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Here’s a new Open Thread for all of you. To minimize the load, please continue to limit your Tweets or place them under a MORE tag.

For those interested, here’s my most recent articles, including my discussion of the latest developments in the Israel/Gaza conflict, my analysis of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, and most recently my review of the surprising political relationship between President Richard Nixon and American Jews.

 
• Category: Foreign Policy • Tags: Gaza, Israel/Palestine, Russia, Ukraine 
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  1. American bookmakers estimate Trump’s chances to win at 64%, Harris at 30%. Unlike MSM, these guys put their money where their mouth is.

    • Replies: @AP
    @AnonfromTN

    That’s because she isn’t the confirmed candidate yet. After the DNC it will probably improve to 40% or more.

    Replies: @Beckow, @A123, @Derer

    , @Greasy William
    @AnonfromTN

    Trump's odds are only 64%? That is free money if you are inclined to gamble

    Replies: @John Johnson, @AnonfromTN

  2. • Replies: @AnonfromTN
    @YetAnotherAnon

    If Zelensky is president, I’m the Pope. He expired back in May, now he is an illegitimate usurper, nothing more.

    Replies: @John Johnson

  3. @YetAnotherAnon
    https://i.postimg.cc/vZVyxBSh/Bidenphone.jpg

    Replies: @AnonfromTN

    If Zelensky is president, I’m the Pope. He expired back in May, now he is an illegitimate usurper, nothing more.

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @AnonfromTN

    If Zelensky is president, I’m the Pope. He expired back in May, now he is an illegitimate usurper, nothing more.

    It's in their constitution that elections are not held during martial law
    https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/online-exclusive/ukraine-cant-hold-elections-during-the-war-does-it-matter/

    It is normal for Europeans to delay elections when under invasion.

    Of course that isn't mentioned on the pro-Putin blogs or Russian State TV.

    Putin's media defenders prefer a closed format just like leftists.

    Both leftists and Putin defenders find it aggravating to allow White men to talk freely.

  4. A lot of commenters in various languages now ask whether Biden knows that he quit. I’d say a more important question is, does he need to know?

  5. @AnonfromTN
    American bookmakers estimate Trump’s chances to win at 64%, Harris at 30%. Unlike MSM, these guys put their money where their mouth is.

    Replies: @AP, @Greasy William

    That’s because she isn’t the confirmed candidate yet. After the DNC it will probably improve to 40% or more.

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @AP

    So there is a 40% chance that the freak show will go on? Not very good for US reputation.

    Instead of expanding to Ukraine to try to destroy Russia the Washingtonians could fix the stuff close to home...We know, you told us (many times) 'but 'mericans have so many appliances!', but still...

    Replies: @AnonfromTN

    , @A123
    @AP



    American bookmakers estimate Trump’s chances to win at 64%, Harris at 30%.
     
    That’s because she isn’t the confirmed candidate yet. After the DNC it will probably improve to 40% or more.
     
    Doubtful. 100 - 64 - 30 = 6%. There will be some money on RFKjr and other low probability outliers. She has to shave points off Trump to make big gains.

    Her future numbers will be burdened by what Biden's have been. She owns a share of the regime's mistakes plus active participation in covering up Biden's deteriorating condition. Both of these are meaningful negatives.

    Despite being the right color, she has a serious religion problem with the DNC base. Her husband is Jewish. Writing off the genocidal Hamas wing of the party makes sense nationally, but it could easily lose Michigan. This will also factor into calculating the numbers.

    Once people focus on Kamala, she is likely to go down in the polls and thus the betting odds.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mikel

    , @Derer
    @AP

    In 2020 Democratic primaries dropout Harris was at the very bottom, and that is her rating from the die hard "Democrats".

    Replies: @AP

  6. @AP
    @AnonfromTN

    That’s because she isn’t the confirmed candidate yet. After the DNC it will probably improve to 40% or more.

    Replies: @Beckow, @A123, @Derer

    So there is a 40% chance that the freak show will go on? Not very good for US reputation.

    Instead of expanding to Ukraine to try to destroy Russia the Washingtonians could fix the stuff close to home…We know, you told us (many times) ‘but ‘mericans have so many appliances!’, but still…

    • Replies: @AnonfromTN
    @Beckow


    So there is a 40% chance that the freak show will go on?
     
    There is 100% chance that the freak show will go on. The only difference is which freak will play the role of a president.

    Not very good for US reputation.
     
    The US reputation is damaged beyond repair. Banana republic level of fraud in 2020 drove the last nail into its coffin. But there will be always people spouting BS about “muh democracy”, "changeable leaders”, “elected officials”, etc., in the US and abroad. Remember, Bush Jr approval rating at the end of his second term was above 20%. Thus, more than a fifth of the US population is hopeless.

    Replies: @Beckow

  7. @Beckow
    @AP

    So there is a 40% chance that the freak show will go on? Not very good for US reputation.

    Instead of expanding to Ukraine to try to destroy Russia the Washingtonians could fix the stuff close to home...We know, you told us (many times) 'but 'mericans have so many appliances!', but still...

    Replies: @AnonfromTN

    So there is a 40% chance that the freak show will go on?

    There is 100% chance that the freak show will go on. The only difference is which freak will play the role of a president.

    Not very good for US reputation.

    The US reputation is damaged beyond repair. Banana republic level of fraud in 2020 drove the last nail into its coffin. But there will be always people spouting BS about “muh democracy”, “changeable leaders”, “elected officials”, etc., in the US and abroad. Remember, Bush Jr approval rating at the end of his second term was above 20%. Thus, more than a fifth of the US population is hopeless.

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @AnonfromTN


    ...There is 100% chance that the freak show will go on...

    The US reputation is damaged beyond repair.
     

    I don't disagree, but the meltdown has been quite sudden and seemingly unnecessary. None of the key decisions were inevitable. Simply staying normal, as they were largely before, was all they had to do.

    - Why go full 'financial' and disembowel the real economy?
    - Why open borders to swamp the West with people not needed and piss off the natives?
    - Why attack Russia openly and stupidly in its home region with no hope of winning? (Even Obama said: 'Russia will always have escalation dominance in Ukraine'.)
    - Why feed irrational hate propaganda against Russia that inevitably backfires?
    - And stay out of 'gender' issues, how did 'trans' triviality become so important?

    As if something broke psychologically and they lost any sense of balance or normalcy. Maybe it did, or the system is so f..ed up financially that distractions and marches-to-nowhere are needed to buy time.

    With Trump it would stabilize for a while. Not because he would do much - he can't and doesn't really want - but because the clean-up and new start would be a relief after this freak-show. His own freaky instincts and inactivity would take some time to bring it down again.

    Replies: @AnonfromTN, @Goddard

  8. A123 says: • Website
    @AP
    @AnonfromTN

    That’s because she isn’t the confirmed candidate yet. After the DNC it will probably improve to 40% or more.

    Replies: @Beckow, @A123, @Derer

    American bookmakers estimate Trump’s chances to win at 64%, Harris at 30%.

    That’s because she isn’t the confirmed candidate yet. After the DNC it will probably improve to 40% or more.

    Doubtful. 100 – 64 – 30 = 6%. There will be some money on RFKjr and other low probability outliers. She has to shave points off Trump to make big gains.

    Her future numbers will be burdened by what Biden’s have been. She owns a share of the regime’s mistakes plus active participation in covering up Biden’s deteriorating condition. Both of these are meaningful negatives.

    Despite being the right color, she has a serious religion problem with the DNC base. Her husband is Jewish. Writing off the genocidal Hamas wing of the party makes sense nationally, but it could easily lose Michigan. This will also factor into calculating the numbers.

    Once people focus on Kamala, she is likely to go down in the polls and thus the betting odds.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @A123

    You should make an AI deep fake trump harris debate. No way youtube would let you post it but rumble or odyssey might pass it. Aren't there some places where it's actually illegal to do that?

    , @Mikel
    @A123


    Once people focus on Kamala, she is likely to go down in the polls and thus the betting odds.
     
    Just a couple of weeks ago I said that Biden would have to drop out, reading what I was reading on the leftist media, and you insisted that that was impossible using lawyerly arguments about party rules and stuff. Obviously, there couldn't be any rules that forced the Dems to go to the elections with a mentally unfit candidate and it's turned out to be very easy to get rid of him. Constant pressure and leaks to the media that even a stubborn, senile man was unable to ignore. The kind of "leaks" that CNN, NBC and all the rest were putting out last Friday always turn out to be true.

    You should realize that any prediction you make now is seriously compromised. But at this point in time predicting Kamala's future is more difficult than Biden's was. All I can say is that the same leftist media are talking too much about other possibilities for her candidacy to be a done deal. Biden's withdrawal is very bad news for Trump though. No matter what polls show now, the massive number of anti-Trump voters will go for Kamala or any other candidate capable of tying sentences together. If the Dems can avoid engaging in an ugly internecine war, they're still in the game.

    Replies: @LatW, @QCIC, @AnonfromTN, @A123, @Emil Nikola Richard

  9. @A123
    @AP



    American bookmakers estimate Trump’s chances to win at 64%, Harris at 30%.
     
    That’s because she isn’t the confirmed candidate yet. After the DNC it will probably improve to 40% or more.
     
    Doubtful. 100 - 64 - 30 = 6%. There will be some money on RFKjr and other low probability outliers. She has to shave points off Trump to make big gains.

    Her future numbers will be burdened by what Biden's have been. She owns a share of the regime's mistakes plus active participation in covering up Biden's deteriorating condition. Both of these are meaningful negatives.

    Despite being the right color, she has a serious religion problem with the DNC base. Her husband is Jewish. Writing off the genocidal Hamas wing of the party makes sense nationally, but it could easily lose Michigan. This will also factor into calculating the numbers.

    Once people focus on Kamala, she is likely to go down in the polls and thus the betting odds.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mikel

    You should make an AI deep fake trump harris debate. No way youtube would let you post it but rumble or odyssey might pass it. Aren’t there some places where it’s actually illegal to do that?

    • LOL: A123
  10. @AnonfromTN
    @Beckow


    So there is a 40% chance that the freak show will go on?
     
    There is 100% chance that the freak show will go on. The only difference is which freak will play the role of a president.

    Not very good for US reputation.
     
    The US reputation is damaged beyond repair. Banana republic level of fraud in 2020 drove the last nail into its coffin. But there will be always people spouting BS about “muh democracy”, "changeable leaders”, “elected officials”, etc., in the US and abroad. Remember, Bush Jr approval rating at the end of his second term was above 20%. Thus, more than a fifth of the US population is hopeless.

    Replies: @Beckow

    …There is 100% chance that the freak show will go on…

    The US reputation is damaged beyond repair.

    I don’t disagree, but the meltdown has been quite sudden and seemingly unnecessary. None of the key decisions were inevitable. Simply staying normal, as they were largely before, was all they had to do.

    – Why go full ‘financial’ and disembowel the real economy?
    – Why open borders to swamp the West with people not needed and piss off the natives?
    – Why attack Russia openly and stupidly in its home region with no hope of winning? (Even Obama said: ‘Russia will always have escalation dominance in Ukraine‘.)
    – Why feed irrational hate propaganda against Russia that inevitably backfires?
    – And stay out of ‘gender’ issues, how did ‘trans’ triviality become so important?

    As if something broke psychologically and they lost any sense of balance or normalcy. Maybe it did, or the system is so f..ed up financially that distractions and marches-to-nowhere are needed to buy time.

    With Trump it would stabilize for a while. Not because he would do much – he can’t and doesn’t really want – but because the clean-up and new start would be a relief after this freak-show. His own freaky instincts and inactivity would take some time to bring it down again.

    • Replies: @AnonfromTN
    @Beckow


    With Trump it would stabilize for a while.
     
    Ir will slow down the decline, but won’t stop it. To actually make America great again the US needs a leader of Putin’s caliber.
    , @Goddard
    @Beckow


    As if something broke psychologically and they lost any sense of balance or normalcy.
     
    Be nearly 60, as I am. Go to a place with crowds. Look around. See the fats ’n’ tats. Note the lack of young, beautiful, thin white women. Note the lack of young married couples with children.

    Remember the Seventies and Eighties. No tats, many fewer fats, many more head turners, many more young married couples.

    Yes, something has broken psychologically.

    White Americans on the one hand look like partiers the day after the bacchanal; on the other hand, like a people defeated in a war.

    White Americans are jacking off with the one hand, waving the white flag with the other.
  11. @A123
    @AP



    American bookmakers estimate Trump’s chances to win at 64%, Harris at 30%.
     
    That’s because she isn’t the confirmed candidate yet. After the DNC it will probably improve to 40% or more.
     
    Doubtful. 100 - 64 - 30 = 6%. There will be some money on RFKjr and other low probability outliers. She has to shave points off Trump to make big gains.

    Her future numbers will be burdened by what Biden's have been. She owns a share of the regime's mistakes plus active participation in covering up Biden's deteriorating condition. Both of these are meaningful negatives.

    Despite being the right color, she has a serious religion problem with the DNC base. Her husband is Jewish. Writing off the genocidal Hamas wing of the party makes sense nationally, but it could easily lose Michigan. This will also factor into calculating the numbers.

    Once people focus on Kamala, she is likely to go down in the polls and thus the betting odds.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mikel

    Once people focus on Kamala, she is likely to go down in the polls and thus the betting odds.

    Just a couple of weeks ago I said that Biden would have to drop out, reading what I was reading on the leftist media, and you insisted that that was impossible using lawyerly arguments about party rules and stuff. Obviously, there couldn’t be any rules that forced the Dems to go to the elections with a mentally unfit candidate and it’s turned out to be very easy to get rid of him. Constant pressure and leaks to the media that even a stubborn, senile man was unable to ignore. The kind of “leaks” that CNN, NBC and all the rest were putting out last Friday always turn out to be true.

    You should realize that any prediction you make now is seriously compromised. But at this point in time predicting Kamala’s future is more difficult than Biden’s was. All I can say is that the same leftist media are talking too much about other possibilities for her candidacy to be a done deal. Biden’s withdrawal is very bad news for Trump though. No matter what polls show now, the massive number of anti-Trump voters will go for Kamala or any other candidate capable of tying sentences together. If the Dems can avoid engaging in an ugly internecine war, they’re still in the game.

    • Replies: @LatW
    @Mikel


    Biden’s withdrawal is very bad news for Trump though. No matter what polls show now, the massive number of anti-Trump voters will go for Kamala or any other candidate capable of tying sentences together.
     
    There could be a similar phenomenon of what just happened in France - when Le Pen's party came so close to winning, and the liberal part of public freaked out so much about how "radical" that change could be that they came out and voted to keep her down.

    Many in the US are probably genuinely afraid of Trump. But the level of polarization is probably the most worrisome thing.
    , @QCIC
    @Mikel

    I think few people will vote for Kamala. It is now obvious that Biden is not a real president and equally obvious that Kamala will not be a real president. This was pretty obvious in 2020 but it was easy for Dems to stay the course and vote for him anyway since he is a long-time DC figure. If Harris gets the nomination Trump will win, but the RFKjr and write-in totals will be substantial.

    Unless the people counting the votes have other plans.

    , @AnonfromTN
    @Mikel


    the massive number of anti-Trump voters will go for Kamala or any other candidate capable of tying sentences together
     
    Judging by her public appearances, Kamala is incapable of composing a grammatically correct sentence, or of saying anything meaningful. If she ends up being DNC nominee, she is going to get the votes of crazed never Trumpers and deranged libtards, i.e., the same votes Minnie Mouse would get if nominated by Dems.

    Replies: @A123, @Mikel, @AP

    , @A123
    @Mikel

    Thank you for agreeing with me.

    What I correctly stated was that convention delegates pledged to Biden would guarantee his nomination *if and only if* he stayed in the race. This is why it was important for the DNC operators to obtain a voluntary withdrawal before the convention.

    As he has dropped out, all of the convention delegates are free agents. IMHO it is unlikely the DNC can arrange a switch, but the smoke filled back rooms of Chicago are notorious. The fundraising elites do not want her, but it remains hard to see an alternative.

    Yours predictions are seriously flawed: (1)


    No matter what polls show now, the massive number of anti-Trump voters will go for Kamala or any other candidate capable of tying sentences together. If the Dems can avoid engaging in an ugly internecine war, they’re still in the game.
     
    Kamala is a co-conspirator in the current regime's mideeds. She was the "Border Czar" and completely failed. Why do you think that everyone would suddenly ignore her record? It is a deranged assertion that only a zealous #NeverTrump cultist, such as yourself, would make. Why are you so wrapped up in personality rather than reality?

    You should realize that any prediction you make now is seriously compromised by your unhinged, emotional, and less than objective attempts at analysis.
    ___

    By the way are you still all-in on whites paying reparations to blacks?

    That is a key platform plank for your precious Che RFKjr Guevara.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Mikel

    , @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Mikel


    If the Dems can avoid engaging in an ugly internecine war, they’re still in the game.
     
    https://rajivsethi.substack.com/p/an-all-pay-auction

    It's a business. The Democratic party is a big money business and the big money donors have to agree on how to split it up. It's much more possible than that blogger who is an economist with dogmatic faith in his homo economicus models thinks, but it's still a long shot.

    Kamala Harris is an utter ditz who cannot string two sentences together. If you listen to her it is obviously the one sentence over and over and over. They have put this right into Trump's wheelhouse. Any campaign they construct will be a house of cards that he can blow over with one of his quips.

    It's Donald the Fat's to lose. Also a possibility. Anybody who thinks they know how this will shake is deluded.

    Replies: @Beckow

  12. @Mikel
    @A123


    Once people focus on Kamala, she is likely to go down in the polls and thus the betting odds.
     
    Just a couple of weeks ago I said that Biden would have to drop out, reading what I was reading on the leftist media, and you insisted that that was impossible using lawyerly arguments about party rules and stuff. Obviously, there couldn't be any rules that forced the Dems to go to the elections with a mentally unfit candidate and it's turned out to be very easy to get rid of him. Constant pressure and leaks to the media that even a stubborn, senile man was unable to ignore. The kind of "leaks" that CNN, NBC and all the rest were putting out last Friday always turn out to be true.

    You should realize that any prediction you make now is seriously compromised. But at this point in time predicting Kamala's future is more difficult than Biden's was. All I can say is that the same leftist media are talking too much about other possibilities for her candidacy to be a done deal. Biden's withdrawal is very bad news for Trump though. No matter what polls show now, the massive number of anti-Trump voters will go for Kamala or any other candidate capable of tying sentences together. If the Dems can avoid engaging in an ugly internecine war, they're still in the game.

    Replies: @LatW, @QCIC, @AnonfromTN, @A123, @Emil Nikola Richard

    Biden’s withdrawal is very bad news for Trump though. No matter what polls show now, the massive number of anti-Trump voters will go for Kamala or any other candidate capable of tying sentences together.

    There could be a similar phenomenon of what just happened in France – when Le Pen’s party came so close to winning, and the liberal part of public freaked out so much about how “radical” that change could be that they came out and voted to keep her down.

    Many in the US are probably genuinely afraid of Trump. But the level of polarization is probably the most worrisome thing.

    • Agree: Dragoslav
  13. @Mikel
    @A123


    Once people focus on Kamala, she is likely to go down in the polls and thus the betting odds.
     
    Just a couple of weeks ago I said that Biden would have to drop out, reading what I was reading on the leftist media, and you insisted that that was impossible using lawyerly arguments about party rules and stuff. Obviously, there couldn't be any rules that forced the Dems to go to the elections with a mentally unfit candidate and it's turned out to be very easy to get rid of him. Constant pressure and leaks to the media that even a stubborn, senile man was unable to ignore. The kind of "leaks" that CNN, NBC and all the rest were putting out last Friday always turn out to be true.

    You should realize that any prediction you make now is seriously compromised. But at this point in time predicting Kamala's future is more difficult than Biden's was. All I can say is that the same leftist media are talking too much about other possibilities for her candidacy to be a done deal. Biden's withdrawal is very bad news for Trump though. No matter what polls show now, the massive number of anti-Trump voters will go for Kamala or any other candidate capable of tying sentences together. If the Dems can avoid engaging in an ugly internecine war, they're still in the game.

    Replies: @LatW, @QCIC, @AnonfromTN, @A123, @Emil Nikola Richard

    I think few people will vote for Kamala. It is now obvious that Biden is not a real president and equally obvious that Kamala will not be a real president. This was pretty obvious in 2020 but it was easy for Dems to stay the course and vote for him anyway since he is a long-time DC figure. If Harris gets the nomination Trump will win, but the RFKjr and write-in totals will be substantial.

    Unless the people counting the votes have other plans.

  14. @Mikel
    @A123


    Once people focus on Kamala, she is likely to go down in the polls and thus the betting odds.
     
    Just a couple of weeks ago I said that Biden would have to drop out, reading what I was reading on the leftist media, and you insisted that that was impossible using lawyerly arguments about party rules and stuff. Obviously, there couldn't be any rules that forced the Dems to go to the elections with a mentally unfit candidate and it's turned out to be very easy to get rid of him. Constant pressure and leaks to the media that even a stubborn, senile man was unable to ignore. The kind of "leaks" that CNN, NBC and all the rest were putting out last Friday always turn out to be true.

    You should realize that any prediction you make now is seriously compromised. But at this point in time predicting Kamala's future is more difficult than Biden's was. All I can say is that the same leftist media are talking too much about other possibilities for her candidacy to be a done deal. Biden's withdrawal is very bad news for Trump though. No matter what polls show now, the massive number of anti-Trump voters will go for Kamala or any other candidate capable of tying sentences together. If the Dems can avoid engaging in an ugly internecine war, they're still in the game.

    Replies: @LatW, @QCIC, @AnonfromTN, @A123, @Emil Nikola Richard

    the massive number of anti-Trump voters will go for Kamala or any other candidate capable of tying sentences together

    Judging by her public appearances, Kamala is incapable of composing a grammatically correct sentence, or of saying anything meaningful. If she ends up being DNC nominee, she is going to get the votes of crazed never Trumpers and deranged libtards, i.e., the same votes Minnie Mouse would get if nominated by Dems.

    • Agree: A123, LondonBob
    • Replies: @A123
    @AnonfromTN


    Judging by her public appearances, Kamala is incapable of composing a grammatically correct sentence, or of saying anything meaningful.
     
    They need a convincing orator who can hold together a pyramid of conflicting special interest groups.

    The DNC is fracturing. (1)

    Pro-BDS group defends counterprotest of 'Pride' parade, blames HRC for 'pinkwashing'

    Columbia University's Apartheid Divest Coalition posted a series of statements on Instagram to bring greater awareness to 'Palestinian liberation' following the conclusion of 'Pride Month.'

    'There is no pride in genocide, no queer liberation without Palestinian liberation,' the group also wrote.
     
    Does anyone think that Kamala has sufficient leadership gravitas to make these factions fall into line?

    If she ends up being DNC nominee, she is going to get the votes of crazed never Trumpers and deranged libtards, i.e., the same votes Minnie Mouse would get if nominated by Dems
     
    I agree.

    Crazed #NeverTrump voters like Mikel will support her. However that is only ~30% and over concentrated in safe red states like California. She lacks the skills and character to win over moderates and independents in swing states.

    The Dems are counting on something blowing up in the Trump-Vance campaign. Some hideous story about Vance (true or more likely fabricated) is something they are likely to try.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.campusreform.org/article/pro-bds-group-defends-counterprotest-pride-parade-blames-hrc-pinkwashing/25928

    Replies: @RadicalCenter

    , @Mikel
    @AnonfromTN


    the same votes Minnie Mouse would get if nominated by Dems.
     
    Not exactly. Let's remember that Biden was still polling in the high 30s last week, after the debate and the Trump assassination attempt. Those are the real "Minnie Mouse" voters who weren't voting for Biden but against Trump. However, in any election you always have plenty of independents and "undecideds". I reckon most of them don't like Trump but couldn't vote for a visibly unfit candidate either. Now that the dementia factor is gone, they can be convinced to vote Dem. But the Democrats have lost a tremendous amount of credibility. They need to stop making mistakes and show a unified front fast.

    Replies: @AnonfromTN, @Gerard1234

    , @AP
    @AnonfromTN


    Judging by her public appearances, Kamala is incapable of composing a grammatically correct sentence, or of saying anything meaningful
     
    You are too reliant on tendentious internet sources for your information. While Kamala may be the least intelligent major candidate in a long time (and in terms of VP only Sarah Palin has been dumber), she is capable of speaking coherently when she needs to.

    She did finish law school and pass the bar, so she has whatever minimal brains are necessary to do that. I’d guess an IQ in Beckow’s neighborhood of around 115 or so.

    Here she is speaking coherently:

    https://twitter.com/acyn/status/1815509563522920918?s=46&t=Qz3eXZWFYIvyHmaAk32tcg

    Replies: @QCIC, @Mr. XYZ, @Negronicus

  15. A123 says: • Website
    @Mikel
    @A123


    Once people focus on Kamala, she is likely to go down in the polls and thus the betting odds.
     
    Just a couple of weeks ago I said that Biden would have to drop out, reading what I was reading on the leftist media, and you insisted that that was impossible using lawyerly arguments about party rules and stuff. Obviously, there couldn't be any rules that forced the Dems to go to the elections with a mentally unfit candidate and it's turned out to be very easy to get rid of him. Constant pressure and leaks to the media that even a stubborn, senile man was unable to ignore. The kind of "leaks" that CNN, NBC and all the rest were putting out last Friday always turn out to be true.

    You should realize that any prediction you make now is seriously compromised. But at this point in time predicting Kamala's future is more difficult than Biden's was. All I can say is that the same leftist media are talking too much about other possibilities for her candidacy to be a done deal. Biden's withdrawal is very bad news for Trump though. No matter what polls show now, the massive number of anti-Trump voters will go for Kamala or any other candidate capable of tying sentences together. If the Dems can avoid engaging in an ugly internecine war, they're still in the game.

    Replies: @LatW, @QCIC, @AnonfromTN, @A123, @Emil Nikola Richard

    Thank you for agreeing with me.

    What I correctly stated was that convention delegates pledged to Biden would guarantee his nomination *if and only if* he stayed in the race. This is why it was important for the DNC operators to obtain a voluntary withdrawal before the convention.

    As he has dropped out, all of the convention delegates are free agents. IMHO it is unlikely the DNC can arrange a switch, but the smoke filled back rooms of Chicago are notorious. The fundraising elites do not want her, but it remains hard to see an alternative.

    Yours predictions are seriously flawed: (1)

    No matter what polls show now, the massive number of anti-Trump voters will go for Kamala or any other candidate capable of tying sentences together. If the Dems can avoid engaging in an ugly internecine war, they’re still in the game.

    Kamala is a co-conspirator in the current regime’s mideeds. She was the “Border Czar” and completely failed. Why do you think that everyone would suddenly ignore her record? It is a deranged assertion that only a zealous #NeverTrump cultist, such as yourself, would make. Why are you so wrapped up in personality rather than reality?

    You should realize that any prediction you make now is seriously compromised by your unhinged, emotional, and less than objective attempts at analysis.
    ___

    By the way are you still all-in on whites paying reparations to blacks?

    That is a key platform plank for your precious Che RFKjr Guevara.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @Mikel
    @A123


    convention delegates pledged to Biden would guarantee his nomination
     
    No, they wouldn't necessarily. You were wrong even on the lawyerly part because you were ignoring the 'good conscience" clause. But it's OK. We don't read your comments for your prediction skills. What we all appreciate is the entertainment value of your bizarre ideas.

    Replies: @A123, @Torna atrás

  16. @Mikel
    @A123


    Once people focus on Kamala, she is likely to go down in the polls and thus the betting odds.
     
    Just a couple of weeks ago I said that Biden would have to drop out, reading what I was reading on the leftist media, and you insisted that that was impossible using lawyerly arguments about party rules and stuff. Obviously, there couldn't be any rules that forced the Dems to go to the elections with a mentally unfit candidate and it's turned out to be very easy to get rid of him. Constant pressure and leaks to the media that even a stubborn, senile man was unable to ignore. The kind of "leaks" that CNN, NBC and all the rest were putting out last Friday always turn out to be true.

    You should realize that any prediction you make now is seriously compromised. But at this point in time predicting Kamala's future is more difficult than Biden's was. All I can say is that the same leftist media are talking too much about other possibilities for her candidacy to be a done deal. Biden's withdrawal is very bad news for Trump though. No matter what polls show now, the massive number of anti-Trump voters will go for Kamala or any other candidate capable of tying sentences together. If the Dems can avoid engaging in an ugly internecine war, they're still in the game.

    Replies: @LatW, @QCIC, @AnonfromTN, @A123, @Emil Nikola Richard

    If the Dems can avoid engaging in an ugly internecine war, they’re still in the game.

    https://rajivsethi.substack.com/p/an-all-pay-auction

    It’s a business. The Democratic party is a big money business and the big money donors have to agree on how to split it up. It’s much more possible than that blogger who is an economist with dogmatic faith in his homo economicus models thinks, but it’s still a long shot.

    Kamala Harris is an utter ditz who cannot string two sentences together. If you listen to her it is obviously the one sentence over and over and over. They have put this right into Trump’s wheelhouse. Any campaign they construct will be a house of cards that he can blow over with one of his quips.

    It’s Donald the Fat’s to lose. Also a possibility. Anybody who thinks they know how this will shake is deluded.

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    ...Kamala Harris is an utter ditz who cannot string two sentences together. If you listen to her it is obviously the one sentence over and over and over.
     
    Kamala is almost 60 and childless - all women with that profile become ditzy. And Kamala was already ditzy and unserious, how can she get any worse?

    Somebody should stop the circus before US is a complete laughing stock. Put her on meds to control the twitchy laughter and silliness, damn the side effects, this is a horror show.

    Maybe the process is not done and there will be a switcheroo to get her out. More likely the Dems are throwing the election. It won't make much difference, the harder war will be abandoned (it was lost anyway), Izrael unleashed but still achieve nothing, Europe fu..ed, and some dudes banned from girls' showers.

    Instead of 10 million migrants walking in, there will be 5 million flying in. Trump will probably welcome them at airports - he is a devotee of the enterpreneural-migrant cult and old men tend to go wobbly anyway.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  17. A123 says: • Website
    @AnonfromTN
    @Mikel


    the massive number of anti-Trump voters will go for Kamala or any other candidate capable of tying sentences together
     
    Judging by her public appearances, Kamala is incapable of composing a grammatically correct sentence, or of saying anything meaningful. If she ends up being DNC nominee, she is going to get the votes of crazed never Trumpers and deranged libtards, i.e., the same votes Minnie Mouse would get if nominated by Dems.

    Replies: @A123, @Mikel, @AP

    Judging by her public appearances, Kamala is incapable of composing a grammatically correct sentence, or of saying anything meaningful.

    They need a convincing orator who can hold together a pyramid of conflicting special interest groups.

    The DNC is fracturing. (1)

    Pro-BDS group defends counterprotest of ‘Pride’ parade, blames HRC for ‘pinkwashing’

    Columbia University’s Apartheid Divest Coalition posted a series of statements on Instagram to bring greater awareness to ‘Palestinian liberation’ following the conclusion of ‘Pride Month.’

    ‘There is no pride in genocide, no queer liberation without Palestinian liberation,’ the group also wrote.

    Does anyone think that Kamala has sufficient leadership gravitas to make these factions fall into line?

    If she ends up being DNC nominee, she is going to get the votes of crazed never Trumpers and deranged libtards, i.e., the same votes Minnie Mouse would get if nominated by Dems

    I agree.

    Crazed #NeverTrump voters like Mikel will support her. However that is only ~30% and over concentrated in safe red states like California. She lacks the skills and character to win over moderates and independents in swing states.

    The Dems are counting on something blowing up in the Trump-Vance campaign. Some hideous story about Vance (true or more likely fabricated) is something they are likely to try.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.campusreform.org/article/pro-bds-group-defends-counterprotest-pride-parade-blames-hrc-pinkwashing/25928

    • Replies: @RadicalCenter
    @A123

    Intentionally starving and carpet-bombing civilians in their own homes, schools, shops, hospitals, places of worship and refugee camps is evil and needlessly cruel and ungodly — and that doesn’t change if homosexuals or anyone else agrees.

    It’s not “self-defense”, nor even legitimate proportional retaliation, nor legitimate preemption of an imminent attack. That’s not changed by perverts (“pride month”) reaching the same conclusion.

    Terrorizing and dehumanizing innocent human beings and laughing about it, is the height (or depth) of vile cruelty. Homosexuals or leftists having the sense and decency to notice that, doesn’t undermine this conclusion.

    But we notice your attempt to taint the morally and legally righteous movement against the genocide, by association with movements that most of us here don’t like.

    Stop murdering children on purpose.
    Stop murdering women on purpose.
    Stop murdering old people and handicapped people and doctors, nurses and patients on purpose.
    .
    Stop targeting hospitals and schools and refugee camps.
    Then get the fuck out off the Palestinians’ land and leave forever — or decent people will make sure you do.

    https://youtu.be/6GaUwsfkzU4?si=GNtnmbllwbDq3xFd

    How Israel Was Created:
    https://youtu.be/6foH3Zc82ZQ?si=bOatNmPdy0nXec6z

    FREE PALESTINE.
    Disarm and disband “israel.”

    Replies: @RadicalCenter, @A123

  18. @AnonfromTN
    @Mikel


    the massive number of anti-Trump voters will go for Kamala or any other candidate capable of tying sentences together
     
    Judging by her public appearances, Kamala is incapable of composing a grammatically correct sentence, or of saying anything meaningful. If she ends up being DNC nominee, she is going to get the votes of crazed never Trumpers and deranged libtards, i.e., the same votes Minnie Mouse would get if nominated by Dems.

    Replies: @A123, @Mikel, @AP

    the same votes Minnie Mouse would get if nominated by Dems.

    Not exactly. Let’s remember that Biden was still polling in the high 30s last week, after the debate and the Trump assassination attempt. Those are the real “Minnie Mouse” voters who weren’t voting for Biden but against Trump. However, in any election you always have plenty of independents and “undecideds”. I reckon most of them don’t like Trump but couldn’t vote for a visibly unfit candidate either. Now that the dementia factor is gone, they can be convinced to vote Dem. But the Democrats have lost a tremendous amount of credibility. They need to stop making mistakes and show a unified front fast.

    • Replies: @AnonfromTN
    @Mikel


    Now that the dementia factor is gone
     
    Kamala is stupid, verging on clinical. Unlike Biden, she does not have an excuse of dementia. Dems cannot afford a debate with her, as her mental incompetence will come out (not to mention her idiotic giggles).

    I am not a fan of Trump, but even he is way better than Kamala. With Trump at least some of crazy libtard pet issues will be gone, like umpteen sexes, or going to girls’ bathroom with male equipment. Trump presidency won’t stop the march to the cliff, but it will slow it down.
    , @Gerard1234
    @Mikel

    From the previous thread:


    We’ve had more than enough MH-11s, Chepigas, Novichoks, mysterious cyberattacks and all of that.
     
    WOW! You appear a smart guy, so it’s simply incredible that NATO vermin full-spectrum propaganda brainwashing BS dominance is that extreme in the west, you would be coerced into thinking “Russian agents poisoned ” the Skripals even though:

    1. Salibury is home of main training base of UK army
    2. Salisbury is home of main Chemical Weapons facility of the UK
    3. Salisbury is full of persons of interest in military, espionage, military tech etc
    4. “coincidentally” the Skripals were “rescued” …….by the the top military nurse in the UK who was just walking past the bench that the Skripals were on
    5. The completely inexplicable death “by Novichok” of this homeless woman. Again NATO scum propaganda just relies on mass repetition of slogans as “Russians”, “spies” “Novichok” to connect to the “poisoning” of this woman – even though its implausible and nonsensical. If anything it should be confirmation that its such a lie, that the British must have performed the entire thing

    How your 1st reaction wouldn’t be that the traditional British liars are trying to setup Russia, is a mystery of logic.

    Those 1st 3 points are suitable to explain motive of why Chepiga & Petrov were there not to “poison” the Skripals- there is about a million other things they could have been doing for intelligence. Just as with the homeless woman death – Chepiga & Petrov can’t be placed at or near Skripals house, on his road or having met him. Because of the 1st 3 points, them coming all the way from Russia isn’t strong enough to link to murder. For the homeless woman, the lazy british scum don’t even make any effort to link Chepiga/Petrov to the location.

    Anglo-American NATO retards know nothing about Russia, so it would not surprise me if these lazy bums turned to Hollywood to concoct their BS. In the Anglo film about their special military unit, the SAS, called “Who Dares Wins” a woman uses a perfume bottle to kill a spy on the bus a sprayed substance that I think is Novichok. Good film, actually.

    I don’t know about you, but my chemical and medical knowledge is near non-existant/forgotten – so I have no idea if the “Novichok” is supposed to kill in 1 second or whatever, but its claimed lethality does not look to be supported by what happened there or with Navalny.

    And even if Chepiga/Petrov was there to meet Skripal they are STILL highly unlikely to have poisoned him . We know from the Litvinenko issue that he was openly meeting with FSB colleagues ( former for him) in popular London hotels/bars/restaurants. For a guy claiming long before this as a “political refugee”, who had defected, working for criminal oligarch fugitive and who was frequently making accusations against the Russian government in public – it seems incredible or extremely stupid and disrespectful to his British masters to be doing this………..Except for the fact I think this practise is encouraged by the British Intelligence. They want the contacts maintained.

    Same thing with Skripal, or it very plausibly could have been doing some shadowish business deal with them. That’s not murder

    Skripal’s mother is alive in her 90’s, but sick and immobile. Thats more than enough motivation to try and do something for the benefit of Russian government to allow him to return. I think his daughter was engaged also. She could have been co-operating with the 2 of them

    Its so near zero chance this Novichok BS, that I think even the insane Chepiga-Petrov as well-manicured fags gaying eachother in Salisbury Cathedral has more plausibility to it – and even explanation for them being forced as punishment to do the silly sports supplements/tourists interview.

    Whatever isn’t known or seems very inconsistent, then with our own biases we explain by the opposite sides “incompetence” – as the Anglo-EU-American trash do with the mountain of inconsistencies in their accusations. My thought is if she , the daughter, travelled directly from Moscow to London to meet her father then I think impossible , our intelligence services didn’t know that……and I think absolutely ZERO chance they would have tried to kill Skripal, particularly poison him, with her visiting if they knew . Maybe she was travelling via transit through another country as Turkey or EU state? We don’t know.

    Navalny you didn’t mention – again no knowledge to talk about the so-called Novichok itself, but everything about how he was acting, the situation at the airport ( phoned in bomb-alert before landing, so all emergency services there, for what was a DIVERTED plane to the airport), how he was then sent to Germany, ‘recovered” , made another hysterical BS video with German co-operation, they allowed him Lenin-style to return to Russia, he insanely returned to Russia knowing he is going to be arrested, jailed and despite doing the BS claim they tried to poison him………appears ridiculous. Why would they send him back, and why would we send him there if we attempted “assassinate by Novichok”?

    Again – he could just be another psycho liberast that have plagued Russia over the centuries, but I think that like most of us ( not ukronazis of course) he loves his own family. Do some stupid stunt, be a prisoner for a few years with your children guaranteed a rich and prosperous life forever……..and we get you released after a few years as we have abducted a few Russian guys to exchange you for anyway and Russia have some Americans we want back. Plausible the Americans could have told him.

    MH17
     
    Plenty on the technical side suggests it was a deliberate Ukrainian operation. It annoys me that our policy is entirely counter-reaction. Nothing proactive. Even with all the NATO lies about MH17, we have not put out our official version of what happened. Only put information out that Su-24’s were flying directly there, and counter claims about the warhead of missile not being compatible with claims from NATO side.

    But again – why there would not be a high suspicion of khokhol conspiracy is a mystery


    mysterious cyberattacks
     
    Bizarre statement. Surely these attacks are accepted as mutual? I needed to do something important for me on state agency website 2 months ago but it was inaccessible that day because of Nato/Banderastan DDoS attack. Most of the BS accusations are based not on anything firm but on some use of the Russian language by the hackers- nations with large number of scammers and people with Russian language skills such as Banderastan or Romania could be responsible for many of these attacks.

    Again – I can’t understand why this is your natural response when we all know they said the same definite lies about ” Russian hacking” the Clinton Teams e-mails, and Hunter Bidens laptop. These lies have probably had an influence in the SMO occuring – that is the selfish and satanic nature of these people.

    Then there is the Syrian gas attack. Or the Ukronazis shooting down plane in Belgorod with their own POW’s about to be exchanged ( ironic , as that probable strike from Patriot system was likely what they were referring to when saying “we have fired American missiles into Russia anyway, so allow us to do it). Or the Ukronazis HIMARS attack on their own POW’s held at Olenovka…and plenty of others

    We’ve had more than enough MH-11s, Chepigas, Novichoks, mysterious cyberattacks and all of that.
     
    Here I think the opposite. There is no tiresome accumulative effect. If NATO side is lying on one of these things, then they must be lying on all of them is my view. Normally the reaction should be to judge each case on their merits , which would be exhausting …….but the NATO propaganda and actions are so intense and similar for all these events that there is no option but to think if 1 is wrong, then they must all be wrong.

    Replies: @AnonfromTN

  19. @Mikel
    @AnonfromTN


    the same votes Minnie Mouse would get if nominated by Dems.
     
    Not exactly. Let's remember that Biden was still polling in the high 30s last week, after the debate and the Trump assassination attempt. Those are the real "Minnie Mouse" voters who weren't voting for Biden but against Trump. However, in any election you always have plenty of independents and "undecideds". I reckon most of them don't like Trump but couldn't vote for a visibly unfit candidate either. Now that the dementia factor is gone, they can be convinced to vote Dem. But the Democrats have lost a tremendous amount of credibility. They need to stop making mistakes and show a unified front fast.

    Replies: @AnonfromTN, @Gerard1234

    Now that the dementia factor is gone

    Kamala is stupid, verging on clinical. Unlike Biden, she does not have an excuse of dementia. Dems cannot afford a debate with her, as her mental incompetence will come out (not to mention her idiotic giggles).

    I am not a fan of Trump, but even he is way better than Kamala. With Trump at least some of crazy libtard pet issues will be gone, like umpteen sexes, or going to girls’ bathroom with male equipment. Trump presidency won’t stop the march to the cliff, but it will slow it down.

  20. @A123
    @Mikel

    Thank you for agreeing with me.

    What I correctly stated was that convention delegates pledged to Biden would guarantee his nomination *if and only if* he stayed in the race. This is why it was important for the DNC operators to obtain a voluntary withdrawal before the convention.

    As he has dropped out, all of the convention delegates are free agents. IMHO it is unlikely the DNC can arrange a switch, but the smoke filled back rooms of Chicago are notorious. The fundraising elites do not want her, but it remains hard to see an alternative.

    Yours predictions are seriously flawed: (1)


    No matter what polls show now, the massive number of anti-Trump voters will go for Kamala or any other candidate capable of tying sentences together. If the Dems can avoid engaging in an ugly internecine war, they’re still in the game.
     
    Kamala is a co-conspirator in the current regime's mideeds. She was the "Border Czar" and completely failed. Why do you think that everyone would suddenly ignore her record? It is a deranged assertion that only a zealous #NeverTrump cultist, such as yourself, would make. Why are you so wrapped up in personality rather than reality?

    You should realize that any prediction you make now is seriously compromised by your unhinged, emotional, and less than objective attempts at analysis.
    ___

    By the way are you still all-in on whites paying reparations to blacks?

    That is a key platform plank for your precious Che RFKjr Guevara.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Mikel

    convention delegates pledged to Biden would guarantee his nomination

    No, they wouldn’t necessarily. You were wrong even on the lawyerly part because you were ignoring the ‘good conscience” clause. But it’s OK. We don’t read your comments for your prediction skills. What we all appreciate is the entertainment value of your bizarre ideas.

    • Agree: Torna atrás
    • Replies: @A123
    @Mikel



    convention delegates pledged to Biden would guarantee his nomination
     
    No, they wouldn’t necessarily. You were wrong even on the lawyerly part because you were ignoring the ‘good conscience” clause.
     
    When has the "good conscience" clause been actioned in a contested convention or court? Lets see... Never:

    • There is every reason to believe that hand picked Biden delegates would have voted for Biden. They were put on that slate for their loyalty to the chosen one.

    • If there had been an insurrection, it would have been challenged in a judicial process as an "unconscionable" act. How many weeks would that have taken? And, how would that have interacted with ballot access provisions?

    Your #NeverTrump cult extremism led you to a bad assumption, simply because it was favorable to your desperately desired outcome. Your emotional distress does not be assure your result.
    ___

    Please keep your profoundly non-serious & comedic string of errors on display. Remember:

    =============================
        No one is laughing with you.
         We are all laughing at you.
    =============================

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @John Johnson

    , @Torna atrás
    @Mikel

    https://youtu.be/mCMDvVgmG3c?si=K3WmCn8QXN_JqYrG

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  21. A123 says: • Website
    @Mikel
    @A123


    convention delegates pledged to Biden would guarantee his nomination
     
    No, they wouldn't necessarily. You were wrong even on the lawyerly part because you were ignoring the 'good conscience" clause. But it's OK. We don't read your comments for your prediction skills. What we all appreciate is the entertainment value of your bizarre ideas.

    Replies: @A123, @Torna atrás

    convention delegates pledged to Biden would guarantee his nomination

    No, they wouldn’t necessarily. You were wrong even on the lawyerly part because you were ignoring the ‘good conscience” clause.

    When has the “good conscience” clause been actioned in a contested convention or court? Lets see… Never:

    • There is every reason to believe that hand picked Biden delegates would have voted for Biden. They were put on that slate for their loyalty to the chosen one.

    • If there had been an insurrection, it would have been challenged in a judicial process as an “unconscionable” act. How many weeks would that have taken? And, how would that have interacted with ballot access provisions?

    Your #NeverTrump cult extremism led you to a bad assumption, simply because it was favorable to your desperately desired outcome. Your emotional distress does not be assure your result.
    ___

    Please keep your profoundly non-serious & comedic string of errors on display. Remember:

    =============================
        No one is laughing with you.
         We are all laughing at you.
    =============================

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @A123

    Your #NeverTrump cult extremism led you to a bad assumption, simply because it was favorable to your desperately desired outcome. Your emotional distress does not be assure your result.

    Shall we go back and look at the posts where you called me clueless and an idiot for saying there is no reason to assume that Biden will be the final candidate?

    Your orange felon's best chance was against Mr. Magoo.

    Better hope that the Democrats run Harris. But in a brokered convention she can be defeated even if the DNC and media back her.

    The polls show that Trump loses against practically any non-name moderate Democrat.

    "Polls are just MSM BS, you're indoctrinated"

    - Trump Tribe in the last election when I pointed out that he was losing independents.

    Replies: @A123, @RadicalCenter

  22. @Mikel
    @A123


    convention delegates pledged to Biden would guarantee his nomination
     
    No, they wouldn't necessarily. You were wrong even on the lawyerly part because you were ignoring the 'good conscience" clause. But it's OK. We don't read your comments for your prediction skills. What we all appreciate is the entertainment value of your bizarre ideas.

    Replies: @A123, @Torna atrás

    • LOL: Bashibuzuk
    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Torna atrás

    One of the funniest comments I ever read on UR.

  23. @AnonfromTN
    @YetAnotherAnon

    If Zelensky is president, I’m the Pope. He expired back in May, now he is an illegitimate usurper, nothing more.

    Replies: @John Johnson

    If Zelensky is president, I’m the Pope. He expired back in May, now he is an illegitimate usurper, nothing more.

    It’s in their constitution that elections are not held during martial law
    https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/online-exclusive/ukraine-cant-hold-elections-during-the-war-does-it-matter/

    It is normal for Europeans to delay elections when under invasion.

    Of course that isn’t mentioned on the pro-Putin blogs or Russian State TV.

    Putin’s media defenders prefer a closed format just like leftists.

    Both leftists and Putin defenders find it aggravating to allow White men to talk freely.

  24. @A123
    @Mikel



    convention delegates pledged to Biden would guarantee his nomination
     
    No, they wouldn’t necessarily. You were wrong even on the lawyerly part because you were ignoring the ‘good conscience” clause.
     
    When has the "good conscience" clause been actioned in a contested convention or court? Lets see... Never:

    • There is every reason to believe that hand picked Biden delegates would have voted for Biden. They were put on that slate for their loyalty to the chosen one.

    • If there had been an insurrection, it would have been challenged in a judicial process as an "unconscionable" act. How many weeks would that have taken? And, how would that have interacted with ballot access provisions?

    Your #NeverTrump cult extremism led you to a bad assumption, simply because it was favorable to your desperately desired outcome. Your emotional distress does not be assure your result.
    ___

    Please keep your profoundly non-serious & comedic string of errors on display. Remember:

    =============================
        No one is laughing with you.
         We are all laughing at you.
    =============================

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @John Johnson

    Your #NeverTrump cult extremism led you to a bad assumption, simply because it was favorable to your desperately desired outcome. Your emotional distress does not be assure your result.

    Shall we go back and look at the posts where you called me clueless and an idiot for saying there is no reason to assume that Biden will be the final candidate?

    Your orange felon’s best chance was against Mr. Magoo.

    Better hope that the Democrats run Harris. But in a brokered convention she can be defeated even if the DNC and media back her.

    The polls show that Trump loses against practically any non-name moderate Democrat.

    “Polls are just MSM BS, you’re indoctrinated”

    – Trump Tribe in the last election when I pointed out that he was losing independents.

    • LOL: A123
    • Replies: @A123
    @John Johnson


    The polls show that Trump loses against practically any non-name moderate Democrat.

     

    You cherry picked one poll over a year ago. Your mouth frothing #NeverTrump zealotry was unconvincing at the time and remains so today.

    Here is a collection of multiple recent Trump/Harris polls (1). Nationally -- Trump is ahead in 9, Harris 2, tie 1.

    The key battlegrounds, other than MI, are generally more favorable than the national for Trump over Biden. It will take several weeks for a wide array state polls to occur with Harris, but there is every reason to believe that she is in the same Electoral College hole as her boss. Tied or behind in every swing state.
    ____

    Didn't you say the documents case was going to be a bombshell that would send Trump to jail this year? Have you noticed that it has been effectively dismissed due to the illegal nature of the prosecution? Your prediction 100% failed.

    I have to give credit where credit is due. Your prognostication is vastly worse (and funnier) than Mikel's. That requires special talent and utter obliviousness to reality.

    ===============
       You keep lying
    We keep laughing
    ===============

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-harris

    Replies: @John Johnson

    , @RadicalCenter
    @John Johnson

    Pretend-“moderate” white christian guy like Kentucky's Bashear, plus a Spanish-speaking white-ish Hispanic (probably a woman) for Veep. And the Dems could actually squeak out a win without having to engage in massive vote fraud.

    Replies: @John Johnson

  25. @AP
    @AnonfromTN

    That’s because she isn’t the confirmed candidate yet. After the DNC it will probably improve to 40% or more.

    Replies: @Beckow, @A123, @Derer

    In 2020 Democratic primaries dropout Harris was at the very bottom, and that is her rating from the die hard “Democrats”.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Derer

    She wasn’t running against Trump in the primaries.

  26. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Mikel


    If the Dems can avoid engaging in an ugly internecine war, they’re still in the game.
     
    https://rajivsethi.substack.com/p/an-all-pay-auction

    It's a business. The Democratic party is a big money business and the big money donors have to agree on how to split it up. It's much more possible than that blogger who is an economist with dogmatic faith in his homo economicus models thinks, but it's still a long shot.

    Kamala Harris is an utter ditz who cannot string two sentences together. If you listen to her it is obviously the one sentence over and over and over. They have put this right into Trump's wheelhouse. Any campaign they construct will be a house of cards that he can blow over with one of his quips.

    It's Donald the Fat's to lose. Also a possibility. Anybody who thinks they know how this will shake is deluded.

    Replies: @Beckow

    …Kamala Harris is an utter ditz who cannot string two sentences together. If you listen to her it is obviously the one sentence over and over and over.

    Kamala is almost 60 and childless – all women with that profile become ditzy. And Kamala was already ditzy and unserious, how can she get any worse?

    Somebody should stop the circus before US is a complete laughing stock. Put her on meds to control the twitchy laughter and silliness, damn the side effects, this is a horror show.

    Maybe the process is not done and there will be a switcheroo to get her out. More likely the Dems are throwing the election. It won’t make much difference, the harder war will be abandoned (it was lost anyway), Izrael unleashed but still achieve nothing, Europe fu..ed, and some dudes banned from girls’ showers.

    Instead of 10 million migrants walking in, there will be 5 million flying in. Trump will probably welcome them at airports – he is a devotee of the enterpreneural-migrant cult and old men tend to go wobbly anyway.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Beckow


    Somebody should stop the circus before US is a complete laughing stock.
     
    It should have been done prior to Dubya.

    I stopped taking US seriously after 9-11.

    We know that Jeb Bush stole the election for his brother from Al Gore and then 9-11 made any investigation into the results impossible.

    https://youtu.be/aAm5KTWvUTk?si=-H9m_8jWTWv5u146

    At least US used to produce great comedy…🙂
  27. A123 says: • Website
    @John Johnson
    @A123

    Your #NeverTrump cult extremism led you to a bad assumption, simply because it was favorable to your desperately desired outcome. Your emotional distress does not be assure your result.

    Shall we go back and look at the posts where you called me clueless and an idiot for saying there is no reason to assume that Biden will be the final candidate?

    Your orange felon's best chance was against Mr. Magoo.

    Better hope that the Democrats run Harris. But in a brokered convention she can be defeated even if the DNC and media back her.

    The polls show that Trump loses against practically any non-name moderate Democrat.

    "Polls are just MSM BS, you're indoctrinated"

    - Trump Tribe in the last election when I pointed out that he was losing independents.

    Replies: @A123, @RadicalCenter

    The polls show that Trump loses against practically any non-name moderate Democrat.

    You cherry picked one poll over a year ago. Your mouth frothing #NeverTrump zealotry was unconvincing at the time and remains so today.

    Here is a collection of multiple recent Trump/Harris polls (1). Nationally — Trump is ahead in 9, Harris 2, tie 1.

    The key battlegrounds, other than MI, are generally more favorable than the national for Trump over Biden. It will take several weeks for a wide array state polls to occur with Harris, but there is every reason to believe that she is in the same Electoral College hole as her boss. Tied or behind in every swing state.
    ____

    Didn’t you say the documents case was going to be a bombshell that would send Trump to jail this year? Have you noticed that it has been effectively dismissed due to the illegal nature of the prosecution? Your prediction 100% failed.

    I have to give credit where credit is due. Your prognostication is vastly worse (and funnier) than Mikel’s. That requires special talent and utter obliviousness to reality.

    ===============
       You keep lying
    We keep laughing
    ===============

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-harris

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @A123


    The polls show that Trump loses against practically any non-name moderate Democrat.

     

    You cherry picked one poll over a year ago. Your mouth frothing #NeverTrump zealotry was unconvincing at the time and remains so today.

    Here is a poll from June 3rd:
    https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/majority-independents-double-haters-trump-end-2024-campaign/story?id=110778206

    Overall, 72% of Republicans, 6% of Democrats and 23% of independents have a favorable view of Trump following his conviction.

    Independents simply don't like Trump. The Democrats would win with any no-name moderate.

    Once again we have Trump Tribe members projecting their felony crush onto everyone else instead of facing his loss of support from independents. I pointed this out in the last election but Trump Tribe was certain that he would win. I was told that I must support Biden. A lack of faith of course.

    Trump lost and exit polls showed a drop from independents and swing voters. COVID was cited as a common reason.

    Ignoring the data sure worked wonders.

    Here is a collection of multiple recent Trump/Harris polls (1). Nationally — Trump is ahead in 9, Harris 2, tie 1.

    I've never said that Harris would win against Trump. She is not a no-name moderate.

    Harris would be a terrible pick. Better hope they go with her now that Magoo is out. Trump polls best against the incompetent and only barely. Harris is terrible. I have no idea why so many Trump fans are thrilled that Biden is quitting. That was their best chance. Trump polls best when independents are forced to pick between a felon and Magoo.

    Didn’t you say the documents case was going to be a bombshell that would send Trump to jail this year?

    I said it was the worst case and that he would be found guilty. I also said he would need a miracle or loophole to get out of it. Getting a judge to delay the case so he can pardon himself would fall into that category.

    Are you proud to back someone that is trying to delay the case through a pro-Trump judge so he can pardon himself?

    He hasn't locked that delay down so you might want to wait before celebrating.

    Even if he tries to take America to another moral low with a "self-pardon" that would end up in court. A long trail of court cases seem to follow this guy.

    I have to give credit where credit is due. Your prognostication is vastly worse (and funnier) than Mikel’s.

    I'm on record stating that there is no reason to assume Biden will be the final candidate. I put it at a coin toss. You however went on a big rant about how I don't understand the system and it's too late for a new candidate. Should we pull that rant?

    Replies: @A123, @Derer

  28. The talk is cheap…over bloated and over the top…yes the Olympic circus is back in it’s efforts to project a happy, celebration of humans best athletes.

    Clubs and societies are all about who is excluded compared to who is allowed, the Olympic circus allows Israel while excluding Russia?

    Why is China attending since the U.S and Europe has huge influence over entry to the club…is China showing its subservience?

    Israel should be hooted and booed at every event it competes in, silence should greet its announcement at the opening ceremony.

    We are judged by actions not words…the BRICS countries have taken a step back by attending this Olympics above previous episodes.

    If you don’t walk the talk then nobody takes you seriously…I won’t watch a second of this five ring circus…I know of one asshole who are the four other assholes of the five rings?
    Is it the five eyes?

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Mr_Chow_Mein

    The last Olympics had its moments. My favorite was ladies' badminton. The Chinese ladies were doing negro touchdown dances every time they won a point. Maybe they call those slam dunk dances in China where they love basketball?

  29. @A123
    @John Johnson


    The polls show that Trump loses against practically any non-name moderate Democrat.

     

    You cherry picked one poll over a year ago. Your mouth frothing #NeverTrump zealotry was unconvincing at the time and remains so today.

    Here is a collection of multiple recent Trump/Harris polls (1). Nationally -- Trump is ahead in 9, Harris 2, tie 1.

    The key battlegrounds, other than MI, are generally more favorable than the national for Trump over Biden. It will take several weeks for a wide array state polls to occur with Harris, but there is every reason to believe that she is in the same Electoral College hole as her boss. Tied or behind in every swing state.
    ____

    Didn't you say the documents case was going to be a bombshell that would send Trump to jail this year? Have you noticed that it has been effectively dismissed due to the illegal nature of the prosecution? Your prediction 100% failed.

    I have to give credit where credit is due. Your prognostication is vastly worse (and funnier) than Mikel's. That requires special talent and utter obliviousness to reality.

    ===============
       You keep lying
    We keep laughing
    ===============

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-harris

    Replies: @John Johnson

    The polls show that Trump loses against practically any non-name moderate Democrat.

    You cherry picked one poll over a year ago. Your mouth frothing #NeverTrump zealotry was unconvincing at the time and remains so today.

    Here is a poll from June 3rd:
    https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/majority-independents-double-haters-trump-end-2024-campaign/story?id=110778206

    Overall, 72% of Republicans, 6% of Democrats and 23% of independents have a favorable view of Trump following his conviction.

    Independents simply don’t like Trump. The Democrats would win with any no-name moderate.

    Once again we have Trump Tribe members projecting their felony crush onto everyone else instead of facing his loss of support from independents. I pointed this out in the last election but Trump Tribe was certain that he would win. I was told that I must support Biden. A lack of faith of course.

    Trump lost and exit polls showed a drop from independents and swing voters. COVID was cited as a common reason.

    Ignoring the data sure worked wonders.

    Here is a collection of multiple recent Trump/Harris polls (1). Nationally — Trump is ahead in 9, Harris 2, tie 1.

    I’ve never said that Harris would win against Trump. She is not a no-name moderate.

    Harris would be a terrible pick. Better hope they go with her now that Magoo is out. Trump polls best against the incompetent and only barely. Harris is terrible. I have no idea why so many Trump fans are thrilled that Biden is quitting. That was their best chance. Trump polls best when independents are forced to pick between a felon and Magoo.

    Didn’t you say the documents case was going to be a bombshell that would send Trump to jail this year?

    I said it was the worst case and that he would be found guilty. I also said he would need a miracle or loophole to get out of it. Getting a judge to delay the case so he can pardon himself would fall into that category.

    Are you proud to back someone that is trying to delay the case through a pro-Trump judge so he can pardon himself?

    He hasn’t locked that delay down so you might want to wait before celebrating.

    Even if he tries to take America to another moral low with a “self-pardon” that would end up in court. A long trail of court cases seem to follow this guy.

    I have to give credit where credit is due. Your prognostication is vastly worse (and funnier) than Mikel’s.

    I’m on record stating that there is no reason to assume Biden will be the final candidate. I put it at a coin toss. You however went on a big rant about how I don’t understand the system and it’s too late for a new candidate. Should we pull that rant?

    • Replies: @A123
    @John Johnson



    You cherry picked one poll over a year ago. Your mouth frothing #NeverTrump zealotry was unconvincing at the time and remains so today.

    Here is a collection of multiple recent Trump/Harris polls (1). Nationally — Trump is ahead in 9, Harris 2, tie 1.
     
    Here is a poll from June 3rd:
     
    You were called out for cherry picking a single poll... Now you try to counter by #NeverTrump cherry picking another single poll. Your complete lack of self awareness is truly entertaining. ROTFLMAO

    Here is a multi-poll analysis that is resistant to the manipulation you were attempting. Alas the images are embedded in a manner that prevents me from easily inserting them: (1)

    The problem with this explanation is that Harris doesn't poll much better than Biden against Trump. In fact, if you include minor party candidates, she actually polls worse against Trump. Trump was leading Biden by 3.7% in the RealClearPolitics average,

    And he was leading Kamala Harris by 5%.
     
    There is zip, zero, nada, zilch evidence that there will be a rush to the current regime's VP. She is either worse or tied... No amount of your fact free #NeverTrump cult dogma will impact the real world. All you are doing is embarrassing yourself and being laughed at.


    Didn’t you say the documents case was going to be a bombshell that would send Trump to jail this year?

     

    I said it was the worst case and that he would be found guilty. I also said he would need a miracle or loophole to get out of it.
     
    There was neither a miracle nor a loophole. The illegal counsel brought an illegitimate case. Thus the bogus, tampered with evidence from the illicit searches is not admissible. Everyone serious realized the persecution was corrupt from day 1.

    You would be much better off if you admitted you were wrong. However, please feel free to humorously flop about if you so desire.

    PEACE 😇
    ___________

    (1) https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2024-07-22/why-they-forced-biden-ticket

    Replies: @John Johnson, @Hapalong Cassidy

    , @Derer
    @John Johnson

    Saying "The Democrats would win with any no-name moderate"... instead of "The Democrats WILL win with any no-name moderate" signify your weak tenet.

  30. @AnonfromTN
    American bookmakers estimate Trump’s chances to win at 64%, Harris at 30%. Unlike MSM, these guys put their money where their mouth is.

    Replies: @AP, @Greasy William

    Trump’s odds are only 64%? That is free money if you are inclined to gamble

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @Greasy William


    American bookmakers estimate Trump’s chances to win at 64%, Harris at 30%. Unlike MSM, these guys put their money where their mouth is.
     
    Trump’s odds are only 64%? That is free money if you are inclined to gamble

    He probably means Trump has a 64% chance to win which means you would lose money. Vegas doesn't pay out on favored odds.

    The latest odds have Trump at 1/2 and Harris at 11/4.

    Replies: @A123

    , @AnonfromTN
    @Greasy William


    if you are inclined to gamble
     
    I do not gamble because I know math. Bookmakers make money, just like hotel owners in Las Vegas. Thus, it is 100% clear who wins.

    Replies: @John Johnson

  31. @Mr_Chow_Mein
    The talk is cheap...over bloated and over the top...yes the Olympic circus is back in it's efforts to project a happy, celebration of humans best athletes.

    Clubs and societies are all about who is excluded compared to who is allowed, the Olympic circus allows Israel while excluding Russia?

    Why is China attending since the U.S and Europe has huge influence over entry to the club...is China showing its subservience?

    Israel should be hooted and booed at every event it competes in, silence should greet its announcement at the opening ceremony.

    We are judged by actions not words...the BRICS countries have taken a step back by attending this Olympics above previous episodes.

    If you don't walk the talk then nobody takes you seriously...I won't watch a second of this five ring circus...I know of one asshole who are the four other assholes of the five rings?
    Is it the five eyes?

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    The last Olympics had its moments. My favorite was ladies’ badminton. The Chinese ladies were doing negro touchdown dances every time they won a point. Maybe they call those slam dunk dances in China where they love basketball?

  32. @Torna atrás
    @Mikel

    https://youtu.be/mCMDvVgmG3c?si=K3WmCn8QXN_JqYrG

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    One of the funniest comments I ever read on UR.

  33. WTF, Musk actually signed papers for his son to get puberty blockers?!!!!!

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @songbird

    For real?

    Replies: @songbird

  34. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Beckow
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    ...Kamala Harris is an utter ditz who cannot string two sentences together. If you listen to her it is obviously the one sentence over and over and over.
     
    Kamala is almost 60 and childless - all women with that profile become ditzy. And Kamala was already ditzy and unserious, how can she get any worse?

    Somebody should stop the circus before US is a complete laughing stock. Put her on meds to control the twitchy laughter and silliness, damn the side effects, this is a horror show.

    Maybe the process is not done and there will be a switcheroo to get her out. More likely the Dems are throwing the election. It won't make much difference, the harder war will be abandoned (it was lost anyway), Izrael unleashed but still achieve nothing, Europe fu..ed, and some dudes banned from girls' showers.

    Instead of 10 million migrants walking in, there will be 5 million flying in. Trump will probably welcome them at airports - he is a devotee of the enterpreneural-migrant cult and old men tend to go wobbly anyway.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    Somebody should stop the circus before US is a complete laughing stock.

    It should have been done prior to Dubya.

    I stopped taking US seriously after 9-11.

    We know that Jeb Bush stole the election for his brother from Al Gore and then 9-11 made any investigation into the results impossible.

    At least US used to produce great comedy…🙂

  35. @songbird
    WTF, Musk actually signed papers for his son to get puberty blockers?!!!!!

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    For real?

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Bashibuzuk

    Yes, but it happened a few years back. His son Xavier. Originally, I thought it was the mother acting alone because he was an absent father, which is bad enough, but he actually signed the papers. He says he was "tricked" and told that suicide might be the result if he didn't sign.
    https://twitter.com/runews/status/1815501248767942935

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Bashibuzuk, @ShortOnTime

  36. @Greasy William
    @AnonfromTN

    Trump's odds are only 64%? That is free money if you are inclined to gamble

    Replies: @John Johnson, @AnonfromTN

    American bookmakers estimate Trump’s chances to win at 64%, Harris at 30%. Unlike MSM, these guys put their money where their mouth is.

    Trump’s odds are only 64%? That is free money if you are inclined to gamble

    He probably means Trump has a 64% chance to win which means you would lose money. Vegas doesn’t pay out on favored odds.

    The latest odds have Trump at 1/2 and Harris at 11/4.

    • Replies: @A123
    @John Johnson


    The latest odds have Trump at 1/2 and Harris at 11/4.
     
    Odds from where?

    You need to provide a citation to back up such a bold #NeverTrump fabrication assertion.
    ____

    Moving back to reality (1), the worst odds at this moment are Trump 57 and the average is 59.4.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.realclearpolling.com/betting-odds/2024/president

    Replies: @John Johnson

  37. A123 says: • Website
    @John Johnson
    @A123


    The polls show that Trump loses against practically any non-name moderate Democrat.

     

    You cherry picked one poll over a year ago. Your mouth frothing #NeverTrump zealotry was unconvincing at the time and remains so today.

    Here is a poll from June 3rd:
    https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/majority-independents-double-haters-trump-end-2024-campaign/story?id=110778206

    Overall, 72% of Republicans, 6% of Democrats and 23% of independents have a favorable view of Trump following his conviction.

    Independents simply don't like Trump. The Democrats would win with any no-name moderate.

    Once again we have Trump Tribe members projecting their felony crush onto everyone else instead of facing his loss of support from independents. I pointed this out in the last election but Trump Tribe was certain that he would win. I was told that I must support Biden. A lack of faith of course.

    Trump lost and exit polls showed a drop from independents and swing voters. COVID was cited as a common reason.

    Ignoring the data sure worked wonders.

    Here is a collection of multiple recent Trump/Harris polls (1). Nationally — Trump is ahead in 9, Harris 2, tie 1.

    I've never said that Harris would win against Trump. She is not a no-name moderate.

    Harris would be a terrible pick. Better hope they go with her now that Magoo is out. Trump polls best against the incompetent and only barely. Harris is terrible. I have no idea why so many Trump fans are thrilled that Biden is quitting. That was their best chance. Trump polls best when independents are forced to pick between a felon and Magoo.

    Didn’t you say the documents case was going to be a bombshell that would send Trump to jail this year?

    I said it was the worst case and that he would be found guilty. I also said he would need a miracle or loophole to get out of it. Getting a judge to delay the case so he can pardon himself would fall into that category.

    Are you proud to back someone that is trying to delay the case through a pro-Trump judge so he can pardon himself?

    He hasn't locked that delay down so you might want to wait before celebrating.

    Even if he tries to take America to another moral low with a "self-pardon" that would end up in court. A long trail of court cases seem to follow this guy.

    I have to give credit where credit is due. Your prognostication is vastly worse (and funnier) than Mikel’s.

    I'm on record stating that there is no reason to assume Biden will be the final candidate. I put it at a coin toss. You however went on a big rant about how I don't understand the system and it's too late for a new candidate. Should we pull that rant?

    Replies: @A123, @Derer

    You cherry picked one poll over a year ago. Your mouth frothing #NeverTrump zealotry was unconvincing at the time and remains so today.

    Here is a collection of multiple recent Trump/Harris polls (1). Nationally — Trump is ahead in 9, Harris 2, tie 1.

    Here is a poll from June 3rd:

    You were called out for cherry picking a single poll… Now you try to counter by #NeverTrump cherry picking another single poll. Your complete lack of self awareness is truly entertaining. ROTFLMAO

    Here is a multi-poll analysis that is resistant to the manipulation you were attempting. Alas the images are embedded in a manner that prevents me from easily inserting them: (1)

    The problem with this explanation is that Harris doesn’t poll much better than Biden against Trump. In fact, if you include minor party candidates, she actually polls worse against Trump. Trump was leading Biden by 3.7% in the RealClearPolitics average,

    And he was leading Kamala Harris by 5%.

    There is zip, zero, nada, zilch evidence that there will be a rush to the current regime’s VP. She is either worse or tied… No amount of your fact free #NeverTrump cult dogma will impact the real world. All you are doing is embarrassing yourself and being laughed at.

    Didn’t you say the documents case was going to be a bombshell that would send Trump to jail this year?

    I said it was the worst case and that he would be found guilty. I also said he would need a miracle or loophole to get out of it.

    There was neither a miracle nor a loophole. The illegal counsel brought an illegitimate case. Thus the bogus, tampered with evidence from the illicit searches is not admissible. Everyone serious realized the persecution was corrupt from day 1.

    You would be much better off if you admitted you were wrong. However, please feel free to humorously flop about if you so desire.

    PEACE 😇
    ___________

    (1) https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2024-07-22/why-they-forced-biden-ticket

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @A123

    You were called out for cherry picking a single poll… Now you try to counter by #NeverTrump cherry picking another single poll. Your complete lack of self awareness is truly entertaining. ROTFLMAO

    Why can you not respond to a poll like a normal person? You really seem unhinged. The #nevertrump hash tag is from 2016. I remember it because I supported Trump in 2016. In 2020 I was concerned that he was losing independents and I had members of Trump Tribe tell me I was wrong for following the polls. That is in my history.

    So here we are again with someone from Trump Tribe that is upset by merely pointing out a poll that shows his consistently weak area which is independents.

    If you don't think a poll is accurate or is missing something then simply provide your reasoning. Take a deep breath and describe why I should ignore a poll if you don't agree with the result. You'll sound less like an obnoxious drunk at a party where everyone else is using an indoor voice tone.

    Do you think most independents like Trump? Can you provide a poll showing that even 33% of independents view Trump favorably?

    There is zip, zero, nada, zilch evidence that there will be a rush to the current regime’s VP. She is either worse or tied… No amount of your fact free #NeverTrump cult dogma will impact the real world

    You didn't respond to me. That wasn't my quote. Please try again. I'm not sure who is in your blockquote.

    There was neither a miracle nor a loophole. The illegal counsel brought an illegitimate case. Thus the bogus, tampered with evidence from the illicit searches is not admissible. Everyone serious realized the persecution was corrupt from day 1.

    So you believe that Trump did not commit any felonies in the documents case?

    You would be much better off if you admitted you were wrong.

    Wrong about what? The documents case? Feel free to quote me. You keep projecting as if I represent all critics. I said he would be found guilty if it goes to trial and he could reach a deal whereby he stays out of politics. I also said he could get prison time as it is one of many possible outcomes. I said his only hope was to somehow avoid the trial by getting lucky or through a loophole or technicality. Meaning he has zero chance in a fair trial and I think he knows that as seen by his insistence on delaying the trial. Thus far he has been able to avoid the trial through delay tactics but the year isn't over. But keep counting your lucky felony stars and try to work a bit harder on quoting me.

    , @Hapalong Cassidy
    @A123

    Why do you keep replying to the Stooge? He’ll always answer back, and not just because he’s one of those people that has to get the last word in. He probably gets paid by the word and you make his job easier.

    Replies: @A123

  38. @Beckow
    @AnonfromTN


    ...There is 100% chance that the freak show will go on...

    The US reputation is damaged beyond repair.
     

    I don't disagree, but the meltdown has been quite sudden and seemingly unnecessary. None of the key decisions were inevitable. Simply staying normal, as they were largely before, was all they had to do.

    - Why go full 'financial' and disembowel the real economy?
    - Why open borders to swamp the West with people not needed and piss off the natives?
    - Why attack Russia openly and stupidly in its home region with no hope of winning? (Even Obama said: 'Russia will always have escalation dominance in Ukraine'.)
    - Why feed irrational hate propaganda against Russia that inevitably backfires?
    - And stay out of 'gender' issues, how did 'trans' triviality become so important?

    As if something broke psychologically and they lost any sense of balance or normalcy. Maybe it did, or the system is so f..ed up financially that distractions and marches-to-nowhere are needed to buy time.

    With Trump it would stabilize for a while. Not because he would do much - he can't and doesn't really want - but because the clean-up and new start would be a relief after this freak-show. His own freaky instincts and inactivity would take some time to bring it down again.

    Replies: @AnonfromTN, @Goddard

    With Trump it would stabilize for a while.

    Ir will slow down the decline, but won’t stop it. To actually make America great again the US needs a leader of Putin’s caliber.

    • Agree: YetAnotherAnon, Goddard
  39. @Greasy William
    @AnonfromTN

    Trump's odds are only 64%? That is free money if you are inclined to gamble

    Replies: @John Johnson, @AnonfromTN

    if you are inclined to gamble

    I do not gamble because I know math. Bookmakers make money, just like hotel owners in Las Vegas. Thus, it is 100% clear who wins.

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @AnonfromTN

    I do not gamble because I know math. Bookmakers make money, just like hotel owners in Las Vegas. Thus, it is 100% clear who wins.

    Oh God not another person that thinks he has outsmarted everyone in Vegas.

    You think everyone gambling in Vegas isn't aware that the house has the advantage?

    How could it work otherwise?

    It's a tiny minority that actually thinks lady luck can lift them above the odds.

    It's just entertainment and poker in fact draws a lot of people that have an interest in statistics. Same for sports gambling. You have to understand math to make most of the bets,

    Some people spend a few hundred on a Brittney Spears concert. Some people spend 5-6 hundred on the tables. Some people spend a few hundred dollars on a dinner.

    I've had one of those high end dinners and I thought it was a bigger waste of money than gambling. I didn't have to pay and I was honestly embarrassed to be there. It just felt like a huge waste of money even though it wasn't mine. A crass celebration of greed that I'd happily skip for a dirty casino.

  40. A123 says: • Website
    @John Johnson
    @Greasy William


    American bookmakers estimate Trump’s chances to win at 64%, Harris at 30%. Unlike MSM, these guys put their money where their mouth is.
     
    Trump’s odds are only 64%? That is free money if you are inclined to gamble

    He probably means Trump has a 64% chance to win which means you would lose money. Vegas doesn't pay out on favored odds.

    The latest odds have Trump at 1/2 and Harris at 11/4.

    Replies: @A123

    The latest odds have Trump at 1/2 and Harris at 11/4.

    Odds from where?

    You need to provide a citation to back up such a bold #NeverTrump fabrication assertion.
    ____

    Moving back to reality (1), the worst odds at this moment are Trump 57 and the average is 59.4.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.realclearpolling.com/betting-odds/2024/president

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @A123


    The latest odds have Trump at 1/2 and Harris at 11/4.

     

    You need to provide a citation to back up such a bold #NeverTrump fabrication assertion.
    ____

    Moving back to reality (1), the worst odds at this moment are Trump 57 and the average is 59.4.

    I guess you don't understand how Vegas odds work. It's given as a fraction. It isn't the same as a poll nor is it entrely based on polls. They will take polls into consideration but the final calculation is determined for the purpose of making a profit.

    Donald Trump 1/2

    Kamala Harris 11/4

    https://www.vegasinsider.com/odds/us-presidential-election/

    Maybe stop throwing around your silly hashtag and simply ask for a source. Are you drunk half the time when you post?

  41. @Bashibuzuk
    @songbird

    For real?

    Replies: @songbird

    Yes, but it happened a few years back. His son Xavier. Originally, I thought it was the mother acting alone because he was an absent father, which is bad enough, but he actually signed the papers. He says he was “tricked” and told that suicide might be the result if he didn’t sign.

    [MORE]

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    This falls into the same category as J.D.Vance's slut mama.

    Family trauma is for your therapist. Nobody else wants to hear about it. A lot of people have their own shit going on and they would far rather not have you shoving yours into their space.

    Jerry Springer or Oprah Winfrey might tell you they want to hear about it. They are LYING!

    Replies: @songbird

    , @Bashibuzuk
    @songbird

    Well, that might explain why he’s now speaking against wokeness. And yeah, the mother of his son should be seen as a very sick person to trick him into signing these papers as well as subjecting her boy to this disgusting treatment. Some women are truly swayed by fashion and fades. They are pathetic and can cause so much harm.

    Replies: @songbird, @QCIC

    , @ShortOnTime
    @songbird

    There's something to be said about the ultimate superiority of the Kingdom of Heaven over the worldly kingdom.

    What good is all the wealth in the world (Elon Musk is the richest man in the world?) if one can't save their own progeny from having their genitals and psyche mutilated?

    (Of course, wealth accumulation is usually good and recommended for most people since money can solve or massively help many problems anyone may have, but some things are simply beyond the realm of being fixable by money and technology.)

    And this too ... (Although to be fair Elon has made some noises).



    https://twitter.com/KeithWoodsYT/status/1815554734239158469

    Replies: @Sher Singh

  42. @songbird
    @Bashibuzuk

    Yes, but it happened a few years back. His son Xavier. Originally, I thought it was the mother acting alone because he was an absent father, which is bad enough, but he actually signed the papers. He says he was "tricked" and told that suicide might be the result if he didn't sign.
    https://twitter.com/runews/status/1815501248767942935

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Bashibuzuk, @ShortOnTime

    This falls into the same category as J.D.Vance’s slut mama.

    Family trauma is for your therapist. Nobody else wants to hear about it. A lot of people have their own shit going on and they would far rather not have you shoving yours into their space.

    Jerry Springer or Oprah Winfrey might tell you they want to hear about it. They are LYING!

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Honestly, I'd like to know more about it. Like, who was around him? Was he talking to Jared Kushner, and he advised him to sign? (I think Kushner might)

    Musk says he knew his son was gay since he was 4. While I believe gayness has a lot to do with development in the womb, that seems pretty young, and it seems like something unnatural in the environment he was exposed to, that he manifested indicators at such an early stage. Maybe, modern TV.

    Of course, Musk has a lot of children, and this one's potential to have children was probably somewhat minimal, but a tranny is a super-gay, and IMO, it is a bad thing for both society and the individual to allow a gay to turn into a super-gay.

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1815519696424161361

    Replies: @QCIC, @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mikel

  43. Bashibuzuk says:
    @songbird
    @Bashibuzuk

    Yes, but it happened a few years back. His son Xavier. Originally, I thought it was the mother acting alone because he was an absent father, which is bad enough, but he actually signed the papers. He says he was "tricked" and told that suicide might be the result if he didn't sign.
    https://twitter.com/runews/status/1815501248767942935

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Bashibuzuk, @ShortOnTime

    Well, that might explain why he’s now speaking against wokeness. And yeah, the mother of his son should be seen as a very sick person to trick him into signing these papers as well as subjecting her boy to this disgusting treatment. Some women are truly swayed by fashion and fades. They are pathetic and can cause so much harm.

    • Agree: Torna atrás
    • Replies: @songbird
    @Bashibuzuk


    And yeah, the mother of his son should be seen as a very sick person to trick him into signing these papers
     
    could be wrong, but I got the vague impression that he was talking about being given a medical opinion by some kind of quakdoctor. (Maybe, the one with a financial interest in the project?). And he bowed to credentialism.

    Certainly, the mother is a crazed, evil loon, though.
    , @QCIC
    @Bashibuzuk

    It would be interesting to hear how Musk got "tricked". This sounds a bit unlikely.

    Always remember Musk is pushing AI as hard as anyone while simultaneously stating it is the most dangerous thing ever.

  44. A123 says: • Website

    Worst idea ever (mildly NSFW)

    PEACE 😇

    [MORE]

      

    Ummmm…. How? This needs an explanation.

     

  45. @A123
    @John Johnson



    You cherry picked one poll over a year ago. Your mouth frothing #NeverTrump zealotry was unconvincing at the time and remains so today.

    Here is a collection of multiple recent Trump/Harris polls (1). Nationally — Trump is ahead in 9, Harris 2, tie 1.
     
    Here is a poll from June 3rd:
     
    You were called out for cherry picking a single poll... Now you try to counter by #NeverTrump cherry picking another single poll. Your complete lack of self awareness is truly entertaining. ROTFLMAO

    Here is a multi-poll analysis that is resistant to the manipulation you were attempting. Alas the images are embedded in a manner that prevents me from easily inserting them: (1)

    The problem with this explanation is that Harris doesn't poll much better than Biden against Trump. In fact, if you include minor party candidates, she actually polls worse against Trump. Trump was leading Biden by 3.7% in the RealClearPolitics average,

    And he was leading Kamala Harris by 5%.
     
    There is zip, zero, nada, zilch evidence that there will be a rush to the current regime's VP. She is either worse or tied... No amount of your fact free #NeverTrump cult dogma will impact the real world. All you are doing is embarrassing yourself and being laughed at.


    Didn’t you say the documents case was going to be a bombshell that would send Trump to jail this year?

     

    I said it was the worst case and that he would be found guilty. I also said he would need a miracle or loophole to get out of it.
     
    There was neither a miracle nor a loophole. The illegal counsel brought an illegitimate case. Thus the bogus, tampered with evidence from the illicit searches is not admissible. Everyone serious realized the persecution was corrupt from day 1.

    You would be much better off if you admitted you were wrong. However, please feel free to humorously flop about if you so desire.

    PEACE 😇
    ___________

    (1) https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2024-07-22/why-they-forced-biden-ticket

    Replies: @John Johnson, @Hapalong Cassidy

    You were called out for cherry picking a single poll… Now you try to counter by #NeverTrump cherry picking another single poll. Your complete lack of self awareness is truly entertaining. ROTFLMAO

    Why can you not respond to a poll like a normal person? You really seem unhinged. The #nevertrump hash tag is from 2016. I remember it because I supported Trump in 2016. In 2020 I was concerned that he was losing independents and I had members of Trump Tribe tell me I was wrong for following the polls. That is in my history.

    So here we are again with someone from Trump Tribe that is upset by merely pointing out a poll that shows his consistently weak area which is independents.

    If you don’t think a poll is accurate or is missing something then simply provide your reasoning. Take a deep breath and describe why I should ignore a poll if you don’t agree with the result. You’ll sound less like an obnoxious drunk at a party where everyone else is using an indoor voice tone.

    Do you think most independents like Trump? Can you provide a poll showing that even 33% of independents view Trump favorably?

    There is zip, zero, nada, zilch evidence that there will be a rush to the current regime’s VP. She is either worse or tied… No amount of your fact free #NeverTrump cult dogma will impact the real world

    You didn’t respond to me. That wasn’t my quote. Please try again. I’m not sure who is in your blockquote.

    There was neither a miracle nor a loophole. The illegal counsel brought an illegitimate case. Thus the bogus, tampered with evidence from the illicit searches is not admissible. Everyone serious realized the persecution was corrupt from day 1.

    So you believe that Trump did not commit any felonies in the documents case?

    You would be much better off if you admitted you were wrong.

    Wrong about what? The documents case? Feel free to quote me. You keep projecting as if I represent all critics. I said he would be found guilty if it goes to trial and he could reach a deal whereby he stays out of politics. I also said he could get prison time as it is one of many possible outcomes. I said his only hope was to somehow avoid the trial by getting lucky or through a loophole or technicality. Meaning he has zero chance in a fair trial and I think he knows that as seen by his insistence on delaying the trial. Thus far he has been able to avoid the trial through delay tactics but the year isn’t over. But keep counting your lucky felony stars and try to work a bit harder on quoting me.

  46. @A123
    @John Johnson


    The latest odds have Trump at 1/2 and Harris at 11/4.
     
    Odds from where?

    You need to provide a citation to back up such a bold #NeverTrump fabrication assertion.
    ____

    Moving back to reality (1), the worst odds at this moment are Trump 57 and the average is 59.4.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.realclearpolling.com/betting-odds/2024/president

    Replies: @John Johnson

    The latest odds have Trump at 1/2 and Harris at 11/4.

    You need to provide a citation to back up such a bold #NeverTrump fabrication assertion.
    ____

    Moving back to reality (1), the worst odds at this moment are Trump 57 and the average is 59.4.

    I guess you don’t understand how Vegas odds work. It’s given as a fraction. It isn’t the same as a poll nor is it entrely based on polls. They will take polls into consideration but the final calculation is determined for the purpose of making a profit.

    Donald Trump 1/2

    Kamala Harris 11/4

    https://www.vegasinsider.com/odds/us-presidential-election/

    Maybe stop throwing around your silly hashtag and simply ask for a source. Are you drunk half the time when you post?

  47. @AnonfromTN
    @Greasy William


    if you are inclined to gamble
     
    I do not gamble because I know math. Bookmakers make money, just like hotel owners in Las Vegas. Thus, it is 100% clear who wins.

    Replies: @John Johnson

    I do not gamble because I know math. Bookmakers make money, just like hotel owners in Las Vegas. Thus, it is 100% clear who wins.

    Oh God not another person that thinks he has outsmarted everyone in Vegas.

    You think everyone gambling in Vegas isn’t aware that the house has the advantage?

    How could it work otherwise?

    It’s a tiny minority that actually thinks lady luck can lift them above the odds.

    It’s just entertainment and poker in fact draws a lot of people that have an interest in statistics. Same for sports gambling. You have to understand math to make most of the bets,

    Some people spend a few hundred on a Brittney Spears concert. Some people spend 5-6 hundred on the tables. Some people spend a few hundred dollars on a dinner.

    I’ve had one of those high end dinners and I thought it was a bigger waste of money than gambling. I didn’t have to pay and I was honestly embarrassed to be there. It just felt like a huge waste of money even though it wasn’t mine. A crass celebration of greed that I’d happily skip for a dirty casino.

  48. @Derer
    @AP

    In 2020 Democratic primaries dropout Harris was at the very bottom, and that is her rating from the die hard "Democrats".

    Replies: @AP

    She wasn’t running against Trump in the primaries.

    • Agree: Goddard
  49. @A123
    @John Johnson



    You cherry picked one poll over a year ago. Your mouth frothing #NeverTrump zealotry was unconvincing at the time and remains so today.

    Here is a collection of multiple recent Trump/Harris polls (1). Nationally — Trump is ahead in 9, Harris 2, tie 1.
     
    Here is a poll from June 3rd:
     
    You were called out for cherry picking a single poll... Now you try to counter by #NeverTrump cherry picking another single poll. Your complete lack of self awareness is truly entertaining. ROTFLMAO

    Here is a multi-poll analysis that is resistant to the manipulation you were attempting. Alas the images are embedded in a manner that prevents me from easily inserting them: (1)

    The problem with this explanation is that Harris doesn't poll much better than Biden against Trump. In fact, if you include minor party candidates, she actually polls worse against Trump. Trump was leading Biden by 3.7% in the RealClearPolitics average,

    And he was leading Kamala Harris by 5%.
     
    There is zip, zero, nada, zilch evidence that there will be a rush to the current regime's VP. She is either worse or tied... No amount of your fact free #NeverTrump cult dogma will impact the real world. All you are doing is embarrassing yourself and being laughed at.


    Didn’t you say the documents case was going to be a bombshell that would send Trump to jail this year?

     

    I said it was the worst case and that he would be found guilty. I also said he would need a miracle or loophole to get out of it.
     
    There was neither a miracle nor a loophole. The illegal counsel brought an illegitimate case. Thus the bogus, tampered with evidence from the illicit searches is not admissible. Everyone serious realized the persecution was corrupt from day 1.

    You would be much better off if you admitted you were wrong. However, please feel free to humorously flop about if you so desire.

    PEACE 😇
    ___________

    (1) https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2024-07-22/why-they-forced-biden-ticket

    Replies: @John Johnson, @Hapalong Cassidy

    Why do you keep replying to the Stooge? He’ll always answer back, and not just because he’s one of those people that has to get the last word in. He probably gets paid by the word and you make his job easier.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Hapalong Cassidy


    Why do you keep replying to the Stooge? He’ll always answer back, and not just because he’s one of those people that has to get the last word in.
     
    The stupidity needs to be exposed so that no one follows.

    Let us examine his failure in correctly interpreting the betting markets.

    • The aggregator I have been pulling from is RCP. It reports numbers as contracts. At 58¢, the contract would return $1 if successful. A net gain of 42¢.

    This technique is useful as market arbitrage will tend to pull the net of all contracts towards $1. Thus, a 58¢ contract also implies ~58% chance of success. Contract prices can be effectively presented along polls as they intuitively read in a very similar manner.

    • JJ clearly believed Vegas 1/2 odds were worse for Trump than the number I reported. I could not follow that, and thus pushed him for more information.

    His own citation explains how the quote works, which is quite helpful.


    How to Read the Odds:
    Ex. Bet $100 on Donald Trump (1/2) to win $50
     
    Presumably, JJ read 1/2 as equivalent to a 50¢ contract. However, that is not how the math plays out.

    To obtain that same return in contract form would be 150 contracts @ 66.6667¢. Bet $100 on Donald to receive $150 (winning $50). Thus, Vegas is giving Trump ~67% chance to win at this moment.

    The citation he provided actually helped my case. He is not reading what he is linking, not understanding it, or a combination of both.


    He probably gets paid by the word and you make his job easier.

     
    Given his lack of effectiveness. Who would pay JJ?

    Perhaps there is some sort of cult thing? Competing for the number of #NeverTrump zealot posts? Mindless regurgitation of dogma above quota may yield perceived status among similar brainwashed acolytes. If so, it is a very sad way to live.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @John Johnson

  50. https://thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com/2024/07/20/but-if-you-try-sometimes-you-just-might-find-you-get-what-you-need-or-alternatively-what-you-deserve/comment-page-1/#comment-99649

    I received a reply from Kit Klarenburg, author of the piece which underpins this post; the second paragraph contains additional details of which I was also unaware, and I thought you might be, too.

    “One striking nugget I didn’t include was in 2020, after Zelensky proposed creating a consulting group with representatives of the DPR/LPR during Minsk talks, a coalition of Western-funded NGOs and assets in Ukraine wrote an open letter effectively ordering the government not to do so (https://uacrisis.org/uk/75229-pryamij-dialog-ordlo). This amply reinforces that the West wanted war with Russia over Ukraine, and consistently overruled its citizens and government to achieve that goal. Minsk designating Russia a “mediator” to the conflict, rather than a “party” (ie peacemaker vs active belligerent) was a crucial legal distinction the US/Britain were very unhappy about and sought to undermine at every turn. This wasn’t just a delaying tactic – as I write in this investigation, I am certain the purpose was to gain legal grounds for sparking all-out proxy war. The totally ignored ICJ ruling on cases brought by Kiev against Moscow amply confirms that view – https://www.mintpressnews.com/failed-icj-case-against-russia-backfires-paves-way-for-genocide-charges-against-ukraine/287028/.”

  51. AP says:
    @AnonfromTN
    @Mikel


    the massive number of anti-Trump voters will go for Kamala or any other candidate capable of tying sentences together
     
    Judging by her public appearances, Kamala is incapable of composing a grammatically correct sentence, or of saying anything meaningful. If she ends up being DNC nominee, she is going to get the votes of crazed never Trumpers and deranged libtards, i.e., the same votes Minnie Mouse would get if nominated by Dems.

    Replies: @A123, @Mikel, @AP

    Judging by her public appearances, Kamala is incapable of composing a grammatically correct sentence, or of saying anything meaningful

    You are too reliant on tendentious internet sources for your information. While Kamala may be the least intelligent major candidate in a long time (and in terms of VP only Sarah Palin has been dumber), she is capable of speaking coherently when she needs to.

    She did finish law school and pass the bar, so she has whatever minimal brains are necessary to do that. I’d guess an IQ in Beckow’s neighborhood of around 115 or so.

    Here she is speaking coherently:

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @AP

    In this clip she is reading the script correctly and with approximately correct intonation. That is a very low bar for someone in her position.

    I assume everything about Kamala's career has been gamed through family connections, affirmative action or political maneuvering. She seems like a low watt bulb.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @AnonfromTN, @Mikel

    , @Mr. XYZ
    @AP

    Do you think that Kamala is smarter than Michelle Obama is?

    Replies: @AP

    , @Negronicus
    @AP

    That's a nasty woman, don't vote for the DA.

  52. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    This falls into the same category as J.D.Vance's slut mama.

    Family trauma is for your therapist. Nobody else wants to hear about it. A lot of people have their own shit going on and they would far rather not have you shoving yours into their space.

    Jerry Springer or Oprah Winfrey might tell you they want to hear about it. They are LYING!

    Replies: @songbird

    Honestly, I’d like to know more about it. Like, who was around him? Was he talking to Jared Kushner, and he advised him to sign? (I think Kushner might)

    Musk says he knew his son was gay since he was 4. While I believe gayness has a lot to do with development in the womb, that seems pretty young, and it seems like something unnatural in the environment he was exposed to, that he manifested indicators at such an early stage. Maybe, modern TV.

    Of course, Musk has a lot of children, and this one’s potential to have children was probably somewhat minimal, but a tranny is a super-gay, and IMO, it is a bad thing for both society and the individual to allow a gay to turn into a super-gay.

    [MORE]

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @songbird

    Is there a connection between Kushner and Musk?

    Replies: @songbird, @Dmitry

    , @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    If this subject interests you there are great books written by good writers. Musk might be good at lobbying for money but I think he sucks as a storyteller. His sob story is not worth paying any attention to.

    This one is good:

    https://www.amazon.com/Betrayal-Trauma-Logic-Forgetting-Childhood/dp/067406805X

    There is an inexhaustible supply of misery in our world. Job and Ecclesiastes also are very well written.

    Why?

    It is God's will over our pay grade.

    In the first chapter or even in the first paragraph these books will also inform you about unreliable narrators. Musk can't even tell you the truth about his messed up personal life.

    Replies: @songbird

    , @Mikel
    @songbird

    Of course Jordan Peterson couldn't help interrupting Musk's personal story several times in his strident voice (dressed as a trans himself btw). How did this clown become so popular?

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @songbird

  53. @Bashibuzuk
    @songbird

    Well, that might explain why he’s now speaking against wokeness. And yeah, the mother of his son should be seen as a very sick person to trick him into signing these papers as well as subjecting her boy to this disgusting treatment. Some women are truly swayed by fashion and fades. They are pathetic and can cause so much harm.

    Replies: @songbird, @QCIC

    And yeah, the mother of his son should be seen as a very sick person to trick him into signing these papers

    could be wrong, but I got the vague impression that he was talking about being given a medical opinion by some kind of quakdoctor. (Maybe, the one with a financial interest in the project?). And he bowed to credentialism.

    Certainly, the mother is a crazed, evil loon, though.

  54. A123 says: • Website
    @Hapalong Cassidy
    @A123

    Why do you keep replying to the Stooge? He’ll always answer back, and not just because he’s one of those people that has to get the last word in. He probably gets paid by the word and you make his job easier.

    Replies: @A123

    Why do you keep replying to the Stooge? He’ll always answer back, and not just because he’s one of those people that has to get the last word in.

    The stupidity needs to be exposed so that no one follows.

    Let us examine his failure in correctly interpreting the betting markets.

    • The aggregator I have been pulling from is RCP. It reports numbers as contracts. At 58¢, the contract would return $1 if successful. A net gain of 42¢.

    This technique is useful as market arbitrage will tend to pull the net of all contracts towards $1. Thus, a 58¢ contract also implies ~58% chance of success. Contract prices can be effectively presented along polls as they intuitively read in a very similar manner.

    • JJ clearly believed Vegas 1/2 odds were worse for Trump than the number I reported. I could not follow that, and thus pushed him for more information.

    His own citation explains how the quote works, which is quite helpful.

    How to Read the Odds:
    Ex. Bet $100 on Donald Trump (1/2) to win $50

    Presumably, JJ read 1/2 as equivalent to a 50¢ contract. However, that is not how the math plays out.

    To obtain that same return in contract form would be 150 contracts @ 66.6667¢. Bet $100 on Donald to receive $150 (winning $50). Thus, Vegas is giving Trump ~67% chance to win at this moment.

    The citation he provided actually helped my case. He is not reading what he is linking, not understanding it, or a combination of both.

    He probably gets paid by the word and you make his job easier.

    Given his lack of effectiveness. Who would pay JJ?

    Perhaps there is some sort of cult thing? Competing for the number of #NeverTrump zealot posts? Mindless regurgitation of dogma above quota may yield perceived status among similar brainwashed acolytes. If so, it is a very sad way to live.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @A123

    JJ clearly believed Vegas 1/2 odds were worse for Trump than the number I reported. I could not follow that, and thus pushed him for more information.

    What do you mean "I believed"? I sourced Vegas odds for Trump as you requested.

    Were you hoping that I made those numbers up?

    You are mentally unstable.

    His own citation explains how the quote works, which is quite helpful.

    So as confirmed you didn't understand Vegas numbers and went on some unhinged rant. You somehow made it this far in life without bothering to understand what an oddsmaker fraction represents.

    Presumably, JJ read 1/2 as equivalent to a 50¢ contract. However, that is not how the math plays out.

    And why would you make such a presumption? A 50 cent contract? What are you talking about?

    I provided Vegas numbers and then sourced them as you asked. Did you forget that?

  55. @Bashibuzuk
    @songbird

    Well, that might explain why he’s now speaking against wokeness. And yeah, the mother of his son should be seen as a very sick person to trick him into signing these papers as well as subjecting her boy to this disgusting treatment. Some women are truly swayed by fashion and fades. They are pathetic and can cause so much harm.

    Replies: @songbird, @QCIC

    It would be interesting to hear how Musk got “tricked”. This sounds a bit unlikely.

    Always remember Musk is pushing AI as hard as anyone while simultaneously stating it is the most dangerous thing ever.

  56. @AP
    @AnonfromTN


    Judging by her public appearances, Kamala is incapable of composing a grammatically correct sentence, or of saying anything meaningful
     
    You are too reliant on tendentious internet sources for your information. While Kamala may be the least intelligent major candidate in a long time (and in terms of VP only Sarah Palin has been dumber), she is capable of speaking coherently when she needs to.

    She did finish law school and pass the bar, so she has whatever minimal brains are necessary to do that. I’d guess an IQ in Beckow’s neighborhood of around 115 or so.

    Here she is speaking coherently:

    https://twitter.com/acyn/status/1815509563522920918?s=46&t=Qz3eXZWFYIvyHmaAk32tcg

    Replies: @QCIC, @Mr. XYZ, @Negronicus

    In this clip she is reading the script correctly and with approximately correct intonation. That is a very low bar for someone in her position.

    I assume everything about Kamala’s career has been gamed through family connections, affirmative action or political maneuvering. She seems like a low watt bulb.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @QCIC

    She is going to have to convince big donors one on one to donate. She will pass the test or she will not.

    I'm guessing not. P~.8.

    , @AnonfromTN
    @QCIC


    In this clip she is reading the script correctly and with approximately correct intonation.
     
    Look on the bright side: that’s proof positive that she can read. If she can also count to ten, she has qualifications to be the US president. At least as much as demented Joe.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    , @Mikel
    @QCIC


    She seems like a low watt bulb.
     
    Biden's wattage was barely enough to illuminate a small room in 2020 and he won.

    Kamala may have problems with some demographics that Biden, as a white family man and well known figure in politics, didn't have but one shouldn't forget that the Democrats have very big advantages and don't really need a brilliant candidate to beat Trump: the MSM and 90% of Big Tech are with them, the years-long demonization of Trump has created a visceral opposition to his figure in large parts of the electorate and Trump has obvious flaws of character that put off even people that are generally sympathetic to his ideas.

    I think that the Republicans are making a mistake by calling for Biden's resignation. Their best bet was for Biden to carry on til November and now they should try to keep him in the limelight for as long as possible, just to remind voters of what a disaster the Democrats were trying to push on them. Making senile Joe disappear from the scene gives the Dems plenty of months to memory hole the whole incident with help from the media and build a solid enough campaign to win.

    Just my humble opinion. I may be wrong but surely not as wrong as the people here who made optimistic predictions that failed a couple of weeks later.

    Replies: @A123, @John Johnson

  57. @songbird
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Honestly, I'd like to know more about it. Like, who was around him? Was he talking to Jared Kushner, and he advised him to sign? (I think Kushner might)

    Musk says he knew his son was gay since he was 4. While I believe gayness has a lot to do with development in the womb, that seems pretty young, and it seems like something unnatural in the environment he was exposed to, that he manifested indicators at such an early stage. Maybe, modern TV.

    Of course, Musk has a lot of children, and this one's potential to have children was probably somewhat minimal, but a tranny is a super-gay, and IMO, it is a bad thing for both society and the individual to allow a gay to turn into a super-gay.

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1815519696424161361

    Replies: @QCIC, @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mikel

    Is there a connection between Kushner and Musk?

    • Replies: @songbird
    @QCIC

    Don't know how deep it is, but they were photographed together at the 2022 World Cup Final in Qatar.
    https://twitter.com/corinne_perkins/status/1604591591259250688

    Maybe, I am making too much of the connection. But I think there was definitely a social element to Musk signing the papers. Either he wasn't talking to other men, or he was and they were the wrong men.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    , @Dmitry
    @QCIC

    These South African origin Paypal investors Musk, Sacks and Thiels, are connected to J.D. Vance, according to the media.

    Who knows, but this could indicate they are not so close in relation to Trump, as they seem to feel they need Vance, as a closer friend in the White House than Trump.

    Musk and Sacks have both telephoned Trump, to say they support Vance.

    -

    After Vance is chosen, a lot of other investors including outside the Paypal group, were saying they are supporting Trump.

    For example, the day after Vance is chosen, the "Ben and Marc show" say they support Trump. It could look like, Vance has a lot of friends and support among some of these groups of investors beyond just the Paypal/South Africa origin group .

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_sNclEgQZQ

    Replies: @AP, @Dmitry, @QCIC

  58. @QCIC
    @songbird

    Is there a connection between Kushner and Musk?

    Replies: @songbird, @Dmitry

    Don’t know how deep it is, but they were photographed together at the 2022 World Cup Final in Qatar.

    [MORE]

    Maybe, I am making too much of the connection. But I think there was definitely a social element to Musk signing the papers. Either he wasn’t talking to other men, or he was and they were the wrong men.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @songbird

    He knew his son was somewhat effeminate, perhaps that influenced his decision. And the fact that he divorced Xavier’s mom could also lead to resentment from both the kid and the mother. Then if the mother is somewhat unhinged and the kid is somewhat autistic and effeminate, the step to take to do a radical change of gender, at the same time signaling a radical rejection of the father and the male identity is probably somewhat easier. BTW, given that a « third sex » existed in many cultures at different periods in history (it is still in existence in the subcontinent, even it’s Islamic part and of course South Eastern Asia with the lady boys), it would be naive to ignore that some people « fall in between two categories » of maleness and femininity. Therefore, I am of the Ayatollahs’ opinion on the issue: transitioning is sometimes inevitable to experience a more balanced identity, but this transitioning should only be done by adults after a consultation with psychologists, hormonal therapists, MDs and finally surgeons if nothing else works. And this transitioning should be final without any ambiguity about the gender identity of the person. That way it would be a treatment for an adult psychosocial illness and not a fashion for crazy people to indulge in at the expense of immature children.

    https://qz.com/889548/everyone-treated-me-like-a-saint-in-iran-theres-only-one-way-to-survive-as-a-transgender-person

    Replies: @songbird

  59. @QCIC
    @AP

    In this clip she is reading the script correctly and with approximately correct intonation. That is a very low bar for someone in her position.

    I assume everything about Kamala's career has been gamed through family connections, affirmative action or political maneuvering. She seems like a low watt bulb.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @AnonfromTN, @Mikel

    She is going to have to convince big donors one on one to donate. She will pass the test or she will not.

    I’m guessing not. P~.8.

  60. How true is this apocalyptic amren article saying that they have bulldozed the school parks in Vienna to make way for container-classrooms of migrants? And that 70% of schoolchildren there don’t even speak German at home?
    https://www.amren.com/news/2024/07/austria-teachers-flee-vienna-schools-over-mass-migration-with-20-teachers-quitting-on-a-peak-day/

    • Replies: @AP
    @songbird


    70% of schoolchildren there don’t even speak German at home
     
    IIRC the stats are for public schools, not private ones where many natives send their kids.

    I spent a week in Vienna in 2019. My impression was that the visible non-European population was similar to Moscow’s - around 10-15% or so. In Vienna’s case this was mostly Arabs, with a few Africans.

    However, many of Vienna’s Muslims are secular Bosniaks and Albanians who dress like Europeans. These would blend in with natives. There are also a lot of Serbs and Croats in Vienna (in some respect Austria is for the former Yugoslavia what Poland is for Ukraine). If you add up all of these people, plus recent Ukrainian refugees, it is possible that 70% of Viennese public schoolchildren aren’t native German-speakers.

    Also, many Viennese natives have Czech or Croatian ancestors from 100+ years ago, they are not fully ethnic German, which in terms of physical appearance makes them less distinguishable from Croats.
  61. @songbird
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Honestly, I'd like to know more about it. Like, who was around him? Was he talking to Jared Kushner, and he advised him to sign? (I think Kushner might)

    Musk says he knew his son was gay since he was 4. While I believe gayness has a lot to do with development in the womb, that seems pretty young, and it seems like something unnatural in the environment he was exposed to, that he manifested indicators at such an early stage. Maybe, modern TV.

    Of course, Musk has a lot of children, and this one's potential to have children was probably somewhat minimal, but a tranny is a super-gay, and IMO, it is a bad thing for both society and the individual to allow a gay to turn into a super-gay.

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1815519696424161361

    Replies: @QCIC, @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mikel

    If this subject interests you there are great books written by good writers. Musk might be good at lobbying for money but I think he sucks as a storyteller. His sob story is not worth paying any attention to.

    This one is good:

    https://www.amazon.com/Betrayal-Trauma-Logic-Forgetting-Childhood/dp/067406805X

    There is an inexhaustible supply of misery in our world. Job and Ecclesiastes also are very well written.

    Why?

    It is God’s will over our pay grade.

    In the first chapter or even in the first paragraph these books will also inform you about unreliable narrators. Musk can’t even tell you the truth about his messed up personal life.

    • Agree: Bashibuzuk
    • Replies: @songbird
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    these books will also inform you about unreliable narrators
     
    I was vaguely interested in this Indian story, as I thought it might be interesting sociologically, until I learned it was a novel.

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

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

  62. @QCIC
    @songbird

    Is there a connection between Kushner and Musk?

    Replies: @songbird, @Dmitry

    These South African origin Paypal investors Musk, Sacks and Thiels, are connected to J.D. Vance, according to the media.

    Who knows, but this could indicate they are not so close in relation to Trump, as they seem to feel they need Vance, as a closer friend in the White House than Trump.

    Musk and Sacks have both telephoned Trump, to say they support Vance.

    After Vance is chosen, a lot of other investors including outside the Paypal group, were saying they are supporting Trump.

    For example, the day after Vance is chosen, the “Ben and Marc show” say they support Trump. It could look like, Vance has a lot of friends and support among some of these groups of investors beyond just the Paypal/South Africa origin group .

    • Replies: @AP
    @Dmitry

    Trump met with Musk prior to picking Vance. Maybe Trump was pressured to choose Vance (who is probably owned by these Paypal guys) in exchange for Musk’s generous funding.

    If Trump doesn’t complete his term this leaves the USA in the hands of Musk, Thiel, Sacks. Unless he turns on them…

    Replies: @Dmitry

    , @Dmitry
    @Dmitry


    For example, the day after Vance is chosen, the “Ben and Marc show” say they support Trump. It could look like, Vance has a lot of friends and support among some of these groups of investors beyond just the Paypal/South Africa origin group .

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_sNclEgQZQ
     

    Oops I watched it now. It seems like Marc and Ben's support is not related to Vance. It doesn't seem to be related to the Paypal people who are Vance's friends. So, ignore this part of my earlier comment.

    -

    If you watch at 53:30

    Marc saying Trump said in a three hour dinner with them, he wouldn't regulate AI so much, they feel like he would help to increase the investments in the military applications.

    At 1:04:00 they say they are worried about the Biden proposal to tax structure to unrealized capital gains on over $100 million.* Marc is mainly worried about the effect of this on small tech investments.

    In 1:19:30 Ben is saying they are mainly friends with Trump family because of Jared and Ivanka (Trump's oldest daughter and her husband).

    At 1:27:00 they are saying their experience of the Biden administration has been negatively surprising for them.

    Ben says they had a good relation with Clinton "on cryptography" (I guess maybe he is talking about cyber investments related to the government).

    At 1:30:00 Ben is saying they will become socially unpopular for not supporting Democrats now.

    -

    *It is possibly also why some of the larger company owners like Zuckerberg were also seeming like they are going to support Trump.

    , @QCIC
    @Dmitry

    If Vance is being lined up to replace Trump, all I can say is, "Watch your ear, Don."

    I just realized this classic clip could be the inspiration for last Saturday; punch line at 3:06 :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF8r3DhudHM

  63. Bashibuzuk says:
    @songbird
    @QCIC

    Don't know how deep it is, but they were photographed together at the 2022 World Cup Final in Qatar.
    https://twitter.com/corinne_perkins/status/1604591591259250688

    Maybe, I am making too much of the connection. But I think there was definitely a social element to Musk signing the papers. Either he wasn't talking to other men, or he was and they were the wrong men.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    He knew his son was somewhat effeminate, perhaps that influenced his decision. And the fact that he divorced Xavier’s mom could also lead to resentment from both the kid and the mother. Then if the mother is somewhat unhinged and the kid is somewhat autistic and effeminate, the step to take to do a radical change of gender, at the same time signaling a radical rejection of the father and the male identity is probably somewhat easier. BTW, given that a « third sex » existed in many cultures at different periods in history (it is still in existence in the subcontinent, even it’s Islamic part and of course South Eastern Asia with the lady boys), it would be naive to ignore that some people « fall in between two categories » of maleness and femininity. Therefore, I am of the Ayatollahs’ opinion on the issue: transitioning is sometimes inevitable to experience a more balanced identity, but this transitioning should only be done by adults after a consultation with psychologists, hormonal therapists, MDs and finally surgeons if nothing else works. And this transitioning should be final without any ambiguity about the gender identity of the person. That way it would be a treatment for an adult psychosocial illness and not a fashion for crazy people to indulge in at the expense of immature children.

    https://qz.com/889548/everyone-treated-me-like-a-saint-in-iran-theres-only-one-way-to-survive-as-a-transgender-person

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Bashibuzuk

    IMO, Iran is somewhat hobbled by geography. A lot of its Gulf islands are seen as being military-strategic, and so it doesn't necessarily have a good place to exile gays, like Indonesia might - if it wanted to.

    Replies: @Torna atrás

  64. @A123
    @Hapalong Cassidy


    Why do you keep replying to the Stooge? He’ll always answer back, and not just because he’s one of those people that has to get the last word in.
     
    The stupidity needs to be exposed so that no one follows.

    Let us examine his failure in correctly interpreting the betting markets.

    • The aggregator I have been pulling from is RCP. It reports numbers as contracts. At 58¢, the contract would return $1 if successful. A net gain of 42¢.

    This technique is useful as market arbitrage will tend to pull the net of all contracts towards $1. Thus, a 58¢ contract also implies ~58% chance of success. Contract prices can be effectively presented along polls as they intuitively read in a very similar manner.

    • JJ clearly believed Vegas 1/2 odds were worse for Trump than the number I reported. I could not follow that, and thus pushed him for more information.

    His own citation explains how the quote works, which is quite helpful.


    How to Read the Odds:
    Ex. Bet $100 on Donald Trump (1/2) to win $50
     
    Presumably, JJ read 1/2 as equivalent to a 50¢ contract. However, that is not how the math plays out.

    To obtain that same return in contract form would be 150 contracts @ 66.6667¢. Bet $100 on Donald to receive $150 (winning $50). Thus, Vegas is giving Trump ~67% chance to win at this moment.

    The citation he provided actually helped my case. He is not reading what he is linking, not understanding it, or a combination of both.


    He probably gets paid by the word and you make his job easier.

     
    Given his lack of effectiveness. Who would pay JJ?

    Perhaps there is some sort of cult thing? Competing for the number of #NeverTrump zealot posts? Mindless regurgitation of dogma above quota may yield perceived status among similar brainwashed acolytes. If so, it is a very sad way to live.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @John Johnson

    JJ clearly believed Vegas 1/2 odds were worse for Trump than the number I reported. I could not follow that, and thus pushed him for more information.

    What do you mean “I believed”? I sourced Vegas odds for Trump as you requested.

    Were you hoping that I made those numbers up?

    You are mentally unstable.

    His own citation explains how the quote works, which is quite helpful.

    So as confirmed you didn’t understand Vegas numbers and went on some unhinged rant. You somehow made it this far in life without bothering to understand what an oddsmaker fraction represents.

    Presumably, JJ read 1/2 as equivalent to a 50¢ contract. However, that is not how the math plays out.

    And why would you make such a presumption? A 50 cent contract? What are you talking about?

    I provided Vegas numbers and then sourced them as you asked. Did you forget that?

    • LOL: A123
  65. AP says:
    @Dmitry
    @QCIC

    These South African origin Paypal investors Musk, Sacks and Thiels, are connected to J.D. Vance, according to the media.

    Who knows, but this could indicate they are not so close in relation to Trump, as they seem to feel they need Vance, as a closer friend in the White House than Trump.

    Musk and Sacks have both telephoned Trump, to say they support Vance.

    -

    After Vance is chosen, a lot of other investors including outside the Paypal group, were saying they are supporting Trump.

    For example, the day after Vance is chosen, the "Ben and Marc show" say they support Trump. It could look like, Vance has a lot of friends and support among some of these groups of investors beyond just the Paypal/South Africa origin group .

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_sNclEgQZQ

    Replies: @AP, @Dmitry, @QCIC

    Trump met with Musk prior to picking Vance. Maybe Trump was pressured to choose Vance (who is probably owned by these Paypal guys) in exchange for Musk’s generous funding.

    If Trump doesn’t complete his term this leaves the USA in the hands of Musk, Thiel, Sacks. Unless he turns on them…

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @AP

    Musk and Sacks are also seeming like they support Vivek, as they hosted him on their podcast last year.

    I don't have time to watch the Musk/Sacks podcast with him. But if someone is a Vivek fan, like Bashibuzuk? I post if someone wants to watch the Musk/Sacks podcast (maybe on 2x speed).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5RyE4d5nBY

  66. Worth stating that pro-Russians would do well to restrain any hopes about a Trump presidency regarding the Ukraine War. Trump relented on the Ukraine aid bill and could possibly escalate anti-Russian actions despite the vice president pick of Vance (as that weird article by that O’Brien guy about escalating the war against Russia and sending the entire US Marine Corps to the Asia-Pacific for war against China shows).

    Perhaps it makes no difference from the “Biden administration” (what should it even be called though he’s technically still president???) where admittedly there has been a sober awareness of the risks of nuclear risks and escalations insofar as there have been some delays and limitations on approving Ukraine doing deep strikes in Russia.

    Then again, a lot of things about Trump have proven unpredictable or surprising, with perhaps one of the few reliable predictions being that Israel will be much more likely to invade Lebanon with greater armament support after US elections (possibly regardless of who becomes president anyway, since support for Israel is institutional in the entire US government with it even possible to go so far as to say that Christian Zionism is the unofficial state ideology of the USA).

    • Replies: @AnonfromTN
    @ShortOnTime


    Worth stating that pro-Russians would do well to restrain any hopes about a Trump presidency regarding the Ukraine War.
     
    Anyone who pays attention knows that the US foreign policy does not change with the change of the figurehead in the White house. Those who actually rule the country make sure that this never happens.

    Replies: @A123

    , @Beckow
    @ShortOnTime


    ... a lot of things about Trump have proven unpredictable or surprising
     
    Trump's goals are approximately the same as of the liberal over-class but his executive style is more bold and creative - that comes across as surprising or volatile. But Trump is fully in support of the current economic system including open borders, globalism, running the economy with virtual money - financialization that inevitably leads to un-payable debts. All he wants is a "smarter way" and US getting better deals and smarter migrants.

    Socially Trump is a traditional liberal of the older type who finds some of the recent liberal excesses like dudes-in-girls-showers too much. But he is about as liberal as they come. The flag waving and uber-patriotism is probably sincere but mostly irrelevant, anyone can do that.

    Trump's one bright spot is his genuine aversion to stupid wars - and by that he means wars that US eventually loses. He may also be offended by all the Slavs being killed (two of his wives had that background). So he would push for peace, but given his unbound 'creativity' that could make it worse. In general US can only influence what will happen in Ukraine so much - it is too far, US is unwilling to actually fight, and Russia simply has local superiority. So it may not matter much.

  67. @songbird
    @Bashibuzuk

    Yes, but it happened a few years back. His son Xavier. Originally, I thought it was the mother acting alone because he was an absent father, which is bad enough, but he actually signed the papers. He says he was "tricked" and told that suicide might be the result if he didn't sign.
    https://twitter.com/runews/status/1815501248767942935

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Bashibuzuk, @ShortOnTime

    There’s something to be said about the ultimate superiority of the Kingdom of Heaven over the worldly kingdom.

    What good is all the wealth in the world (Elon Musk is the richest man in the world?) if one can’t save their own progeny from having their genitals and psyche mutilated?

    (Of course, wealth accumulation is usually good and recommended for most people since money can solve or massively help many problems anyone may have, but some things are simply beyond the realm of being fixable by money and technology.)

    And this too … (Although to be fair Elon has made some noises).

    [MORE]

    • Agree: songbird
    • Replies: @Sher Singh
    @ShortOnTime

    https://gurvichar.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/180420-miri-piri-hargobind.jpg?w=421&h=290

    At the age of 11, Guru Hargobind Sahib had the Akal Takht constructed, adorned weapons, took to hunting and kept an army.

    The passage below describes the first time Guru Hargobind Sahib sat on the Akal Takht wearing Miri and Piri. ⁣⁣
    ⁣⁣
    ਰਚ੍ਯੋ ਤਖਤ ਤਿਸ ਬੰਦਨ ਕੀਨਿ । ਚਢਿ ਗੁਰੁ ਬੀਰਾਸਨ ਆਸੀਨ । ਬ੍ਰਿਧ ਆਦਿਕ ਗੁਰਦਾਸ ਮਸੰਦ । ਅਵਿਲੋਕਤਿ ਬਿਸਮਾਇ ਬਿਲੰਦ ।੨੦।⁣⁣⁣
    He saluted the [Akal] Takht which He had constructed, ascending he sat in Vir Asan [Warrior Pose, one knee raised one leg flat].
    Baba Budha Ji, Bhai Gurdas Ji and the other Masands were in great awe looking upon the Guru. ⁣⁣⁣


    ਹਾਥ ਜੋਰਿ ਕਰਿ ਬੂਝਨ ਲਾਗੇ । ਧਰਹਿ ਖੜਗ ਇਕ ਜੇ ਭਟ ਆਗੇ । ਦੋਇ ਆਪ ਲੇ ਨਿਜ ਗਰ ਪਾਏ । ਇਹ ਕ੍ਯਾ ਕਾਰਨ ਦੇਹੁ ਸੁਨਾਏ ।੨੧। ⁣⁣⁣
    With folded hands they ask,

    "Until now we have seen a warrior adorned with one sword.
    You have worn two, what is the purpose?" ⁣⁣ ⁣

    ਧਰੇ ਤੇਜ ਸਤਿਗੁਰੁ ਬਚ ਕਹੇ । ਹਮ ਨੇ ਇਸ ਹਿਤ ਜੁਗ ਅਸਿ ਗਹੇ । ਇਕ ਤੇ ਲੇਂ ਮੀਰਨਿ ਕੀ ਮੀਰੀ । ਦੂਸਰ ਤੇ ਪੀਰਨਿ ਕੀ ਪੀਰੀ ।੨੨।⁣⁣⁣
    The Guru replied, "
    One is the Miri of Amirs (Worldly Sovereignity)
    The other the Piri of Pirs (Saintliness - Spiritual Sovereignity) ⁣⁣⁣
    ⁣⁣⁣
    ਮੀਰੀ ਪੀਰੀ ਦੋਨੋਂ ਧਰੈਂ । ਬਚਹਿ ਸਰਨਿ ਨਤੁ ਜੁਗ ਪਰਹਰੈਂ ।⁣⁣⁣
    I have worn both.
    Both reside under their refuge,
    else all is lost.

    ਅਕਾਲ

  68. AP says:
    @songbird
    How true is this apocalyptic amren article saying that they have bulldozed the school parks in Vienna to make way for container-classrooms of migrants? And that 70% of schoolchildren there don't even speak German at home?
    https://www.amren.com/news/2024/07/austria-teachers-flee-vienna-schools-over-mass-migration-with-20-teachers-quitting-on-a-peak-day/

    Replies: @AP

    70% of schoolchildren there don’t even speak German at home

    IIRC the stats are for public schools, not private ones where many natives send their kids.

    I spent a week in Vienna in 2019. My impression was that the visible non-European population was similar to Moscow’s – around 10-15% or so. In Vienna’s case this was mostly Arabs, with a few Africans.

    However, many of Vienna’s Muslims are secular Bosniaks and Albanians who dress like Europeans. These would blend in with natives. There are also a lot of Serbs and Croats in Vienna (in some respect Austria is for the former Yugoslavia what Poland is for Ukraine). If you add up all of these people, plus recent Ukrainian refugees, it is possible that 70% of Viennese public schoolchildren aren’t native German-speakers.

    Also, many Viennese natives have Czech or Croatian ancestors from 100+ years ago, they are not fully ethnic German, which in terms of physical appearance makes them less distinguishable from Croats.

    • Thanks: songbird
  69. @QCIC
    @AP

    In this clip she is reading the script correctly and with approximately correct intonation. That is a very low bar for someone in her position.

    I assume everything about Kamala's career has been gamed through family connections, affirmative action or political maneuvering. She seems like a low watt bulb.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @AnonfromTN, @Mikel

    In this clip she is reading the script correctly and with approximately correct intonation.

    Look on the bright side: that’s proof positive that she can read. If she can also count to ten, she has qualifications to be the US president. At least as much as demented Joe.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @AnonfromTN

    Can she count backwards by 7 starting at 100?

    Replies: @John Johnson

  70. @Dmitry
    @QCIC

    These South African origin Paypal investors Musk, Sacks and Thiels, are connected to J.D. Vance, according to the media.

    Who knows, but this could indicate they are not so close in relation to Trump, as they seem to feel they need Vance, as a closer friend in the White House than Trump.

    Musk and Sacks have both telephoned Trump, to say they support Vance.

    -

    After Vance is chosen, a lot of other investors including outside the Paypal group, were saying they are supporting Trump.

    For example, the day after Vance is chosen, the "Ben and Marc show" say they support Trump. It could look like, Vance has a lot of friends and support among some of these groups of investors beyond just the Paypal/South Africa origin group .

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_sNclEgQZQ

    Replies: @AP, @Dmitry, @QCIC

    For example, the day after Vance is chosen, the “Ben and Marc show” say they support Trump. It could look like, Vance has a lot of friends and support among some of these groups of investors beyond just the Paypal/South Africa origin group .

    Oops I watched it now. It seems like Marc and Ben’s support is not related to Vance. It doesn’t seem to be related to the Paypal people who are Vance’s friends. So, ignore this part of my earlier comment.

    If you watch at 53:30

    Marc saying Trump said in a three hour dinner with them, he wouldn’t regulate AI so much, they feel like he would help to increase the investments in the military applications.

    At 1:04:00 they say they are worried about the Biden proposal to tax structure to unrealized capital gains on over $100 million.* Marc is mainly worried about the effect of this on small tech investments.

    In 1:19:30 Ben is saying they are mainly friends with Trump family because of Jared and Ivanka (Trump’s oldest daughter and her husband).

    At 1:27:00 they are saying their experience of the Biden administration has been negatively surprising for them.

    Ben says they had a good relation with Clinton “on cryptography” (I guess maybe he is talking about cyber investments related to the government).

    At 1:30:00 Ben is saying they will become socially unpopular for not supporting Democrats now.

    *It is possibly also why some of the larger company owners like Zuckerberg were also seeming like they are going to support Trump.

  71. @ShortOnTime
    Worth stating that pro-Russians would do well to restrain any hopes about a Trump presidency regarding the Ukraine War. Trump relented on the Ukraine aid bill and could possibly escalate anti-Russian actions despite the vice president pick of Vance (as that weird article by that O'Brien guy about escalating the war against Russia and sending the entire US Marine Corps to the Asia-Pacific for war against China shows).

    Perhaps it makes no difference from the "Biden administration" (what should it even be called though he's technically still president???) where admittedly there has been a sober awareness of the risks of nuclear risks and escalations insofar as there have been some delays and limitations on approving Ukraine doing deep strikes in Russia.

    Then again, a lot of things about Trump have proven unpredictable or surprising, with perhaps one of the few reliable predictions being that Israel will be much more likely to invade Lebanon with greater armament support after US elections (possibly regardless of who becomes president anyway, since support for Israel is institutional in the entire US government with it even possible to go so far as to say that Christian Zionism is the unofficial state ideology of the USA).

    Replies: @AnonfromTN, @Beckow

    Worth stating that pro-Russians would do well to restrain any hopes about a Trump presidency regarding the Ukraine War.

    Anyone who pays attention knows that the US foreign policy does not change with the change of the figurehead in the White house. Those who actually rule the country make sure that this never happens.

    • Agree: ShortOnTime
    • Replies: @A123
    @AnonfromTN

    Anyone who pays attention knows that U.S. foreign policy does change when a non-figurehead reaches the White House. SJW Globalist elites who think they rule the country cannot prevent it from happening.

    Four clear examples from Trump's 1st term:

    -1- He abandoned the Erdogan/Obama "Assad Must Go" doctrine. IIRC in year 3 of his term. It took his team a bit to figure out that the moderate resistance concept inherited from Obama was not viable.

    -2- He pulled American troops out of the kill sack between Syrian and Turkish forces thus preventing their loss from being used as a provocation. "Protecting Oil" was a cover story than no one on any side believed then or since.

    -3- He effectively discontinued the Afghanistan mission and was working on an orderly withdrawal plan centered on the securable Bagram military airfield. He was even going to compensate some of the more reliable Taliban elements for their convoy protection assistance. Possibly not pretty, but certainly effective.

    -4- He refused 4 years of Sociopath Khamenei's provocations. He did not put boots on the ground in Iran.

    All of these Trump foreign policy victories were brutal losses for the establishment elites.

    As I have said many times before -- One does not obtain 100% of absolutely everything instantly. The ideal end state for #2 and #3 would have been full withdrawals. However, that means that should be referred to as "large successes" instead of "complete successes".
    ___

    The Veggie-In-Chief also successfully changed foreign policy in a manner that the establishment did not want. He walked into the Afghanistan withdrawal trap that Gen. SJW Milley and others had set to ensnare Trump's administration. Obstinate senility delivered a result.

    PEACE 😇

  72. @AP
    @Dmitry

    Trump met with Musk prior to picking Vance. Maybe Trump was pressured to choose Vance (who is probably owned by these Paypal guys) in exchange for Musk’s generous funding.

    If Trump doesn’t complete his term this leaves the USA in the hands of Musk, Thiel, Sacks. Unless he turns on them…

    Replies: @Dmitry

    Musk and Sacks are also seeming like they support Vivek, as they hosted him on their podcast last year.

    I don’t have time to watch the Musk/Sacks podcast with him. But if someone is a Vivek fan, like Bashibuzuk? I post if someone wants to watch the Musk/Sacks podcast (maybe on 2x speed).

  73. @Mikel
    @AnonfromTN


    the same votes Minnie Mouse would get if nominated by Dems.
     
    Not exactly. Let's remember that Biden was still polling in the high 30s last week, after the debate and the Trump assassination attempt. Those are the real "Minnie Mouse" voters who weren't voting for Biden but against Trump. However, in any election you always have plenty of independents and "undecideds". I reckon most of them don't like Trump but couldn't vote for a visibly unfit candidate either. Now that the dementia factor is gone, they can be convinced to vote Dem. But the Democrats have lost a tremendous amount of credibility. They need to stop making mistakes and show a unified front fast.

    Replies: @AnonfromTN, @Gerard1234

    From the previous thread:

    We’ve had more than enough MH-11s, Chepigas, Novichoks, mysterious cyberattacks and all of that.

    WOW! You appear a smart guy, so it’s simply incredible that NATO vermin full-spectrum propaganda brainwashing BS dominance is that extreme in the west, you would be coerced into thinking “Russian agents poisoned ” the Skripals even though:

    1. Salibury is home of main training base of UK army
    2. Salisbury is home of main Chemical Weapons facility of the UK
    3. Salisbury is full of persons of interest in military, espionage, military tech etc
    4. “coincidentally” the Skripals were “rescued” …….by the the top military nurse in the UK who was just walking past the bench that the Skripals were on
    5. The completely inexplicable death “by Novichok” of this homeless woman. Again NATO scum propaganda just relies on mass repetition of slogans as “Russians”, “spies” “Novichok” to connect to the “poisoning” of this woman – even though its implausible and nonsensical. If anything it should be confirmation that its such a lie, that the British must have performed the entire thing

    How your 1st reaction wouldn’t be that the traditional British liars are trying to setup Russia, is a mystery of logic.

    Those 1st 3 points are suitable to explain motive of why Chepiga & Petrov were there not to “poison” the Skripals- there is about a million other things they could have been doing for intelligence. Just as with the homeless woman death – Chepiga & Petrov can’t be placed at or near Skripals house, on his road or having met him. Because of the 1st 3 points, them coming all the way from Russia isn’t strong enough to link to murder. For the homeless woman, the lazy british scum don’t even make any effort to link Chepiga/Petrov to the location.

    Anglo-American NATO retards know nothing about Russia, so it would not surprise me if these lazy bums turned to Hollywood to concoct their BS. In the Anglo film about their special military unit, the SAS, called “Who Dares Wins” a woman uses a perfume bottle to kill a spy on the bus a sprayed substance that I think is Novichok. Good film, actually.

    I don’t know about you, but my chemical and medical knowledge is near non-existant/forgotten – so I have no idea if the “Novichok” is supposed to kill in 1 second or whatever, but its claimed lethality does not look to be supported by what happened there or with Navalny.

    And even if Chepiga/Petrov was there to meet Skripal they are STILL highly unlikely to have poisoned him . We know from the Litvinenko issue that he was openly meeting with FSB colleagues ( former for him) in popular London hotels/bars/restaurants. For a guy claiming long before this as a “political refugee”, who had defected, working for criminal oligarch fugitive and who was frequently making accusations against the Russian government in public – it seems incredible or extremely stupid and disrespectful to his British masters to be doing this………..Except for the fact I think this practise is encouraged by the British Intelligence. They want the contacts maintained.

    Same thing with Skripal, or it very plausibly could have been doing some shadowish business deal with them. That’s not murder

    Skripal’s mother is alive in her 90’s, but sick and immobile. Thats more than enough motivation to try and do something for the benefit of Russian government to allow him to return. I think his daughter was engaged also. She could have been co-operating with the 2 of them

    Its so near zero chance this Novichok BS, that I think even the insane Chepiga-Petrov as well-manicured fags gaying eachother in Salisbury Cathedral has more plausibility to it – and even explanation for them being forced as punishment to do the silly sports supplements/tourists interview.

    Whatever isn’t known or seems very inconsistent, then with our own biases we explain by the opposite sides “incompetence” – as the Anglo-EU-American trash do with the mountain of inconsistencies in their accusations. My thought is if she , the daughter, travelled directly from Moscow to London to meet her father then I think impossible , our intelligence services didn’t know that……and I think absolutely ZERO chance they would have tried to kill Skripal, particularly poison him, with her visiting if they knew . Maybe she was travelling via transit through another country as Turkey or EU state? We don’t know.

    Navalny you didn’t mention – again no knowledge to talk about the so-called Novichok itself, but everything about how he was acting, the situation at the airport ( phoned in bomb-alert before landing, so all emergency services there, for what was a DIVERTED plane to the airport), how he was then sent to Germany, ‘recovered” , made another hysterical BS video with German co-operation, they allowed him Lenin-style to return to Russia, he insanely returned to Russia knowing he is going to be arrested, jailed and despite doing the BS claim they tried to poison him………appears ridiculous. Why would they send him back, and why would we send him there if we attempted “assassinate by Novichok”?

    Again – he could just be another psycho liberast that have plagued Russia over the centuries, but I think that like most of us ( not ukronazis of course) he loves his own family. Do some stupid stunt, be a prisoner for a few years with your children guaranteed a rich and prosperous life forever……..and we get you released after a few years as we have abducted a few Russian guys to exchange you for anyway and Russia have some Americans we want back. Plausible the Americans could have told him.

    MH17

    Plenty on the technical side suggests it was a deliberate Ukrainian operation. It annoys me that our policy is entirely counter-reaction. Nothing proactive. Even with all the NATO lies about MH17, we have not put out our official version of what happened. Only put information out that Su-24’s were flying directly there, and counter claims about the warhead of missile not being compatible with claims from NATO side.

    But again – why there would not be a high suspicion of khokhol conspiracy is a mystery

    mysterious cyberattacks

    Bizarre statement. Surely these attacks are accepted as mutual? I needed to do something important for me on state agency website 2 months ago but it was inaccessible that day because of Nato/Banderastan DDoS attack. Most of the BS accusations are based not on anything firm but on some use of the Russian language by the hackers- nations with large number of scammers and people with Russian language skills such as Banderastan or Romania could be responsible for many of these attacks.

    Again – I can’t understand why this is your natural response when we all know they said the same definite lies about ” Russian hacking” the Clinton Teams e-mails, and Hunter Bidens laptop. These lies have probably had an influence in the SMO occuring – that is the selfish and satanic nature of these people.

    Then there is the Syrian gas attack. Or the Ukronazis shooting down plane in Belgorod with their own POW’s about to be exchanged ( ironic , as that probable strike from Patriot system was likely what they were referring to when saying “we have fired American missiles into Russia anyway, so allow us to do it). Or the Ukronazis HIMARS attack on their own POW’s held at Olenovka…and plenty of others

    We’ve had more than enough MH-11s, Chepigas, Novichoks, mysterious cyberattacks and all of that.

    Here I think the opposite. There is no tiresome accumulative effect. If NATO side is lying on one of these things, then they must be lying on all of them is my view. Normally the reaction should be to judge each case on their merits , which would be exhausting …….but the NATO propaganda and actions are so intense and similar for all these events that there is no option but to think if 1 is wrong, then they must all be wrong.

    • Replies: @AnonfromTN
    @Gerard1234


    You appear a smart guy, so it’s simply incredible that NATO vermin full-spectrum propaganda brainwashing BS dominance is that extreme in the west,
     
    Propaganda works so well only because most people choose self-deception for various reasons. You can never convince someone who voluntarily deceives him/herself.

    Replies: @Beckow

  74. @songbird
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Honestly, I'd like to know more about it. Like, who was around him? Was he talking to Jared Kushner, and he advised him to sign? (I think Kushner might)

    Musk says he knew his son was gay since he was 4. While I believe gayness has a lot to do with development in the womb, that seems pretty young, and it seems like something unnatural in the environment he was exposed to, that he manifested indicators at such an early stage. Maybe, modern TV.

    Of course, Musk has a lot of children, and this one's potential to have children was probably somewhat minimal, but a tranny is a super-gay, and IMO, it is a bad thing for both society and the individual to allow a gay to turn into a super-gay.

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1815519696424161361

    Replies: @QCIC, @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mikel

    Of course Jordan Peterson couldn’t help interrupting Musk’s personal story several times in his strident voice (dressed as a trans himself btw). How did this clown become so popular?

    • Agree: Torna atrás
    • LOL: ShortOnTime
    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Mikel

    He is not in a tranny costume.

    He is in a negro pimp costume. You need a couple more classes to get full cultural assimilation. Do you ever watch NFL football?

    , @songbird
    @Mikel


    How did this clown become so popular?
     
    like a lot of things, I think it was because the establishment promoted him, since they thought his message was useful to them.

    In his case, because he spoke out in favor of individualism and against a group identity for Europeans. Naturally, his message for Israel was different

    Replies: @LondonBob

  75. @ShortOnTime
    Worth stating that pro-Russians would do well to restrain any hopes about a Trump presidency regarding the Ukraine War. Trump relented on the Ukraine aid bill and could possibly escalate anti-Russian actions despite the vice president pick of Vance (as that weird article by that O'Brien guy about escalating the war against Russia and sending the entire US Marine Corps to the Asia-Pacific for war against China shows).

    Perhaps it makes no difference from the "Biden administration" (what should it even be called though he's technically still president???) where admittedly there has been a sober awareness of the risks of nuclear risks and escalations insofar as there have been some delays and limitations on approving Ukraine doing deep strikes in Russia.

    Then again, a lot of things about Trump have proven unpredictable or surprising, with perhaps one of the few reliable predictions being that Israel will be much more likely to invade Lebanon with greater armament support after US elections (possibly regardless of who becomes president anyway, since support for Israel is institutional in the entire US government with it even possible to go so far as to say that Christian Zionism is the unofficial state ideology of the USA).

    Replies: @AnonfromTN, @Beckow

    … a lot of things about Trump have proven unpredictable or surprising

    Trump’s goals are approximately the same as of the liberal over-class but his executive style is more bold and creative – that comes across as surprising or volatile. But Trump is fully in support of the current economic system including open borders, globalism, running the economy with virtual money – financialization that inevitably leads to un-payable debts. All he wants is a “smarter way” and US getting better deals and smarter migrants.

    Socially Trump is a traditional liberal of the older type who finds some of the recent liberal excesses like dudes-in-girls-showers too much. But he is about as liberal as they come. The flag waving and uber-patriotism is probably sincere but mostly irrelevant, anyone can do that.

    Trump’s one bright spot is his genuine aversion to stupid wars – and by that he means wars that US eventually loses. He may also be offended by all the Slavs being killed (two of his wives had that background). So he would push for peace, but given his unbound ‘creativity’ that could make it worse. In general US can only influence what will happen in Ukraine so much – it is too far, US is unwilling to actually fight, and Russia simply has local superiority. So it may not matter much.

    • Thanks: ShortOnTime
  76. @AnonfromTN
    @QCIC


    In this clip she is reading the script correctly and with approximately correct intonation.
     
    Look on the bright side: that’s proof positive that she can read. If she can also count to ten, she has qualifications to be the US president. At least as much as demented Joe.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    Can she count backwards by 7 starting at 100?

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Can she count backwards by 7 starting at 100?


    It would sound like this:

    The numbers....they go in many directions....the numbers....we support the numbers....we know the numbers.....seven is a good number.....there are many sevens...in 100.....I support a woman's right to choose.

  77. @Mikel
    @songbird

    Of course Jordan Peterson couldn't help interrupting Musk's personal story several times in his strident voice (dressed as a trans himself btw). How did this clown become so popular?

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @songbird

    He is not in a tranny costume.

    He is in a negro pimp costume. You need a couple more classes to get full cultural assimilation. Do you ever watch NFL football?

    • LOL: Mikel
  78. Pre crime department and illegal in the EU.

    Machine Learning Can Predict Shooting Victimization Well Enough to Help Prevent It

    https://www.nber.org/papers/w30170

    I wonder if their model predicts that opposition political candidates have likelihood of being shot. I only read the abstract so far.

  79. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @AnonfromTN

    Can she count backwards by 7 starting at 100?

    Replies: @John Johnson

    Can she count backwards by 7 starting at 100?

    It would sound like this:

    The numbers….they go in many directions….the numbers….we support the numbers….we know the numbers…..seven is a good number…..there are many sevens…in 100…..I support a woman’s right to choose.

  80. @Gerard1234
    @Mikel

    From the previous thread:


    We’ve had more than enough MH-11s, Chepigas, Novichoks, mysterious cyberattacks and all of that.
     
    WOW! You appear a smart guy, so it’s simply incredible that NATO vermin full-spectrum propaganda brainwashing BS dominance is that extreme in the west, you would be coerced into thinking “Russian agents poisoned ” the Skripals even though:

    1. Salibury is home of main training base of UK army
    2. Salisbury is home of main Chemical Weapons facility of the UK
    3. Salisbury is full of persons of interest in military, espionage, military tech etc
    4. “coincidentally” the Skripals were “rescued” …….by the the top military nurse in the UK who was just walking past the bench that the Skripals were on
    5. The completely inexplicable death “by Novichok” of this homeless woman. Again NATO scum propaganda just relies on mass repetition of slogans as “Russians”, “spies” “Novichok” to connect to the “poisoning” of this woman – even though its implausible and nonsensical. If anything it should be confirmation that its such a lie, that the British must have performed the entire thing

    How your 1st reaction wouldn’t be that the traditional British liars are trying to setup Russia, is a mystery of logic.

    Those 1st 3 points are suitable to explain motive of why Chepiga & Petrov were there not to “poison” the Skripals- there is about a million other things they could have been doing for intelligence. Just as with the homeless woman death – Chepiga & Petrov can’t be placed at or near Skripals house, on his road or having met him. Because of the 1st 3 points, them coming all the way from Russia isn’t strong enough to link to murder. For the homeless woman, the lazy british scum don’t even make any effort to link Chepiga/Petrov to the location.

    Anglo-American NATO retards know nothing about Russia, so it would not surprise me if these lazy bums turned to Hollywood to concoct their BS. In the Anglo film about their special military unit, the SAS, called “Who Dares Wins” a woman uses a perfume bottle to kill a spy on the bus a sprayed substance that I think is Novichok. Good film, actually.

    I don’t know about you, but my chemical and medical knowledge is near non-existant/forgotten – so I have no idea if the “Novichok” is supposed to kill in 1 second or whatever, but its claimed lethality does not look to be supported by what happened there or with Navalny.

    And even if Chepiga/Petrov was there to meet Skripal they are STILL highly unlikely to have poisoned him . We know from the Litvinenko issue that he was openly meeting with FSB colleagues ( former for him) in popular London hotels/bars/restaurants. For a guy claiming long before this as a “political refugee”, who had defected, working for criminal oligarch fugitive and who was frequently making accusations against the Russian government in public – it seems incredible or extremely stupid and disrespectful to his British masters to be doing this………..Except for the fact I think this practise is encouraged by the British Intelligence. They want the contacts maintained.

    Same thing with Skripal, or it very plausibly could have been doing some shadowish business deal with them. That’s not murder

    Skripal’s mother is alive in her 90’s, but sick and immobile. Thats more than enough motivation to try and do something for the benefit of Russian government to allow him to return. I think his daughter was engaged also. She could have been co-operating with the 2 of them

    Its so near zero chance this Novichok BS, that I think even the insane Chepiga-Petrov as well-manicured fags gaying eachother in Salisbury Cathedral has more plausibility to it – and even explanation for them being forced as punishment to do the silly sports supplements/tourists interview.

    Whatever isn’t known or seems very inconsistent, then with our own biases we explain by the opposite sides “incompetence” – as the Anglo-EU-American trash do with the mountain of inconsistencies in their accusations. My thought is if she , the daughter, travelled directly from Moscow to London to meet her father then I think impossible , our intelligence services didn’t know that……and I think absolutely ZERO chance they would have tried to kill Skripal, particularly poison him, with her visiting if they knew . Maybe she was travelling via transit through another country as Turkey or EU state? We don’t know.

    Navalny you didn’t mention – again no knowledge to talk about the so-called Novichok itself, but everything about how he was acting, the situation at the airport ( phoned in bomb-alert before landing, so all emergency services there, for what was a DIVERTED plane to the airport), how he was then sent to Germany, ‘recovered” , made another hysterical BS video with German co-operation, they allowed him Lenin-style to return to Russia, he insanely returned to Russia knowing he is going to be arrested, jailed and despite doing the BS claim they tried to poison him………appears ridiculous. Why would they send him back, and why would we send him there if we attempted “assassinate by Novichok”?

    Again – he could just be another psycho liberast that have plagued Russia over the centuries, but I think that like most of us ( not ukronazis of course) he loves his own family. Do some stupid stunt, be a prisoner for a few years with your children guaranteed a rich and prosperous life forever……..and we get you released after a few years as we have abducted a few Russian guys to exchange you for anyway and Russia have some Americans we want back. Plausible the Americans could have told him.

    MH17
     
    Plenty on the technical side suggests it was a deliberate Ukrainian operation. It annoys me that our policy is entirely counter-reaction. Nothing proactive. Even with all the NATO lies about MH17, we have not put out our official version of what happened. Only put information out that Su-24’s were flying directly there, and counter claims about the warhead of missile not being compatible with claims from NATO side.

    But again – why there would not be a high suspicion of khokhol conspiracy is a mystery


    mysterious cyberattacks
     
    Bizarre statement. Surely these attacks are accepted as mutual? I needed to do something important for me on state agency website 2 months ago but it was inaccessible that day because of Nato/Banderastan DDoS attack. Most of the BS accusations are based not on anything firm but on some use of the Russian language by the hackers- nations with large number of scammers and people with Russian language skills such as Banderastan or Romania could be responsible for many of these attacks.

    Again – I can’t understand why this is your natural response when we all know they said the same definite lies about ” Russian hacking” the Clinton Teams e-mails, and Hunter Bidens laptop. These lies have probably had an influence in the SMO occuring – that is the selfish and satanic nature of these people.

    Then there is the Syrian gas attack. Or the Ukronazis shooting down plane in Belgorod with their own POW’s about to be exchanged ( ironic , as that probable strike from Patriot system was likely what they were referring to when saying “we have fired American missiles into Russia anyway, so allow us to do it). Or the Ukronazis HIMARS attack on their own POW’s held at Olenovka…and plenty of others

    We’ve had more than enough MH-11s, Chepigas, Novichoks, mysterious cyberattacks and all of that.
     
    Here I think the opposite. There is no tiresome accumulative effect. If NATO side is lying on one of these things, then they must be lying on all of them is my view. Normally the reaction should be to judge each case on their merits , which would be exhausting …….but the NATO propaganda and actions are so intense and similar for all these events that there is no option but to think if 1 is wrong, then they must all be wrong.

    Replies: @AnonfromTN

    You appear a smart guy, so it’s simply incredible that NATO vermin full-spectrum propaganda brainwashing BS dominance is that extreme in the west,

    Propaganda works so well only because most people choose self-deception for various reasons. You can never convince someone who voluntarily deceives him/herself.

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @AnonfromTN


    ...most people choose self-deception for various reasons
     
    There is an old saying that it always takes two to lie...

    That insight about how lies work and the answer to the question "how bad had to be the guy who lost the election to Hitler?" are never allowed in the West. A bit of a one-dimensional society if you ask me, but I am told they have great appliances...

  81. @A123
    @AnonfromTN


    Judging by her public appearances, Kamala is incapable of composing a grammatically correct sentence, or of saying anything meaningful.
     
    They need a convincing orator who can hold together a pyramid of conflicting special interest groups.

    The DNC is fracturing. (1)

    Pro-BDS group defends counterprotest of 'Pride' parade, blames HRC for 'pinkwashing'

    Columbia University's Apartheid Divest Coalition posted a series of statements on Instagram to bring greater awareness to 'Palestinian liberation' following the conclusion of 'Pride Month.'

    'There is no pride in genocide, no queer liberation without Palestinian liberation,' the group also wrote.
     
    Does anyone think that Kamala has sufficient leadership gravitas to make these factions fall into line?

    If she ends up being DNC nominee, she is going to get the votes of crazed never Trumpers and deranged libtards, i.e., the same votes Minnie Mouse would get if nominated by Dems
     
    I agree.

    Crazed #NeverTrump voters like Mikel will support her. However that is only ~30% and over concentrated in safe red states like California. She lacks the skills and character to win over moderates and independents in swing states.

    The Dems are counting on something blowing up in the Trump-Vance campaign. Some hideous story about Vance (true or more likely fabricated) is something they are likely to try.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.campusreform.org/article/pro-bds-group-defends-counterprotest-pride-parade-blames-hrc-pinkwashing/25928

    Replies: @RadicalCenter

    Intentionally starving and carpet-bombing civilians in their own homes, schools, shops, hospitals, places of worship and refugee camps is evil and needlessly cruel and ungodly — and that doesn’t change if homosexuals or anyone else agrees.

    It’s not “self-defense”, nor even legitimate proportional retaliation, nor legitimate preemption of an imminent attack. That’s not changed by perverts (“pride month”) reaching the same conclusion.

    Terrorizing and dehumanizing innocent human beings and laughing about it, is the height (or depth) of vile cruelty. Homosexuals or leftists having the sense and decency to notice that, doesn’t undermine this conclusion.

    But we notice your attempt to taint the morally and legally righteous movement against the genocide, by association with movements that most of us here don’t like.

    Stop murdering children on purpose.
    Stop murdering women on purpose.
    Stop murdering old people and handicapped people and doctors, nurses and patients on purpose.
    .
    Stop targeting hospitals and schools and refugee camps.
    Then get the fuck out off the Palestinians’ land and leave forever — or decent people will make sure you do.

    How Israel Was Created:

    FREE PALESTINE.
    Disarm and disband “israel.”

    • Replies: @RadicalCenter
    @RadicalCenter

    “Israelis” “defending” themselves by mauling a terrified men with Down Syndrome using a dog, then leaving him to die a slow, agonizing death by blood loss and starvation, ALONE.

    Another similar incident:

    https://youtu.be/cn7dMYkKfos?si=JaoF5ase7c_ru9JI

    “israelis” “defending themselves” by mauling an old lady with a dog:
    https://youtu.be/reF-iLVWWhs?si=CkqZngYhjUdAWegv

    It must be alright, though, because homosexual activists and other people we don’t like say it’s wrong.
    Right, A123?

    FREE PALESTINE.

    , @A123
    @RadicalCenter

    The genocidal Hamas, October 7 Jihad attack was ungodly.

    Indigenous Palestinian Jews have the right and moral duty to rescue hostages held by Muslim colonists. By placing these hostages among civilians, Hamas butchers their coreligionists by using them as human shields.

    • How should Jews recover hostages from Muslim war criminals?
    • Do you not see that righteous Jews, in the service of God, must go where degenerate Islamists hold their victims?

    Muslims need to stop murdering children on purpose.
    Muslims need to stop murdering women on purpose.
    Muslims need to stop murdering old people and handicapped people and doctors, nurses and patients on purpose.

    Stop targeting pizzerias, schools, and peace concerts.

    Muslim colonists need to get the fuck off of Jewish & Christian Palestinian land, and leave forever — or decent Judeo-Christian people will make sure you do.

    FREE PALESTINIAN CHRISTIANS AND JEWS
    Disarm and disband the Islamic occupation.

    PEACE 😇

  82. @AnonfromTN
    @Gerard1234


    You appear a smart guy, so it’s simply incredible that NATO vermin full-spectrum propaganda brainwashing BS dominance is that extreme in the west,
     
    Propaganda works so well only because most people choose self-deception for various reasons. You can never convince someone who voluntarily deceives him/herself.

    Replies: @Beckow

    …most people choose self-deception for various reasons

    There is an old saying that it always takes two to lie…

    That insight about how lies work and the answer to the question “how bad had to be the guy who lost the election to Hitler?” are never allowed in the West. A bit of a one-dimensional society if you ask me, but I am told they have great appliances

  83. @RadicalCenter
    @A123

    Intentionally starving and carpet-bombing civilians in their own homes, schools, shops, hospitals, places of worship and refugee camps is evil and needlessly cruel and ungodly — and that doesn’t change if homosexuals or anyone else agrees.

    It’s not “self-defense”, nor even legitimate proportional retaliation, nor legitimate preemption of an imminent attack. That’s not changed by perverts (“pride month”) reaching the same conclusion.

    Terrorizing and dehumanizing innocent human beings and laughing about it, is the height (or depth) of vile cruelty. Homosexuals or leftists having the sense and decency to notice that, doesn’t undermine this conclusion.

    But we notice your attempt to taint the morally and legally righteous movement against the genocide, by association with movements that most of us here don’t like.

    Stop murdering children on purpose.
    Stop murdering women on purpose.
    Stop murdering old people and handicapped people and doctors, nurses and patients on purpose.
    .
    Stop targeting hospitals and schools and refugee camps.
    Then get the fuck out off the Palestinians’ land and leave forever — or decent people will make sure you do.

    https://youtu.be/6GaUwsfkzU4?si=GNtnmbllwbDq3xFd

    How Israel Was Created:
    https://youtu.be/6foH3Zc82ZQ?si=bOatNmPdy0nXec6z

    FREE PALESTINE.
    Disarm and disband “israel.”

    Replies: @RadicalCenter, @A123

    “Israelis” “defending” themselves by mauling a terrified men with Down Syndrome using a dog, then leaving him to die a slow, agonizing death by blood loss and starvation, ALONE.

    Another similar incident:

    “israelis” “defending themselves” by mauling an old lady with a dog:

    It must be alright, though, because homosexual activists and other people we don’t like say it’s wrong.
    Right, A123?

    FREE PALESTINE.

  84. @John Johnson
    @A123

    Your #NeverTrump cult extremism led you to a bad assumption, simply because it was favorable to your desperately desired outcome. Your emotional distress does not be assure your result.

    Shall we go back and look at the posts where you called me clueless and an idiot for saying there is no reason to assume that Biden will be the final candidate?

    Your orange felon's best chance was against Mr. Magoo.

    Better hope that the Democrats run Harris. But in a brokered convention she can be defeated even if the DNC and media back her.

    The polls show that Trump loses against practically any non-name moderate Democrat.

    "Polls are just MSM BS, you're indoctrinated"

    - Trump Tribe in the last election when I pointed out that he was losing independents.

    Replies: @A123, @RadicalCenter

    Pretend-“moderate” white christian guy like Kentucky’s Bashear, plus a Spanish-speaking white-ish Hispanic (probably a woman) for Veep. And the Dems could actually squeak out a win without having to engage in massive vote fraud.

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @RadicalCenter

    Pretend-“moderate” white christian guy like Kentucky’s Bashear, plus a Spanish-speaking white-ish Hispanic (probably a woman) for Veep.

    That would do it.

    For VP I'd look at the Democrats that voted against Biden on immigration.

  85. @Mikel
    @songbird

    Of course Jordan Peterson couldn't help interrupting Musk's personal story several times in his strident voice (dressed as a trans himself btw). How did this clown become so popular?

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @songbird

    How did this clown become so popular?

    like a lot of things, I think it was because the establishment promoted him, since they thought his message was useful to them.

    In his case, because he spoke out in favor of individualism and against a group identity for Europeans. Naturally, his message for Israel was different

    • Replies: @LondonBob
    @songbird

    At least he was promoted more subtly than Konstantin Kisin, or Lex Friedman.

    Replies: @songbird

  86. A123 says: • Website
    @AnonfromTN
    @ShortOnTime


    Worth stating that pro-Russians would do well to restrain any hopes about a Trump presidency regarding the Ukraine War.
     
    Anyone who pays attention knows that the US foreign policy does not change with the change of the figurehead in the White house. Those who actually rule the country make sure that this never happens.

    Replies: @A123

    Anyone who pays attention knows that U.S. foreign policy does change when a non-figurehead reaches the White House. SJW Globalist elites who think they rule the country cannot prevent it from happening.

    Four clear examples from Trump’s 1st term:

    -1- He abandoned the Erdogan/Obama “Assad Must Go” doctrine. IIRC in year 3 of his term. It took his team a bit to figure out that the moderate resistance concept inherited from Obama was not viable.

    -2- He pulled American troops out of the kill sack between Syrian and Turkish forces thus preventing their loss from being used as a provocation. “Protecting Oil” was a cover story than no one on any side believed then or since.

    -3- He effectively discontinued the Afghanistan mission and was working on an orderly withdrawal plan centered on the securable Bagram military airfield. He was even going to compensate some of the more reliable Taliban elements for their convoy protection assistance. Possibly not pretty, but certainly effective.

    -4- He refused 4 years of Sociopath Khamenei’s provocations. He did not put boots on the ground in Iran.

    All of these Trump foreign policy victories were brutal losses for the establishment elites.

    As I have said many times before — One does not obtain 100% of absolutely everything instantly. The ideal end state for #2 and #3 would have been full withdrawals. However, that means that should be referred to as “large successes” instead of “complete successes”.
    ___

    The Veggie-In-Chief also successfully changed foreign policy in a manner that the establishment did not want. He walked into the Afghanistan withdrawal trap that Gen. SJW Milley and others had set to ensnare Trump’s administration. Obstinate senility delivered a result.

    PEACE 😇

  87. @Bashibuzuk
    @songbird

    He knew his son was somewhat effeminate, perhaps that influenced his decision. And the fact that he divorced Xavier’s mom could also lead to resentment from both the kid and the mother. Then if the mother is somewhat unhinged and the kid is somewhat autistic and effeminate, the step to take to do a radical change of gender, at the same time signaling a radical rejection of the father and the male identity is probably somewhat easier. BTW, given that a « third sex » existed in many cultures at different periods in history (it is still in existence in the subcontinent, even it’s Islamic part and of course South Eastern Asia with the lady boys), it would be naive to ignore that some people « fall in between two categories » of maleness and femininity. Therefore, I am of the Ayatollahs’ opinion on the issue: transitioning is sometimes inevitable to experience a more balanced identity, but this transitioning should only be done by adults after a consultation with psychologists, hormonal therapists, MDs and finally surgeons if nothing else works. And this transitioning should be final without any ambiguity about the gender identity of the person. That way it would be a treatment for an adult psychosocial illness and not a fashion for crazy people to indulge in at the expense of immature children.

    https://qz.com/889548/everyone-treated-me-like-a-saint-in-iran-theres-only-one-way-to-survive-as-a-transgender-person

    Replies: @songbird

    IMO, Iran is somewhat hobbled by geography. A lot of its Gulf islands are seen as being military-strategic, and so it doesn’t necessarily have a good place to exile gays, like Indonesia might – if it wanted to.

    • Replies: @Torna atrás
    @songbird

    Best photo from the article posted by Bashi.

    https://i.kinja-img.com/image/upload/c_fit,q_60,w_1315/e41d6bc90362e10c81b4e49e5b020ecc.jpg



    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GBk5_mnW4AAxFJ1.jpg

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @AP

  88. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    If this subject interests you there are great books written by good writers. Musk might be good at lobbying for money but I think he sucks as a storyteller. His sob story is not worth paying any attention to.

    This one is good:

    https://www.amazon.com/Betrayal-Trauma-Logic-Forgetting-Childhood/dp/067406805X

    There is an inexhaustible supply of misery in our world. Job and Ecclesiastes also are very well written.

    Why?

    It is God's will over our pay grade.

    In the first chapter or even in the first paragraph these books will also inform you about unreliable narrators. Musk can't even tell you the truth about his messed up personal life.

    Replies: @songbird

    these books will also inform you about unreliable narrators

    I was vaguely interested in this Indian story, as I thought it might be interesting sociologically, until I learned it was a novel.

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

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    In Walter Kaufmann Shakespeare to Existentialism he has an illustration of his point that sometimes truths expressed in fictional works can't ever be done in non-fiction. This isn't verbatim as I don't have the book handy and the terms are too common to search the internet but it's a memorable thought experiment. Like I can remember it now and I read it fifteen years ago.

    Compare: in the afterlife the spirit of Napoleon gets his hand on twenty books about Napoleon. He happily concludes, "my secret is safe".

    In the afterlife the spirit of the real life inspiration of Natasha Rostov gets her hand on a copy of War and Peace. She cries out in horror "oh my god everybody knew."

    https://www.amazon.com/Shakespeare-Existentialism-Walter-Kaufmann/dp/0691013675

  89. A123 says: • Website
    @RadicalCenter
    @A123

    Intentionally starving and carpet-bombing civilians in their own homes, schools, shops, hospitals, places of worship and refugee camps is evil and needlessly cruel and ungodly — and that doesn’t change if homosexuals or anyone else agrees.

    It’s not “self-defense”, nor even legitimate proportional retaliation, nor legitimate preemption of an imminent attack. That’s not changed by perverts (“pride month”) reaching the same conclusion.

    Terrorizing and dehumanizing innocent human beings and laughing about it, is the height (or depth) of vile cruelty. Homosexuals or leftists having the sense and decency to notice that, doesn’t undermine this conclusion.

    But we notice your attempt to taint the morally and legally righteous movement against the genocide, by association with movements that most of us here don’t like.

    Stop murdering children on purpose.
    Stop murdering women on purpose.
    Stop murdering old people and handicapped people and doctors, nurses and patients on purpose.
    .
    Stop targeting hospitals and schools and refugee camps.
    Then get the fuck out off the Palestinians’ land and leave forever — or decent people will make sure you do.

    https://youtu.be/6GaUwsfkzU4?si=GNtnmbllwbDq3xFd

    How Israel Was Created:
    https://youtu.be/6foH3Zc82ZQ?si=bOatNmPdy0nXec6z

    FREE PALESTINE.
    Disarm and disband “israel.”

    Replies: @RadicalCenter, @A123

    The genocidal Hamas, October 7 Jihad attack was ungodly.

    Indigenous Palestinian Jews have the right and moral duty to rescue hostages held by Muslim colonists. By placing these hostages among civilians, Hamas butchers their coreligionists by using them as human shields.

    • How should Jews recover hostages from Muslim war criminals?
    • Do you not see that righteous Jews, in the service of God, must go where degenerate Islamists hold their victims?

    Muslims need to stop murdering children on purpose.
    Muslims need to stop murdering women on purpose.
    Muslims need to stop murdering old people and handicapped people and doctors, nurses and patients on purpose.

    Stop targeting pizzerias, schools, and peace concerts.

    Muslim colonists need to get the fuck off of Jewish & Christian Palestinian land, and leave forever — or decent Judeo-Christian people will make sure you do.

    FREE PALESTINIAN CHRISTIANS AND JEWS
    Disarm and disband the Islamic occupation.

    PEACE 😇

  90. Watch this SU-25 get taken out by a MANPAD:

  91. @RadicalCenter
    @John Johnson

    Pretend-“moderate” white christian guy like Kentucky's Bashear, plus a Spanish-speaking white-ish Hispanic (probably a woman) for Veep. And the Dems could actually squeak out a win without having to engage in massive vote fraud.

    Replies: @John Johnson

    Pretend-“moderate” white christian guy like Kentucky’s Bashear, plus a Spanish-speaking white-ish Hispanic (probably a woman) for Veep.

    That would do it.

    For VP I’d look at the Democrats that voted against Biden on immigration.

  92. @Dmitry
    @QCIC

    These South African origin Paypal investors Musk, Sacks and Thiels, are connected to J.D. Vance, according to the media.

    Who knows, but this could indicate they are not so close in relation to Trump, as they seem to feel they need Vance, as a closer friend in the White House than Trump.

    Musk and Sacks have both telephoned Trump, to say they support Vance.

    -

    After Vance is chosen, a lot of other investors including outside the Paypal group, were saying they are supporting Trump.

    For example, the day after Vance is chosen, the "Ben and Marc show" say they support Trump. It could look like, Vance has a lot of friends and support among some of these groups of investors beyond just the Paypal/South Africa origin group .

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_sNclEgQZQ

    Replies: @AP, @Dmitry, @QCIC

    If Vance is being lined up to replace Trump, all I can say is, “Watch your ear, Don.”

    I just realized this classic clip could be the inspiration for last Saturday; punch line at 3:06 🙂

    [MORE]

  93. @songbird
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    these books will also inform you about unreliable narrators
     
    I was vaguely interested in this Indian story, as I thought it might be interesting sociologically, until I learned it was a novel.

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

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    In Walter Kaufmann Shakespeare to Existentialism he has an illustration of his point that sometimes truths expressed in fictional works can’t ever be done in non-fiction. This isn’t verbatim as I don’t have the book handy and the terms are too common to search the internet but it’s a memorable thought experiment. Like I can remember it now and I read it fifteen years ago.

    Compare: in the afterlife the spirit of Napoleon gets his hand on twenty books about Napoleon. He happily concludes, “my secret is safe”.

    In the afterlife the spirit of the real life inspiration of Natasha Rostov gets her hand on a copy of War and Peace. She cries out in horror “oh my god everybody knew.”

    • Thanks: songbird
  94. @QCIC
    @AP

    In this clip she is reading the script correctly and with approximately correct intonation. That is a very low bar for someone in her position.

    I assume everything about Kamala's career has been gamed through family connections, affirmative action or political maneuvering. She seems like a low watt bulb.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @AnonfromTN, @Mikel

    She seems like a low watt bulb.

    Biden’s wattage was barely enough to illuminate a small room in 2020 and he won.

    Kamala may have problems with some demographics that Biden, as a white family man and well known figure in politics, didn’t have but one shouldn’t forget that the Democrats have very big advantages and don’t really need a brilliant candidate to beat Trump: the MSM and 90% of Big Tech are with them, the years-long demonization of Trump has created a visceral opposition to his figure in large parts of the electorate and Trump has obvious flaws of character that put off even people that are generally sympathetic to his ideas.

    I think that the Republicans are making a mistake by calling for Biden’s resignation. Their best bet was for Biden to carry on til November and now they should try to keep him in the limelight for as long as possible, just to remind voters of what a disaster the Democrats were trying to push on them. Making senile Joe disappear from the scene gives the Dems plenty of months to memory hole the whole incident with help from the media and build a solid enough campaign to win.

    Just my humble opinion. I may be wrong but surely not as wrong as the people here who made optimistic predictions that failed a couple of weeks later.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Mikel


    Kamala may have problems with some demographics that Biden, as a white family man and well known figure in politics, didn’t have
     
    She has gigantic issues with critical swing demographics including independents and Hispanics: (1)

    She has ratings slightly lower than Mr. Biden’s. In the last HarvardCAPS/Harris poll, her personal ratings stood at 38% favorable and 52% unfavorable. (Mr. Biden’s were 39% and 55%, respectively.) Her negatives are particularly high with men (56%), seniors (61%), whites (60%), independents (58%) and Hispanics (45%).

    She will make the argument Mr. Biden had planned to make—that the administration is on the right path on the issues. That means there will be no daylight between Mr. Biden’s policies and Ms. Harris’s nor any expectation that she will make a game-changing shift to the center and bring on a Republican or Joe Manchin as her running mate.
     

    Trust in the Fake Stream Media is at an all time low. The 2020 bag of deception and crime is no where near enough to steal 2024.

    Big tech is already pivoting towards Trump. He is more favourable to them on some key issues, most notably crypto currencies as a competitor to the Fed.


    I think that the Republicans are making a mistake by calling for Biden’s resignation. Their best bet was for Biden to carry on til November and now they should try to keep him in the limelight for as long as possible
     
    These two positions are not necessarily contradictory.

    I agree that having him stay is better for Trump. However, calling on him to go and encouraging Dems and Harris to defend Biden is the optimum.

    IMHO too risky, but forcing him out does have a theoretical upside. Congress does not have to approve a new VP. It would make Speaker Johnson one heartbeat away from the Presidency.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.wsj.com/articles/harris-swap-leaves-a-similar-race-close-poll-numbers-similar-issue-on-record-16586cbd

    (no paywall) https://archive.is/zmNuj

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    , @John Johnson
    @Mikel

    Biden’s wattage was barely enough to illuminate a small room in 2020 and he won.

    Democrats have very big advantages and don’t really need a brilliant candidate to beat Trump: the MSM and 90% of Big Tech are with them

    You are correct that they don't need a brilliant candidate.

    But they do need a candidate that can take swing states and on that basis Harris is a terrible choice.

    Newsweek is one of the few outlets that did an honest take on the numbers:
    https://www.newsweek.com/kamala-harris-polling-blow-joe-biden-democrats-election-2024-swing-states-1926440

    You don't run a candidate that is viewed unfavorably by independents.

    It's completely idiotic.

    The Democrat faithful would vote for anyone. You don't pick a candidate based on their DEI feelies. It's terrible strategy and even if you really want a minority or woman then you find someone else. Harris not only associated with Biden but is viewed as a low quality candidate.

    I rip on Trump and his fans but Democrats are out of their damn minds. Too many White people are going insane from White guilt. If Harris was a red-headed scotch-irish then this would not be happening. This is White guilt and affirmative action at work. It's turning Whites into complete idiots.

  95. It could feel like CNN is not training professional journalists.

    Read these two of the main articles on the website today.

    https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/22/entertainment/charli-xcx-kamala-harris-brat-meme/index.html

    https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/23/style/brat-summer-green-explained/index.html

    It seems kind of uninteresting marketing without real content, which they hire from bots for an app in Beijing, but CNN report like the content of the marketing is exciting and real.

  96. @songbird
    @Mikel


    How did this clown become so popular?
     
    like a lot of things, I think it was because the establishment promoted him, since they thought his message was useful to them.

    In his case, because he spoke out in favor of individualism and against a group identity for Europeans. Naturally, his message for Israel was different

    Replies: @LondonBob

    At least he was promoted more subtly than Konstantin Kisin, or Lex Friedman.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @LondonBob


    At least he was promoted more subtly than Konstantin Kisin, or Lex Friedman
     
    From my perspective, JBP was the most heavily promoted of that group. I can't even begin to put a number on the amount of JBP videos, autoplay used to try to send me to.

    Kisin I would guess might be more promoted in the UK.

    Lex I have honestly never really heard promoted outside of this thread. But my experience might be atypical. It is strange to think how he gets all his guests.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  97. A123 says: • Website
    @Mikel
    @QCIC


    She seems like a low watt bulb.
     
    Biden's wattage was barely enough to illuminate a small room in 2020 and he won.

    Kamala may have problems with some demographics that Biden, as a white family man and well known figure in politics, didn't have but one shouldn't forget that the Democrats have very big advantages and don't really need a brilliant candidate to beat Trump: the MSM and 90% of Big Tech are with them, the years-long demonization of Trump has created a visceral opposition to his figure in large parts of the electorate and Trump has obvious flaws of character that put off even people that are generally sympathetic to his ideas.

    I think that the Republicans are making a mistake by calling for Biden's resignation. Their best bet was for Biden to carry on til November and now they should try to keep him in the limelight for as long as possible, just to remind voters of what a disaster the Democrats were trying to push on them. Making senile Joe disappear from the scene gives the Dems plenty of months to memory hole the whole incident with help from the media and build a solid enough campaign to win.

    Just my humble opinion. I may be wrong but surely not as wrong as the people here who made optimistic predictions that failed a couple of weeks later.

    Replies: @A123, @John Johnson

    Kamala may have problems with some demographics that Biden, as a white family man and well known figure in politics, didn’t have

    She has gigantic issues with critical swing demographics including independents and Hispanics: (1)

    She has ratings slightly lower than Mr. Biden’s. In the last HarvardCAPS/Harris poll, her personal ratings stood at 38% favorable and 52% unfavorable. (Mr. Biden’s were 39% and 55%, respectively.) Her negatives are particularly high with men (56%), seniors (61%), whites (60%), independents (58%) and Hispanics (45%).

    She will make the argument Mr. Biden had planned to make—that the administration is on the right path on the issues. That means there will be no daylight between Mr. Biden’s policies and Ms. Harris’s nor any expectation that she will make a game-changing shift to the center and bring on a Republican or Joe Manchin as her running mate.

    Trust in the Fake Stream Media is at an all time low. The 2020 bag of deception and crime is no where near enough to steal 2024.

    Big tech is already pivoting towards Trump. He is more favourable to them on some key issues, most notably crypto currencies as a competitor to the Fed.

    I think that the Republicans are making a mistake by calling for Biden’s resignation. Their best bet was for Biden to carry on til November and now they should try to keep him in the limelight for as long as possible

    These two positions are not necessarily contradictory.

    I agree that having him stay is better for Trump. However, calling on him to go and encouraging Dems and Harris to defend Biden is the optimum.

    IMHO too risky, but forcing him out does have a theoretical upside. Congress does not have to approve a new VP. It would make Speaker Johnson one heartbeat away from the Presidency.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.wsj.com/articles/harris-swap-leaves-a-similar-race-close-poll-numbers-similar-issue-on-record-16586cbd

    (no paywall) https://archive.is/zmNuj

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @A123

    https://www.reuters.com/world/us/harris-leads-trump-44-42-us-presidential-race-reutersipsos-poll-finds-2024-07-23/

    “What is important is not how they vote, but who counts the votes”

    Comrade Stalin.

    Replies: @AnonfromTN, @A123

  98. @Mikel
    @QCIC


    She seems like a low watt bulb.
     
    Biden's wattage was barely enough to illuminate a small room in 2020 and he won.

    Kamala may have problems with some demographics that Biden, as a white family man and well known figure in politics, didn't have but one shouldn't forget that the Democrats have very big advantages and don't really need a brilliant candidate to beat Trump: the MSM and 90% of Big Tech are with them, the years-long demonization of Trump has created a visceral opposition to his figure in large parts of the electorate and Trump has obvious flaws of character that put off even people that are generally sympathetic to his ideas.

    I think that the Republicans are making a mistake by calling for Biden's resignation. Their best bet was for Biden to carry on til November and now they should try to keep him in the limelight for as long as possible, just to remind voters of what a disaster the Democrats were trying to push on them. Making senile Joe disappear from the scene gives the Dems plenty of months to memory hole the whole incident with help from the media and build a solid enough campaign to win.

    Just my humble opinion. I may be wrong but surely not as wrong as the people here who made optimistic predictions that failed a couple of weeks later.

    Replies: @A123, @John Johnson

    Biden’s wattage was barely enough to illuminate a small room in 2020 and he won.

    Democrats have very big advantages and don’t really need a brilliant candidate to beat Trump: the MSM and 90% of Big Tech are with them

    You are correct that they don’t need a brilliant candidate.

    But they do need a candidate that can take swing states and on that basis Harris is a terrible choice.

    Newsweek is one of the few outlets that did an honest take on the numbers:
    https://www.newsweek.com/kamala-harris-polling-blow-joe-biden-democrats-election-2024-swing-states-1926440

    You don’t run a candidate that is viewed unfavorably by independents.

    It’s completely idiotic.

    The Democrat faithful would vote for anyone. You don’t pick a candidate based on their DEI feelies. It’s terrible strategy and even if you really want a minority or woman then you find someone else. Harris not only associated with Biden but is viewed as a low quality candidate.

    I rip on Trump and his fans but Democrats are out of their damn minds. Too many White people are going insane from White guilt. If Harris was a red-headed scotch-irish then this would not be happening. This is White guilt and affirmative action at work. It’s turning Whites into complete idiots.

  99. @A123
    @Mikel


    Kamala may have problems with some demographics that Biden, as a white family man and well known figure in politics, didn’t have
     
    She has gigantic issues with critical swing demographics including independents and Hispanics: (1)

    She has ratings slightly lower than Mr. Biden’s. In the last HarvardCAPS/Harris poll, her personal ratings stood at 38% favorable and 52% unfavorable. (Mr. Biden’s were 39% and 55%, respectively.) Her negatives are particularly high with men (56%), seniors (61%), whites (60%), independents (58%) and Hispanics (45%).

    She will make the argument Mr. Biden had planned to make—that the administration is on the right path on the issues. That means there will be no daylight between Mr. Biden’s policies and Ms. Harris’s nor any expectation that she will make a game-changing shift to the center and bring on a Republican or Joe Manchin as her running mate.
     

    Trust in the Fake Stream Media is at an all time low. The 2020 bag of deception and crime is no where near enough to steal 2024.

    Big tech is already pivoting towards Trump. He is more favourable to them on some key issues, most notably crypto currencies as a competitor to the Fed.


    I think that the Republicans are making a mistake by calling for Biden’s resignation. Their best bet was for Biden to carry on til November and now they should try to keep him in the limelight for as long as possible
     
    These two positions are not necessarily contradictory.

    I agree that having him stay is better for Trump. However, calling on him to go and encouraging Dems and Harris to defend Biden is the optimum.

    IMHO too risky, but forcing him out does have a theoretical upside. Congress does not have to approve a new VP. It would make Speaker Johnson one heartbeat away from the Presidency.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.wsj.com/articles/harris-swap-leaves-a-similar-race-close-poll-numbers-similar-issue-on-record-16586cbd

    (no paywall) https://archive.is/zmNuj

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    https://www.reuters.com/world/us/harris-leads-trump-44-42-us-presidential-race-reutersipsos-poll-finds-2024-07-23/

    “What is important is not how they vote, but who counts the votes”

    Comrade Stalin.

    • Replies: @AnonfromTN
    @Bashibuzuk


    “What is important is not how they vote, but who counts the votes”
     
    It is equally important who conducts the poll. Before 2016 elections all libtard-conducted polls suggested that Killary wins by a landslide. Thank goodness, this did not happen.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    , @A123
    @Bashibuzuk

    Already debunked due to atrociously inappropriate sampling: (1)


    A new Reuters/Ipsos poll has found that Harris leads Trump 44% to 42% in the national poll (with a 3% margin of error).

    Yet, there's a catch. As we noted in the 2016 and 2020 elections, pollsters had their thumb on the scale by oversampling Democrats.

    Well, they've done it again - sampling 426 Democrat voters vs. 376 Republicans and 341 Independents.
     
    The Nazi-crats are desperate and flailing. The crime of fraud is based on exploiting plausibility. The crazy, gonzo, phweet propaganda that the fascists are trying to push is too absurd. The malfeasance is blown as it crosses the starting line.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.zerohedge.com/political/reuters-shock-poll-finds-jump-support-kamala-theres-just-one-catch
  100. @Bashibuzuk
    @A123

    https://www.reuters.com/world/us/harris-leads-trump-44-42-us-presidential-race-reutersipsos-poll-finds-2024-07-23/

    “What is important is not how they vote, but who counts the votes”

    Comrade Stalin.

    Replies: @AnonfromTN, @A123

    “What is important is not how they vote, but who counts the votes”

    It is equally important who conducts the poll. Before 2016 elections all libtard-conducted polls suggested that Killary wins by a landslide. Thank goodness, this did not happen.

    • Agree: Bashibuzuk
    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @AnonfromTN

    But what if “it’s her (Kamala’s) time?”

    I mean how can anyone progressive be against the first Black female president?

    Being against it is in itself a form of bigotry.

    🙂

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

  101. @AnonfromTN
    @Bashibuzuk


    “What is important is not how they vote, but who counts the votes”
     
    It is equally important who conducts the poll. Before 2016 elections all libtard-conducted polls suggested that Killary wins by a landslide. Thank goodness, this did not happen.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    But what if “it’s her (Kamala’s) time?”

    I mean how can anyone progressive be against the first Black female president?

    Being against it is in itself a form of bigotry.

    🙂

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Bashibuzuk

    CNN and the New York Times and everybody is totally behind her. Until they aren't. Which may happen really really fast. Seven days ago she was totally behind Biden.

    Have you ever read those stories about the last 72 hours of Lehman Brothers? They are a hoot. I forget who it was that stuck the dagger into them exactly. Goldman Sachs? It was a trusted partner going back generations. When you play Game of Thrones you win or die.

  102. A123 says: • Website
    @Bashibuzuk
    @A123

    https://www.reuters.com/world/us/harris-leads-trump-44-42-us-presidential-race-reutersipsos-poll-finds-2024-07-23/

    “What is important is not how they vote, but who counts the votes”

    Comrade Stalin.

    Replies: @AnonfromTN, @A123

    Already debunked due to atrociously inappropriate sampling: (1)

    A new Reuters/Ipsos poll has found that Harris leads Trump 44% to 42% in the national poll (with a 3% margin of error).

    Yet, there’s a catch. As we noted in the 2016 and 2020 elections, pollsters had their thumb on the scale by oversampling Democrats.

    Well, they’ve done it again – sampling 426 Democrat voters vs. 376 Republicans and 341 Independents.

    The Nazi-crats are desperate and flailing. The crime of fraud is based on exploiting plausibility. The crazy, gonzo, phweet propaganda that the fascists are trying to push is too absurd. The malfeasance is blown as it crosses the starting line.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.zerohedge.com/political/reuters-shock-poll-finds-jump-support-kamala-theres-just-one-catch

  103. Bashibuzuk says:

    The witty phrase “late Soviet America” was coined by the Princeton historian Harold James back in 2020. It has only become more apposite since then as the cold war we’re in—the second one—heats up.
    I first pointed out that we’re in Cold War II back in 2018. In articles for The New York Times and National Review, I tried to show how the People’s Republic of China now occupies the space vacated by the Soviet Union when it collapsed in 1991.
    This view is less controversial now than it was then. China is clearly not only an ideological rival, firmly committed to Marxism-Leninism and one-party rule. It’s also a technological competitor—the only one the U.S. confronts in fields such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing. It’s a military rival, with a navy that is already larger than ours and a nuclear arsenal that is catching up fast. And it’s a geopolitical rival, asserting itself not only in the Indo-Pacific but also through proxies in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
    But it only recently struck me that in this new Cold War, we—and not the Chinese—might be the Soviets. It’s a bit like that moment when the British comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb, playing Waffen-SS officers toward the end of World War II, ask the immortal question: “Are we the baddies?”
    I imagine two American sailors asking themselves one day—perhaps as their aircraft carrier is sinking beneath their feet somewhere near the Taiwan Strait: Are we the Soviets?

    https://www.thefp.com/p/were-all-soviets-now

    (Yeah, it’s Niall Ferguson. Sorry for that. 🙄)

    • Thanks: S1
    • Replies: @songbird
    @Bashibuzuk

    Have never really read Ferguson, but I suspect, having himself married a Somali, he doesn't really touch on the race communism.

    I mean, the individuality thing isn't exactly false, but it doesn't seem to cover all the bases, if one looks at rhetoric or actual systems. And the purpose of a system is what it does.

    Replies: @Coconuts

    , @Torna atrás
    @Bashibuzuk

    The Asiatic mode of production.



    Over the 16-year period since 2008, the number of years it takes for an average Chinese manufacturing worker to afford a basic plug-in EV has fallen from ~9 years to <1.

    This is while the technical/performance specifications have increased dramatically.

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GPJ2iXOWIAAfZDj.png


    Fordism.

  104. @Bashibuzuk
    @AnonfromTN

    But what if “it’s her (Kamala’s) time?”

    I mean how can anyone progressive be against the first Black female president?

    Being against it is in itself a form of bigotry.

    🙂

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    CNN and the New York Times and everybody is totally behind her. Until they aren’t. Which may happen really really fast. Seven days ago she was totally behind Biden.

    Have you ever read those stories about the last 72 hours of Lehman Brothers? They are a hoot. I forget who it was that stuck the dagger into them exactly. Goldman Sachs? It was a trusted partner going back generations. When you play Game of Thrones you win or die.

  105. @Bashibuzuk

    The witty phrase “late Soviet America” was coined by the Princeton historian Harold James back in 2020. It has only become more apposite since then as the cold war we’re in—the second one—heats up.
    I first pointed out that we’re in Cold War II back in 2018. In articles for The New York Times and National Review, I tried to show how the People’s Republic of China now occupies the space vacated by the Soviet Union when it collapsed in 1991.
    This view is less controversial now than it was then. China is clearly not only an ideological rival, firmly committed to Marxism-Leninism and one-party rule. It’s also a technological competitor—the only one the U.S. confronts in fields such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing. It’s a military rival, with a navy that is already larger than ours and a nuclear arsenal that is catching up fast. And it’s a geopolitical rival, asserting itself not only in the Indo-Pacific but also through proxies in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
    But it only recently struck me that in this new Cold War, we—and not the Chinese—might be the Soviets. It’s a bit like that moment when the British comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb, playing Waffen-SS officers toward the end of World War II, ask the immortal question: “Are we the baddies?”
    I imagine two American sailors asking themselves one day—perhaps as their aircraft carrier is sinking beneath their feet somewhere near the Taiwan Strait: Are we the Soviets?
     
    https://www.thefp.com/p/were-all-soviets-now

    (Yeah, it’s Niall Ferguson. Sorry for that. 🙄)

    Replies: @songbird, @Torna atrás

    Have never really read Ferguson, but I suspect, having himself married a Somali, he doesn’t really touch on the race communism.

    I mean, the individuality thing isn’t exactly false, but it doesn’t seem to cover all the bases, if one looks at rhetoric or actual systems. And the purpose of a system is what it does.

    • Replies: @Coconuts
    @songbird


    Have never really read Ferguson, but I suspect, having himself married a Somali, he doesn’t really touch on the race communism.
     
    The last interview I saw with him he was saying that one of the big problems in the culture is that enough time isn't spent in schools discussing the Third Reich and the Holocaust, and if this was done it would be easier to fight wokeness. He has written some good books but this made me think that he was somehow out of touch with current trends.

    About Konstantin Kisin, he seems to be in the IDW zone and a cheerleader for 1990s Western liberalism, which makes him a relatively fringe figure and a possible white supremacist. I get some notifications on YT for his videos but I still occasionally watch episodes of Triggernometry. Kisin and Francis Foster used to be stand up comedians but got cancelled and became unable to perform in any mainstream venues so I think they fell back on becoming classical liberal or old left (in Foster's case) commentators.

    (The Goat Life film may still be worth it, for the title alone).

    Replies: @songbird

  106. @LondonBob
    @songbird

    At least he was promoted more subtly than Konstantin Kisin, or Lex Friedman.

    Replies: @songbird

    At least he was promoted more subtly than Konstantin Kisin, or Lex Friedman

    From my perspective, JBP was the most heavily promoted of that group. I can’t even begin to put a number on the amount of JBP videos, autoplay used to try to send me to.

    Kisin I would guess might be more promoted in the UK.

    Lex I have honestly never really heard promoted outside of this thread. But my experience might be atypical. It is strange to think how he gets all his guests.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @songbird

    It's just how the algorithm works and the preferences stored on the cache on the app on your television.

    If they recommend JBP (Joe Budden Podcast?) it must be because you have watched one of the videos.

    They store information about how long you watch the video for, if you pause it, how interested you seem in the video.

    This is then matching with a lot of information about what the background people with your preference or demographics are watching.

    -

    It's not artificial, but it's going to recommend the influencers' who make the most "clickbait" interactions. These are usually the influencers with a lot of fans across different platforms, which produce clickbait and which have the social media managers and people doing a professional search engine optimization for them.

    Generally, the higher quality of content, doesn't have many views. Because it's not clickbait and doesn't receive the clicks and interactions.

    Replies: @songbird, @Gerard1234

  107. @AP
    @AnonfromTN


    Judging by her public appearances, Kamala is incapable of composing a grammatically correct sentence, or of saying anything meaningful
     
    You are too reliant on tendentious internet sources for your information. While Kamala may be the least intelligent major candidate in a long time (and in terms of VP only Sarah Palin has been dumber), she is capable of speaking coherently when she needs to.

    She did finish law school and pass the bar, so she has whatever minimal brains are necessary to do that. I’d guess an IQ in Beckow’s neighborhood of around 115 or so.

    Here she is speaking coherently:

    https://twitter.com/acyn/status/1815509563522920918?s=46&t=Qz3eXZWFYIvyHmaAk32tcg

    Replies: @QCIC, @Mr. XYZ, @Negronicus

    Do you think that Kamala is smarter than Michelle Obama is?

    • Replies: @AP
    @Mr. XYZ

    Judging by her schools she is probably smarter than Kamala.

    Replies: @Derer, @Mr. XYZ

  108. Anatoly Karlin blocked me on multiple platforms because I linked to his Rational Wiki article on a subreddit for Russians.

    I was trying to show the direct quotes, not the commentary.

    Are the direct quotes on his Rational Wiki (or RatWiki) article inaccurate and/or misleading?

    https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Anatoly_Karlin

    For clarification:

    https://akarlin.com/rationalwiki/rationalwiki-2019/

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Mr. XYZ

    I have the impression that what you and Tolik are going through is an example of the Law of negation of the negation.

    And I find it very surprising that you guys have come to this, given that both of you are now in the same LGBTQ - friendly team.

    🙂

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ

    , @YetAnotherAnon
    @Mr. XYZ

    RationalWiki should be renamed DerangedWiki.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/07/25/a-day-after-getting-surrounded-near-prohres-two-ukrainian-battalions-overruled-their-commander-and-fought-their-way-to-safety/?ss=aerospace-defense

    The Russian advance toward Prohres began last week after Russian warplanes “carried out powerful air strikes on the tactical rear,” according to the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies. Amid the confusion, one of the Ukrainian brigades in the sector—possibly the 110th Mechanized Brigade or the 111th Territorial Defense Brigade—collapsed.

    To be clear, it wasn’t the brigade’s rank and file who failed—it was their leaders. “The main problem,” Ukrainian correspondent Yuriy Butusov reported, “is primarily in the management and organization of our actions.”

    “When a poorly managed crew is attacked, it can’t hold,” Butusov explained.

    As Ukrainian troops fled, a clutch of motor rifle regiments from the Russian 1st Army Corps seized the opportunity—and marched four miles to the west in the span of a week, ultimately capturing Prohres and sweeping around those two Ukrainian battalions north of the village.

    The surrounded Ukrainians then experienced their own leadership crisis, according to Deep State. “The brigade commander never gave the order to break through, so the personnel who were in that area confronted him with the fact that the boys would break through with a fight.”

    That is to say, the encircled Ukrainian troops decided, on their own, to battle their way to the main Ukrainian line hundreds of yards to the west. “This case should be a reminder to many commanders not to neglect personnel and trust the [non-commissioned officers] and officers who are on the direct line of battle,” Deep State commented.

  109. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Mr. XYZ
    Anatoly Karlin blocked me on multiple platforms because I linked to his Rational Wiki article on a subreddit for Russians.

    I was trying to show the direct quotes, not the commentary.

    Are the direct quotes on his Rational Wiki (or RatWiki) article inaccurate and/or misleading?

    https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Anatoly_Karlin

    For clarification:

    https://akarlin.com/rationalwiki/rationalwiki-2019/

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @YetAnotherAnon

    I have the impression that what you and Tolik are going through is an example of the Law of negation of the negation.

    And I find it very surprising that you guys have come to this, given that both of you are now in the same LGBTQ – friendly team.

    🙂

    • Replies: @Mr. XYZ
    @Bashibuzuk

    Here's the specific Subreddit where this was linked to:

    https://www.reddit.com/r/AskARussian/comments/1e6ocg5/what_are_your_thoughts_on_anatoly_karlin/

    TBH, linking to it might have been a mistake, but at the same time, I also don't think that it's worth ruining a 7-year online friendship over *that*!

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  110. @Bashibuzuk
    @Mr. XYZ

    I have the impression that what you and Tolik are going through is an example of the Law of negation of the negation.

    And I find it very surprising that you guys have come to this, given that both of you are now in the same LGBTQ - friendly team.

    🙂

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ

    Here’s the specific Subreddit where this was linked to:

    What are your thoughts on Anatoly Karlin?
    by inAskARussian

    TBH, linking to it might have been a mistake, but at the same time, I also don’t think that it’s worth ruining a 7-year online friendship over *that*!

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Mr. XYZ

    So why did you feel the need to post that Rational Wiki publication about him on that thread?

    Especially that you did it several times?

    Just your autism playing tricks on you again?

    And just so you know, for a non-autistic person, there is no such thing as online friendship. Friends can only be people you have personally met IRL. The online friends are nothing but friendly strangers, whose opinion about you doesn’t matter.

    BTW, given that we can’t be friends, because you are a pervert, and I can’t be friends with perverts, my opinion about you matters even less than the one of your supposed online friend Karlin.

    So basically, never mind my opinions about you. And never mind your opinion about Tolik or his about you.

    🙂

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ, @Dmitry

  111. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Mr. XYZ
    @Bashibuzuk

    Here's the specific Subreddit where this was linked to:

    https://www.reddit.com/r/AskARussian/comments/1e6ocg5/what_are_your_thoughts_on_anatoly_karlin/

    TBH, linking to it might have been a mistake, but at the same time, I also don't think that it's worth ruining a 7-year online friendship over *that*!

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    So why did you feel the need to post that Rational Wiki publication about him on that thread?

    Especially that you did it several times?

    Just your autism playing tricks on you again?

    And just so you know, for a non-autistic person, there is no such thing as online friendship. Friends can only be people you have personally met IRL. The online friends are nothing but friendly strangers, whose opinion about you doesn’t matter.

    BTW, given that we can’t be friends, because you are a pervert, and I can’t be friends with perverts, my opinion about you matters even less than the one of your supposed online friend Karlin.

    So basically, never mind my opinions about you. And never mind your opinion about Tolik or his about you.

    🙂

    • Replies: @Mr. XYZ
    @Bashibuzuk

    > So why did you feel the need to post that Rational Wiki publication about him on that thread?

    Because of the huge collection of direct quotes from him on it about various topics.

    > Especially that you did it several times?

    I did it twice.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    , @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk

    People online, at least in our forum, also flip between being friendly and unfriendly, very fast, in a way which would be mentally ill behavior for real life people.

    Like Songbird, one of my oldest "online friends", was last thread writing "agree" on some hostile comments about myself. If Songbird can do this, then I'm now expecting the same from even my older and more loyal "online friends" Mr Hack and Gerard.

    This is normal in the forum, and it's probably result of the political format. We are all flipping to unfriendly, from friendly naturally as part of the discussion

    But, if you imagine being a professional influencer like Karlin, it could be quite confusing for him, as the internet is like his office. That's probably one of the stresses for the influencers.

    -

    Bashibuzuk wasn't here, but in 2022 Karlin was suddenly very angry with everyone on the forum. He was writing aggressive comments to almost all of us. It was because he abandoned the forum for many months. He was somehow surprised we had criticized him after he abandoned the forum, even though he was actually the person who had abandoned the forum.

    Replies: @AnonfromTN

  112. @Bashibuzuk
    @Mr. XYZ

    So why did you feel the need to post that Rational Wiki publication about him on that thread?

    Especially that you did it several times?

    Just your autism playing tricks on you again?

    And just so you know, for a non-autistic person, there is no such thing as online friendship. Friends can only be people you have personally met IRL. The online friends are nothing but friendly strangers, whose opinion about you doesn’t matter.

    BTW, given that we can’t be friends, because you are a pervert, and I can’t be friends with perverts, my opinion about you matters even less than the one of your supposed online friend Karlin.

    So basically, never mind my opinions about you. And never mind your opinion about Tolik or his about you.

    🙂

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ, @Dmitry

    > So why did you feel the need to post that Rational Wiki publication about him on that thread?

    Because of the huge collection of direct quotes from him on it about various topics.

    > Especially that you did it several times?

    I did it twice.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Mr. XYZ

    Aren’t you the OP who posted the link to Rational Wiki thrice in a discussion of about only a dozen comments?

    BTW, some of the comments were pretty funny.

    🙂

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mr. XYZ

  113. @Mr. XYZ
    @Bashibuzuk

    > So why did you feel the need to post that Rational Wiki publication about him on that thread?

    Because of the huge collection of direct quotes from him on it about various topics.

    > Especially that you did it several times?

    I did it twice.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    Aren’t you the OP who posted the link to Rational Wiki thrice in a discussion of about only a dozen comments?

    BTW, some of the comments were pretty funny.

    🙂

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Bashibuzuk

    Is

    долбоёб мечущийся из крайности в крайность

    which google claims is

    idiot rushing from one extreme to another

    really a saying in Russia?

    Also the anglicization of what they say is idiot

    mechushchiysya

    looks a lot like Yiddish for lunatic.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @AnonfromTN, @Dmitry

    , @Mr. XYZ
    @Bashibuzuk

    Yeah, it might have been thrice. But I subsequently quickly deleted all of these links as a courtesy to Anatoly Karlin and thus I didn't count their exact number.

  114. If only there were sea monsters big enough to sink that navy ship named after Harvey Milk

    [MORE]
    https://youtu.be/d09rPOCa2Zk?si=LEFtVakFE_IgfgsH

    Would be curious to know the exact depth. My initial theory is that the whale didn’t have the vertical space to orientate itself to do a good check of the surface.

    Have been in roughly those waters before, fishing, but maybe not the exact same spot.

    Anyway, it is possible these humpbacks could also be trained to help police these NGO migrant boats.

    In other whale news, this rare whale species that has never been observed alive washed up in NZ. LatW would probably cut herself off a steak, if she were down there.

    https://www.livescience.com/animals/whales/ultra-rare-whale-never-seen-alive-washes-up-on-on-new-zealand-beach-and-scientists-could-now-dissect-it-for-the-1st-time

  115. @Bashibuzuk
    @Mr. XYZ

    Aren’t you the OP who posted the link to Rational Wiki thrice in a discussion of about only a dozen comments?

    BTW, some of the comments were pretty funny.

    🙂

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mr. XYZ

    Is

    долбоёб мечущийся из крайности в крайность

    which google claims is

    idiot rushing from one extreme to another

    really a saying in Russia?

    Also the anglicization of what they say is idiot

    mechushchiysya

    looks a lot like Yiddish for lunatic.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    This translation is somewhat mild, the original is more insulting.

    mechushchiysya = adjective pertaining to agitatedly and rapidly moving from a place to another.

    dolboyob = dumbf**k / retard.

    Idiot in Russian is the same word = idiot.

    , @AnonfromTN
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    долбоёб
     
    That’s not a saying, but a good example of Russian usage.

    There are many Russian words google would translate as “idiot”, but each has a different flavor. The word “долбоёб” is not just an idiot, but a hopelessly dumb person doing idiotic things or failing to understand elementary things. Because of its obscene root, it is not a word you’d use in front of the ladies (or ladies would use in front of the gentlemen). At least not in a society pretending to be polite and civilized.
    , @Dmitry
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    The Yiddish vocabulary sometimes has origin from Polish/Ukrainian/Russian languages. Words like "oy".

    In the other direction a lot of old mafia and criminal origin words in Russia are from Yiddish. So, words like "koresh", "blatnoy", "frayer", "lokh", "shakher-makher"

    -

    Nowadays prisoner language is probably changing all the time and maybe they invent new words. I've heard some groups of people saying mysterious words, which are feeling like prisoner slang, you should walk to the safety of the other side of the road.

    Replies: @AnonfromTN, @Bashibuzuk

  116. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Bashibuzuk

    Is

    долбоёб мечущийся из крайности в крайность

    which google claims is

    idiot rushing from one extreme to another

    really a saying in Russia?

    Also the anglicization of what they say is idiot

    mechushchiysya

    looks a lot like Yiddish for lunatic.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @AnonfromTN, @Dmitry

    This translation is somewhat mild, the original is more insulting.

    mechushchiysya = adjective pertaining to agitatedly and rapidly moving from a place to another.

    dolboyob = dumbf**k / retard.

    Idiot in Russian is the same word = idiot.

  117. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Bashibuzuk

    Is

    долбоёб мечущийся из крайности в крайность

    which google claims is

    idiot rushing from one extreme to another

    really a saying in Russia?

    Also the anglicization of what they say is idiot

    mechushchiysya

    looks a lot like Yiddish for lunatic.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @AnonfromTN, @Dmitry

    долбоёб

    That’s not a saying, but a good example of Russian usage.

    There are many Russian words google would translate as “idiot”, but each has a different flavor. The word “долбоёб” is not just an idiot, but a hopelessly dumb person doing idiotic things or failing to understand elementary things. Because of its obscene root, it is not a word you’d use in front of the ladies (or ladies would use in front of the gentlemen). At least not in a society pretending to be polite and civilized.

    • Agree: Bashibuzuk
  118. There was a request for a chart reading for JD Vance. I don’t feel like doing his natal chart, we basically know who the guy is, but I do think it is worth looking at his solar return chart.

    Vance’s solar return begins on August 2nd. His chart features two instances of important conjunctions with Behenian fixed stars: His MC conjuncts Vega and his moon conjuncts Sirius. Both of these aspects signify gaining power. These aspects cannot be referring to him being named Trump’s running mate because that already has happened before the solar year in question has begun. So we have a very powerful indication that he is going to be Vice President.

    Aries rising so the chart is ruled by Mars. Mars is in a somewhat weak placement in the 2nd house: this indicates family problems, harsh speech and gains via immoral/aggressive means. This is tempered by having Jupiter also in the 2nd house, however. Jupiter in the 2nd house indicates domestic harmony and also gains from the government (lol). Basically Vance will become VP but he will deal with some familial strain.

    Like Trump’s solar return chart, Vance also has moon in the 3rd house, indicative of successful campaigning.

    Venus in the 5th indicates a great year for Vance’s children and his relationship with them.

    Extremely strong sun in the 5th indicates power and domination.

    Saturn in the 12th indicates success and destruction of enemies. It is retrograde, though, so that would also indicate some setbacks. Saturn is trining the moon so the setbacks/hardships should be on the campaign trail. It won’t be an assassination attempt, probably just ends up being a grind that really takes a lot out of him. For the record, Vance already is the most unpopular VP nominee in history so that is likely at least part of what this aspect is referring to.

    As for Shapiro, it ain’t 2000 anymore: the Dems CANNOT nominate a Jew, that is not gonna fly with the current iteration of the Democratic party. When Kamala picks her running mate, I’ll do that person’s solar return chart then.

    It’s probably gonna be Mark Kelly. Shapiro is Jewish and Whitmer, Pritzker and Newsom want no part of this ticket.

  119. @Mr. XYZ
    @AP

    Do you think that Kamala is smarter than Michelle Obama is?

    Replies: @AP

    Judging by her schools she is probably smarter than Kamala.

    • Replies: @Derer
    @AP

    Harris is smarter in what? One cannot learn intelligence. Regardless, she got zero chance of winning the US presidency, because Obama took her "affirmative action" advantage. On the other hand, H. Clinton was in a much better position to beat Trump on the other "affirmative action" and lost. Harris is the most insignificant VP.

    Replies: @Mikhail

    , @Mr. XYZ
    @AP

    Didn't Michelle benefit from huge affirmative action in getting into Harvard, though? Especially with her elder brother being a star basketball player?

  120. @John Johnson
    @A123


    The polls show that Trump loses against practically any non-name moderate Democrat.

     

    You cherry picked one poll over a year ago. Your mouth frothing #NeverTrump zealotry was unconvincing at the time and remains so today.

    Here is a poll from June 3rd:
    https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/majority-independents-double-haters-trump-end-2024-campaign/story?id=110778206

    Overall, 72% of Republicans, 6% of Democrats and 23% of independents have a favorable view of Trump following his conviction.

    Independents simply don't like Trump. The Democrats would win with any no-name moderate.

    Once again we have Trump Tribe members projecting their felony crush onto everyone else instead of facing his loss of support from independents. I pointed this out in the last election but Trump Tribe was certain that he would win. I was told that I must support Biden. A lack of faith of course.

    Trump lost and exit polls showed a drop from independents and swing voters. COVID was cited as a common reason.

    Ignoring the data sure worked wonders.

    Here is a collection of multiple recent Trump/Harris polls (1). Nationally — Trump is ahead in 9, Harris 2, tie 1.

    I've never said that Harris would win against Trump. She is not a no-name moderate.

    Harris would be a terrible pick. Better hope they go with her now that Magoo is out. Trump polls best against the incompetent and only barely. Harris is terrible. I have no idea why so many Trump fans are thrilled that Biden is quitting. That was their best chance. Trump polls best when independents are forced to pick between a felon and Magoo.

    Didn’t you say the documents case was going to be a bombshell that would send Trump to jail this year?

    I said it was the worst case and that he would be found guilty. I also said he would need a miracle or loophole to get out of it. Getting a judge to delay the case so he can pardon himself would fall into that category.

    Are you proud to back someone that is trying to delay the case through a pro-Trump judge so he can pardon himself?

    He hasn't locked that delay down so you might want to wait before celebrating.

    Even if he tries to take America to another moral low with a "self-pardon" that would end up in court. A long trail of court cases seem to follow this guy.

    I have to give credit where credit is due. Your prognostication is vastly worse (and funnier) than Mikel’s.

    I'm on record stating that there is no reason to assume Biden will be the final candidate. I put it at a coin toss. You however went on a big rant about how I don't understand the system and it's too late for a new candidate. Should we pull that rant?

    Replies: @A123, @Derer

    Saying “The Democrats would win with any no-name moderate”… instead of “The Democrats WILL win with any no-name moderate” signify your weak tenet.

  121. @AP
    @Mr. XYZ

    Judging by her schools she is probably smarter than Kamala.

    Replies: @Derer, @Mr. XYZ

    Harris is smarter in what? One cannot learn intelligence. Regardless, she got zero chance of winning the US presidency, because Obama took her “affirmative action” advantage. On the other hand, H. Clinton was in a much better position to beat Trump on the other “affirmative action” and lost. Harris is the most insignificant VP.

    • Replies: @Mikhail
    @Derer

    Brandon said he wanted a woman and/or person of color for Veep. Were it not for that, Harris would be zilch. The Dem establishment favored her in 2020. Much like how the Repub establishment was for Jeb Bush in 2016. Like, Jeb, she flopped miserably in the primaries, dropping out early.

  122. Neocon Flipped

    Re: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/ending-war-ukraine-potential-roadmap-peace-211993

    The Collective West could and should still value ties with Russia just enough to be more flexible in its demands. As discussed in this article,

    https://www.eurasiareview.com/01072024-nato-proxy-war-ongoing-biden-new-york-times-deceit-oped/

    Zalmay Khalilzad repeats the ongoing calculated lie that Russia has suffered more armed combatant casualties than Ukraine.

    The longer the NATO proxy war continues, the more likely the Kiev regime loses more territory. A practical route for ending the armed conflict is the following settlement:

    – Kiev regime and international recognition that Crimea, Zaporozhe, Kherson, Lugansk and Donetsk are Russian territory
    – Ukraine is geopolitically neutral with a limited military and no NATO membership
    – Sanctions against Russia and Russians, including the hypocritically bigoted one in sports come to a prompt end.

    As long as these conditions are honored, Russia will not have any further territorial claims on Ukraine’s Communist drawn boundary. Don’t like this settlement? The armed conflict likely continues with the Kiev regime losing more.

    • Replies: @LondonBob
    @Mikhail

    Interesting analysis of an interview with Richard Grenell, by Gilbert Doctorow, of what a peace deal could look lie.

    https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2024/07/22/what-a-ukraine-peace-treaty-brokered-by-trump-might-look-like/

    Replies: @A123, @Mikhail

  123. @Derer
    @AP

    Harris is smarter in what? One cannot learn intelligence. Regardless, she got zero chance of winning the US presidency, because Obama took her "affirmative action" advantage. On the other hand, H. Clinton was in a much better position to beat Trump on the other "affirmative action" and lost. Harris is the most insignificant VP.

    Replies: @Mikhail

    Brandon said he wanted a woman and/or person of color for Veep. Were it not for that, Harris would be zilch. The Dem establishment favored her in 2020. Much like how the Repub establishment was for Jeb Bush in 2016. Like, Jeb, she flopped miserably in the primaries, dropping out early.

    • Agree: Derer
  124. @Bashibuzuk

    The witty phrase “late Soviet America” was coined by the Princeton historian Harold James back in 2020. It has only become more apposite since then as the cold war we’re in—the second one—heats up.
    I first pointed out that we’re in Cold War II back in 2018. In articles for The New York Times and National Review, I tried to show how the People’s Republic of China now occupies the space vacated by the Soviet Union when it collapsed in 1991.
    This view is less controversial now than it was then. China is clearly not only an ideological rival, firmly committed to Marxism-Leninism and one-party rule. It’s also a technological competitor—the only one the U.S. confronts in fields such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing. It’s a military rival, with a navy that is already larger than ours and a nuclear arsenal that is catching up fast. And it’s a geopolitical rival, asserting itself not only in the Indo-Pacific but also through proxies in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
    But it only recently struck me that in this new Cold War, we—and not the Chinese—might be the Soviets. It’s a bit like that moment when the British comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb, playing Waffen-SS officers toward the end of World War II, ask the immortal question: “Are we the baddies?”
    I imagine two American sailors asking themselves one day—perhaps as their aircraft carrier is sinking beneath their feet somewhere near the Taiwan Strait: Are we the Soviets?
     
    https://www.thefp.com/p/were-all-soviets-now

    (Yeah, it’s Niall Ferguson. Sorry for that. 🙄)

    Replies: @songbird, @Torna atrás

    The Asiatic mode of production.

    [MORE]

    Over the 16-year period since 2008, the number of years it takes for an average Chinese manufacturing worker to afford a basic plug-in EV has fallen from ~9 years to <1.

    This is while the technical/performance specifications have increased dramatically.

    Fordism.

    • Agree: Bashibuzuk
  125. @songbird
    @Bashibuzuk

    Have never really read Ferguson, but I suspect, having himself married a Somali, he doesn't really touch on the race communism.

    I mean, the individuality thing isn't exactly false, but it doesn't seem to cover all the bases, if one looks at rhetoric or actual systems. And the purpose of a system is what it does.

    Replies: @Coconuts

    Have never really read Ferguson, but I suspect, having himself married a Somali, he doesn’t really touch on the race communism.

    The last interview I saw with him he was saying that one of the big problems in the culture is that enough time isn’t spent in schools discussing the Third Reich and the Holocaust, and if this was done it would be easier to fight wokeness. He has written some good books but this made me think that he was somehow out of touch with current trends.

    About Konstantin Kisin, he seems to be in the IDW zone and a cheerleader for 1990s Western liberalism, which makes him a relatively fringe figure and a possible white supremacist. I get some notifications on YT for his videos but I still occasionally watch episodes of Triggernometry. Kisin and Francis Foster used to be stand up comedians but got cancelled and became unable to perform in any mainstream venues so I think they fell back on becoming classical liberal or old left (in Foster’s case) commentators.

    (The Goat Life film may still be worth it, for the title alone).

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Coconuts


    The last interview I saw with him he was saying that one of the big problems in the culture is that enough time isn’t spent in schools discussing the Third Reich and the Holocaust, and if this was done it would be easier to fight wokeness.
     
    Wow, seems like a very strange assertion for him to make, as I feel like the education on this in Germany is obviously more intense - I have myself seen seventh graders bused to a work camp. But Germany doesn't seem to have less problems in this area.

    About Konstantin Kisin, he seems to be in the IDW zone and a cheerleader for 1990s Western liberalism, which makes him a relatively fringe figure and a possible white supremacist.
     
    I just remember vaguely that some noted an exchange where he or the other guy said something to the effect that anti-immigrant sentiment made him uncomfortable, which according to what I heard is pretty notable, as he often uses the pronounce "we" and tries to speak for the UK or the West as a whole, even though he is an alien immigrant.

    The Goat Life film may still be worth it, for the title alone).
     
    whether from lack of cultural exposure, or just individual taste, I find it very difficult to watch these three hour movies.

    Even as a work of fiction, I must admit there is a certain sociological appeal. But the film (which I have not watched) seems to lack some of the elements I have enjoyed in Indian films, like the celebration of masculine ideals or some form of paganism.

    I wish Mr. Hack would do me a solid and review it here for us, but the last Indian film I tried to get him to watch was every action-orientated (RRR) and I couldn't seem to interest him in it.

    Blinky once posted a clip from an Indian film or two, but I am not sure whether he has watched the full films or not.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Coconuts

  126. @songbird
    @LondonBob


    At least he was promoted more subtly than Konstantin Kisin, or Lex Friedman
     
    From my perspective, JBP was the most heavily promoted of that group. I can't even begin to put a number on the amount of JBP videos, autoplay used to try to send me to.

    Kisin I would guess might be more promoted in the UK.

    Lex I have honestly never really heard promoted outside of this thread. But my experience might be atypical. It is strange to think how he gets all his guests.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    It’s just how the algorithm works and the preferences stored on the cache on the app on your television.

    If they recommend JBP (Joe Budden Podcast?) it must be because you have watched one of the videos.

    They store information about how long you watch the video for, if you pause it, how interested you seem in the video.

    This is then matching with a lot of information about what the background people with your preference or demographics are watching.

    It’s not artificial, but it’s going to recommend the influencers’ who make the most “clickbait” interactions. These are usually the influencers with a lot of fans across different platforms, which produce clickbait and which have the social media managers and people doing a professional search engine optimization for them.

    Generally, the higher quality of content, doesn’t have many views. Because it’s not clickbait and doesn’t receive the clicks and interactions.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Dmitry


    they recommend JBP (Joe Budden Podcast?) it must be because you have watched one of the videos.
     
    Jordan B. Peterson. I won't say I never watched one of his videos, but, for the most part, I did not find him interesting other than some initial curiosity to find out who he was, and why he was being promoted.

    There was a common feeling among people watching more nationalistic content that the algorithm was trying to take them away from that content and to the more moderate, individuality-promoting Jordan B. Peterson.

    I think it is narrowly possible that it wasn't directly political. There may have been some process like, so you enjoy political content? We will send you to the most heavily-monetized stuff. But Google seems very political on the surface. They had a Google doodle one day that celebrated the guy who became the first tranny in Weimar and died of organ rejection.

    Generally, the higher quality of content, doesn’t have many views. Because it’s not clickbait and doesn’t receive the clicks and interactions.
     
    I totally agree with this. It is almost scary to me to see the stuff normal people watch. My favorite content (even non-political) is really fringe or amateur. Sometimes it can be hard to find. I think there must be nearly endless interesting stuff that is totally buried and near impossible to find.

    I sometimes like these small, fringe history channels. I was watching a video on saffron once that I thought was really interesting.

    In contrast, I once listened to a History Guy podcast about Magellen, where he said he hadn't realized Magellen died on his journey, until he did his research for the podcast, and I felt I couldn't listen to him anymore, as he was either lying or had no curiosity.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Torna atrás, @Emil Nikola Richard, @Dmitry

    , @Gerard1234
    @Dmitry


    It’s really hard for me to get interested in Indian films.
     
    And I noticed Hack, that its VERY hard for you to get interested in khokhol/"Ukrainian" films..........except the snuff ones of course,and any those of any other perversions.


    In 404 Dovzhenko is now very much thought of as a nationalist, I would guess in your Nazi-diaspora-UPA circles in Anerica they blinded themselves with their anti-sovietism to the point they thought he must have been "too Soviet" and never watched him films, and so never revised their backwards thinking ?

    You a re normally an excellent source of the cultural/historical stuff that the diaspora likes (much prefer when you do this compared to the delinquent cartoons), so it is noticeable that you don't appear to go near ukrop cinema.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  127. @songbird
    @Bashibuzuk

    IMO, Iran is somewhat hobbled by geography. A lot of its Gulf islands are seen as being military-strategic, and so it doesn't necessarily have a good place to exile gays, like Indonesia might - if it wanted to.

    Replies: @Torna atrás

    Best photo from the article posted by Bashi.

    [MORE]

    • Agree: Bashibuzuk
    • Thanks: songbird
    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Torna atrás



    https://youtu.be/Ww3_EA_5nYM?si=9eqaSgXJ2-VEu25l

    , @AP
    @Torna atrás

    Was that Nick Cave getting arrested in Iran?

    Replies: @Torna atrás

  128. @Torna atrás
    @songbird

    Best photo from the article posted by Bashi.

    https://i.kinja-img.com/image/upload/c_fit,q_60,w_1315/e41d6bc90362e10c81b4e49e5b020ecc.jpg



    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GBk5_mnW4AAxFJ1.jpg

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @AP

    [MORE]

  129. @Torna atrás
    @songbird

    Best photo from the article posted by Bashi.

    https://i.kinja-img.com/image/upload/c_fit,q_60,w_1315/e41d6bc90362e10c81b4e49e5b020ecc.jpg



    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GBk5_mnW4AAxFJ1.jpg

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @AP

    Was that Nick Cave getting arrested in Iran?

    • Replies: @Torna atrás
    @AP

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

    https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS5x5kSlRumGL337IQ6ZzFcH_WfcNGdTcwSVw&s.jpg

    One of Yevardian's people.

  130. @Dmitry
    @songbird

    It's just how the algorithm works and the preferences stored on the cache on the app on your television.

    If they recommend JBP (Joe Budden Podcast?) it must be because you have watched one of the videos.

    They store information about how long you watch the video for, if you pause it, how interested you seem in the video.

    This is then matching with a lot of information about what the background people with your preference or demographics are watching.

    -

    It's not artificial, but it's going to recommend the influencers' who make the most "clickbait" interactions. These are usually the influencers with a lot of fans across different platforms, which produce clickbait and which have the social media managers and people doing a professional search engine optimization for them.

    Generally, the higher quality of content, doesn't have many views. Because it's not clickbait and doesn't receive the clicks and interactions.

    Replies: @songbird, @Gerard1234

    they recommend JBP (Joe Budden Podcast?) it must be because you have watched one of the videos.

    Jordan B. Peterson. I won’t say I never watched one of his videos, but, for the most part, I did not find him interesting other than some initial curiosity to find out who he was, and why he was being promoted.

    [MORE]

    There was a common feeling among people watching more nationalistic content that the algorithm was trying to take them away from that content and to the more moderate, individuality-promoting Jordan B. Peterson.

    I think it is narrowly possible that it wasn’t directly political. There may have been some process like, so you enjoy political content? We will send you to the most heavily-monetized stuff. But Google seems very political on the surface. They had a Google doodle one day that celebrated the guy who became the first tranny in Weimar and died of organ rejection.

    Generally, the higher quality of content, doesn’t have many views. Because it’s not clickbait and doesn’t receive the clicks and interactions.

    I totally agree with this. It is almost scary to me to see the stuff normal people watch. My favorite content (even non-political) is really fringe or amateur. Sometimes it can be hard to find. I think there must be nearly endless interesting stuff that is totally buried and near impossible to find.

    I sometimes like these small, fringe history channels. I was watching a video on saffron once that I thought was really interesting.

    In contrast, I once listened to a History Guy podcast about Magellen, where he said he hadn’t realized Magellen died on his journey, until he did his research for the podcast, and I felt I couldn’t listen to him anymore, as he was either lying or had no curiosity.

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @songbird

    Petey has a good, forthright lecture or two on the influence of intelligence on a person's life course. I think he believes IQ data is sound across races. I would like to hear what he says about African and African-American intelligence and any social implications of the data.

    I never followed him but some of his practical life advice is simply a counterweight to the woke tranny BS. Not perfect but better than nothing. He did his part.

    He is apparently one of the those lively, apparently sane people who seems to be on the borderline of madness (sane but looks crazy). What came out over time is that he is actually one of those insane people who is on the borderline of sanity (crazy but looks sane--sometimes). It is worth recognizing there are many people like this.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @songbird

    , @Torna atrás
    @songbird


    In contrast, I once listened to a History Guy podcast about Magellen, where he said he hadn’t realized Magellen died on his journey,
     
    If you ever have a chance to chat with a Pinoy, it's a great conversation starter along with Sky Flakes and Balut.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    , @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThI0pBAbFnk

    Replies: @songbird

    , @Dmitry
    @songbird


    may have been some process like, so you enjoy political
     
    You need to reset the app or delete the cache in the YouTube, log out the user.

    They still know things like your language and location, but this will give more general recommendations for people in your area.

    Then when you watch the first videos again, you need to be careful in the beginning, as this early videos will put you like on railway track for all the recommendations that will follow a kind of path from those.

    Try to watch some higher quality videos in the beginning. Hopefully, you will lose the JBP recommendations. But anyway, tell us what happens.

    -

    Their recommends on the app uses two neural networks. They have a candidate generation network, its output funnels to a ranking network.

    Outside of location, individualized input for both the networks are things like your viewing behavior, which videos you watch, how long you watch on the outputs, your searches and then things you add like age and gender.

    For the ranking network, which inputs hundreds of videos and outputs only dozens, it is serving the videos by what is their expected probability of watchtime.


    from that content and to the more moderate, individuality-promoting Jordan B. Peterson.

     

    After their ReLU layers, their candidate generation network has a layer of the outputs from the most similar users to you, which is another kind of collaborative filtering.

    So, for the original candidate pool of videos, you can partly blame what other users, which they believe are similar to you, are watching. Although for the output from the ranking network, it's your own fault.

    -

    One of the interesting things about YouTube is how much improvement they get from just including users' search history.

    For example, the improvement from including search history is larger than the improvement from introducing nonlinearity to the model.

    And this is "free improvement", while if you're adding more ReLU layers are relatively "expensive" improvements in this sense you're increasing latency, or the "inference time" in the model.

    https://i.imgur.com/6SSBDcd.jpeg


    So, we can see for YouTube to get more information from the users gets you the "cheap" improvement, while adding more layers is "expensive" improvement from both sides as it increases latency from inference time.


    Google seems very political on the surface. They had a Google doodle one day that celebrated the guy who became the first tranny in Weimar and died of organ rejection.

     

    I watched some interviews with the owners of Google. They are kind of centrist, liberals. Their main interest is automation. They have some kind of religious beliefs about increasing knowledge and enlightenment, which could seem political though.

    -


    But, as they begin to employ younger workers, like all companies, it's possible some aspects could move increasingly politically left, as the Generation Z a lot more left than the previous generation of employees. Even when the company owners can be more centrist, the low level employees also add some pressure in the culture.*

    Basically, the corporate world isn't an island separated from wider generational trends. Most of the company owners are relatively conservative compared to the younger generation of the population in the West.

    This is one of the things the older investors on the Ben and Marc show are sounding a little scared about. They know a lot of their employees are going to be angry with them, now they are supporting Trump.


    -

    * In Google, there were firing some of them recently, when some low level workers were protesting about Israel. Google is a popular employer so they can fire you easily. .

    Replies: @songbird, @Coconuts

  131. @AP
    @Torna atrás

    Was that Nick Cave getting arrested in Iran?

    Replies: @Torna atrás

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

    [MORE]

    One of Yevardian’s people.

  132. @songbird
    @Dmitry


    they recommend JBP (Joe Budden Podcast?) it must be because you have watched one of the videos.
     
    Jordan B. Peterson. I won't say I never watched one of his videos, but, for the most part, I did not find him interesting other than some initial curiosity to find out who he was, and why he was being promoted.

    There was a common feeling among people watching more nationalistic content that the algorithm was trying to take them away from that content and to the more moderate, individuality-promoting Jordan B. Peterson.

    I think it is narrowly possible that it wasn't directly political. There may have been some process like, so you enjoy political content? We will send you to the most heavily-monetized stuff. But Google seems very political on the surface. They had a Google doodle one day that celebrated the guy who became the first tranny in Weimar and died of organ rejection.

    Generally, the higher quality of content, doesn’t have many views. Because it’s not clickbait and doesn’t receive the clicks and interactions.
     
    I totally agree with this. It is almost scary to me to see the stuff normal people watch. My favorite content (even non-political) is really fringe or amateur. Sometimes it can be hard to find. I think there must be nearly endless interesting stuff that is totally buried and near impossible to find.

    I sometimes like these small, fringe history channels. I was watching a video on saffron once that I thought was really interesting.

    In contrast, I once listened to a History Guy podcast about Magellen, where he said he hadn't realized Magellen died on his journey, until he did his research for the podcast, and I felt I couldn't listen to him anymore, as he was either lying or had no curiosity.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Torna atrás, @Emil Nikola Richard, @Dmitry

    Petey has a good, forthright lecture or two on the influence of intelligence on a person’s life course. I think he believes IQ data is sound across races. I would like to hear what he says about African and African-American intelligence and any social implications of the data.

    I never followed him but some of his practical life advice is simply a counterweight to the woke tranny BS. Not perfect but better than nothing. He did his part.

    He is apparently one of the those lively, apparently sane people who seems to be on the borderline of madness (sane but looks crazy). What came out over time is that he is actually one of those insane people who is on the borderline of sanity (crazy but looks sane–sometimes). It is worth recognizing there are many people like this.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @QCIC

    Jordan Peterson is a one hit wonder. His rise was specifically when he was the first (and only for a few months) person to say out loud this N different gender identities and custom pronoun thing was bullshit.

    If you can name one other specific memorable thing ever other than making a fool of himself I would be very surprised.

    , @songbird
    @QCIC


    What came out over time is that he is actually one of those insane people who is on the borderline of sanity (crazy but looks sane–sometimes
     
    Human zoo is certainly an interesting aspect of the internet.

    I have been mildly amused by JBP at various times when he was acting strangely. Most recently there was him calling Fuentes a rat, which I think is interesting on various levels. Firstly, because of the clear political bias - it is okay to call certain people that but not others. Then because he is a clinician and psychological language contains many abstractions or labels, but sometimes they are just thin veneers for these base insults.

    There are times when I am inclined to almost agree with the scientologists that most of these psychologist people are popped-up psychopaths who want to drug people because they themselves are crazy druggies.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Emil Nikola Richard

  133. @songbird
    @Dmitry


    they recommend JBP (Joe Budden Podcast?) it must be because you have watched one of the videos.
     
    Jordan B. Peterson. I won't say I never watched one of his videos, but, for the most part, I did not find him interesting other than some initial curiosity to find out who he was, and why he was being promoted.

    There was a common feeling among people watching more nationalistic content that the algorithm was trying to take them away from that content and to the more moderate, individuality-promoting Jordan B. Peterson.

    I think it is narrowly possible that it wasn't directly political. There may have been some process like, so you enjoy political content? We will send you to the most heavily-monetized stuff. But Google seems very political on the surface. They had a Google doodle one day that celebrated the guy who became the first tranny in Weimar and died of organ rejection.

    Generally, the higher quality of content, doesn’t have many views. Because it’s not clickbait and doesn’t receive the clicks and interactions.
     
    I totally agree with this. It is almost scary to me to see the stuff normal people watch. My favorite content (even non-political) is really fringe or amateur. Sometimes it can be hard to find. I think there must be nearly endless interesting stuff that is totally buried and near impossible to find.

    I sometimes like these small, fringe history channels. I was watching a video on saffron once that I thought was really interesting.

    In contrast, I once listened to a History Guy podcast about Magellen, where he said he hadn't realized Magellen died on his journey, until he did his research for the podcast, and I felt I couldn't listen to him anymore, as he was either lying or had no curiosity.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Torna atrás, @Emil Nikola Richard, @Dmitry

    In contrast, I once listened to a History Guy podcast about Magellen, where he said he hadn’t realized Magellen died on his journey,

    If you ever have a chance to chat with a Pinoy, it’s a great conversation starter along with Sky Flakes and Balut.

    • Thanks: songbird
    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Torna atrás

    I’ve been to the Magellan Cross in Cebu. The locals are quite proud of both the fact that the great explorer stopped there and erected a cross and that a local chieftain killed him in a battle. I also learned there that Magellan had a Malay navigator guide who actually directed the navigation through that region. The Malay converted from Islam to Catholicism, got an European name (that I don’t remember). If you ever go to Cebu, try the roasted pork, it’s really delicious.

  134. @Coconuts
    @songbird


    Have never really read Ferguson, but I suspect, having himself married a Somali, he doesn’t really touch on the race communism.
     
    The last interview I saw with him he was saying that one of the big problems in the culture is that enough time isn't spent in schools discussing the Third Reich and the Holocaust, and if this was done it would be easier to fight wokeness. He has written some good books but this made me think that he was somehow out of touch with current trends.

    About Konstantin Kisin, he seems to be in the IDW zone and a cheerleader for 1990s Western liberalism, which makes him a relatively fringe figure and a possible white supremacist. I get some notifications on YT for his videos but I still occasionally watch episodes of Triggernometry. Kisin and Francis Foster used to be stand up comedians but got cancelled and became unable to perform in any mainstream venues so I think they fell back on becoming classical liberal or old left (in Foster's case) commentators.

    (The Goat Life film may still be worth it, for the title alone).

    Replies: @songbird

    The last interview I saw with him he was saying that one of the big problems in the culture is that enough time isn’t spent in schools discussing the Third Reich and the Holocaust, and if this was done it would be easier to fight wokeness.

    Wow, seems like a very strange assertion for him to make, as I feel like the education on this in Germany is obviously more intense – I have myself seen seventh graders bused to a work camp. But Germany doesn’t seem to have less problems in this area.

    [MORE]

    About Konstantin Kisin, he seems to be in the IDW zone and a cheerleader for 1990s Western liberalism, which makes him a relatively fringe figure and a possible white supremacist.

    I just remember vaguely that some noted an exchange where he or the other guy said something to the effect that anti-immigrant sentiment made him uncomfortable, which according to what I heard is pretty notable, as he often uses the pronounce “we” and tries to speak for the UK or the West as a whole, even though he is an alien immigrant.

    The Goat Life film may still be worth it, for the title alone).

    whether from lack of cultural exposure, or just individual taste, I find it very difficult to watch these three hour movies.

    Even as a work of fiction, I must admit there is a certain sociological appeal. But the film (which I have not watched) seems to lack some of the elements I have enjoyed in Indian films, like the celebration of masculine ideals or some form of paganism.

    I wish Mr. Hack would do me a solid and review it here for us, but the last Indian film I tried to get him to watch was every action-orientated (RRR) and I couldn’t seem to interest him in it.

    Blinky once posted a clip from an Indian film or two, but I am not sure whether he has watched the full films or not.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @songbird


    I wish Mr. Hack would do me a solid and review it here for us, but the last Indian film I tried to get him to watch was every action-orientated (RRR) and I couldn’t seem to interest him in it.
     
    You have a very good memory. It's really hard for me to get interested in Indian films. A caste of thousands dancing and singing in synchronized fashion around a plot of boy/girl unrequited love for two hours or more, is just...a bit too much for me. You need to look for somebody a bit more immersed in the culture to be able to decipher the vagaries and nuances of this sort of thing. I'd much rather listen to you tell us more about your own personal experience of seeing people being shipped to "work camps". I think that it was you who made a statement like this, although to be honest, I'm having a difficult time in relocating this comment?...

    Replies: @songbird

    , @Coconuts
    @songbird


    Wow, seems like a very strange assertion for him to make...
     
    I think the interview was post the October 7th attacks and all the demonstrations etc. following them, otherwise I agree it doesn't really make any sense. It made me think he was out of touch with the issues around Wokeness and was trying to make some generic anti-totalitarian arguments.



    When I was last in Berlin we visited a few different museums and sites linked to the Nazi era and there was a strong anti-totalitarian message, that was interesting given the way things were going in the UK at the time.

    I just remember vaguely that some noted an exchange where he or the other guy said something to the effect that anti-immigrant sentiment made him uncomfortable...
     
    The other guy is half Venezuelan as well. There is an interview with Alex Kaschuta where they start to discuss issues around racism and Alex (who is looking obviously blonde iirc) tells them something to the effect that she doesn't think it should be taboo, and then there is an awkward atmosphere for the rest of the interview. When they are talking about the West they definitely intend it in the classical liberal sense.

    Even as a work of fiction, I must admit there is a certain sociological appeal. But the film (which I have not watched) seems to lack some of the elements I have enjoyed in Indian films, like the celebration of masculine ideals or some form of paganism.
     
    The last Bollywood I remember seeing was called Chot. It was a revenge drama set in a diary. I think it had some dance sequences but the masculine ideal was definitely present, and there was some spiritual symbolism around the cows and milk.

    It looks like the goat film hasn't got Mr Hack interested this time :(

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @songbird

  135. @songbird
    @Coconuts


    The last interview I saw with him he was saying that one of the big problems in the culture is that enough time isn’t spent in schools discussing the Third Reich and the Holocaust, and if this was done it would be easier to fight wokeness.
     
    Wow, seems like a very strange assertion for him to make, as I feel like the education on this in Germany is obviously more intense - I have myself seen seventh graders bused to a work camp. But Germany doesn't seem to have less problems in this area.

    About Konstantin Kisin, he seems to be in the IDW zone and a cheerleader for 1990s Western liberalism, which makes him a relatively fringe figure and a possible white supremacist.
     
    I just remember vaguely that some noted an exchange where he or the other guy said something to the effect that anti-immigrant sentiment made him uncomfortable, which according to what I heard is pretty notable, as he often uses the pronounce "we" and tries to speak for the UK or the West as a whole, even though he is an alien immigrant.

    The Goat Life film may still be worth it, for the title alone).
     
    whether from lack of cultural exposure, or just individual taste, I find it very difficult to watch these three hour movies.

    Even as a work of fiction, I must admit there is a certain sociological appeal. But the film (which I have not watched) seems to lack some of the elements I have enjoyed in Indian films, like the celebration of masculine ideals or some form of paganism.

    I wish Mr. Hack would do me a solid and review it here for us, but the last Indian film I tried to get him to watch was every action-orientated (RRR) and I couldn't seem to interest him in it.

    Blinky once posted a clip from an Indian film or two, but I am not sure whether he has watched the full films or not.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Coconuts

    I wish Mr. Hack would do me a solid and review it here for us, but the last Indian film I tried to get him to watch was every action-orientated (RRR) and I couldn’t seem to interest him in it.

    You have a very good memory. It’s really hard for me to get interested in Indian films. A caste of thousands dancing and singing in synchronized fashion around a plot of boy/girl unrequited love for two hours or more, is just…a bit too much for me. You need to look for somebody a bit more immersed in the culture to be able to decipher the vagaries and nuances of this sort of thing. I’d much rather listen to you tell us more about your own personal experience of seeing people being shipped to “work camps”. I think that it was you who made a statement like this, although to be honest, I’m having a difficult time in relocating this comment?…

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Mr. Hack


    A caste of thousands dancing and singing in synchronized fashion around a plot of boy/girl unrequited love for two hours or more, is just…a bit too much for me.
     
    There is an exotic quality which verges on the alien. I must admit that I find it incomprehensible how there is a market for such films, even if in a very abstract way I can understand that being lighthearted (ie. in this case singing and dancing) has an appeal (though I personally don't like singing and dancing.). But many films don't have that and are shorter.

    I sometimes get a similar sense of the alien while watching mainland Chinese movies. It is not every time, but sometimes, I feel like they just have too many characters, or too many or too much onscreen at the same time.

    I can't help but suspect that it is somehow related, despite there being fairly hard geographic and historical divisions between the two places. Like something to do with a long history of cities, or communism/socialism.

    You need to look for somebody a bit more immersed in the culture to be able to decipher the vagaries and nuances of this sort of thing.

     

    Well, Thulean is on extended hiatus and you have cunningly ducked my attempts to assign part of his duties to you, incorporating it under your appreciation of cinema.

    I’d much rather listen to you tell us more about your own personal experience of seeing people being shipped to “work camps”.
     
    Grammatically, I suppose I should have said "former", but more dramatic language does appeal to me.

    I was talking about kids having a school field trip to a concentration camp. "Work camp" generally being the label given to the camps local to Germany, where deaths were mainly due to disease.

    I remember the name of the place, but don't want to be too specific.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  136. @songbird
    @Dmitry


    they recommend JBP (Joe Budden Podcast?) it must be because you have watched one of the videos.
     
    Jordan B. Peterson. I won't say I never watched one of his videos, but, for the most part, I did not find him interesting other than some initial curiosity to find out who he was, and why he was being promoted.

    There was a common feeling among people watching more nationalistic content that the algorithm was trying to take them away from that content and to the more moderate, individuality-promoting Jordan B. Peterson.

    I think it is narrowly possible that it wasn't directly political. There may have been some process like, so you enjoy political content? We will send you to the most heavily-monetized stuff. But Google seems very political on the surface. They had a Google doodle one day that celebrated the guy who became the first tranny in Weimar and died of organ rejection.

    Generally, the higher quality of content, doesn’t have many views. Because it’s not clickbait and doesn’t receive the clicks and interactions.
     
    I totally agree with this. It is almost scary to me to see the stuff normal people watch. My favorite content (even non-political) is really fringe or amateur. Sometimes it can be hard to find. I think there must be nearly endless interesting stuff that is totally buried and near impossible to find.

    I sometimes like these small, fringe history channels. I was watching a video on saffron once that I thought was really interesting.

    In contrast, I once listened to a History Guy podcast about Magellen, where he said he hadn't realized Magellen died on his journey, until he did his research for the podcast, and I felt I couldn't listen to him anymore, as he was either lying or had no curiosity.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Torna atrás, @Emil Nikola Richard, @Dmitry

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    I don't get the musical part of Korean wave.

    Can enjoy some of the films, and I appreciate that the girl groups are supposed to be eye candy, but the music is totally lost on me, or I just haven't really listened to it long enough hear anything good.

    Equally, I haven't really listened to older Japanese or HK pop, but I feel like it is better, or at least the older stuff. Maybe, not the stuff from today.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

  137. @Dmitry
    @songbird

    It's just how the algorithm works and the preferences stored on the cache on the app on your television.

    If they recommend JBP (Joe Budden Podcast?) it must be because you have watched one of the videos.

    They store information about how long you watch the video for, if you pause it, how interested you seem in the video.

    This is then matching with a lot of information about what the background people with your preference or demographics are watching.

    -

    It's not artificial, but it's going to recommend the influencers' who make the most "clickbait" interactions. These are usually the influencers with a lot of fans across different platforms, which produce clickbait and which have the social media managers and people doing a professional search engine optimization for them.

    Generally, the higher quality of content, doesn't have many views. Because it's not clickbait and doesn't receive the clicks and interactions.

    Replies: @songbird, @Gerard1234

    It’s really hard for me to get interested in Indian films.

    And I noticed Hack, that its VERY hard for you to get interested in khokhol/”Ukrainian” films……….except the snuff ones of course,and any those of any other perversions.

    In 404 Dovzhenko is now very much thought of as a nationalist, I would guess in your Nazi-diaspora-UPA circles in Anerica they blinded themselves with their anti-sovietism to the point they thought he must have been “too Soviet” and never watched him films, and so never revised their backwards thinking ?

    You a re normally an excellent source of the cultural/historical stuff that the diaspora likes (much prefer when you do this compared to the delinquent cartoons), so it is noticeable that you don’t appear to go near ukrop cinema.

    • LOL: Mr. Hack
    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Gerard1234

    I was asked to review an Indian film. I do enjoy Indian cuisine, does that make me a traitor to the Ukrainian cause?

    I do miss our culinary discussions with Karlin, who also had an appreciation for spice in his faire. It's too bad that he appears to have gone over to the far side. It's even worse that he hasn't pulled you over there with him too! :-)

    You don't like my choice of political cartoons?

    https://static.kyivpost.com/storage/2024/07/16/ff131ee944a81f6743f8fc19fe6bd62f.jpg?w=1280&q=90&f=webp
    Think of the yarns that Bashibuzuk could weave to accompany this colorful conspiracy theory one? :-)

    Replies: @Derer

  138. @QCIC
    @songbird

    Petey has a good, forthright lecture or two on the influence of intelligence on a person's life course. I think he believes IQ data is sound across races. I would like to hear what he says about African and African-American intelligence and any social implications of the data.

    I never followed him but some of his practical life advice is simply a counterweight to the woke tranny BS. Not perfect but better than nothing. He did his part.

    He is apparently one of the those lively, apparently sane people who seems to be on the borderline of madness (sane but looks crazy). What came out over time is that he is actually one of those insane people who is on the borderline of sanity (crazy but looks sane--sometimes). It is worth recognizing there are many people like this.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @songbird

    Jordan Peterson is a one hit wonder. His rise was specifically when he was the first (and only for a few months) person to say out loud this N different gender identities and custom pronoun thing was bullshit.

    If you can name one other specific memorable thing ever other than making a fool of himself I would be very surprised.

  139. @Gerard1234
    @Dmitry


    It’s really hard for me to get interested in Indian films.
     
    And I noticed Hack, that its VERY hard for you to get interested in khokhol/"Ukrainian" films..........except the snuff ones of course,and any those of any other perversions.


    In 404 Dovzhenko is now very much thought of as a nationalist, I would guess in your Nazi-diaspora-UPA circles in Anerica they blinded themselves with their anti-sovietism to the point they thought he must have been "too Soviet" and never watched him films, and so never revised their backwards thinking ?

    You a re normally an excellent source of the cultural/historical stuff that the diaspora likes (much prefer when you do this compared to the delinquent cartoons), so it is noticeable that you don't appear to go near ukrop cinema.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    I was asked to review an Indian film. I do enjoy Indian cuisine, does that make me a traitor to the Ukrainian cause?

    I do miss our culinary discussions with Karlin, who also had an appreciation for spice in his faire. It’s too bad that he appears to have gone over to the far side. It’s even worse that he hasn’t pulled you over there with him too! 🙂

    You don’t like my choice of political cartoons?
    Think of the yarns that Bashibuzuk could weave to accompany this colorful conspiracy theory one? 🙂

    • Replies: @Derer
    @Mr. Hack

    Who is that guy on the right? No resemblance, perhaps Adenauer but he is long dead.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  140. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Torna atrás
    @songbird


    In contrast, I once listened to a History Guy podcast about Magellen, where he said he hadn’t realized Magellen died on his journey,
     
    If you ever have a chance to chat with a Pinoy, it's a great conversation starter along with Sky Flakes and Balut.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    I’ve been to the Magellan Cross in Cebu. The locals are quite proud of both the fact that the great explorer stopped there and erected a cross and that a local chieftain killed him in a battle. I also learned there that Magellan had a Malay navigator guide who actually directed the navigation through that region. The Malay converted from Islam to Catholicism, got an European name (that I don’t remember). If you ever go to Cebu, try the roasted pork, it’s really delicious.

  141. @QCIC
    @songbird

    Petey has a good, forthright lecture or two on the influence of intelligence on a person's life course. I think he believes IQ data is sound across races. I would like to hear what he says about African and African-American intelligence and any social implications of the data.

    I never followed him but some of his practical life advice is simply a counterweight to the woke tranny BS. Not perfect but better than nothing. He did his part.

    He is apparently one of the those lively, apparently sane people who seems to be on the borderline of madness (sane but looks crazy). What came out over time is that he is actually one of those insane people who is on the borderline of sanity (crazy but looks sane--sometimes). It is worth recognizing there are many people like this.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @songbird

    What came out over time is that he is actually one of those insane people who is on the borderline of sanity (crazy but looks sane–sometimes

    Human zoo is certainly an interesting aspect of the internet.

    I have been mildly amused by JBP at various times when he was acting strangely. Most recently there was him calling Fuentes a rat, which I think is interesting on various levels. Firstly, because of the clear political bias – it is okay to call certain people that but not others. Then because he is a clinician and psychological language contains many abstractions or labels, but sometimes they are just thin veneers for these base insults.

    There are times when I am inclined to almost agree with the scientologists that most of these psychologist people are popped-up psychopaths who want to drug people because they themselves are crazy druggies.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @songbird


    There are times when I am inclined to almost agree with the scientologists that most of these psychologist people are popped-up psychopaths who want to drug people because they themselves are crazy druggies.
     
    Asked a shrink lady once whether they had a functional theory of Consciousness. She replied no. Asked how can they work with the problems of human Consciousness if they don’t have a clear understanding of what exactly that is. Got an interested look in response… 🙂

    Replies: @Mikel, @Emil Nikola Richard

    , @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    The internet needs a long form discussion Jordan P and Robert Sapolksy on the subject of their favorite laboratory rat traits.

  142. @Mikhail
    Neocon Flipped

    Re: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/ending-war-ukraine-potential-roadmap-peace-211993

    The Collective West could and should still value ties with Russia just enough to be more flexible in its demands. As discussed in this article,

    https://www.eurasiareview.com/01072024-nato-proxy-war-ongoing-biden-new-york-times-deceit-oped/

    Zalmay Khalilzad repeats the ongoing calculated lie that Russia has suffered more armed combatant casualties than Ukraine.

    The longer the NATO proxy war continues, the more likely the Kiev regime loses more territory. A practical route for ending the armed conflict is the following settlement:

    - Kiev regime and international recognition that Crimea, Zaporozhe, Kherson, Lugansk and Donetsk are Russian territory
    - Ukraine is geopolitically neutral with a limited military and no NATO membership
    - Sanctions against Russia and Russians, including the hypocritically bigoted one in sports come to a prompt end.

    As long as these conditions are honored, Russia will not have any further territorial claims on Ukraine's Communist drawn boundary. Don't like this settlement? The armed conflict likely continues with the Kiev regime losing more.

    Replies: @LondonBob

    Interesting analysis of an interview with Richard Grenell, by Gilbert Doctorow, of what a peace deal could look lie.

    https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2024/07/22/what-a-ukraine-peace-treaty-brokered-by-trump-might-look-like/

    • Replies: @A123
    @LondonBob


    Interesting analysis of an interview with Richard Grenell, by Gilbert Doctorow, of what a peace deal could look lie.
     
    Not bad.

    IMHO the current line is more likely than all of 2 oblasts:

    • A proper "land bridge" requires parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.
    • Dnieper access for fresh water is 100% non-negotiable necessity.
    • Giving up ZNPP seems exceedingly foolish.

    Sacrificing lightly or uninhabited parts of Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts would be undesirable for Russia. However, these are not strategic necessities like the parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts associated with the land bridge.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @LondonBob

    , @Mikhail
    @LondonBob

    I don't see Russia going back on their declaration regarding Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhe and Kherson. Bookmark this matter for future reference. As for what I envisage for the present day:

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-255/#comment-6677092

    A gentle Jewish socialist sent me this reply:


    I agree that the war there has to stop, and the sooner the better.
    BUT who's going to pay for the reparations caused by it?
    Did Ukraine invade Russia? No, Russia invaded Ukraine.
    If sanctions are to be halted, provision for reparations must be agreed to.
    Do you disagree?
     
    My response:

    Should Israel pay for Gaza? Russia did everything within reason to avoid the NATO proxy war, with the Collective West doing the opposite. Go back to Minsk Accords and Istanbul talks. Russia will assist a hypothetically different Ukraine which isn't run by anti-Russian extremists, along the lines of how the West (US specifically) helped rebuild West Germany and Japan after WW II.
     
  143. Bashibuzuk says:
    @songbird
    @QCIC


    What came out over time is that he is actually one of those insane people who is on the borderline of sanity (crazy but looks sane–sometimes
     
    Human zoo is certainly an interesting aspect of the internet.

    I have been mildly amused by JBP at various times when he was acting strangely. Most recently there was him calling Fuentes a rat, which I think is interesting on various levels. Firstly, because of the clear political bias - it is okay to call certain people that but not others. Then because he is a clinician and psychological language contains many abstractions or labels, but sometimes they are just thin veneers for these base insults.

    There are times when I am inclined to almost agree with the scientologists that most of these psychologist people are popped-up psychopaths who want to drug people because they themselves are crazy druggies.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Emil Nikola Richard

    There are times when I am inclined to almost agree with the scientologists that most of these psychologist people are popped-up psychopaths who want to drug people because they themselves are crazy druggies.

    Asked a shrink lady once whether they had a functional theory of Consciousness. She replied no. Asked how can they work with the problems of human Consciousness if they don’t have a clear understanding of what exactly that is. Got an interested look in response… 🙂

    • Thanks: songbird
    • LOL: Torna atrás
    • Replies: @Mikel
    @Bashibuzuk


    Asked how can they work with the problems of human Consciousness if they don’t have a clear understanding of what exactly that is.
     
    Fortunately, having a full understanding of human consciousness is not necessary to be able to alleviate human psychological suffering and brain malfunctions. Some shrinks, therapists and drugs do quite a good job. Would you prefer them to stop doing the best they can until that (perhaps impossible) full understanding is achieved?

    We're very far away from having a full understanding of how biological mechanisms work too. They're wildly complicated systems. But that doesn't prevent me from visiting a doctor when I have some health issue and so far they've managed to keep me alive and disease free (which a century and a half ago was a rare event for people over 50, most had actually died by then).
    , @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Bashibuzuk

    So after I posted that comment @ songbird I had this after thought. Do you think either Sapolksy or Peterson have a sufficiently complex theory of rat-mind that they have ever noticed individual laboratory rats? Could either of them distinguish the extremely erudite from totally deranged?

  144. @songbird
    @QCIC


    What came out over time is that he is actually one of those insane people who is on the borderline of sanity (crazy but looks sane–sometimes
     
    Human zoo is certainly an interesting aspect of the internet.

    I have been mildly amused by JBP at various times when he was acting strangely. Most recently there was him calling Fuentes a rat, which I think is interesting on various levels. Firstly, because of the clear political bias - it is okay to call certain people that but not others. Then because he is a clinician and psychological language contains many abstractions or labels, but sometimes they are just thin veneers for these base insults.

    There are times when I am inclined to almost agree with the scientologists that most of these psychologist people are popped-up psychopaths who want to drug people because they themselves are crazy druggies.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Emil Nikola Richard

    The internet needs a long form discussion Jordan P and Robert Sapolksy on the subject of their favorite laboratory rat traits.

  145. @Mr. Hack
    @songbird


    I wish Mr. Hack would do me a solid and review it here for us, but the last Indian film I tried to get him to watch was every action-orientated (RRR) and I couldn’t seem to interest him in it.
     
    You have a very good memory. It's really hard for me to get interested in Indian films. A caste of thousands dancing and singing in synchronized fashion around a plot of boy/girl unrequited love for two hours or more, is just...a bit too much for me. You need to look for somebody a bit more immersed in the culture to be able to decipher the vagaries and nuances of this sort of thing. I'd much rather listen to you tell us more about your own personal experience of seeing people being shipped to "work camps". I think that it was you who made a statement like this, although to be honest, I'm having a difficult time in relocating this comment?...

    Replies: @songbird

    A caste of thousands dancing and singing in synchronized fashion around a plot of boy/girl unrequited love for two hours or more, is just…a bit too much for me.

    There is an exotic quality which verges on the alien.

    [MORE]
    I must admit that I find it incomprehensible how there is a market for such films, even if in a very abstract way I can understand that being lighthearted (ie. in this case singing and dancing) has an appeal (though I personally don’t like singing and dancing.). But many films don’t have that and are shorter.

    I sometimes get a similar sense of the alien while watching mainland Chinese movies. It is not every time, but sometimes, I feel like they just have too many characters, or too many or too much onscreen at the same time.

    I can’t help but suspect that it is somehow related, despite there being fairly hard geographic and historical divisions between the two places. Like something to do with a long history of cities, or communism/socialism.

    You need to look for somebody a bit more immersed in the culture to be able to decipher the vagaries and nuances of this sort of thing.

    Well, Thulean is on extended hiatus and you have cunningly ducked my attempts to assign part of his duties to you, incorporating it under your appreciation of cinema.

    I’d much rather listen to you tell us more about your own personal experience of seeing people being shipped to “work camps”.

    Grammatically, I suppose I should have said “former”, but more dramatic language does appeal to me.

    I was talking about kids having a school field trip to a concentration camp. “Work camp” generally being the label given to the camps local to Germany, where deaths were mainly due to disease.

    I remember the name of the place, but don’t want to be too specific.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @songbird


    Well, Thulean is on extended hiatus and you have cunningly ducked my attempts to assign part of his duties to you, incorporating it under your appreciation of cinema.
     
    I don't see how I've "cunningly" managed to duck your attempts to get me to watch a long, probably boring bollywood film, especially as both of our general opinions about this sort of faire dovetail quite closely? Besides, I don't want to step on anybody's toes (Thulean?) if he's already shown promise in reviewing this sort of thing.

    I think that perhaps you're a bit more cuning than I am in ducking a fuller explanation about your own experience(s) viewing German children visit a "work camp" in Germany? You see, I have a personal interest in this sort of thing because my own family lived in one of these places for a few years before I was born, and have heard some stories about their experiences...

    Replies: @songbird

  146. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThI0pBAbFnk

    Replies: @songbird

    I don’t get the musical part of Korean wave.

    Can enjoy some of the films, and I appreciate that the girl groups are supposed to be eye candy, but the music is totally lost on me, or I just haven’t really listened to it long enough hear anything good.

    Equally, I haven’t really listened to older Japanese or HK pop, but I feel like it is better, or at least the older stuff. Maybe, not the stuff from today.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    Sometimes I watch the chick videos with the sound muted.

    The guy video I posted is the first time this band has used AI generated video graphics and AI generated music. I could only listen to it for a couple minutes. Cory Doctorow had a great blog post the other day on AI artwork.

    https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/20/ransom-note-force-field/#antilibraries

    AI art has no anti-cooption immune system

  147. @Bashibuzuk
    @songbird


    There are times when I am inclined to almost agree with the scientologists that most of these psychologist people are popped-up psychopaths who want to drug people because they themselves are crazy druggies.
     
    Asked a shrink lady once whether they had a functional theory of Consciousness. She replied no. Asked how can they work with the problems of human Consciousness if they don’t have a clear understanding of what exactly that is. Got an interested look in response… 🙂

    Replies: @Mikel, @Emil Nikola Richard

    Asked how can they work with the problems of human Consciousness if they don’t have a clear understanding of what exactly that is.

    Fortunately, having a full understanding of human consciousness is not necessary to be able to alleviate human psychological suffering and brain malfunctions. Some shrinks, therapists and drugs do quite a good job. Would you prefer them to stop doing the best they can until that (perhaps impossible) full understanding is achieved?

    We’re very far away from having a full understanding of how biological mechanisms work too. They’re wildly complicated systems. But that doesn’t prevent me from visiting a doctor when I have some health issue and so far they’ve managed to keep me alive and disease free (which a century and a half ago was a rare event for people over 50, most had actually died by then).

  148. A123 says: • Website
    @LondonBob
    @Mikhail

    Interesting analysis of an interview with Richard Grenell, by Gilbert Doctorow, of what a peace deal could look lie.

    https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2024/07/22/what-a-ukraine-peace-treaty-brokered-by-trump-might-look-like/

    Replies: @A123, @Mikhail

    Interesting analysis of an interview with Richard Grenell, by Gilbert Doctorow, of what a peace deal could look lie.

    Not bad.

    IMHO the current line is more likely than all of 2 oblasts:

    • A proper “land bridge” requires parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.
    • Dnieper access for fresh water is 100% non-negotiable necessity.
    • Giving up ZNPP seems exceedingly foolish.

    Sacrificing lightly or uninhabited parts of Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts would be undesirable for Russia. However, these are not strategic necessities like the parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts associated with the land bridge.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @LondonBob
    @A123

    I see it more as them setting out the best possible deal the US could get, trying to anchor the negotiations with that as a starting point, don't see the Kremlin agreeing, but they probably don't either.

  149. Reversing his previous position, Ukrainian foreign minister Kuleba stated in China that Ukraine is ready for talks with Russia. It looks like Russia is in no hurry to talk, though. Russian troops keep advancing, strengthening its position in putative negotiations with every passing day.

    Putin’s spokesperson Peskov said that the RF will achieve its goals, either via negotiations or by the continuation of SMO. He pointed out that, while negotiations would be preferable, there are two obstacles to talks:

    1. The law prohibiting negotiations with the RF remains in force in Ukraine.

    2. It is unclear who can legally negotiate and sign any possible agreements on the Ukrainian side. Zelensky’s mandate ended May 20. Ukrainian law stipulates that the mandate of the Rada (parliament) can be extended in case of war, but does not have a provision for extending presidential mandate. Thus, from May 21 on Zelensky is not legitimate (notwithstanding what his puppeteers and their other puppets claim), which makes his signature legally null and void.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @AnonfromTN


    It is unclear who can legally negotiate and sign any possible agreements on the Ukrainian side. Zelensky’s mandate ended May 20.
     
    Zelensky and Ukraine won't do exactly whatever Washington tell them?

    Replies: @AnonfromTN, @A123

    , @John Johnson
    @AnonfromTN

    It looks like Russia is in no hurry to talk, though. Russian troops keep advancing, strengthening its position in putative negotiations with every passing day.

    Russia is running out of tanks. They are not using motorcycle squads as an homage to Mad Max.

    Putin already offered to walk with the current lines and share Crimea.

    Putin’s spokesperson Peskov said that the RF will achieve its goals, either via negotiations or by the continuation of SMO.

    Oh well if someone in the Russian government says so then it must be true.

    This war started with Lavrov yelling at the UN on how it was a training exercise and no invasion would happen.

    Scott Ritter in fact wrote an article for Russian State Media on how he knows Russia and that they won't attack because it isn't in their nature.

    He should just give handjobs at Russian truck stops for a living. Would be more honest than his propaganda work.

    Thus, from May 21 on Zelensky is not legitimate (notwithstanding what his puppeteers and their other puppets claim), which makes his signature legally null and void.

    The constitution allows for delaying elections while under martial law.

    Most European countries have a similar statute.

  150. @AnonfromTN
    Reversing his previous position, Ukrainian foreign minister Kuleba stated in China that Ukraine is ready for talks with Russia. It looks like Russia is in no hurry to talk, though. Russian troops keep advancing, strengthening its position in putative negotiations with every passing day.

    Putin’s spokesperson Peskov said that the RF will achieve its goals, either via negotiations or by the continuation of SMO. He pointed out that, while negotiations would be preferable, there are two obstacles to talks:

    1. The law prohibiting negotiations with the RF remains in force in Ukraine.

    2. It is unclear who can legally negotiate and sign any possible agreements on the Ukrainian side. Zelensky’s mandate ended May 20. Ukrainian law stipulates that the mandate of the Rada (parliament) can be extended in case of war, but does not have a provision for extending presidential mandate. Thus, from May 21 on Zelensky is not legitimate (notwithstanding what his puppeteers and their other puppets claim), which makes his signature legally null and void.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @John Johnson

    It is unclear who can legally negotiate and sign any possible agreements on the Ukrainian side. Zelensky’s mandate ended May 20.

    Zelensky and Ukraine won’t do exactly whatever Washington tell them?

    • Replies: @AnonfromTN
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    Zelensky and Ukraine won’t do exactly whatever Washington tell them?
     
    With continuing misfortunes at the front, destroyed power generation, difficulties in getting enough cannon fodder to replace losses (Ukie field commanders say that out of 100 forcibly conscripted no more than 10 actually fight; Ukie estimates suggest that the population has already paid ~$2 billion in bribes to avoid draft or run away from Ukraine), and possible change of guard in Washington politburo, the clown is at the end of his tether. Cornered rats are not only dangerous, but also unpredictable.

    Considering the RF stance, the puppeteers might decide to change puppets in Kiev, like they did in DNC.
    , @A123
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    Zelensky and Ukraine won’t do exactly whatever Washington tell them?
     
    Of course not, don't be silly:

    • The Veggie-In-Chief cannot formulate logical directives. All his team does is pass thru policy papers that originate from European power centers (e.g. Berlin, Paris, Davos).

    • Once Trump cuts off 80-90% of the money, Führer Zelensky will have no reason to listen. Although it would be entertaining if Trump's 2nd term administration sold arms to Putin.

    Remember, for some time it has been the European Empire driving Kiev aggression. Merkel single handedly killed Minsk. Scholz & BoJo made sure the Istanbul deal never came to fruition. Macron has been agitating for European offensive troops.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @John Johnson

  151. @AnonfromTN
    Reversing his previous position, Ukrainian foreign minister Kuleba stated in China that Ukraine is ready for talks with Russia. It looks like Russia is in no hurry to talk, though. Russian troops keep advancing, strengthening its position in putative negotiations with every passing day.

    Putin’s spokesperson Peskov said that the RF will achieve its goals, either via negotiations or by the continuation of SMO. He pointed out that, while negotiations would be preferable, there are two obstacles to talks:

    1. The law prohibiting negotiations with the RF remains in force in Ukraine.

    2. It is unclear who can legally negotiate and sign any possible agreements on the Ukrainian side. Zelensky’s mandate ended May 20. Ukrainian law stipulates that the mandate of the Rada (parliament) can be extended in case of war, but does not have a provision for extending presidential mandate. Thus, from May 21 on Zelensky is not legitimate (notwithstanding what his puppeteers and their other puppets claim), which makes his signature legally null and void.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @John Johnson

    It looks like Russia is in no hurry to talk, though. Russian troops keep advancing, strengthening its position in putative negotiations with every passing day.

    Russia is running out of tanks. They are not using motorcycle squads as an homage to Mad Max.

    Putin already offered to walk with the current lines and share Crimea.

    Putin’s spokesperson Peskov said that the RF will achieve its goals, either via negotiations or by the continuation of SMO.

    Oh well if someone in the Russian government says so then it must be true.

    This war started with Lavrov yelling at the UN on how it was a training exercise and no invasion would happen.

    Scott Ritter in fact wrote an article for Russian State Media on how he knows Russia and that they won’t attack because it isn’t in their nature.

    He should just give handjobs at Russian truck stops for a living. Would be more honest than his propaganda work.

    Thus, from May 21 on Zelensky is not legitimate (notwithstanding what his puppeteers and their other puppets claim), which makes his signature legally null and void.

    The constitution allows for delaying elections while under martial law.

    Most European countries have a similar statute.

  152. @songbird
    @Dmitry


    they recommend JBP (Joe Budden Podcast?) it must be because you have watched one of the videos.
     
    Jordan B. Peterson. I won't say I never watched one of his videos, but, for the most part, I did not find him interesting other than some initial curiosity to find out who he was, and why he was being promoted.

    There was a common feeling among people watching more nationalistic content that the algorithm was trying to take them away from that content and to the more moderate, individuality-promoting Jordan B. Peterson.

    I think it is narrowly possible that it wasn't directly political. There may have been some process like, so you enjoy political content? We will send you to the most heavily-monetized stuff. But Google seems very political on the surface. They had a Google doodle one day that celebrated the guy who became the first tranny in Weimar and died of organ rejection.

    Generally, the higher quality of content, doesn’t have many views. Because it’s not clickbait and doesn’t receive the clicks and interactions.
     
    I totally agree with this. It is almost scary to me to see the stuff normal people watch. My favorite content (even non-political) is really fringe or amateur. Sometimes it can be hard to find. I think there must be nearly endless interesting stuff that is totally buried and near impossible to find.

    I sometimes like these small, fringe history channels. I was watching a video on saffron once that I thought was really interesting.

    In contrast, I once listened to a History Guy podcast about Magellen, where he said he hadn't realized Magellen died on his journey, until he did his research for the podcast, and I felt I couldn't listen to him anymore, as he was either lying or had no curiosity.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Torna atrás, @Emil Nikola Richard, @Dmitry

    may have been some process like, so you enjoy political

    You need to reset the app or delete the cache in the YouTube, log out the user.

    They still know things like your language and location, but this will give more general recommendations for people in your area.

    Then when you watch the first videos again, you need to be careful in the beginning, as this early videos will put you like on railway track for all the recommendations that will follow a kind of path from those.

    Try to watch some higher quality videos in the beginning. Hopefully, you will lose the JBP recommendations. But anyway, tell us what happens.

    Their recommends on the app uses two neural networks. They have a candidate generation network, its output funnels to a ranking network.

    Outside of location, individualized input for both the networks are things like your viewing behavior, which videos you watch, how long you watch on the outputs, your searches and then things you add like age and gender.

    For the ranking network, which inputs hundreds of videos and outputs only dozens, it is serving the videos by what is their expected probability of watchtime.

    from that content and to the more moderate, individuality-promoting Jordan B. Peterson.

    After their ReLU layers, their candidate generation network has a layer of the outputs from the most similar users to you, which is another kind of collaborative filtering.

    So, for the original candidate pool of videos, you can partly blame what other users, which they believe are similar to you, are watching. Although for the output from the ranking network, it’s your own fault.

    One of the interesting things about YouTube is how much improvement they get from just including users’ search history.

    For example, the improvement from including search history is larger than the improvement from introducing nonlinearity to the model.

    And this is “free improvement”, while if you’re adding more ReLU layers are relatively “expensive” improvements in this sense you’re increasing latency, or the “inference time” in the model.

    So, we can see for YouTube to get more information from the users gets you the “cheap” improvement, while adding more layers is “expensive” improvement from both sides as it increases latency from inference time.

    Google seems very political on the surface. They had a Google doodle one day that celebrated the guy who became the first tranny in Weimar and died of organ rejection.

    I watched some interviews with the owners of Google. They are kind of centrist, liberals. Their main interest is automation. They have some kind of religious beliefs about increasing knowledge and enlightenment, which could seem political though.

    But, as they begin to employ younger workers, like all companies, it’s possible some aspects could move increasingly politically left, as the Generation Z a lot more left than the previous generation of employees. Even when the company owners can be more centrist, the low level employees also add some pressure in the culture.*

    Basically, the corporate world isn’t an island separated from wider generational trends. Most of the company owners are relatively conservative compared to the younger generation of the population in the West.

    This is one of the things the older investors on the Ben and Marc show are sounding a little scared about. They know a lot of their employees are going to be angry with them, now they are supporting Trump.

    * In Google, there were firing some of them recently, when some low level workers were protesting about Israel. Google is a popular employer so they can fire you easily. .

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Dmitry


    Hopefully, you will lose the JBP recommendations. But anyway, tell us what happens.
     
    This was a long time ago. Perhaps, about six years ago or longer. (Cannot put an exact date on it.). But I have long since turned off autoplay.

    I don't think I see JBP anymore in the recommendations.

    For a while, I kept getting fed some disgusting videos. Some were meant to be comical, but just activated my sense of disgust, with their thumbnail. Others were nature-related (bears with tapeworms.). I half-joked and half-wondered, if they were trying to punish me for using adblocker. But they disappeared eventually, after I kept hitting "not interested."
    _______
    Another thing that gave people an idea of bias were all the bans. For example , Stefan Molyneux had a pretty big channel and he was cancelled and never made any sort of recovery. Stefan was an über-libertarian and never argued for any form of violence, even remotely. Personally, I was not a fan of his logorrhea, but I think the ban was unfair.
    _______
    Believe YouTube is streamed more on TVs now more than Netflix? But it has lost some of its old charms, like video responses, and there always seems the threat on the horizon to disable adblocker.
    _______

    Like Songbird, one of my oldest “online friends”, was last thread writing “agree” on some hostile comments about myself.
     
    Meant to be agreeing with the idea that Western Europe is already worse off for the middle class, maybe a bit also with GR's dark stereotypes of EEs, being locked into perceiving the West as high status, due to the Cold War, and despite its most recent changes for the worse.
    , @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    Basically, the corporate world isn’t an island separated from wider generational trends.
     
    It is not separate from the power of the government either.

    I remember the kind of thing Songbird was talking about, there was a particular period when watching a video from D/R content creators would produce an autoplay list predictably filled with many JBP video suggestions, it became a kind of meme. Before that the algorithm had seemed to operate more freely.

    The belief that it was being manipulated may be related to the prominence that counter-extremism and anti-radicalism initiatives run by the security services had at the same time. In Britain the public facing element of this was the Prevent program and semi-governmental NGOs like Hope not Hate. Under the Prevent guidelines if you worked in education, the civil service or local government you had a duty to notify Prevent of any signs of possible radicialisation or extremism among young people or service users, in case it developed into terrorism. I remember that observing someone viewing something like a Murdoch Murdoch video with swastikas in public could have been enough for a Prevent referral.

    There are also connections between certain spheres of academic study and the official counter-extremism sphere.

    Given things like this, it doesn't seem impossible that some suggestions may have been made to Google about corporate social responsibility and limiting the spread of extremist content. Perhaps JBP autoplay lists were a part of that.

    Since then a range of D/R channels have been progressively banned, at the same time some of the issues have become more mainstream, with more mainstream creators making that type of content, so it is harder to see them as extremist.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Dmitry

  153. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @AnonfromTN


    It is unclear who can legally negotiate and sign any possible agreements on the Ukrainian side. Zelensky’s mandate ended May 20.
     
    Zelensky and Ukraine won't do exactly whatever Washington tell them?

    Replies: @AnonfromTN, @A123

    Zelensky and Ukraine won’t do exactly whatever Washington tell them?

    With continuing misfortunes at the front, destroyed power generation, difficulties in getting enough cannon fodder to replace losses (Ukie field commanders say that out of 100 forcibly conscripted no more than 10 actually fight; Ukie estimates suggest that the population has already paid ~$2 billion in bribes to avoid draft or run away from Ukraine), and possible change of guard in Washington politburo, the clown is at the end of his tether. Cornered rats are not only dangerous, but also unpredictable.

    Considering the RF stance, the puppeteers might decide to change puppets in Kiev, like they did in DNC.

  154. A123 says: • Website
    @Emil Nikola Richard
    @AnonfromTN


    It is unclear who can legally negotiate and sign any possible agreements on the Ukrainian side. Zelensky’s mandate ended May 20.
     
    Zelensky and Ukraine won't do exactly whatever Washington tell them?

    Replies: @AnonfromTN, @A123

    Zelensky and Ukraine won’t do exactly whatever Washington tell them?

    Of course not, don’t be silly:

    • The Veggie-In-Chief cannot formulate logical directives. All his team does is pass thru policy papers that originate from European power centers (e.g. Berlin, Paris, Davos).

    • Once Trump cuts off 80-90% of the money, Führer Zelensky will have no reason to listen. Although it would be entertaining if Trump’s 2nd term administration sold arms to Putin.

    Remember, for some time it has been the European Empire driving Kiev aggression. Merkel single handedly killed Minsk. Scholz & BoJo made sure the Istanbul deal never came to fruition. Macron has been agitating for European offensive troops.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @A123

    Once Trump cuts off 80-90% of the money

    Why would he do that when Trump is the one that delivered the Ukraine aid bill to Johnson?

    Putin is currently pulling Soviet era artillery out of storage:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkPudOWU1ak

    Magoo still has his lame duck session. How much of a difference could a pro-Putin president even make at this point? The ATACMS inventory is on the way and artillery contracts have already been signed. He would have to get congress to undo the previous bill. Good luck with that. Magoo will probably sign another small one before leaving.

    Although it would be entertaining if Trump’s 2nd term administration sold arms to Putin.

    Trump puts his image first and foremost.

    He still wants to be viewed as American and not some whore for a totalitarian regime.

    It was Trump that sold Ukrainians anti-tank weapons to the chagrin of Putin.

    You would need Vance in charge for any of your fantasies. Trump by his actions made it clear that he will support the military industrial complex when pressured. I'm not at all worried about a Trump presidency and Ukraine. His Mar-A-Whorego meeting assuaged any concerns. He will sign for those weapons if the swamp creatures come crawling. Johnson held out for over 8 months and then after one meeting with Trump he came back with the Ukraine aid bill. Boy that must have been a kick to the balls for Putin defenders.

  155. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Bashibuzuk

    Is

    долбоёб мечущийся из крайности в крайность

    which google claims is

    idiot rushing from one extreme to another

    really a saying in Russia?

    Also the anglicization of what they say is idiot

    mechushchiysya

    looks a lot like Yiddish for lunatic.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @AnonfromTN, @Dmitry

    The Yiddish vocabulary sometimes has origin from Polish/Ukrainian/Russian languages. Words like “oy”.

    In the other direction a lot of old mafia and criminal origin words in Russia are from Yiddish. So, words like “koresh”, “blatnoy”, “frayer”, “lokh”, “shakher-makher”

    Nowadays prisoner language is probably changing all the time and maybe they invent new words. I’ve heard some groups of people saying mysterious words, which are feeling like prisoner slang, you should walk to the safety of the other side of the road.

    • Replies: @AnonfromTN
    @Dmitry


    The Yiddish vocabulary sometimes has origin from Polish/Ukrainian/Russian.
     
    To the best of my knowledge, most Yiddish is corrupted German.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    , @Bashibuzuk
    @Dmitry

    Around 50% of the blatnaya fenya Vor thieves’ cant is derived from Yiddish and Hebrew. The word Blat itself comes from Yiddish/German (Yiddish being a German dialect after all). Examples of Yiddish/Hebrew terminology in the Vor jargon are way to numerous to innumerate here, but it points out the self-evident fact that many people spoke Yiddish during the formative period of the Russian organized crime, which was late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The so called Russian mafia was at the time quite kosher.

    The most important locations for the genesis of the Blatnoy way of life were Odessa (called Odessa mama in some Blatnoy songs) and Rostov on Don (called Rostov papa in the Blatnoy songs). Funnily enough, one of the most famous Blatnoy songs, “On Deribasovskaya street there was an opening of a beer pub” (На Дерибасовской открылася (sic) пивная) was actually written in Rostov and in the early days referred to Rostov street names. It was later adapted by the Jewish mobsters of Odessa to their own locality and it became a Russian mafia classic chanson.

    Here Alex Shinder continues the Odessite Blatnoy Jewish tradition by singing this song as it should be sung with the Yiddish / Hebrew words, name and intonations, after finding refuge from the war in Paris, France:

    https://youtu.be/EngiT3GPmLY?si=I06oHAopK5_VMKlZ

    Enjoy koresha , l’chayim ! 🙂

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Dmitry

  156. @Dmitry
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    The Yiddish vocabulary sometimes has origin from Polish/Ukrainian/Russian languages. Words like "oy".

    In the other direction a lot of old mafia and criminal origin words in Russia are from Yiddish. So, words like "koresh", "blatnoy", "frayer", "lokh", "shakher-makher"

    -

    Nowadays prisoner language is probably changing all the time and maybe they invent new words. I've heard some groups of people saying mysterious words, which are feeling like prisoner slang, you should walk to the safety of the other side of the road.

    Replies: @AnonfromTN, @Bashibuzuk

    The Yiddish vocabulary sometimes has origin from Polish/Ukrainian/Russian.

    To the best of my knowledge, most Yiddish is corrupted German.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @AnonfromTN

    It's a German dialect like the Pennsylvania Dutch language, but some of the popular Yiddish words are from Polish/Ukrainian/Russian, like "nu", "oy", "balagan".

    "Oy" often seems the most important word in the language.

    Replies: @AP

  157. @Bashibuzuk
    @Mr. XYZ

    So why did you feel the need to post that Rational Wiki publication about him on that thread?

    Especially that you did it several times?

    Just your autism playing tricks on you again?

    And just so you know, for a non-autistic person, there is no such thing as online friendship. Friends can only be people you have personally met IRL. The online friends are nothing but friendly strangers, whose opinion about you doesn’t matter.

    BTW, given that we can’t be friends, because you are a pervert, and I can’t be friends with perverts, my opinion about you matters even less than the one of your supposed online friend Karlin.

    So basically, never mind my opinions about you. And never mind your opinion about Tolik or his about you.

    🙂

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ, @Dmitry

    People online, at least in our forum, also flip between being friendly and unfriendly, very fast, in a way which would be mentally ill behavior for real life people.

    Like Songbird, one of my oldest “online friends”, was last thread writing “agree” on some hostile comments about myself. If Songbird can do this, then I’m now expecting the same from even my older and more loyal “online friends” Mr Hack and Gerard.

    This is normal in the forum, and it’s probably result of the political format. We are all flipping to unfriendly, from friendly naturally as part of the discussion

    But, if you imagine being a professional influencer like Karlin, it could be quite confusing for him, as the internet is like his office. That’s probably one of the stresses for the influencers.

    Bashibuzuk wasn’t here, but in 2022 Karlin was suddenly very angry with everyone on the forum. He was writing aggressive comments to almost all of us. It was because he abandoned the forum for many months. He was somehow surprised we had criticized him after he abandoned the forum, even though he was actually the person who had abandoned the forum.

    • Replies: @AnonfromTN
    @Dmitry


    People online, at least in our forum, also flip between being friendly and unfriendly, very fast, in a way which would be mentally ill behavior for real life people.
     
    Frankly, I don’t see in in terms of friendly-unfriendly. I don’t know how typical this is, but I think I am emotionally neutral. I have my opinions about intelligence of particular commenters, the quality of their opinions, etc., but I try to be polite regardless (try does not necessarily mean succeed). Disclaimer: this applies to people, does not apply to trolls.
  158. @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk

    People online, at least in our forum, also flip between being friendly and unfriendly, very fast, in a way which would be mentally ill behavior for real life people.

    Like Songbird, one of my oldest "online friends", was last thread writing "agree" on some hostile comments about myself. If Songbird can do this, then I'm now expecting the same from even my older and more loyal "online friends" Mr Hack and Gerard.

    This is normal in the forum, and it's probably result of the political format. We are all flipping to unfriendly, from friendly naturally as part of the discussion

    But, if you imagine being a professional influencer like Karlin, it could be quite confusing for him, as the internet is like his office. That's probably one of the stresses for the influencers.

    -

    Bashibuzuk wasn't here, but in 2022 Karlin was suddenly very angry with everyone on the forum. He was writing aggressive comments to almost all of us. It was because he abandoned the forum for many months. He was somehow surprised we had criticized him after he abandoned the forum, even though he was actually the person who had abandoned the forum.

    Replies: @AnonfromTN

    People online, at least in our forum, also flip between being friendly and unfriendly, very fast, in a way which would be mentally ill behavior for real life people.

    Frankly, I don’t see in in terms of friendly-unfriendly. I don’t know how typical this is, but I think I am emotionally neutral. I have my opinions about intelligence of particular commenters, the quality of their opinions, etc., but I try to be polite regardless (try does not necessarily mean succeed). Disclaimer: this applies to people, does not apply to trolls.

    • Agree: Mikhail
  159. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Dmitry
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    The Yiddish vocabulary sometimes has origin from Polish/Ukrainian/Russian languages. Words like "oy".

    In the other direction a lot of old mafia and criminal origin words in Russia are from Yiddish. So, words like "koresh", "blatnoy", "frayer", "lokh", "shakher-makher"

    -

    Nowadays prisoner language is probably changing all the time and maybe they invent new words. I've heard some groups of people saying mysterious words, which are feeling like prisoner slang, you should walk to the safety of the other side of the road.

    Replies: @AnonfromTN, @Bashibuzuk

    Around 50% of the blatnaya fenya Vor thieves’ cant is derived from Yiddish and Hebrew. The word Blat itself comes from Yiddish/German (Yiddish being a German dialect after all). Examples of Yiddish/Hebrew terminology in the Vor jargon are way to numerous to innumerate here, but it points out the self-evident fact that many people spoke Yiddish during the formative period of the Russian organized crime, which was late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The so called Russian mafia was at the time quite kosher.

    The most important locations for the genesis of the Blatnoy way of life were Odessa (called Odessa mama in some Blatnoy songs) and Rostov on Don (called Rostov papa in the Blatnoy songs). Funnily enough, one of the most famous Blatnoy songs, “On Deribasovskaya street there was an opening of a beer pub” (На Дерибасовской открылася (sic) пивная) was actually written in Rostov and in the early days referred to Rostov street names. It was later adapted by the Jewish mobsters of Odessa to their own locality and it became a Russian mafia classic chanson.

    Here Alex Shinder continues the Odessite Blatnoy Jewish tradition by singing this song as it should be sung with the Yiddish / Hebrew words, name and intonations, after finding refuge from the war in Paris, France:

    Enjoy koresha , l’chayim ! 🙂

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Bashibuzuk

    The original version from Rostov on Don, dating to the NEP era in the late 1920ies.

    https://youtu.be/_Gyn22lXXtI?si=T-uGe86IehKw5z0d

    Those who understand Russian would see the difference with Odessite adaptation.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Greasy William

    , @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk

    About Odessa, it's part of the war of Russian and Ukrainian identity now.

    Are the Ukrainians going to have the cool culture, the old gangsters' songs, the cossacks, ?

    I think already, today, half of the world will say Tokarev was taking "traditional Ukrainian national songs"


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjZTB6JTB-Q

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @John Johnson

  160. @A123
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    Zelensky and Ukraine won’t do exactly whatever Washington tell them?
     
    Of course not, don't be silly:

    • The Veggie-In-Chief cannot formulate logical directives. All his team does is pass thru policy papers that originate from European power centers (e.g. Berlin, Paris, Davos).

    • Once Trump cuts off 80-90% of the money, Führer Zelensky will have no reason to listen. Although it would be entertaining if Trump's 2nd term administration sold arms to Putin.

    Remember, for some time it has been the European Empire driving Kiev aggression. Merkel single handedly killed Minsk. Scholz & BoJo made sure the Istanbul deal never came to fruition. Macron has been agitating for European offensive troops.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @John Johnson

    Once Trump cuts off 80-90% of the money

    Why would he do that when Trump is the one that delivered the Ukraine aid bill to Johnson?

    Putin is currently pulling Soviet era artillery out of storage:

    Magoo still has his lame duck session. How much of a difference could a pro-Putin president even make at this point? The ATACMS inventory is on the way and artillery contracts have already been signed. He would have to get congress to undo the previous bill. Good luck with that. Magoo will probably sign another small one before leaving.

    Although it would be entertaining if Trump’s 2nd term administration sold arms to Putin.

    Trump puts his image first and foremost.

    He still wants to be viewed as American and not some whore for a totalitarian regime.

    It was Trump that sold Ukrainians anti-tank weapons to the chagrin of Putin.

    You would need Vance in charge for any of your fantasies. Trump by his actions made it clear that he will support the military industrial complex when pressured. I’m not at all worried about a Trump presidency and Ukraine. His Mar-A-Whorego meeting assuaged any concerns. He will sign for those weapons if the swamp creatures come crawling. Johnson held out for over 8 months and then after one meeting with Trump he came back with the Ukraine aid bill. Boy that must have been a kick to the balls for Putin defenders.

  161. @songbird
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    I don't get the musical part of Korean wave.

    Can enjoy some of the films, and I appreciate that the girl groups are supposed to be eye candy, but the music is totally lost on me, or I just haven't really listened to it long enough hear anything good.

    Equally, I haven't really listened to older Japanese or HK pop, but I feel like it is better, or at least the older stuff. Maybe, not the stuff from today.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    Sometimes I watch the chick videos with the sound muted.

    The guy video I posted is the first time this band has used AI generated video graphics and AI generated music. I could only listen to it for a couple minutes. Cory Doctorow had a great blog post the other day on AI artwork.

    https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/20/ransom-note-force-field/#antilibraries

    AI art has no anti-cooption immune system

    • Thanks: songbird
  162. @Mr. Hack
    @Gerard1234

    I was asked to review an Indian film. I do enjoy Indian cuisine, does that make me a traitor to the Ukrainian cause?

    I do miss our culinary discussions with Karlin, who also had an appreciation for spice in his faire. It's too bad that he appears to have gone over to the far side. It's even worse that he hasn't pulled you over there with him too! :-)

    You don't like my choice of political cartoons?

    https://static.kyivpost.com/storage/2024/07/16/ff131ee944a81f6743f8fc19fe6bd62f.jpg?w=1280&q=90&f=webp
    Think of the yarns that Bashibuzuk could weave to accompany this colorful conspiracy theory one? :-)

    Replies: @Derer

    Who is that guy on the right? No resemblance, perhaps Adenauer but he is long dead.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Derer

    Why that's toady man Viktor Orban. You can tell by the little Hungarian flag on his coffee tray.

    I try not to judge people by their physical appearances, but in Orban's case I just can't help but to exhibit displeasure at looking at his thuggish appearance,

    More and more rumblings coming from Brussels to cede Hungary away from the EU. I say, go for it. Let Orban really hitch his star to the Kremlin and we'll see how his electorate responds.

    https://s3-eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/cartoons-s3/styles/product_detail_image/s3/Orb%C4%81ns-Orbaneklis.jpg?itok=9vih1I01
    Is that brown stuff really what I think that it is that Putler is placing on Orban's head? :-)

    Replies: @Negronicus, @Derer

  163. Shock poll: 78% Dems want someone other than Kamala as nominee…

  164. @AnonfromTN
    @Dmitry


    The Yiddish vocabulary sometimes has origin from Polish/Ukrainian/Russian.
     
    To the best of my knowledge, most Yiddish is corrupted German.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    It’s a German dialect like the Pennsylvania Dutch language, but some of the popular Yiddish words are from Polish/Ukrainian/Russian, like “nu”, “oy”, “balagan”.

    “Oy” often seems the most important word in the language.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Dmitry

    Also "shmata" (rags) and "bobba" (grandmother).

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  165. S1 says:

    Catwoman (Julie Newmar) yet lives. Hard to believe she’s going to be 91 next month. She had to have been about the best Catwoman they ever had.

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

    A clip (below) of Newmar from a 1962 episode of Route 66.

    Believe it or not, judging from the modern day interview below ‘more’, she doesn’t seem to be acting too much outside of her slightly eccentric natural character here. Today, amongst other things, she’s a multi-million dollar LA real estate mogul.

    Beauty, brains, and a good heart, a rare combination in anyone. 🙂

    [MORE]

  166. @AP
    @Mr. XYZ

    Judging by her schools she is probably smarter than Kamala.

    Replies: @Derer, @Mr. XYZ

    Didn’t Michelle benefit from huge affirmative action in getting into Harvard, though? Especially with her elder brother being a star basketball player?

  167. If you find that some of the characters in that “old Odessa” setting (supposed to look like 1946) have a phenotype similar to Vicky Nuland and Robert Kagan it’s no coincidence. 🙂

  168. @Bashibuzuk
    @Dmitry

    Around 50% of the blatnaya fenya Vor thieves’ cant is derived from Yiddish and Hebrew. The word Blat itself comes from Yiddish/German (Yiddish being a German dialect after all). Examples of Yiddish/Hebrew terminology in the Vor jargon are way to numerous to innumerate here, but it points out the self-evident fact that many people spoke Yiddish during the formative period of the Russian organized crime, which was late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The so called Russian mafia was at the time quite kosher.

    The most important locations for the genesis of the Blatnoy way of life were Odessa (called Odessa mama in some Blatnoy songs) and Rostov on Don (called Rostov papa in the Blatnoy songs). Funnily enough, one of the most famous Blatnoy songs, “On Deribasovskaya street there was an opening of a beer pub” (На Дерибасовской открылася (sic) пивная) was actually written in Rostov and in the early days referred to Rostov street names. It was later adapted by the Jewish mobsters of Odessa to their own locality and it became a Russian mafia classic chanson.

    Here Alex Shinder continues the Odessite Blatnoy Jewish tradition by singing this song as it should be sung with the Yiddish / Hebrew words, name and intonations, after finding refuge from the war in Paris, France:

    https://youtu.be/EngiT3GPmLY?si=I06oHAopK5_VMKlZ

    Enjoy koresha , l’chayim ! 🙂

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Dmitry

    The original version from Rostov on Don, dating to the NEP era in the late 1920ies.

    Those who understand Russian would see the difference with Odessite adaptation.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Bashibuzuk

    And the singer here is Strongilla Shabbetayevna Irtlach, a Karaite artist from Leningrad.

    https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%98%D1%80%D1%82%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%87,_%D0%A1%D1%82%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B3%D0%B8%D0%BB%D0%BB%D0%B0_%D0%A8%D0%B0%D0%B1%D0%B1%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%BD%D0%B0

    For those who are not familiar with the Karaites:

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

    So yeah, that’s (((Russian mafia))) mafia for you Goyim. And BTW, the Jewish Mob was also very strong in the US around the same period. Often these people came from Jewish families who migrated from the Tsarist Empire.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish-American_organized_crime

    Therefore, no surprise that after the fall of the USSR the Russian Mafiosi and the US banksters had no trouble at all finding a common language.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/russian-mafia-laundered-10bn-at-bank-of-new-york-p-1113796.html

    As early as 1999, 10 Bln USD have been laundered by the bank of New York alone. It was just 8 years after the fall of the USSR, that’s more than a billion (would be probably equivalent to 2 -3 Bln in today’s fiat) a year. Now you understand better how it all worked.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Greasy William

    , @Greasy William
    @Bashibuzuk

    woman on the left looks Jewish. She's a Russian?

    Replies: @Torna atrás, @Bashibuzuk

  169. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Bashibuzuk
    @Bashibuzuk

    The original version from Rostov on Don, dating to the NEP era in the late 1920ies.

    https://youtu.be/_Gyn22lXXtI?si=T-uGe86IehKw5z0d

    Those who understand Russian would see the difference with Odessite adaptation.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Greasy William

    And the singer here is Strongilla Shabbetayevna Irtlach, a Karaite artist from Leningrad.

    https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%98%D1%80%D1%82%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%87,_%D0%A1%D1%82%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B3%D0%B8%D0%BB%D0%BB%D0%B0_%D0%A8%D0%B0%D0%B1%D0%B1%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%BD%D0%B0

    For those who are not familiar with the Karaites:

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

    So yeah, that’s (((Russian mafia))) mafia for you Goyim. And BTW, the Jewish Mob was also very strong in the US around the same period. Often these people came from Jewish families who migrated from the Tsarist Empire.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish-American_organized_crime

    Therefore, no surprise that after the fall of the USSR the Russian Mafiosi and the US banksters had no trouble at all finding a common language.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/russian-mafia-laundered-10bn-at-bank-of-new-york-p-1113796.html

    As early as 1999, 10 Bln USD have been laundered by the bank of New York alone. It was just 8 years after the fall of the USSR, that’s more than a billion (would be probably equivalent to 2 -3 Bln in today’s fiat) a year. Now you understand better how it all worked.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Bashibuzuk

    Are they going with Bitcoin or Ethereum?

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    , @Greasy William
    @Bashibuzuk


    And BTW, the Jewish Mob was also very strong in the US around the same period
     
    My grandad had to work with the Jewish mob in 1920's Chicago. If you were engaged in any commerce you in the Chicago Jewish ghetto, you had to deal with them.

    I asked him about it and he said that it may have been different in Philadelphia or Detroit but that in Chicago it was definitely the Italian gangsters, led by Al Capone, who ran the place. The Jewish gangsters all either worked for Al or paid up to him.

    Once Prohibition ended, that ended Jewish organized crime in the United States until the "Red Mafia" emerged in the 1970's.

    For those who are not familiar with the Karaites
     
    Karaites aren't Jews, they don't consider themselves Jews and they were spared extermination during the Holocaust.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  170. @Dmitry
    @songbird


    may have been some process like, so you enjoy political
     
    You need to reset the app or delete the cache in the YouTube, log out the user.

    They still know things like your language and location, but this will give more general recommendations for people in your area.

    Then when you watch the first videos again, you need to be careful in the beginning, as this early videos will put you like on railway track for all the recommendations that will follow a kind of path from those.

    Try to watch some higher quality videos in the beginning. Hopefully, you will lose the JBP recommendations. But anyway, tell us what happens.

    -

    Their recommends on the app uses two neural networks. They have a candidate generation network, its output funnels to a ranking network.

    Outside of location, individualized input for both the networks are things like your viewing behavior, which videos you watch, how long you watch on the outputs, your searches and then things you add like age and gender.

    For the ranking network, which inputs hundreds of videos and outputs only dozens, it is serving the videos by what is their expected probability of watchtime.


    from that content and to the more moderate, individuality-promoting Jordan B. Peterson.

     

    After their ReLU layers, their candidate generation network has a layer of the outputs from the most similar users to you, which is another kind of collaborative filtering.

    So, for the original candidate pool of videos, you can partly blame what other users, which they believe are similar to you, are watching. Although for the output from the ranking network, it's your own fault.

    -

    One of the interesting things about YouTube is how much improvement they get from just including users' search history.

    For example, the improvement from including search history is larger than the improvement from introducing nonlinearity to the model.

    And this is "free improvement", while if you're adding more ReLU layers are relatively "expensive" improvements in this sense you're increasing latency, or the "inference time" in the model.

    https://i.imgur.com/6SSBDcd.jpeg


    So, we can see for YouTube to get more information from the users gets you the "cheap" improvement, while adding more layers is "expensive" improvement from both sides as it increases latency from inference time.


    Google seems very political on the surface. They had a Google doodle one day that celebrated the guy who became the first tranny in Weimar and died of organ rejection.

     

    I watched some interviews with the owners of Google. They are kind of centrist, liberals. Their main interest is automation. They have some kind of religious beliefs about increasing knowledge and enlightenment, which could seem political though.

    -


    But, as they begin to employ younger workers, like all companies, it's possible some aspects could move increasingly politically left, as the Generation Z a lot more left than the previous generation of employees. Even when the company owners can be more centrist, the low level employees also add some pressure in the culture.*

    Basically, the corporate world isn't an island separated from wider generational trends. Most of the company owners are relatively conservative compared to the younger generation of the population in the West.

    This is one of the things the older investors on the Ben and Marc show are sounding a little scared about. They know a lot of their employees are going to be angry with them, now they are supporting Trump.


    -

    * In Google, there were firing some of them recently, when some low level workers were protesting about Israel. Google is a popular employer so they can fire you easily. .

    Replies: @songbird, @Coconuts

    Hopefully, you will lose the JBP recommendations. But anyway, tell us what happens.

    This was a long time ago. Perhaps, about six years ago or longer. (Cannot put an exact date on it.). But I have long since turned off autoplay.

    [MORE]

    I don’t think I see JBP anymore in the recommendations.

    For a while, I kept getting fed some disgusting videos. Some were meant to be comical, but just activated my sense of disgust, with their thumbnail. Others were nature-related (bears with tapeworms.). I half-joked and half-wondered, if they were trying to punish me for using adblocker. But they disappeared eventually, after I kept hitting “not interested.”
    _______
    Another thing that gave people an idea of bias were all the bans. For example , Stefan Molyneux had a pretty big channel and he was cancelled and never made any sort of recovery. Stefan was an über-libertarian and never argued for any form of violence, even remotely. Personally, I was not a fan of his logorrhea, but I think the ban was unfair.
    _______
    Believe YouTube is streamed more on TVs now more than Netflix? But it has lost some of its old charms, like video responses, and there always seems the threat on the horizon to disable adblocker.
    _______

    Like Songbird, one of my oldest “online friends”, was last thread writing “agree” on some hostile comments about myself.

    Meant to be agreeing with the idea that Western Europe is already worse off for the middle class, maybe a bit also with GR’s dark stereotypes of EEs, being locked into perceiving the West as high status, due to the Cold War, and despite its most recent changes for the worse.

  171. @Bashibuzuk
    @songbird


    There are times when I am inclined to almost agree with the scientologists that most of these psychologist people are popped-up psychopaths who want to drug people because they themselves are crazy druggies.
     
    Asked a shrink lady once whether they had a functional theory of Consciousness. She replied no. Asked how can they work with the problems of human Consciousness if they don’t have a clear understanding of what exactly that is. Got an interested look in response… 🙂

    Replies: @Mikel, @Emil Nikola Richard

    So after I posted that comment @ songbird I had this after thought. Do you think either Sapolksy or Peterson have a sufficiently complex theory of rat-mind that they have ever noticed individual laboratory rats? Could either of them distinguish the extremely erudite from totally deranged?

  172. @Bashibuzuk
    @Bashibuzuk

    And the singer here is Strongilla Shabbetayevna Irtlach, a Karaite artist from Leningrad.

    https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%98%D1%80%D1%82%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%87,_%D0%A1%D1%82%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B3%D0%B8%D0%BB%D0%BB%D0%B0_%D0%A8%D0%B0%D0%B1%D0%B1%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%BD%D0%B0

    For those who are not familiar with the Karaites:

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

    So yeah, that’s (((Russian mafia))) mafia for you Goyim. And BTW, the Jewish Mob was also very strong in the US around the same period. Often these people came from Jewish families who migrated from the Tsarist Empire.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish-American_organized_crime

    Therefore, no surprise that after the fall of the USSR the Russian Mafiosi and the US banksters had no trouble at all finding a common language.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/russian-mafia-laundered-10bn-at-bank-of-new-york-p-1113796.html

    As early as 1999, 10 Bln USD have been laundered by the bank of New York alone. It was just 8 years after the fall of the USSR, that’s more than a billion (would be probably equivalent to 2 -3 Bln in today’s fiat) a year. Now you understand better how it all worked.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Greasy William

    Are they going with Bitcoin or Ethereum?

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Just in:

    https://cryptoslate.com/russian-lawmakers-pass-bill-legalizing-bitcoin-mining-crypto-payments-for-international-trade/


    Russia is also considering the official legalization of stablecoins for international transactions to simplify cross-border payments for Russian companies amid ongoing sanctions. The central band (sic) is actively discussing proposals to permit the use of these crypto-assets, which are pegged to stable currencies or assets like the US dollar or gold, making them less volatile than other cryptocurrencies.
     
    Notice that the author of this article had a Freudian slip of sorts when writing about the RF central bank (in bold above).
  173. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Bashibuzuk

    Are they going with Bitcoin or Ethereum?

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    Just in:

    https://cryptoslate.com/russian-lawmakers-pass-bill-legalizing-bitcoin-mining-crypto-payments-for-international-trade/

    Russia is also considering the official legalization of stablecoins for international transactions to simplify cross-border payments for Russian companies amid ongoing sanctions. The central band (sic) is actively discussing proposals to permit the use of these crypto-assets, which are pegged to stable currencies or assets like the US dollar or gold, making them less volatile than other cryptocurrencies.

    Notice that the author of this article had a Freudian slip of sorts when writing about the RF central bank (in bold above).

  174. @Dmitry
    @AnonfromTN

    It's a German dialect like the Pennsylvania Dutch language, but some of the popular Yiddish words are from Polish/Ukrainian/Russian, like "nu", "oy", "balagan".

    "Oy" often seems the most important word in the language.

    Replies: @AP

    Also “shmata” (rags) and “bobba” (grandmother).

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @AP

    For shmata it’s the other way around:


    почему украинский словарь говорит только о рванине и обрывках?
    Да потому, что у древнееврейского "шамат" (שמט) есть и другие значения: отделял, отрезал,
    разъединял, прерывал соединение. Именно от этих значений и были образованы украинские шмат,
    шматок, шматувати (кусок, часть).

    Шмат, шматок (буквально) – отрезок, обрывок, обломок, часть, кусок.

    Собственно, значение "делать рыхлым, слабым, мягким" естественным образом происходит от значения
    "разъединял, прерывал соединение" – то есть разреживал, убирал плотность и жёсткость. Древнееврейское
    "шамат" (שמט) образовано и получило свои значения от древнееврейского же "шамА" (שמה – разрушение, разруха,
    разорение, опустошение, уничтожение; страх, ужас).

    Однокоренные слова (корень Ш-М):
    древнееврейский – "шамА" (שמה – разрушение, разруха, разорение,
    опустошение, уничтожение; страх, ужас),
    "шмама" (שממה – разрушение, разорение, крушение, уничтожение, руина;
    отходы, потери, отбросы),
    "шамам" (שמם – быть опустошенным; быть потрясённым),
    "шимамон" (שממון – страх, ужас)
    русский – шмат (кусок), шмотки, шмон (обыск)
    украинский – шмат, шматок, шматувати, пошматований
    белорусский – шматкі (клочья)

     

    https://moya-lepta.livejournal.com/170707.html

    Don’t think the Algérois dialectal chmetah = rascal (which is absent from both Arabic and Berber) derives from Ukrainian, but it might certainly come from Hebrew given that Mizrahi and Sefardi Jews represented a substantial part of Algiers city population before the French conquest living in the same Casbah as their Muslim neighbours.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ

  175. A lot of Americans make fun of Europeans for not having air conditioners.

    Can’t speak for all climatic zones, but in the NE, I perceive a pathology around them.

    IMO, you really only need them for a few days. But people are using them a lot of the time in summer. Forget about energy, or the Earth, I just think it creates an unhealthy indoor environment.

    Better to have the windows open, and be circulating air with the outdoors. Greater microorganism diversity. Probably a bit less mold.

    Maybe, people are more afraid to leave their windows open at night now?

    • Replies: @A123
    @songbird


    A lot of Americans make fun of Europeans for not having air conditioners.

    Can’t speak for all climatic zones, but in the NE, I perceive a pathology around them.
     

    The American south is latitude ~30°. Anyone who thinks that air conditioning is not necessary down here needs to be chained to a light post during high summer on a black asphalt surface in Houston. 100F and 90% humidity. They will be begging for mercy in far less than an hour.

    The American NE is latitude ~50°. The warming Gulf Stream is cooling after the crossing, so that number does not tell all. I could live in the UK (similar to state of Washington coast) without air conditioning. The American NE would be more site specific, but is potentially practical.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @songbird

    , @Mikhail
    @songbird

    The problem with window ACs is that once you put one in, an existing cross breeze with another window is lost, making it hotter and necessitating AC use when it otherwise wouldn't be needed.

    The last couple of years, I've been able to comfortably wait until the second half of June before putting them in.

    Replies: @QCIC

  176. Bibi Netanyahu is one of the biggest cringelords ever, even judging him against the standard of other hasbarists.

    First of all, why is this schmuck even in the US to give a speech? Doesn’t he have a war to fight? We still have hostages to recover and some level of security needs to be returned to the north. Maybe deal with that shit before you go take a trip to DC to get slobbered over by congressional Republicans.

    But what I’m more concerned with is the content of his speech. He described the anti Israel protesters as “useful idiots” for Iran because Iran “hangs gays” and “kills women for not covering their hair”.

    And where do you even start with this kinda bullshit? Firstly, I’m pretty certain that anti Israel protesters know that Iran does bad things. So because Iran does bad things… people shouldn’t protest Israel? How does that follow? Is Bibi trying to claim that since Iran is bad that it automatically means that Israel is good? Saudi Arabia is even worse for women’s rights than Iran is and yet Israel has no problem working with them. Was the Soviet Union good, since Hitler regarded it as his main enemy? Gimme a fucking break.

    Secondly, is that why the state of Israel was created, so that there could be an outpost of “Western values” in the heart of the Arab Islamic world? Because if that was the goal, I’m not sure it was a laudable one.

    Thirdly, why doesn’t Bibi go ask his own voters how they feel about gays and feminism? The people in Israel who believe in gay and women’s rights all hate Netanyahu with a passion. Bibi’s coalition is made up of religious nationalists, ultra orthodox and backward Mizrahim. All of those subcultures and patriarchal and homophobic.

    One thing I will say for Bibi, his heart is at least in the right place at least. The real villains are the cowards and traitors who run the IDF, the Mossad, the media and the courts. But that doesn’t change the fact that Bibi basically sucks and needs to go.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Greasy William

    He is protected by the big guy in charge.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Baphomet_by_%C3%89liphas_L%C3%A9vi.jpg/800px-Baphomet_by_%C3%89liphas_L%C3%A9vi.jpg

    Replies: @A123, @Bashibuzuk

    , @A123
    @Greasy William

    The pro-genocide Hamas agitators are despicable. Riots, vandalism, etc. (1)


    Anti-Israel protesters were filmed dragging and assaulting a DC cop, and setting fire to an American flag in protest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech.
    ...
    The Vice President can't be bothered to show up at the nation's capital and the House chamber and to demonstrate the respect and courtesy that we thought was a given, but apparently not," Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said earlier.

    Cornyn added, "I think it's absolutely disgraceful that the most senior members of the Democratic Party have chosen to give the Heisman to one of our closest allies in the Middle East."

    Elon Musk is even attending.
     
    Burning the flag [MORE] and shouting "Death to America" was a huge gift to Netanyahu. Everyone sees him as the adult in the room compared to the nutters outside. This will help Trump-Vance 2024 with moderates and independents in swing states.

    Kamala's husband is Jewish. She cannot possibly be acceptable to the genocide wing of the DNC. By not appearing, she is encouraging more American Jews to join MAGA.

    There are two big winners from Netanyahu's successful speech... Americans and indigenous Palestinian Jews.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.zerohedge.com/political/netanyahu-faces-day-rage-pro-palestinian-protests-dc-many-willing-get-arrested-time



    https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1816202931441438955?s=4
  177. @Greasy William
    Bibi Netanyahu is one of the biggest cringelords ever, even judging him against the standard of other hasbarists.

    First of all, why is this schmuck even in the US to give a speech? Doesn't he have a war to fight? We still have hostages to recover and some level of security needs to be returned to the north. Maybe deal with that shit before you go take a trip to DC to get slobbered over by congressional Republicans.

    But what I'm more concerned with is the content of his speech. He described the anti Israel protesters as "useful idiots" for Iran because Iran "hangs gays" and "kills women for not covering their hair".

    And where do you even start with this kinda bullshit? Firstly, I'm pretty certain that anti Israel protesters know that Iran does bad things. So because Iran does bad things... people shouldn't protest Israel? How does that follow? Is Bibi trying to claim that since Iran is bad that it automatically means that Israel is good? Saudi Arabia is even worse for women's rights than Iran is and yet Israel has no problem working with them. Was the Soviet Union good, since Hitler regarded it as his main enemy? Gimme a fucking break.

    Secondly, is that why the state of Israel was created, so that there could be an outpost of "Western values" in the heart of the Arab Islamic world? Because if that was the goal, I'm not sure it was a laudable one.

    Thirdly, why doesn't Bibi go ask his own voters how they feel about gays and feminism? The people in Israel who believe in gay and women's rights all hate Netanyahu with a passion. Bibi's coalition is made up of religious nationalists, ultra orthodox and backward Mizrahim. All of those subcultures and patriarchal and homophobic.

    ---

    One thing I will say for Bibi, his heart is at least in the right place at least. The real villains are the cowards and traitors who run the IDF, the Mossad, the media and the courts. But that doesn't change the fact that Bibi basically sucks and needs to go.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @A123

    He is protected by the big guy in charge.

    • Agree: Bashibuzuk, AnonfromTN
    • Replies: @A123
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    He is protected by the big guy in charge.
     
    Why did you post a flattering artist's representation of Kamala Harris?

    She is not in charge. And, is far less aesthetic to the eye. Willie Brown has been there (shudder).

    PEACE 😇
    , @Bashibuzuk
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    https://youtu.be/J561hIqQ7CA?si=rZhXAaU-lIylK6B1

    https://cris.haifa.ac.il/en/persons/gad-barnea

  178. A123 says: • Website
    @Greasy William
    Bibi Netanyahu is one of the biggest cringelords ever, even judging him against the standard of other hasbarists.

    First of all, why is this schmuck even in the US to give a speech? Doesn't he have a war to fight? We still have hostages to recover and some level of security needs to be returned to the north. Maybe deal with that shit before you go take a trip to DC to get slobbered over by congressional Republicans.

    But what I'm more concerned with is the content of his speech. He described the anti Israel protesters as "useful idiots" for Iran because Iran "hangs gays" and "kills women for not covering their hair".

    And where do you even start with this kinda bullshit? Firstly, I'm pretty certain that anti Israel protesters know that Iran does bad things. So because Iran does bad things... people shouldn't protest Israel? How does that follow? Is Bibi trying to claim that since Iran is bad that it automatically means that Israel is good? Saudi Arabia is even worse for women's rights than Iran is and yet Israel has no problem working with them. Was the Soviet Union good, since Hitler regarded it as his main enemy? Gimme a fucking break.

    Secondly, is that why the state of Israel was created, so that there could be an outpost of "Western values" in the heart of the Arab Islamic world? Because if that was the goal, I'm not sure it was a laudable one.

    Thirdly, why doesn't Bibi go ask his own voters how they feel about gays and feminism? The people in Israel who believe in gay and women's rights all hate Netanyahu with a passion. Bibi's coalition is made up of religious nationalists, ultra orthodox and backward Mizrahim. All of those subcultures and patriarchal and homophobic.

    ---

    One thing I will say for Bibi, his heart is at least in the right place at least. The real villains are the cowards and traitors who run the IDF, the Mossad, the media and the courts. But that doesn't change the fact that Bibi basically sucks and needs to go.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @A123

    The pro-genocide Hamas agitators are despicable. Riots, vandalism, etc. (1)

    Anti-Israel protesters were filmed dragging and assaulting a DC cop, and setting fire to an American flag in protest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech.

    The Vice President can’t be bothered to show up at the nation’s capital and the House chamber and to demonstrate the respect and courtesy that we thought was a given, but apparently not,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said earlier.

    Cornyn added, “I think it’s absolutely disgraceful that the most senior members of the Democratic Party have chosen to give the Heisman to one of our closest allies in the Middle East.”

    Elon Musk is even attending.

    Burning the flag [MORE] and shouting “Death to America” was a huge gift to Netanyahu. Everyone sees him as the adult in the room compared to the nutters outside. This will help Trump-Vance 2024 with moderates and independents in swing states.

    Kamala’s husband is Jewish. She cannot possibly be acceptable to the genocide wing of the DNC. By not appearing, she is encouraging more American Jews to join MAGA.

    There are two big winners from Netanyahu’s successful speech… Americans and indigenous Palestinian Jews.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.zerohedge.com/political/netanyahu-faces-day-rage-pro-palestinian-protests-dc-many-willing-get-arrested-time

    [MORE]

  179. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Greasy William

    He is protected by the big guy in charge.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Baphomet_by_%C3%89liphas_L%C3%A9vi.jpg/800px-Baphomet_by_%C3%89liphas_L%C3%A9vi.jpg

    Replies: @A123, @Bashibuzuk

    He is protected by the big guy in charge.

    Why did you post a flattering artist’s representation of Kamala Harris?

    She is not in charge. And, is far less aesthetic to the eye. Willie Brown has been there (shudder).

    PEACE 😇

  180. A123 says: • Website
    @songbird
    A lot of Americans make fun of Europeans for not having air conditioners.

    Can't speak for all climatic zones, but in the NE, I perceive a pathology around them.

    IMO, you really only need them for a few days. But people are using them a lot of the time in summer. Forget about energy, or the Earth, I just think it creates an unhealthy indoor environment.

    Better to have the windows open, and be circulating air with the outdoors. Greater microorganism diversity. Probably a bit less mold.

    Maybe, people are more afraid to leave their windows open at night now?

    Replies: @A123, @Mikhail

    A lot of Americans make fun of Europeans for not having air conditioners.

    Can’t speak for all climatic zones, but in the NE, I perceive a pathology around them.

    The American south is latitude ~30°. Anyone who thinks that air conditioning is not necessary down here needs to be chained to a light post during high summer on a black asphalt surface in Houston. 100F and 90% humidity. They will be begging for mercy in far less than an hour.

    The American NE is latitude ~50°. The warming Gulf Stream is cooling after the crossing, so that number does not tell all. I could live in the UK (similar to state of Washington coast) without air conditioning. The American NE would be more site specific, but is potentially practical.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @songbird
    @A123


    The American NE is latitude ~50°.
     
    Not yet, but after Operation Rake.

    Still probably too far north for me on this side of the Atlantic. But I think I would probably enjoy as far as Prince Edward Island, maybe southern Newfoundland.
  181. @LondonBob
    @Mikhail

    Interesting analysis of an interview with Richard Grenell, by Gilbert Doctorow, of what a peace deal could look lie.

    https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2024/07/22/what-a-ukraine-peace-treaty-brokered-by-trump-might-look-like/

    Replies: @A123, @Mikhail

    I don’t see Russia going back on their declaration regarding Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhe and Kherson. Bookmark this matter for future reference. As for what I envisage for the present day:

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-255/#comment-6677092

    A gentle Jewish socialist sent me this reply:

    I agree that the war there has to stop, and the sooner the better.
    BUT who’s going to pay for the reparations caused by it?
    Did Ukraine invade Russia? No, Russia invaded Ukraine.
    If sanctions are to be halted, provision for reparations must be agreed to.
    Do you disagree?

    My response:

    Should Israel pay for Gaza? Russia did everything within reason to avoid the NATO proxy war, with the Collective West doing the opposite. Go back to Minsk Accords and Istanbul talks. Russia will assist a hypothetically different Ukraine which isn’t run by anti-Russian extremists, along the lines of how the West (US specifically) helped rebuild West Germany and Japan after WW II.

  182. @A123
    @songbird


    A lot of Americans make fun of Europeans for not having air conditioners.

    Can’t speak for all climatic zones, but in the NE, I perceive a pathology around them.
     

    The American south is latitude ~30°. Anyone who thinks that air conditioning is not necessary down here needs to be chained to a light post during high summer on a black asphalt surface in Houston. 100F and 90% humidity. They will be begging for mercy in far less than an hour.

    The American NE is latitude ~50°. The warming Gulf Stream is cooling after the crossing, so that number does not tell all. I could live in the UK (similar to state of Washington coast) without air conditioning. The American NE would be more site specific, but is potentially practical.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @songbird

    The American NE is latitude ~50°.

    Not yet, but after Operation Rake.

    Still probably too far north for me on this side of the Atlantic. But I think I would probably enjoy as far as Prince Edward Island, maybe southern Newfoundland.

    • LOL: A123
  183. @songbird
    A lot of Americans make fun of Europeans for not having air conditioners.

    Can't speak for all climatic zones, but in the NE, I perceive a pathology around them.

    IMO, you really only need them for a few days. But people are using them a lot of the time in summer. Forget about energy, or the Earth, I just think it creates an unhealthy indoor environment.

    Better to have the windows open, and be circulating air with the outdoors. Greater microorganism diversity. Probably a bit less mold.

    Maybe, people are more afraid to leave their windows open at night now?

    Replies: @A123, @Mikhail

    The problem with window ACs is that once you put one in, an existing cross breeze with another window is lost, making it hotter and necessitating AC use when it otherwise wouldn’t be needed.

    The last couple of years, I’ve been able to comfortably wait until the second half of June before putting them in.

    • Agree: songbird
    • Disagree: QCIC
    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Mikhail

    A lot of NE homes have poor cross-ventilation. The window AC cools things down and also reduces humidity a bit. The internal portable AC units are pretty good for cooling down a single room at night.

  184. Bashibuzuk says:
    @AP
    @Dmitry

    Also "shmata" (rags) and "bobba" (grandmother).

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    For shmata it’s the other way around:

    почему украинский словарь говорит только о рванине и обрывках?
    Да потому, что у древнееврейского “шамат” (שמט) есть и другие значения: отделял, отрезал,
    разъединял, прерывал соединение. Именно от этих значений и были образованы украинские шмат,
    шматок, шматувати (кусок, часть).

    Шмат, шматок (буквально) – отрезок, обрывок, обломок, часть, кусок.

    Собственно, значение “делать рыхлым, слабым, мягким” естественным образом происходит от значения
    “разъединял, прерывал соединение” – то есть разреживал, убирал плотность и жёсткость. Древнееврейское
    “шамат” (שמט) образовано и получило свои значения от древнееврейского же “шамА” (שמה – разрушение, разруха,
    разорение, опустошение, уничтожение; страх, ужас).

    Однокоренные слова (корень Ш-М):
    древнееврейский – “шамА” (שמה – разрушение, разруха, разорение,
    опустошение, уничтожение; страх, ужас),
    “шмама” (שממה – разрушение, разорение, крушение, уничтожение, руина;
    отходы, потери, отбросы),
    “шамам” (שמם – быть опустошенным; быть потрясённым),
    “шимамон” (שממון – страх, ужас)
    русский – шмат (кусок), шмотки, шмон (обыск)
    украинский – шмат, шматок, шматувати, пошматований
    белорусский – шматкі (клочья)

    https://moya-lepta.livejournal.com/170707.html

    Don’t think the Algérois dialectal chmetah = rascal (which is absent from both Arabic and Berber) derives from Ukrainian, but it might certainly come from Hebrew given that Mizrahi and Sefardi Jews represented a substantial part of Algiers city population before the French conquest living in the same Casbah as their Muslim neighbours.

    • Thanks: AP
    • Replies: @Mr. XYZ
    @Bashibuzuk

    Makes one wonder whether both Algerians and Ukrainians adopted shmata from the Jews.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  185. Night of Long Knives in Ukraine Politically & Literally as Maidan Regime Begins Turning on Itself, Russia & Iran to Strengthen Partnership, Kiev Picks Fight with Hungary & Slovakia It Will Regret
    https://substack.com/home/post/p-146966276

  186. Nazis kill Nazis in Ukraine.

    Ukrainian Neonazi group “National-Socialism/White Power»” took responsibility for the murder of another Ukrainian Nazi Farion.

    This explains many strange details of this murder.

    One, while in Ukraine “recruiters” drag men from stores, churches, buses, and their own cars, so that men in Ukraine either do not venture outside or move in short spurts looking around, a young man of clearly draft age was sitting and waiting for Farion for two weeks in a very noticeable outfit (https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2024/07/21/7466767/) and no “recruiter” ever approached him.

    Two, in the middle of the heat wave the murderer was wearing shirt with long sleeves all that time.

    Three, she was an old woman and she was shot in the head from very close quarters.

    Simple explanations.

    One. The fact that “recruiters” did not try to approach him suggests the complicity of powers-that-be. In Ukraine the most favored groups are Nazis, the rest cannon count on authorities’ cooperation.

    Two. Long sleeves in hot weather suggest that he was hiding tattoos on his arms. The most tattooed people in Ukraine are ideological Nazis. In fact, when the RF army took Mariupol, many Azov Nazis tried to escape by dressing in civilian clothes and pretending that they are non-combatants. Russians demanded that men take their shirts off. Those that had swasticas tattooed on their arms, chest, back, and/or neck were identified as Azov fighters.

    Three. A normal person would not shoot an old woman in the head being face-to-face with her, no matter how obnoxious she is. Humans simply cannot do that. Nazis can.

    • Replies: @Mikhail
    @AnonfromTN

    Related -

    https://www.rt.com/russia/601596-irina-farion-promoted-hatred-ukraine/

    , @Gerard1234
    @AnonfromTN

    Looks like a Uniate follower who planted the car bomb yesterday in Moscow.....


    A normal person would not shoot an old woman in the head being face-to-face with her,
     
    As I have probably said before, when the drug addict scumbag came to Presidency in 2019 - there was a prisoner exchange with Russia. We gave them 34 healthy and strong men aged from 21 - 50, with the 1 pensioner being a Crimean Tatar 'activist" who entered Crimea from Kherson with 10Kg of TNT. Most of the men were from their Navy and captured after doing some idiotic stunt trying to illegally pass under the Crimean bridge.

    In return we got 5 or 6 women ( all non militants), and 6 pensioners ( again non-militants), plus the journalist Kirill Vyshinsky arrested by the terror state, as part of the group of 35.

    Highly indicative of alot of things.
    , @AP
    @AnonfromTN


    One, while in Ukraine “recruiters” drag men from stores, churches, buses, and their own cars, so that men in Ukraine either do not venture outside or move in short spurts looking around
     
    Again proving your incredible gullibility.

    Kiev 2024:

    More women than men, but plenty of men walking around:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMq8mG_d1wI

    Lviv 2024:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOJuKE2O32Y

    Also plenty of men wandering around.

    Odessa 2024, same:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIWRjWjNeJE

    Where are those men scurrying in short spurts?

    So far, none of my male relatives have been mobilized and none are hiding. Nor are any of them Nazis.

    You just blindly believe whatever nonsense the Russian websites write about Ukraine.

    Replies: @QCIC, @AnonfromTN, @Gerard1234

  187. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Greasy William

    He is protected by the big guy in charge.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Baphomet_by_%C3%89liphas_L%C3%A9vi.jpg/800px-Baphomet_by_%C3%89liphas_L%C3%A9vi.jpg

    Replies: @A123, @Bashibuzuk

  188. Anger management

    [MORE]

    Click on this baby and improve your youtube profile statistics! : )

  189. @AnonfromTN
    Nazis kill Nazis in Ukraine.

    Ukrainian Neonazi group “National-Socialism/White Power»” took responsibility for the murder of another Ukrainian Nazi Farion.

    This explains many strange details of this murder.

    One, while in Ukraine “recruiters” drag men from stores, churches, buses, and their own cars, so that men in Ukraine either do not venture outside or move in short spurts looking around, a young man of clearly draft age was sitting and waiting for Farion for two weeks in a very noticeable outfit (https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2024/07/21/7466767/) and no “recruiter” ever approached him.

    Two, in the middle of the heat wave the murderer was wearing shirt with long sleeves all that time.

    Three, she was an old woman and she was shot in the head from very close quarters.

    Simple explanations.

    One. The fact that “recruiters” did not try to approach him suggests the complicity of powers-that-be. In Ukraine the most favored groups are Nazis, the rest cannon count on authorities’ cooperation.

    Two. Long sleeves in hot weather suggest that he was hiding tattoos on his arms. The most tattooed people in Ukraine are ideological Nazis. In fact, when the RF army took Mariupol, many Azov Nazis tried to escape by dressing in civilian clothes and pretending that they are non-combatants. Russians demanded that men take their shirts off. Those that had swasticas tattooed on their arms, chest, back, and/or neck were identified as Azov fighters.

    Three. A normal person would not shoot an old woman in the head being face-to-face with her, no matter how obnoxious she is. Humans simply cannot do that. Nazis can.

    Replies: @Mikhail, @Gerard1234, @AP

  190. • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Mikhail


    How dare those arrogant Ukrainians defend their borders from invaders, their skies from Russian missiles aimed at their cities?
     
    https://images.indianexpress.com/2022/03/FotoJet-2022-03-02T214200.701.jpg
    Arrogant Ukrainians getting ready to greet their Russian liberators, in case they ever break through (highly unlikely). Russia's Kharkiv campaign has fizzled out, a city only 30 miles from the border that has been a prize sot by the Russian military for over 2 years now.

    Replies: @Mikhail

  191. @A123
    @LondonBob


    Interesting analysis of an interview with Richard Grenell, by Gilbert Doctorow, of what a peace deal could look lie.
     
    Not bad.

    IMHO the current line is more likely than all of 2 oblasts:

    • A proper "land bridge" requires parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.
    • Dnieper access for fresh water is 100% non-negotiable necessity.
    • Giving up ZNPP seems exceedingly foolish.

    Sacrificing lightly or uninhabited parts of Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts would be undesirable for Russia. However, these are not strategic necessities like the parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts associated with the land bridge.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @LondonBob

    I see it more as them setting out the best possible deal the US could get, trying to anchor the negotiations with that as a starting point, don’t see the Kremlin agreeing, but they probably don’t either.

  192. @Dmitry
    @songbird


    may have been some process like, so you enjoy political
     
    You need to reset the app or delete the cache in the YouTube, log out the user.

    They still know things like your language and location, but this will give more general recommendations for people in your area.

    Then when you watch the first videos again, you need to be careful in the beginning, as this early videos will put you like on railway track for all the recommendations that will follow a kind of path from those.

    Try to watch some higher quality videos in the beginning. Hopefully, you will lose the JBP recommendations. But anyway, tell us what happens.

    -

    Their recommends on the app uses two neural networks. They have a candidate generation network, its output funnels to a ranking network.

    Outside of location, individualized input for both the networks are things like your viewing behavior, which videos you watch, how long you watch on the outputs, your searches and then things you add like age and gender.

    For the ranking network, which inputs hundreds of videos and outputs only dozens, it is serving the videos by what is their expected probability of watchtime.


    from that content and to the more moderate, individuality-promoting Jordan B. Peterson.

     

    After their ReLU layers, their candidate generation network has a layer of the outputs from the most similar users to you, which is another kind of collaborative filtering.

    So, for the original candidate pool of videos, you can partly blame what other users, which they believe are similar to you, are watching. Although for the output from the ranking network, it's your own fault.

    -

    One of the interesting things about YouTube is how much improvement they get from just including users' search history.

    For example, the improvement from including search history is larger than the improvement from introducing nonlinearity to the model.

    And this is "free improvement", while if you're adding more ReLU layers are relatively "expensive" improvements in this sense you're increasing latency, or the "inference time" in the model.

    https://i.imgur.com/6SSBDcd.jpeg


    So, we can see for YouTube to get more information from the users gets you the "cheap" improvement, while adding more layers is "expensive" improvement from both sides as it increases latency from inference time.


    Google seems very political on the surface. They had a Google doodle one day that celebrated the guy who became the first tranny in Weimar and died of organ rejection.

     

    I watched some interviews with the owners of Google. They are kind of centrist, liberals. Their main interest is automation. They have some kind of religious beliefs about increasing knowledge and enlightenment, which could seem political though.

    -


    But, as they begin to employ younger workers, like all companies, it's possible some aspects could move increasingly politically left, as the Generation Z a lot more left than the previous generation of employees. Even when the company owners can be more centrist, the low level employees also add some pressure in the culture.*

    Basically, the corporate world isn't an island separated from wider generational trends. Most of the company owners are relatively conservative compared to the younger generation of the population in the West.

    This is one of the things the older investors on the Ben and Marc show are sounding a little scared about. They know a lot of their employees are going to be angry with them, now they are supporting Trump.


    -

    * In Google, there were firing some of them recently, when some low level workers were protesting about Israel. Google is a popular employer so they can fire you easily. .

    Replies: @songbird, @Coconuts

    Basically, the corporate world isn’t an island separated from wider generational trends.

    It is not separate from the power of the government either.

    I remember the kind of thing Songbird was talking about, there was a particular period when watching a video from D/R content creators would produce an autoplay list predictably filled with many JBP video suggestions, it became a kind of meme. Before that the algorithm had seemed to operate more freely.

    The belief that it was being manipulated may be related to the prominence that counter-extremism and anti-radicalism initiatives run by the security services had at the same time. In Britain the public facing element of this was the Prevent program and semi-governmental NGOs like Hope not Hate. Under the Prevent guidelines if you worked in education, the civil service or local government you had a duty to notify Prevent of any signs of possible radicialisation or extremism among young people or service users, in case it developed into terrorism. I remember that observing someone viewing something like a Murdoch Murdoch video with swastikas in public could have been enough for a Prevent referral.

    There are also connections between certain spheres of academic study and the official counter-extremism sphere.

    Given things like this, it doesn’t seem impossible that some suggestions may have been made to Google about corporate social responsibility and limiting the spread of extremist content. Perhaps JBP autoplay lists were a part of that.

    Since then a range of D/R channels have been progressively banned, at the same time some of the issues have become more mainstream, with more mainstream creators making that type of content, so it is harder to see them as extremist.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Coconuts


    Given things like this, it doesn’t seem impossible that some suggestions may have been made to Google about corporate social responsibility and limiting the spread of extremist content.
     
    They have lawyers all over the place telling them bullshit that is recommended for lawsuit inoculation. You ever read your employment contract from start to finish? If you are employed to write code for google and you invent a cure for cancer on your vacation in Bali, google's lawyers think you have signed an agreement that they own all intellectual property rights (one of the the stupidest things ever thought of by a man and only a lawyer could conceive of such an idea) to your cancer cure.

    Youtube recommends to me Jordan Peterson and Elon Musk just yesterday. I am not saying this to you. I don't know you. This is intended for everybody else.

    You goddam nerds can do better than this.
    , @Dmitry
    @Coconuts


    D/R content creators would produce an autoplay list predictably filled with many JBP video ss,
     
    They are often doing experiments with different results. For example if they use are changing the vector similarity measures for the embedding space, you can have results where popular videos are measured as becoming measured as more or less similar to each other.

    When you are trying to watch more content from the Drs you are just getting recommendations from viral content. This is more like Instagram or TikTok where the recommendations are usually going to be more viral content.


    Perhaps JBP autoplay lists were a part of that.
     
    Not really, as the machine learning is not working like that in a manual way. If both you and Songbird are recommended the same JBP podcast, it's probably because it's getting high rankings.

    been progressively banned, at the same time some of the issues
     
    It's a business, which is not just requiring just watch time (which can be seen like increasing the size of the billboard), but watch time on the content which the advertiser wants to be connected to (it can be seen like the background of the billboard).

    So, you can understand the content which is not useful for the advertisers, is also not generating money overall while they have to pay to host it.

    Replies: @Coconuts

  193. @Derer
    @Mr. Hack

    Who is that guy on the right? No resemblance, perhaps Adenauer but he is long dead.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    Why that’s toady man Viktor Orban. You can tell by the little Hungarian flag on his coffee tray.

    I try not to judge people by their physical appearances, but in Orban’s case I just can’t help but to exhibit displeasure at looking at his thuggish appearance,

    More and more rumblings coming from Brussels to cede Hungary away from the EU. I say, go for it. Let Orban really hitch his star to the Kremlin and we’ll see how his electorate responds.

    Is that brown stuff really what I think that it is that Putler is placing on Orban’s head? 🙂

    • Replies: @Negronicus
    @Mr. Hack

    Oh shit, it another devastating political cartoon!

    , @Derer
    @Mr. Hack

    I think the EU dictatorship has no mechanism to expel members. Remember how hard it was for the UK to leave the club, especially for those that paying more than receiving. Actually they need people like Victor Orban for the appearance of "democracy".

  194. @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    Basically, the corporate world isn’t an island separated from wider generational trends.
     
    It is not separate from the power of the government either.

    I remember the kind of thing Songbird was talking about, there was a particular period when watching a video from D/R content creators would produce an autoplay list predictably filled with many JBP video suggestions, it became a kind of meme. Before that the algorithm had seemed to operate more freely.

    The belief that it was being manipulated may be related to the prominence that counter-extremism and anti-radicalism initiatives run by the security services had at the same time. In Britain the public facing element of this was the Prevent program and semi-governmental NGOs like Hope not Hate. Under the Prevent guidelines if you worked in education, the civil service or local government you had a duty to notify Prevent of any signs of possible radicialisation or extremism among young people or service users, in case it developed into terrorism. I remember that observing someone viewing something like a Murdoch Murdoch video with swastikas in public could have been enough for a Prevent referral.

    There are also connections between certain spheres of academic study and the official counter-extremism sphere.

    Given things like this, it doesn't seem impossible that some suggestions may have been made to Google about corporate social responsibility and limiting the spread of extremist content. Perhaps JBP autoplay lists were a part of that.

    Since then a range of D/R channels have been progressively banned, at the same time some of the issues have become more mainstream, with more mainstream creators making that type of content, so it is harder to see them as extremist.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Dmitry

    Given things like this, it doesn’t seem impossible that some suggestions may have been made to Google about corporate social responsibility and limiting the spread of extremist content.

    They have lawyers all over the place telling them bullshit that is recommended for lawsuit inoculation. You ever read your employment contract from start to finish? If you are employed to write code for google and you invent a cure for cancer on your vacation in Bali, google’s lawyers think you have signed an agreement that they own all intellectual property rights (one of the the stupidest things ever thought of by a man and only a lawyer could conceive of such an idea) to your cancer cure.

    Youtube recommends to me Jordan Peterson and Elon Musk just yesterday. I am not saying this to you. I don’t know you. This is intended for everybody else.

    You goddam nerds can do better than this.

  195. @Mikhail
    @songbird

    The problem with window ACs is that once you put one in, an existing cross breeze with another window is lost, making it hotter and necessitating AC use when it otherwise wouldn't be needed.

    The last couple of years, I've been able to comfortably wait until the second half of June before putting them in.

    Replies: @QCIC

    A lot of NE homes have poor cross-ventilation. The window AC cools things down and also reduces humidity a bit. The internal portable AC units are pretty good for cooling down a single room at night.

  196. @Mikhail
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx6oqhTg0vg

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    How dare those arrogant Ukrainians defend their borders from invaders, their skies from Russian missiles aimed at their cities?


    Arrogant Ukrainians getting ready to greet their Russian liberators, in case they ever break through (highly unlikely). Russia’s Kharkiv campaign has fizzled out, a city only 30 miles from the border that has been a prize sot by the Russian military for over 2 years now.

    • Replies: @Mikhail
    @Mr. Hack

    There were probably Confederate diehards spinning similarly about a year or so before their effort ended.

    Replies: @AnonfromTN, @Mr. Hack

  197. @songbird
    @Coconuts


    The last interview I saw with him he was saying that one of the big problems in the culture is that enough time isn’t spent in schools discussing the Third Reich and the Holocaust, and if this was done it would be easier to fight wokeness.
     
    Wow, seems like a very strange assertion for him to make, as I feel like the education on this in Germany is obviously more intense - I have myself seen seventh graders bused to a work camp. But Germany doesn't seem to have less problems in this area.

    About Konstantin Kisin, he seems to be in the IDW zone and a cheerleader for 1990s Western liberalism, which makes him a relatively fringe figure and a possible white supremacist.
     
    I just remember vaguely that some noted an exchange where he or the other guy said something to the effect that anti-immigrant sentiment made him uncomfortable, which according to what I heard is pretty notable, as he often uses the pronounce "we" and tries to speak for the UK or the West as a whole, even though he is an alien immigrant.

    The Goat Life film may still be worth it, for the title alone).
     
    whether from lack of cultural exposure, or just individual taste, I find it very difficult to watch these three hour movies.

    Even as a work of fiction, I must admit there is a certain sociological appeal. But the film (which I have not watched) seems to lack some of the elements I have enjoyed in Indian films, like the celebration of masculine ideals or some form of paganism.

    I wish Mr. Hack would do me a solid and review it here for us, but the last Indian film I tried to get him to watch was every action-orientated (RRR) and I couldn't seem to interest him in it.

    Blinky once posted a clip from an Indian film or two, but I am not sure whether he has watched the full films or not.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Coconuts

    Wow, seems like a very strange assertion for him to make…

    I think the interview was post the October 7th attacks and all the demonstrations etc. following them, otherwise I agree it doesn’t really make any sense. It made me think he was out of touch with the issues around Wokeness and was trying to make some generic anti-totalitarian arguments.

    [MORE]

    When I was last in Berlin we visited a few different museums and sites linked to the Nazi era and there was a strong anti-totalitarian message, that was interesting given the way things were going in the UK at the time.

    I just remember vaguely that some noted an exchange where he or the other guy said something to the effect that anti-immigrant sentiment made him uncomfortable…

    The other guy is half Venezuelan as well. There is an interview with Alex Kaschuta where they start to discuss issues around racism and Alex (who is looking obviously blonde iirc) tells them something to the effect that she doesn’t think it should be taboo, and then there is an awkward atmosphere for the rest of the interview. When they are talking about the West they definitely intend it in the classical liberal sense.

    Even as a work of fiction, I must admit there is a certain sociological appeal. But the film (which I have not watched) seems to lack some of the elements I have enjoyed in Indian films, like the celebration of masculine ideals or some form of paganism.

    The last Bollywood I remember seeing was called Chot. It was a revenge drama set in a diary. I think it had some dance sequences but the masculine ideal was definitely present, and there was some spiritual symbolism around the cows and milk.

    It looks like the goat film hasn’t got Mr Hack interested this time 🙁

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Coconuts


    It looks like the goat film hasn’t got Mr Hack interested this time 🙁
     
    I'm too busy widening my appreciation for Indian culinary faire, especially as I've found out that there are several Indian restaurants in the Phoenix area that are counted as among the top 100 in the country. I don't think that I could interest Songbird in this type of exploration, how about you?
    , @songbird
    @Coconuts


    I think the interview was post the October 7th attacks and all the demonstrations etc. following them
     
    ah, yes, there was an excess of rhetoric back then. Talk by the establishment of "mass deportations.". Maybe, there was even a certain logic (though crazy) for Ferguson, as presumably a lot of these migrants didn't get a Western education.

    Alex (who is looking obviously blonde iirc)
     
    she has an interesting background, IIRC. From Romania but an ethnic German or part German. AK did an episode with her, but that was a while back and I haven't listened to it yet.

    The last Bollywood I remember seeing was called Chot.
     
    This own I haven't seen, but the pastoralist in me is attracted to any movie with livestock, and I think in particular cows.

    It looks like the goat film hasn’t got Mr Hack interested this time 🙁
     
    for all his fondness for foreign food, I find it curious how Mr. Hack doesn't seem to have much of any interest in foreign movies. (Perhaps, excepting Ukrainian). I am thinking he doesn't like to read subtitles, which I can appreciate to a certain extent, but I think there is a benefit to subs over dubs. They are often rougher, and give you a better idea of the original dialogue. Plus, anything dubbed, there is a risk that it was foreign financed and that imperils the cultural cohesiveness of the story

    For my own part, foreign movies comprise most of the newer movies that I watch. I appreciate how they generally have a more cohesive cultural background. But unfortunately, you have to go far for this now - not really Western Europe.

    I was just a short while ago marvelling at the idea of this seemingly very woke German film, directed by an ethnic Turk. Good reviews. If I understand correctly, they got the idea to have a Turkish boy falsely accused of theft at a school by observing real Turkish boys at a school in Turkey stealing stuff. (But possibly they were Syrians or Kurds, etc.). I haven't watched it, as I don't think I could stomach it.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Teachers%27_Lounge

    Haven't tried to quantify it scientifically, but I suspect that current Germany's cultural footprint is sadly less than the GDR's was. (At least, if we count cohesive stuff.)

    Replies: @Coconuts

  198. @Coconuts
    @songbird


    Wow, seems like a very strange assertion for him to make...
     
    I think the interview was post the October 7th attacks and all the demonstrations etc. following them, otherwise I agree it doesn't really make any sense. It made me think he was out of touch with the issues around Wokeness and was trying to make some generic anti-totalitarian arguments.



    When I was last in Berlin we visited a few different museums and sites linked to the Nazi era and there was a strong anti-totalitarian message, that was interesting given the way things were going in the UK at the time.

    I just remember vaguely that some noted an exchange where he or the other guy said something to the effect that anti-immigrant sentiment made him uncomfortable...
     
    The other guy is half Venezuelan as well. There is an interview with Alex Kaschuta where they start to discuss issues around racism and Alex (who is looking obviously blonde iirc) tells them something to the effect that she doesn't think it should be taboo, and then there is an awkward atmosphere for the rest of the interview. When they are talking about the West they definitely intend it in the classical liberal sense.

    Even as a work of fiction, I must admit there is a certain sociological appeal. But the film (which I have not watched) seems to lack some of the elements I have enjoyed in Indian films, like the celebration of masculine ideals or some form of paganism.
     
    The last Bollywood I remember seeing was called Chot. It was a revenge drama set in a diary. I think it had some dance sequences but the masculine ideal was definitely present, and there was some spiritual symbolism around the cows and milk.

    It looks like the goat film hasn't got Mr Hack interested this time :(

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @songbird

    It looks like the goat film hasn’t got Mr Hack interested this time 🙁

    I’m too busy widening my appreciation for Indian culinary faire, especially as I’ve found out that there are several Indian restaurants in the Phoenix area that are counted as among the top 100 in the country. I don’t think that I could interest Songbird in this type of exploration, how about you?

  199. @Mr. Hack
    @Derer

    Why that's toady man Viktor Orban. You can tell by the little Hungarian flag on his coffee tray.

    I try not to judge people by their physical appearances, but in Orban's case I just can't help but to exhibit displeasure at looking at his thuggish appearance,

    More and more rumblings coming from Brussels to cede Hungary away from the EU. I say, go for it. Let Orban really hitch his star to the Kremlin and we'll see how his electorate responds.

    https://s3-eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/cartoons-s3/styles/product_detail_image/s3/Orb%C4%81ns-Orbaneklis.jpg?itok=9vih1I01
    Is that brown stuff really what I think that it is that Putler is placing on Orban's head? :-)

    Replies: @Negronicus, @Derer

    Oh shit, it another devastating political cartoon!

    • Agree: Mr. Hack
  200. Sher Singh says:
    @ShortOnTime
    @songbird

    There's something to be said about the ultimate superiority of the Kingdom of Heaven over the worldly kingdom.

    What good is all the wealth in the world (Elon Musk is the richest man in the world?) if one can't save their own progeny from having their genitals and psyche mutilated?

    (Of course, wealth accumulation is usually good and recommended for most people since money can solve or massively help many problems anyone may have, but some things are simply beyond the realm of being fixable by money and technology.)

    And this too ... (Although to be fair Elon has made some noises).



    https://twitter.com/KeithWoodsYT/status/1815554734239158469

    Replies: @Sher Singh


    At the age of 11, Guru Hargobind Sahib had the Akal Takht constructed, adorned weapons, took to hunting and kept an army.

    The passage below describes the first time Guru Hargobind Sahib sat on the Akal Takht wearing Miri and Piri. ⁣⁣
    ⁣⁣
    ਰਚ੍ਯੋ ਤਖਤ ਤਿਸ ਬੰਦਨ ਕੀਨਿ । ਚਢਿ ਗੁਰੁ ਬੀਰਾਸਨ ਆਸੀਨ । ਬ੍ਰਿਧ ਆਦਿਕ ਗੁਰਦਾਸ ਮਸੰਦ । ਅਵਿਲੋਕਤਿ ਬਿਸਮਾਇ ਬਿਲੰਦ ।੨੦।⁣⁣⁣
    He saluted the [Akal] Takht which He had constructed, ascending he sat in Vir Asan [Warrior Pose, one knee raised one leg flat].
    Baba Budha Ji, Bhai Gurdas Ji and the other Masands were in great awe looking upon the Guru. ⁣⁣⁣

    ਹਾਥ ਜੋਰਿ ਕਰਿ ਬੂਝਨ ਲਾਗੇ । ਧਰਹਿ ਖੜਗ ਇਕ ਜੇ ਭਟ ਆਗੇ । ਦੋਇ ਆਪ ਲੇ ਨਿਜ ਗਰ ਪਾਏ । ਇਹ ਕ੍ਯਾ ਕਾਰਨ ਦੇਹੁ ਸੁਨਾਏ ।੨੧। ⁣⁣⁣
    With folded hands they ask,

    “Until now we have seen a warrior adorned with one sword.
    You have worn two, what is the purpose?” ⁣⁣ ⁣

    ਧਰੇ ਤੇਜ ਸਤਿਗੁਰੁ ਬਚ ਕਹੇ । ਹਮ ਨੇ ਇਸ ਹਿਤ ਜੁਗ ਅਸਿ ਗਹੇ । ਇਕ ਤੇ ਲੇਂ ਮੀਰਨਿ ਕੀ ਮੀਰੀ । ਦੂਸਰ ਤੇ ਪੀਰਨਿ ਕੀ ਪੀਰੀ ।੨੨।⁣⁣⁣
    The Guru replied, ”
    One is the Miri of Amirs (Worldly Sovereignity)
    The other the Piri of Pirs (Saintliness – Spiritual Sovereignity) ⁣⁣⁣
    ⁣⁣⁣
    ਮੀਰੀ ਪੀਰੀ ਦੋਨੋਂ ਧਰੈਂ । ਬਚਹਿ ਸਰਨਿ ਨਤੁ ਜੁਗ ਪਰਹਰੈਂ ।⁣⁣⁣
    I have worn both.
    Both reside under their refuge,
    else all is lost.

    ਅਕਾਲ

    • Thanks: ShortOnTime
  201. An inside view of a Russian turtle tank

  202. Ukraine reached an agreement in principle to restructure $20 billion in its debt obligations while reducing the value of these obligations by 37%.

    Upon this news Fitch downgraded Ukraine credit rating from CC to C.
    “The reported agreement with external commercial creditors constitutes a distressed debt exchange (DDE) under its sovereign rating criteria,” Fitch said
    A “C” rating indicates Fitch’s view that a default or default-like process for Ukraine has begun.
    https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/fitch-downgrades-ukraine-further-into-default-zone-over-20-billion-debt-2024-07-24/

    As Ukies like to say, ‘the whole world is with us”.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @AnonfromTN

    The Economist appears to have conceded. They have a quote from Ukraine's "top drone soldier" Colonel Vadim Sukharevsky. Russian drones outnumber Ukraine's drones 6-1.

    https://archive.ph/173r6#selection-1109.113-1109.132

    This is Ukraine's wonder weapon.

    I still haven't been able to find good dope on Big Serge's contention that an attack drone is equal to a rocket propelled grenade in grams of dynamite (or however that is measured) and useless against a real artillery formation.

  203. @AP
    @AnonfromTN


    Judging by her public appearances, Kamala is incapable of composing a grammatically correct sentence, or of saying anything meaningful
     
    You are too reliant on tendentious internet sources for your information. While Kamala may be the least intelligent major candidate in a long time (and in terms of VP only Sarah Palin has been dumber), she is capable of speaking coherently when she needs to.

    She did finish law school and pass the bar, so she has whatever minimal brains are necessary to do that. I’d guess an IQ in Beckow’s neighborhood of around 115 or so.

    Here she is speaking coherently:

    https://twitter.com/acyn/status/1815509563522920918?s=46&t=Qz3eXZWFYIvyHmaAk32tcg

    Replies: @QCIC, @Mr. XYZ, @Negronicus

    That’s a nasty woman, don’t vote for the DA.

  204. @AnonfromTN
    Ukraine reached an agreement in principle to restructure $20 billion in its debt obligations while reducing the value of these obligations by 37%.

    Upon this news Fitch downgraded Ukraine credit rating from CC to C.
    "The reported agreement with external commercial creditors constitutes a distressed debt exchange (DDE) under its sovereign rating criteria," Fitch said
    A "C" rating indicates Fitch's view that a default or default-like process for Ukraine has begun.
    https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/fitch-downgrades-ukraine-further-into-default-zone-over-20-billion-debt-2024-07-24/

    As Ukies like to say, ‘the whole world is with us”.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    The Economist appears to have conceded. They have a quote from Ukraine’s “top drone soldier” Colonel Vadim Sukharevsky. Russian drones outnumber Ukraine’s drones 6-1.

    https://archive.ph/173r6#selection-1109.113-1109.132

    This is Ukraine’s wonder weapon.

    I still haven’t been able to find good dope on Big Serge’s contention that an attack drone is equal to a rocket propelled grenade in grams of dynamite (or however that is measured) and useless against a real artillery formation.

  205. A123 says: • Website

    How is Harris going to win independent and moderate votes when her policy record is terrible?

     

     

    Given how bad things look, how many Democrats are willing to be her VP?

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @AnonfromTN
    @A123


    Given how bad things look, how many Democrats are willing to be her VP?
     
    You are working on an assumption that actual election results matter. 2020 proved this assumption dead wrong.

    Let’s look at it from a different angle. Libtards managed to push demented half-corpse to the White house in 2020. What makes you think that they won’t be able to push a half-crazy dimwit there?

    Replies: @A123, @Mikel

    , @John Johnson
    @A123

    How is Harris going to win independent and moderate votes when her policy record is terrible?

    Most of the MSM isn't even reporting her swing state numbers.

    They've already gone full cheerleader.

    I bet they'll pick some patronizing VP for the swing states in an attempt to grab independent Whites and blue collar swing voters. Some union guy or occasional farmer. Or a military background. No one light in the loafers.

    LOOK AT THIS WHITE GUY WE FOUND FOR VP

    HERE IS A PICTURE OF HIM ON A TRACTOR

    NOT GAY AT ALL

    SO YOU CAN VOTE FOR HARRIS NOW

    EVERYONE IS HAPPY

  206. @A123
    How is Harris going to win independent and moderate votes when her policy record is terrible?

     
    https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMTS9YFj-4GpeWqYLwfB5USSIPvb5HKkkylv9xzJc-iAnyU7vWiCbfBAXU2cc0FI4DnMI_mz6JuKx9W7CCGYapee5PiE1QV7EvztGxxUVhURx9_gbIwkn-N2d5qqRvKdnaT7tOpmX9JeCphd27wRRfytmF_5HQYV0sOJMMLzRG-F57p1Kxpt1UVf6B0XE/s644/1%20kjhgfdgdfgdf.jpg
     

    Given how bad things look, how many Democrats are willing to be her VP?

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @AnonfromTN, @John Johnson

    Given how bad things look, how many Democrats are willing to be her VP?

    You are working on an assumption that actual election results matter. 2020 proved this assumption dead wrong.

    Let’s look at it from a different angle. Libtards managed to push demented half-corpse to the White house in 2020. What makes you think that they won’t be able to push a half-crazy dimwit there?

    • Replies: @A123
    @AnonfromTN

    You are working on an assumption that actual election results do not matter. 2016 proved this assumption dead wrong.

    Let’s look at it from a different angle. Libtards managed to abuse "once-in-a-lifetime" WUHAN-19 virus restrictions in 2020. This unique, non-repeatable situation allowed them to push demented half-corpse to the White house in 2020. What makes you think that they will able to steal the election with someone less popular than the Veggie-In-Chief?

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    , @Mikel
    @AnonfromTN


    You are working on an assumption that actual election results matter. 2020 proved this assumption dead wrong.
     
    I have quite a lot of respect for accomplished scientists like you, AnonfromTN, but to be honest, I'm growing very tired of this lame argument that elections don't matter and the lizard people will make sure that their candidate wins the US elections.

    It's just a matter of simple knowledge of how the election system works in the US. It's a total mess compared to most other civilized countries, certainly, but if every person who whines about how the elections are going to be stolen made the simple effort of actually volunteering to be an observer, it would be impossible to have fake election results. As a matter of fact, if the Republicans (or Team Trump) were seriously worried that the elections are going to be rigged, they would be recruiting an army of observers to make that impossible but it doesn't appear to be much of a concern, they're just conducting a regular campaign with their efforts focused on convincing voters.

    There may be a few districts and counties around the US where the Democrats are corrupt and competent enough to try to rig the results but even there they cannot prevent observers from scrutinizing all their actions. In fact, there already are something like 100,000 volunteers who are going to be watching the counting process in every corner of the US and anyone can join freely.

    Whatever the results are in November, I'm going to dismiss out of hand the opinion of anyone I hear complain about fraud. If you're really worried about fraud, go here NOW: https://protectthevote.com/ You didn't do that? Then shut up in November. Even if the Dems steal the election, which you will never be able to prove (like no one ever proved it in 2020), you will be complicit through lazy inaction and the Dems will deserve to have beaten you.

    Is it a coincidence that there is a clear overlap between the people who believe in stolen election narratives and Skripal/MH17 alternative theories?

    Replies: @AnonfromTN

  207. @AnonfromTN
    Nazis kill Nazis in Ukraine.

    Ukrainian Neonazi group “National-Socialism/White Power»” took responsibility for the murder of another Ukrainian Nazi Farion.

    This explains many strange details of this murder.

    One, while in Ukraine “recruiters” drag men from stores, churches, buses, and their own cars, so that men in Ukraine either do not venture outside or move in short spurts looking around, a young man of clearly draft age was sitting and waiting for Farion for two weeks in a very noticeable outfit (https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2024/07/21/7466767/) and no “recruiter” ever approached him.

    Two, in the middle of the heat wave the murderer was wearing shirt with long sleeves all that time.

    Three, she was an old woman and she was shot in the head from very close quarters.

    Simple explanations.

    One. The fact that “recruiters” did not try to approach him suggests the complicity of powers-that-be. In Ukraine the most favored groups are Nazis, the rest cannon count on authorities’ cooperation.

    Two. Long sleeves in hot weather suggest that he was hiding tattoos on his arms. The most tattooed people in Ukraine are ideological Nazis. In fact, when the RF army took Mariupol, many Azov Nazis tried to escape by dressing in civilian clothes and pretending that they are non-combatants. Russians demanded that men take their shirts off. Those that had swasticas tattooed on their arms, chest, back, and/or neck were identified as Azov fighters.

    Three. A normal person would not shoot an old woman in the head being face-to-face with her, no matter how obnoxious she is. Humans simply cannot do that. Nazis can.

    Replies: @Mikhail, @Gerard1234, @AP

    Looks like a Uniate follower who planted the car bomb yesterday in Moscow…..

    A normal person would not shoot an old woman in the head being face-to-face with her,

    As I have probably said before, when the drug addict scumbag came to Presidency in 2019 – there was a prisoner exchange with Russia. We gave them 34 healthy and strong men aged from 21 – 50, with the 1 pensioner being a Crimean Tatar ‘activist” who entered Crimea from Kherson with 10Kg of TNT. Most of the men were from their Navy and captured after doing some idiotic stunt trying to illegally pass under the Crimean bridge.

    In return we got 5 or 6 women ( all non militants), and 6 pensioners ( again non-militants), plus the journalist Kirill Vyshinsky arrested by the terror state, as part of the group of 35.

    Highly indicative of alot of things.

  208. A123 says: • Website
    @AnonfromTN
    @A123


    Given how bad things look, how many Democrats are willing to be her VP?
     
    You are working on an assumption that actual election results matter. 2020 proved this assumption dead wrong.

    Let’s look at it from a different angle. Libtards managed to push demented half-corpse to the White house in 2020. What makes you think that they won’t be able to push a half-crazy dimwit there?

    Replies: @A123, @Mikel

    You are working on an assumption that actual election results do not matter. 2016 proved this assumption dead wrong.

    Let’s look at it from a different angle. Libtards managed to abuse “once-in-a-lifetime” WUHAN-19 virus restrictions in 2020. This unique, non-repeatable situation allowed them to push demented half-corpse to the White house in 2020. What makes you think that they will able to steal the election with someone less popular than the Veggie-In-Chief?

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @A123

    Clearly you have not seen the libtard twitter sportsgasms. The true believers believe in what can be unburdened by what has been.

    https://www.amazon.com/True-Believer-Thoughts-Movements-Perennial/dp/0060505915

    Steve Bannon is locked up. Who is doing the campaign?

    Replies: @A123

  209. Thanks Freeland.

    [MORE]

  210. @A123
    @AnonfromTN

    You are working on an assumption that actual election results do not matter. 2016 proved this assumption dead wrong.

    Let’s look at it from a different angle. Libtards managed to abuse "once-in-a-lifetime" WUHAN-19 virus restrictions in 2020. This unique, non-repeatable situation allowed them to push demented half-corpse to the White house in 2020. What makes you think that they will able to steal the election with someone less popular than the Veggie-In-Chief?

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    Clearly you have not seen the libtard twitter sportsgasms. The true believers believe in what can be unburdened by what has been.

    Steve Bannon is locked up. Who is doing the campaign?

    • Replies: @A123
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    Clearly you have not seen the libtard twitter sportsgasms. The true believers believe in what can be unburdened by what has been.
     
    The #NeverTrump cultists may not be burdened by what has been.

    What they are burdened with is a candidate that repels swing & independent voters. DEI "Didn't Earn It" Harris is actually worse on both policy and presentation than her boss.

    I look forward to a Trump/Harris debate. Alas, there probably will not be one.

    Steve Bannon is locked up. Who is doing the campaign?
     
    The Trump 2024 campaign spent 4 years recruiting non-flamboyant professionals (1). None of the names spring out as people with their own agenda.

    Both the campaign and Trump's 2nd term will be more disciplined and effective versus 2016.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.reuters.com/world/us/inside-trumps-election-a-team-lean-mean-largely-unseen-2024-02-01/

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

  211. @Bashibuzuk
    @Bashibuzuk

    The original version from Rostov on Don, dating to the NEP era in the late 1920ies.

    https://youtu.be/_Gyn22lXXtI?si=T-uGe86IehKw5z0d

    Those who understand Russian would see the difference with Odessite adaptation.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Greasy William

    woman on the left looks Jewish. She’s a Russian?

    • Replies: @Torna atrás
    @Greasy William

    Please rate this comment for accuracy Oracle of UNZ.

    A B C D.


    Roughly speaking, American Orthodoxy is divided into 3 groupings. Modern Orthodox, Hasidic and Yeshiva Orthodox. These latter two are included under the umbrella term Haredi, but there are some significant differences betwen them.

    Mod. Orthodox, as the name might suggest, tend to be the most integrated/assimilated/acculturated into general American culture. Very high percentage of university attendance, almost entirely professionals : Wall St., Accounting, Law , Medicine etc. thus while they skew politically conservative more than general American population, not nearly as much as Haredim. As an example %40 of Modox say society should discourage homosexuality, (a very high number by today’s standards) for Haredim the corresponding number is over %70.
    Hasidim, on the other hand, are by far the least acculturated of these groups. (They are, loosely speaking, adherents of one or another Hasidic ‘Rebbe’ ; a sort of hereditary guru-like figure) They tend to speak Yiddish rather than English, (their English tends to be rudimentary.) Their dress, especially for males, sets them apart (they wear the funny looking long coats etc.) They tend to work in small businesses, mostly, though not always, in the community. A small percentage are professionals: Accountants mostly, few lawyers( and none, to my knowledge, in BigLaw), almost no MDs. A non-negligible percentage work in real estate.

    Yeshiva Orthodox (my homies) are sort of in between. Almost entirely English speaking, many professionals, though not as many as Modox. Lots of accountants and lawyers. Yeshiva Orthodox attend university kind of rarely but will often go to graduate school using Yeshiva credits in lieu of undergraduate university attendance. (All my children, save one, did this.) From their/our perspective this means that their exposure to debased contemporary culture will generally take place when they’re in their 20s, married, kids etc. so less susceptible to the Narrative.

    Jewishly speaking, Yeshiva Orthodox place the most weight by far on Talmud study. Advanced Talmud study has alot of similarities to law school study so Yeshiva Orthodox tend to excel in law school despite inferior general education.

    While there are complications and countervailing forces which are too burdensome to get into, generally speaking there is something of a rapprochement going on between the right wing of modox and the left wing of Yeshiva dox as well as between the right wing of Yeshiva dox and the left of Hasidim, thus there is an increasing tendency among Right wing Yeshiva Orthodox to de-emphasize English language, secular education etc., a sort of obscurantism envy if you will, which might eventually lead to some sort of re-alignment but it’s too early to tell how matters will resolve themselves.
     

    Replies: @Greasy William

    , @Bashibuzuk
    @Greasy William

    See my comment # 170. She’s a Karaite.

  212. @Greasy William
    @Bashibuzuk

    woman on the left looks Jewish. She's a Russian?

    Replies: @Torna atrás, @Bashibuzuk

    Please rate this comment for accuracy Oracle of UNZ.

    A B C D.

    Roughly speaking, American Orthodoxy is divided into 3 groupings. Modern Orthodox, Hasidic and Yeshiva Orthodox. These latter two are included under the umbrella term Haredi, but there are some significant differences betwen them.

    Mod. Orthodox, as the name might suggest, tend to be the most integrated/assimilated/acculturated into general American culture. Very high percentage of university attendance, almost entirely professionals : Wall St., Accounting, Law , Medicine etc. thus while they skew politically conservative more than general American population, not nearly as much as Haredim. As an example %40 of Modox say society should discourage homosexuality, (a very high number by today’s standards) for Haredim the corresponding number is over %70.
    Hasidim, on the other hand, are by far the least acculturated of these groups. (They are, loosely speaking, adherents of one or another Hasidic ‘Rebbe’ ; a sort of hereditary guru-like figure) They tend to speak Yiddish rather than English, (their English tends to be rudimentary.) Their dress, especially for males, sets them apart (they wear the funny looking long coats etc.) They tend to work in small businesses, mostly, though not always, in the community. A small percentage are professionals: Accountants mostly, few lawyers( and none, to my knowledge, in BigLaw), almost no MDs. A non-negligible percentage work in real estate.

    Yeshiva Orthodox (my homies) are sort of in between. Almost entirely English speaking, many professionals, though not as many as Modox. Lots of accountants and lawyers. Yeshiva Orthodox attend university kind of rarely but will often go to graduate school using Yeshiva credits in lieu of undergraduate university attendance. (All my children, save one, did this.) From their/our perspective this means that their exposure to debased contemporary culture will generally take place when they’re in their 20s, married, kids etc. so less susceptible to the Narrative.

    Jewishly speaking, Yeshiva Orthodox place the most weight by far on Talmud study. Advanced Talmud study has alot of similarities to law school study so Yeshiva Orthodox tend to excel in law school despite inferior general education.

    While there are complications and countervailing forces which are too burdensome to get into, generally speaking there is something of a rapprochement going on between the right wing of modox and the left wing of Yeshiva dox as well as between the right wing of Yeshiva dox and the left of Hasidim, thus there is an increasing tendency among Right wing Yeshiva Orthodox to de-emphasize English language, secular education etc., a sort of obscurantism envy if you will, which might eventually lead to some sort of re-alignment but it’s too early to tell how matters will resolve themselves.

    • Replies: @Greasy William
    @Torna atrás

    A. Fully accurate

    Replies: @QCIC

  213. @Mr. Hack
    @Mikhail


    How dare those arrogant Ukrainians defend their borders from invaders, their skies from Russian missiles aimed at their cities?
     
    https://images.indianexpress.com/2022/03/FotoJet-2022-03-02T214200.701.jpg
    Arrogant Ukrainians getting ready to greet their Russian liberators, in case they ever break through (highly unlikely). Russia's Kharkiv campaign has fizzled out, a city only 30 miles from the border that has been a prize sot by the Russian military for over 2 years now.

    Replies: @Mikhail

    There were probably Confederate diehards spinning similarly about a year or so before their effort ended.

    • Replies: @AnonfromTN
    @Mikhail


    There were probably Confederate diehards spinning similarly about a year or so before their effort ended.
     
    Remember the classical five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance? Denial is always the first stage. Some people remain stuck at it even when more perceptive ones move to subsequent stages.

    There are also more modern examples of this phenomenon than American civil war. E.g., Goebbels propaganda droned on about glorious German victory until early days of May 1945.

    Take-home message: the patient does not present anything new to medical science.

    Replies: @Mikhail

    , @Mr. Hack
    @Mikhail

    Who's spinning? Kharkiv is still in Ukrainian hands and is only 30 miles away from the Russian border. It's been in play since the invasion in 2022. When is the Russian military going to take it?

    Replies: @Mikhail

  214. A123 says: • Website
    @Emil Nikola Richard
    @A123

    Clearly you have not seen the libtard twitter sportsgasms. The true believers believe in what can be unburdened by what has been.

    https://www.amazon.com/True-Believer-Thoughts-Movements-Perennial/dp/0060505915

    Steve Bannon is locked up. Who is doing the campaign?

    Replies: @A123

    Clearly you have not seen the libtard twitter sportsgasms. The true believers believe in what can be unburdened by what has been.

    The #NeverTrump cultists may not be burdened by what has been.

    What they are burdened with is a candidate that repels swing & independent voters. DEI “Didn’t Earn It” Harris is actually worse on both policy and presentation than her boss.

    I look forward to a Trump/Harris debate. Alas, there probably will not be one.

    Steve Bannon is locked up. Who is doing the campaign?

    The Trump 2024 campaign spent 4 years recruiting non-flamboyant professionals (1). None of the names spring out as people with their own agenda.

    Both the campaign and Trump’s 2nd term will be more disciplined and effective versus 2016.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.reuters.com/world/us/inside-trumps-election-a-team-lean-mean-largely-unseen-2024-02-01/

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @A123

    The Reuters piece is all a glowing.

    Who is going to read the polls and decide which electoral votes require the allocation of finite resources and what is their experience doing that?

    Hillary was an overwhelming favorite in September 2016 and fubar'd this exact task and she had Bill Clinton telling her and she did not listen.

  215. @A123
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    Clearly you have not seen the libtard twitter sportsgasms. The true believers believe in what can be unburdened by what has been.
     
    The #NeverTrump cultists may not be burdened by what has been.

    What they are burdened with is a candidate that repels swing & independent voters. DEI "Didn't Earn It" Harris is actually worse on both policy and presentation than her boss.

    I look forward to a Trump/Harris debate. Alas, there probably will not be one.

    Steve Bannon is locked up. Who is doing the campaign?
     
    The Trump 2024 campaign spent 4 years recruiting non-flamboyant professionals (1). None of the names spring out as people with their own agenda.

    Both the campaign and Trump's 2nd term will be more disciplined and effective versus 2016.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.reuters.com/world/us/inside-trumps-election-a-team-lean-mean-largely-unseen-2024-02-01/

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    The Reuters piece is all a glowing.

    Who is going to read the polls and decide which electoral votes require the allocation of finite resources and what is their experience doing that?

    Hillary was an overwhelming favorite in September 2016 and fubar’d this exact task and she had Bill Clinton telling her and she did not listen.

  216. @AnonfromTN
    @A123


    Given how bad things look, how many Democrats are willing to be her VP?
     
    You are working on an assumption that actual election results matter. 2020 proved this assumption dead wrong.

    Let’s look at it from a different angle. Libtards managed to push demented half-corpse to the White house in 2020. What makes you think that they won’t be able to push a half-crazy dimwit there?

    Replies: @A123, @Mikel

    You are working on an assumption that actual election results matter. 2020 proved this assumption dead wrong.

    I have quite a lot of respect for accomplished scientists like you, AnonfromTN, but to be honest, I’m growing very tired of this lame argument that elections don’t matter and the lizard people will make sure that their candidate wins the US elections.

    It’s just a matter of simple knowledge of how the election system works in the US. It’s a total mess compared to most other civilized countries, certainly, but if every person who whines about how the elections are going to be stolen made the simple effort of actually volunteering to be an observer, it would be impossible to have fake election results. As a matter of fact, if the Republicans (or Team Trump) were seriously worried that the elections are going to be rigged, they would be recruiting an army of observers to make that impossible but it doesn’t appear to be much of a concern, they’re just conducting a regular campaign with their efforts focused on convincing voters.

    There may be a few districts and counties around the US where the Democrats are corrupt and competent enough to try to rig the results but even there they cannot prevent observers from scrutinizing all their actions. In fact, there already are something like 100,000 volunteers who are going to be watching the counting process in every corner of the US and anyone can join freely.

    Whatever the results are in November, I’m going to dismiss out of hand the opinion of anyone I hear complain about fraud. If you’re really worried about fraud, go here NOW: https://protectthevote.com/ You didn’t do that? Then shut up in November. Even if the Dems steal the election, which you will never be able to prove (like no one ever proved it in 2020), you will be complicit through lazy inaction and the Dems will deserve to have beaten you.

    Is it a coincidence that there is a clear overlap between the people who believe in stolen election narratives and Skripal/MH17 alternative theories?

    • Replies: @AnonfromTN
    @Mikel


    the Dems will deserve to have beaten you.
     
    Will the country deserve to be driven to the cliff with acceleration? I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer the US not to crash and burn.

    As to 2020, there were many cases where the observers were forced by the threats to them and their families to sign off. There was also the case of Philadelphia, where the proof was glaring, but the court decided that it does not constitute grounds for “disenfranchising” voters (as if fraud does not disenfranchise them). Remember sudden jumps in the curves, allegedly due to mail-in votes, which inexplicably arrived during the night (when US mail does not work). Biden got fewer votes than Obama in crazy red Kentucky and in crazy blue San Francisco, but a lot more votes than Obama in all swing states except Florida.

    Key point is, when the same cabal perpetrates the fraud and controls the courts, the courts will never find proof of anything untoward. In fact, the courts chose the safest way out: dismissed all cases w/o investigation. Classical situation: the fox investigated the break-in into the chicken coup and found itself to be innocent. If you believe that the elections in 2020 were honest, God help you (I can’t).

    Replies: @Mikel, @A123

  217. @Mikhail
    @Mr. Hack

    There were probably Confederate diehards spinning similarly about a year or so before their effort ended.

    Replies: @AnonfromTN, @Mr. Hack

    There were probably Confederate diehards spinning similarly about a year or so before their effort ended.

    Remember the classical five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance? Denial is always the first stage. Some people remain stuck at it even when more perceptive ones move to subsequent stages.

    There are also more modern examples of this phenomenon than American civil war. E.g., Goebbels propaganda droned on about glorious German victory until early days of May 1945.

    Take-home message: the patient does not present anything new to medical science.

    • Agree: Mikhail
    • Replies: @Mikhail
    @AnonfromTN

    Barndon as well.

  218. @Torna atrás
    @Greasy William

    Please rate this comment for accuracy Oracle of UNZ.

    A B C D.


    Roughly speaking, American Orthodoxy is divided into 3 groupings. Modern Orthodox, Hasidic and Yeshiva Orthodox. These latter two are included under the umbrella term Haredi, but there are some significant differences betwen them.

    Mod. Orthodox, as the name might suggest, tend to be the most integrated/assimilated/acculturated into general American culture. Very high percentage of university attendance, almost entirely professionals : Wall St., Accounting, Law , Medicine etc. thus while they skew politically conservative more than general American population, not nearly as much as Haredim. As an example %40 of Modox say society should discourage homosexuality, (a very high number by today’s standards) for Haredim the corresponding number is over %70.
    Hasidim, on the other hand, are by far the least acculturated of these groups. (They are, loosely speaking, adherents of one or another Hasidic ‘Rebbe’ ; a sort of hereditary guru-like figure) They tend to speak Yiddish rather than English, (their English tends to be rudimentary.) Their dress, especially for males, sets them apart (they wear the funny looking long coats etc.) They tend to work in small businesses, mostly, though not always, in the community. A small percentage are professionals: Accountants mostly, few lawyers( and none, to my knowledge, in BigLaw), almost no MDs. A non-negligible percentage work in real estate.

    Yeshiva Orthodox (my homies) are sort of in between. Almost entirely English speaking, many professionals, though not as many as Modox. Lots of accountants and lawyers. Yeshiva Orthodox attend university kind of rarely but will often go to graduate school using Yeshiva credits in lieu of undergraduate university attendance. (All my children, save one, did this.) From their/our perspective this means that their exposure to debased contemporary culture will generally take place when they’re in their 20s, married, kids etc. so less susceptible to the Narrative.

    Jewishly speaking, Yeshiva Orthodox place the most weight by far on Talmud study. Advanced Talmud study has alot of similarities to law school study so Yeshiva Orthodox tend to excel in law school despite inferior general education.

    While there are complications and countervailing forces which are too burdensome to get into, generally speaking there is something of a rapprochement going on between the right wing of modox and the left wing of Yeshiva dox as well as between the right wing of Yeshiva dox and the left of Hasidim, thus there is an increasing tendency among Right wing Yeshiva Orthodox to de-emphasize English language, secular education etc., a sort of obscurantism envy if you will, which might eventually lead to some sort of re-alignment but it’s too early to tell how matters will resolve themselves.
     

    Replies: @Greasy William

    A. Fully accurate

    • Thanks: Torna atrás
    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Greasy William

    Where does Chabad fit in?

    Replies: @Greasy William

  219. @Mikel
    @AnonfromTN


    You are working on an assumption that actual election results matter. 2020 proved this assumption dead wrong.
     
    I have quite a lot of respect for accomplished scientists like you, AnonfromTN, but to be honest, I'm growing very tired of this lame argument that elections don't matter and the lizard people will make sure that their candidate wins the US elections.

    It's just a matter of simple knowledge of how the election system works in the US. It's a total mess compared to most other civilized countries, certainly, but if every person who whines about how the elections are going to be stolen made the simple effort of actually volunteering to be an observer, it would be impossible to have fake election results. As a matter of fact, if the Republicans (or Team Trump) were seriously worried that the elections are going to be rigged, they would be recruiting an army of observers to make that impossible but it doesn't appear to be much of a concern, they're just conducting a regular campaign with their efforts focused on convincing voters.

    There may be a few districts and counties around the US where the Democrats are corrupt and competent enough to try to rig the results but even there they cannot prevent observers from scrutinizing all their actions. In fact, there already are something like 100,000 volunteers who are going to be watching the counting process in every corner of the US and anyone can join freely.

    Whatever the results are in November, I'm going to dismiss out of hand the opinion of anyone I hear complain about fraud. If you're really worried about fraud, go here NOW: https://protectthevote.com/ You didn't do that? Then shut up in November. Even if the Dems steal the election, which you will never be able to prove (like no one ever proved it in 2020), you will be complicit through lazy inaction and the Dems will deserve to have beaten you.

    Is it a coincidence that there is a clear overlap between the people who believe in stolen election narratives and Skripal/MH17 alternative theories?

    Replies: @AnonfromTN

    the Dems will deserve to have beaten you.

    Will the country deserve to be driven to the cliff with acceleration? I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer the US not to crash and burn.

    As to 2020, there were many cases where the observers were forced by the threats to them and their families to sign off. There was also the case of Philadelphia, where the proof was glaring, but the court decided that it does not constitute grounds for “disenfranchising” voters (as if fraud does not disenfranchise them). Remember sudden jumps in the curves, allegedly due to mail-in votes, which inexplicably arrived during the night (when US mail does not work). Biden got fewer votes than Obama in crazy red Kentucky and in crazy blue San Francisco, but a lot more votes than Obama in all swing states except Florida.

    Key point is, when the same cabal perpetrates the fraud and controls the courts, the courts will never find proof of anything untoward. In fact, the courts chose the safest way out: dismissed all cases w/o investigation. Classical situation: the fox investigated the break-in into the chicken coup and found itself to be innocent. If you believe that the elections in 2020 were honest, God help you (I can’t).

    • Replies: @Mikel
    @AnonfromTN


    As to 2020, there were many cases where the observers were forced by the threats to them and their families to sign off.
     
    Please cite one example that we can all verify. If you can't because all those observers are still too afraid for their lives, how exactly do you know what really happened to them?

    There was also the case of Philadelphia, where the proof was glaring
     
    Show us the glaring proof please. I spent many hours patiently listening to team Giuliani's presentations to the state legislatures and they failed to convince not just me but the Republican-majority states legislatures themselves that the cases of fraud were enough to change the election results in any state. As you admit, they didn't convince any judge either, though some cases were never investigated but that is no proof that the election was stolen.

    Furthermore, the MAGA Republicans conducted a thorough recount of all votes in Arizona and ultimately found that, in spite of the irregularities, Biden actually got a few more legitimate votes than the official tally. Explain that too. That recount was boycotted by the Democrats and the Establishment Republicans.

    Biden got fewer votes than Obama in crazy red Kentucky and in crazy blue San Francisco, but a lot more votes than Obama in all swing states except Florida.
     
    Even if true, in all elections you're going to be able to find atypical and sigma-3 results here and there. It's how statistics work. Don't you ever observe such results in your lab?

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @AnonfromTN

    , @A123
    @AnonfromTN

    There is undeniable evidence of vote fraud in Georgia.

    I believe I previously shared this video of blatant double counting of ballots.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1T4aIgxGFw

    After a water main burst, suitcases mysteriously showed up at the counting site. This was investigated by parties with an interest in not finding anything. Surprise, surprise, those with an agenda did not find anything. The "fact checker" cover up is wholly unconvincing.

    Anyone who believes the 2020 result was accurate exhibits a distinct lack of common sense.
    ___

    Giving up on 2024 because 2020 was stolen is faulty logic. There are huge differences between then and now.

    First and foremost, there were all sorts of special and easily exploited WUHAN-19 virus one-time exceptions in 2020. No one will buy another plague. Therefore, many of those unique vulnerabilities will not recur in 2024.

    Given the obvious theft in 2020, many states have tightened rules. Physically counting the presence of individual ballots at every site before they reach the counting center prevents vote multiplication techniques like that in the above video.

    Many more independent observers will be watching the entire process. This will greatly reduce the opportunity to tamper.

    Months ago, Trump's 2024 campaign started assembling a large roster of election lawyers on retainer. Where irregularities occur, they will be able to quickly and effectively fight multiple violations across swing states.

    PEACE 😇

  220. @AnonfromTN
    @Mikel


    the Dems will deserve to have beaten you.
     
    Will the country deserve to be driven to the cliff with acceleration? I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer the US not to crash and burn.

    As to 2020, there were many cases where the observers were forced by the threats to them and their families to sign off. There was also the case of Philadelphia, where the proof was glaring, but the court decided that it does not constitute grounds for “disenfranchising” voters (as if fraud does not disenfranchise them). Remember sudden jumps in the curves, allegedly due to mail-in votes, which inexplicably arrived during the night (when US mail does not work). Biden got fewer votes than Obama in crazy red Kentucky and in crazy blue San Francisco, but a lot more votes than Obama in all swing states except Florida.

    Key point is, when the same cabal perpetrates the fraud and controls the courts, the courts will never find proof of anything untoward. In fact, the courts chose the safest way out: dismissed all cases w/o investigation. Classical situation: the fox investigated the break-in into the chicken coup and found itself to be innocent. If you believe that the elections in 2020 were honest, God help you (I can’t).

    Replies: @Mikel, @A123

    As to 2020, there were many cases where the observers were forced by the threats to them and their families to sign off.

    Please cite one example that we can all verify. If you can’t because all those observers are still too afraid for their lives, how exactly do you know what really happened to them?

    There was also the case of Philadelphia, where the proof was glaring

    Show us the glaring proof please. I spent many hours patiently listening to team Giuliani’s presentations to the state legislatures and they failed to convince not just me but the Republican-majority states legislatures themselves that the cases of fraud were enough to change the election results in any state. As you admit, they didn’t convince any judge either, though some cases were never investigated but that is no proof that the election was stolen.

    Furthermore, the MAGA Republicans conducted a thorough recount of all votes in Arizona and ultimately found that, in spite of the irregularities, Biden actually got a few more legitimate votes than the official tally. Explain that too. That recount was boycotted by the Democrats and the Establishment Republicans.

    Biden got fewer votes than Obama in crazy red Kentucky and in crazy blue San Francisco, but a lot more votes than Obama in all swing states except Florida.

    Even if true, in all elections you’re going to be able to find atypical and sigma-3 results here and there. It’s how statistics work. Don’t you ever observe such results in your lab?

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Mikel

    Were you awake past midnight on election night 2020?

    When I went to bed there was not a declared winner, but based on state elections called number of electoral votes and the up-to-midnight counts on the not decided big states I was 95% sure Donald the Fat had it in the bag.

    When I got up Wednesday morning it took me 2 seconds to look at Biden's victory and conclude fix.

    Biased? Paranoid?

    Whatever.

    Replies: @Mikel, @LondonBob

    , @AnonfromTN
    @Mikel


    Please cite one example that we can all verify.
     
    I am too lazy to dig it all out. Besides, to do that I’d need an honest search engine, not Google, Microsoft Bing, and their ilk. This site has a lot of info:
    https://historyinfographics.com/massive-voter-fraud-ongoing-in-leftists-color-revolution/
    (FYI, it is blocked by my university censors, along with many other “politically incorrect” sites; in my book, censorship in favor of any narrative is an acknowledgement that the narrative you are defending is a lie)

    atypical and sigma-3 results here and there.
    Don’t you ever observe such results in your lab?
     
    Sigma-3 flukes are individual measurements. They totally disappear when you have enough statistical power. Sigma-3 results of counting hundreds of thousands of votes means only one thing, fraud. It’s how statistics work, to use your own phrase.

    Replies: @Mikel

  221. @Mikel
    @AnonfromTN


    As to 2020, there were many cases where the observers were forced by the threats to them and their families to sign off.
     
    Please cite one example that we can all verify. If you can't because all those observers are still too afraid for their lives, how exactly do you know what really happened to them?

    There was also the case of Philadelphia, where the proof was glaring
     
    Show us the glaring proof please. I spent many hours patiently listening to team Giuliani's presentations to the state legislatures and they failed to convince not just me but the Republican-majority states legislatures themselves that the cases of fraud were enough to change the election results in any state. As you admit, they didn't convince any judge either, though some cases were never investigated but that is no proof that the election was stolen.

    Furthermore, the MAGA Republicans conducted a thorough recount of all votes in Arizona and ultimately found that, in spite of the irregularities, Biden actually got a few more legitimate votes than the official tally. Explain that too. That recount was boycotted by the Democrats and the Establishment Republicans.

    Biden got fewer votes than Obama in crazy red Kentucky and in crazy blue San Francisco, but a lot more votes than Obama in all swing states except Florida.
     
    Even if true, in all elections you're going to be able to find atypical and sigma-3 results here and there. It's how statistics work. Don't you ever observe such results in your lab?

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @AnonfromTN

    Were you awake past midnight on election night 2020?

    When I went to bed there was not a declared winner, but based on state elections called number of electoral votes and the up-to-midnight counts on the not decided big states I was 95% sure Donald the Fat had it in the bag.

    When I got up Wednesday morning it took me 2 seconds to look at Biden’s victory and conclude fix.

    Biased? Paranoid?

    Whatever.

    • Replies: @Mikel
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    Were you awake past midnight on election night 2020?
     
    I don't remember that but when I went to bed most TV channels had already declared Biden the winner. There was a lot of uncertainty with some districts in swing states but a) most of them were districts where Dems always win and b) mail-in ballots that were counted later than regular ones also favored Biden because Dems voted by mail much more than Republicans did. So late results favoring Biden was expected and actually predicted that same night by election analysts with a reputation to protect, like Nate Silver.

    Still, I was more than willing to pay attention to all the cases of fraud that were being reported but I'm not going to repeat what I just explained to Professor TN. Sometimes reality sucks. But there's no point in burying your head in the sand. Like I said: https://protectthevote.com/ or stop whining.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    , @LondonBob
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    I went to bed in London with Trump miles ahead, the NYTimes election tracker had him winning all the states he needed with 95% plus certainty. Very confusing when I woke up.

    The fraud was done through mail in votes, we had people who had voted in Arizona who hadn't actually voted when asked on TV. Dead people in Michigan requesting and returning votes. When they realised this wasn't enough in places like Georgia, they just stopped the voting and brought in improbable stacks of votes going 99% for Biden, not even vaguely plausible. Lockdowns were so these rule changes were brought in for mail in, and a lot have been maintained. Clear that the illegals are now also a tool, they are being brought in and registered.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @S1

  222. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Mikel

    Were you awake past midnight on election night 2020?

    When I went to bed there was not a declared winner, but based on state elections called number of electoral votes and the up-to-midnight counts on the not decided big states I was 95% sure Donald the Fat had it in the bag.

    When I got up Wednesday morning it took me 2 seconds to look at Biden's victory and conclude fix.

    Biased? Paranoid?

    Whatever.

    Replies: @Mikel, @LondonBob

    Were you awake past midnight on election night 2020?

    I don’t remember that but when I went to bed most TV channels had already declared Biden the winner. There was a lot of uncertainty with some districts in swing states but a) most of them were districts where Dems always win and b) mail-in ballots that were counted later than regular ones also favored Biden because Dems voted by mail much more than Republicans did. So late results favoring Biden was expected and actually predicted that same night by election analysts with a reputation to protect, like Nate Silver.

    Still, I was more than willing to pay attention to all the cases of fraud that were being reported but I’m not going to repeat what I just explained to Professor TN. Sometimes reality sucks. But there’s no point in burying your head in the sand. Like I said: https://protectthevote.com/ or stop whining.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Mikel

    Fascinating.

    I don't ever watch television and I was busy doing stuff and I just looked at the New York Times electoral vote map every hour or so and at or around midnight Pacific Time I went to bed and thought Donald the Fat had it in the bag.

    I didn't even think to take a screenshot of it.

    Those television people you were listening to might maybe have been in on the fix. Did you ever consider this possibility?

  223. @Mikel
    @AnonfromTN


    As to 2020, there were many cases where the observers were forced by the threats to them and their families to sign off.
     
    Please cite one example that we can all verify. If you can't because all those observers are still too afraid for their lives, how exactly do you know what really happened to them?

    There was also the case of Philadelphia, where the proof was glaring
     
    Show us the glaring proof please. I spent many hours patiently listening to team Giuliani's presentations to the state legislatures and they failed to convince not just me but the Republican-majority states legislatures themselves that the cases of fraud were enough to change the election results in any state. As you admit, they didn't convince any judge either, though some cases were never investigated but that is no proof that the election was stolen.

    Furthermore, the MAGA Republicans conducted a thorough recount of all votes in Arizona and ultimately found that, in spite of the irregularities, Biden actually got a few more legitimate votes than the official tally. Explain that too. That recount was boycotted by the Democrats and the Establishment Republicans.

    Biden got fewer votes than Obama in crazy red Kentucky and in crazy blue San Francisco, but a lot more votes than Obama in all swing states except Florida.
     
    Even if true, in all elections you're going to be able to find atypical and sigma-3 results here and there. It's how statistics work. Don't you ever observe such results in your lab?

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @AnonfromTN

    Please cite one example that we can all verify.

    I am too lazy to dig it all out. Besides, to do that I’d need an honest search engine, not Google, Microsoft Bing, and their ilk. This site has a lot of info:
    https://historyinfographics.com/massive-voter-fraud-ongoing-in-leftists-color-revolution/
    (FYI, it is blocked by my university censors, along with many other “politically incorrect” sites; in my book, censorship in favor of any narrative is an acknowledgement that the narrative you are defending is a lie)

    atypical and sigma-3 results here and there.
    Don’t you ever observe such results in your lab?

    Sigma-3 flukes are individual measurements. They totally disappear when you have enough statistical power. Sigma-3 results of counting hundreds of thousands of votes means only one thing, fraud. It’s how statistics work, to use your own phrase.

    • Replies: @Mikel
    @AnonfromTN


    I am too lazy to dig it all out.
     
    I knew you would be. But this is like publishing the results of a scientific experiment in a peer-reviewed journal versus posting them on Twitter. Why should we believe you with no data to examine by anyone?

    In fact, I have taken the trouble of verifying just one of your claims, out of curiosity ("Biden got fewer votes than Obama in crazy red Kentucky") and look what I found:

    Obama 2008: 751,985 votes
    Obama 2012: 679,370 votes
    Biden 2024: 772,474 votes.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_States_presidential_election_in_Kentucky
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_presidential_election_in_Kentucky
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election_in_Kentucky

    You were WRONG on an easily verifiable claim, as you often are.


    Sigma-3 results of counting hundreds of thousands of votes means only one thing, fraud.
     
    You were talking about geographical inconsistencies in total amount of votes and that is totally normal in election results. Much more unexpected results than the ones you (wrongly) provided would have also been a normal result in a very heterogeneous nation of 300+ million people that proves nothing.

    Replies: @Gerard1234, @AnonfromTN

  224. @Mikel
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    Were you awake past midnight on election night 2020?
     
    I don't remember that but when I went to bed most TV channels had already declared Biden the winner. There was a lot of uncertainty with some districts in swing states but a) most of them were districts where Dems always win and b) mail-in ballots that were counted later than regular ones also favored Biden because Dems voted by mail much more than Republicans did. So late results favoring Biden was expected and actually predicted that same night by election analysts with a reputation to protect, like Nate Silver.

    Still, I was more than willing to pay attention to all the cases of fraud that were being reported but I'm not going to repeat what I just explained to Professor TN. Sometimes reality sucks. But there's no point in burying your head in the sand. Like I said: https://protectthevote.com/ or stop whining.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    Fascinating.

    I don’t ever watch television and I was busy doing stuff and I just looked at the New York Times electoral vote map every hour or so and at or around midnight Pacific Time I went to bed and thought Donald the Fat had it in the bag.

    I didn’t even think to take a screenshot of it.

    Those television people you were listening to might maybe have been in on the fix. Did you ever consider this possibility?

  225. @Coconuts
    @songbird


    Wow, seems like a very strange assertion for him to make...
     
    I think the interview was post the October 7th attacks and all the demonstrations etc. following them, otherwise I agree it doesn't really make any sense. It made me think he was out of touch with the issues around Wokeness and was trying to make some generic anti-totalitarian arguments.



    When I was last in Berlin we visited a few different museums and sites linked to the Nazi era and there was a strong anti-totalitarian message, that was interesting given the way things were going in the UK at the time.

    I just remember vaguely that some noted an exchange where he or the other guy said something to the effect that anti-immigrant sentiment made him uncomfortable...
     
    The other guy is half Venezuelan as well. There is an interview with Alex Kaschuta where they start to discuss issues around racism and Alex (who is looking obviously blonde iirc) tells them something to the effect that she doesn't think it should be taboo, and then there is an awkward atmosphere for the rest of the interview. When they are talking about the West they definitely intend it in the classical liberal sense.

    Even as a work of fiction, I must admit there is a certain sociological appeal. But the film (which I have not watched) seems to lack some of the elements I have enjoyed in Indian films, like the celebration of masculine ideals or some form of paganism.
     
    The last Bollywood I remember seeing was called Chot. It was a revenge drama set in a diary. I think it had some dance sequences but the masculine ideal was definitely present, and there was some spiritual symbolism around the cows and milk.

    It looks like the goat film hasn't got Mr Hack interested this time :(

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @songbird

    I think the interview was post the October 7th attacks and all the demonstrations etc. following them

    ah, yes, there was an excess of rhetoric back then. Talk by the establishment of “mass deportations.”. Maybe, there was even a certain logic (though crazy) for Ferguson, as presumably a lot of these migrants didn’t get a Western education.

    [MORE]

    Alex (who is looking obviously blonde iirc)

    she has an interesting background, IIRC. From Romania but an ethnic German or part German. AK did an episode with her, but that was a while back and I haven’t listened to it yet.

    The last Bollywood I remember seeing was called Chot.

    This own I haven’t seen, but the pastoralist in me is attracted to any movie with livestock, and I think in particular cows.

    It looks like the goat film hasn’t got Mr Hack interested this time 🙁

    for all his fondness for foreign food, I find it curious how Mr. Hack doesn’t seem to have much of any interest in foreign movies. (Perhaps, excepting Ukrainian). I am thinking he doesn’t like to read subtitles, which I can appreciate to a certain extent, but I think there is a benefit to subs over dubs. They are often rougher, and give you a better idea of the original dialogue. Plus, anything dubbed, there is a risk that it was foreign financed and that imperils the cultural cohesiveness of the story

    For my own part, foreign movies comprise most of the newer movies that I watch. I appreciate how they generally have a more cohesive cultural background. But unfortunately, you have to go far for this now – not really Western Europe.

    I was just a short while ago marvelling at the idea of this seemingly very woke German film, directed by an ethnic Turk. Good reviews. If I understand correctly, they got the idea to have a Turkish boy falsely accused of theft at a school by observing real Turkish boys at a school in Turkey stealing stuff. (But possibly they were Syrians or Kurds, etc.). I haven’t watched it, as I don’t think I could stomach it.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Teachers%27_Lounge

    Haven’t tried to quantify it scientifically, but I suspect that current Germany’s cultural footprint is sadly less than the GDR’s was. (At least, if we count cohesive stuff.)

    • Replies: @Coconuts
    @songbird


    Maybe, there was even a certain logic (though crazy) for Ferguson, as presumably a lot of these migrants didn’t get a Western education.
     
    Yes, there was some logic to it. I am not sure how much it means to them, it must be quite weird teaching it. We studied those topics in the 1990s but the cultural connection to that period was still obviously stronger then.


    From Romania but an ethnic German or part German. AK did an episode with her, but that was a while back and I haven’t listened to it yet.
     
    Iirc she has mentioned Hungarian and Slavic ancestry as well, and she seems to speak fluent German. Often her pov on race or other culture war issues seems more typical of other Romanians or other Eastern Europeans, where there is less sensitivity around them than is usual in an Anglo context. She also has mentioned having a degree in Gender Studies and similar feminist subjects from a German university, then becoming disillusioned with it after working in HR for tech companies in London.

    I used to watch her fairly regularly a year or two ago, she used to have some good guests.

    For my own part, foreign movies comprise most of the newer movies that I watch. I appreciate how they generally have a more cohesive cultural background. But unfortunately, you have to go far for this now – not really Western Europe.
     
    I think you can find it still in EE films and dramas. The other weekend I saw an interesting Latvian nationalist war film on Amazon called 'Blizzard of Souls', based on the novel by this guy:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandrs_Gr%C4%ABns

    Often it feels like the contemporary British dramas have implausible instances of diverse casting (the usual thing is too many blacks and too few Indians and Asians). And even the ones with regional settings where irl diversity levels are very low, like the Shetland Islands.

    Haven’t tried to quantify it scientifically, but I suspect that current Germany’s cultural footprint is sadly less than the GDR’s was. (At least, if we count cohesive stuff.)
     
    It wouldn't be surprising. I recall watching a German Netflix series or two 5+ years ago, I can't think of anything since. I feel like the Goat Life film has much more obvious appeal than the one about the thefts in the school, that sounds similar to the story lines that sometimes used to come up in Swedish/Nordic police dramas on the same topic. It's like when trying to refute stereotypes becomes in itself stereotypical.

    Replies: @songbird

  226. @AnonfromTN
    @Mikel


    Please cite one example that we can all verify.
     
    I am too lazy to dig it all out. Besides, to do that I’d need an honest search engine, not Google, Microsoft Bing, and their ilk. This site has a lot of info:
    https://historyinfographics.com/massive-voter-fraud-ongoing-in-leftists-color-revolution/
    (FYI, it is blocked by my university censors, along with many other “politically incorrect” sites; in my book, censorship in favor of any narrative is an acknowledgement that the narrative you are defending is a lie)

    atypical and sigma-3 results here and there.
    Don’t you ever observe such results in your lab?
     
    Sigma-3 flukes are individual measurements. They totally disappear when you have enough statistical power. Sigma-3 results of counting hundreds of thousands of votes means only one thing, fraud. It’s how statistics work, to use your own phrase.

    Replies: @Mikel

    I am too lazy to dig it all out.

    I knew you would be. But this is like publishing the results of a scientific experiment in a peer-reviewed journal versus posting them on Twitter. Why should we believe you with no data to examine by anyone?

    In fact, I have taken the trouble of verifying just one of your claims, out of curiosity (“Biden got fewer votes than Obama in crazy red Kentucky”) and look what I found:

    Obama 2008: 751,985 votes
    Obama 2012: 679,370 votes
    Biden 2024: 772,474 votes.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_States_presidential_election_in_Kentucky
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_presidential_election_in_Kentucky
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election_in_Kentucky

    You were WRONG on an easily verifiable claim, as you often are.

    Sigma-3 results of counting hundreds of thousands of votes means only one thing, fraud.

    You were talking about geographical inconsistencies in total amount of votes and that is totally normal in election results. Much more unexpected results than the ones you (wrongly) provided would have also been a normal result in a very heterogeneous nation of 300+ million people that proves nothing.

    • Replies: @Gerard1234
    @Mikel


    Obama 2008: 751,985 votes
    Obama 2012: 679,370 votes
    Biden 2024: 772,474 votes.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_States_presidential_election_in_Kentucky
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_presidential_election_in_Kentucky
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election_in_Kentucky

    You were WRONG on an easily verifiable claim, as you often are.
     
    Cmon, don't be a clown. It's blatantly obvious that AnonFromTn is intending to talk about voter percentage when talking about less votes. American population increases by about 20-30 million each decade. so purely numerical comparisons aren't that important compared to voter percentage.
    And as AnonFromTN says, Biden less than both Obama elections (Biden 36% vs Obama's 38 & 41%.

    I've heard Trump boast about getting the most voters ever of a losing candidate to imply he was cheated out of winning. Maybe he was, but in reality that number of 75M or 80M votes is obviously irrelevant because the US population increasing each year and maybe more pensioners compared to younger people is further increasing this eligible voting number.

    The "mail-in" voting in an ultra-corrupt country like America is blatantly open vote fixing. Pensioners, active pensioners in states as Florida can be trusted to vote honestly by mail - I very much doubt that states with different age demographics can be trusted . Some psychotically anti-Trump woman Democrat living with her young adult children and any of her elderly parents is blatantly going to force everybody in the house to vote Democrat, and watch them do it.

    The coronavirus enabled them to do it, but the principle of mail-in voting should be for elderly ( like in a pensioner dominated state like Florida), invalid or those away on the day of election. Not for everyone else.

    It's certainly not proof, but indicative that Trump is the first person to win Florida but lose the election in 100 years?

    Replies: @Mikel

    , @AnonfromTN
    @Mikel

    If you trust Wiki, even God might not be able to help you.

    Replies: @Mikel

  227. @Greasy William
    @Bashibuzuk

    woman on the left looks Jewish. She's a Russian?

    Replies: @Torna atrás, @Bashibuzuk

    See my comment # 170. She’s a Karaite.

  228. @Bashibuzuk
    @Bashibuzuk

    And the singer here is Strongilla Shabbetayevna Irtlach, a Karaite artist from Leningrad.

    https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%98%D1%80%D1%82%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%87,_%D0%A1%D1%82%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B3%D0%B8%D0%BB%D0%BB%D0%B0_%D0%A8%D0%B0%D0%B1%D0%B1%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%BD%D0%B0

    For those who are not familiar with the Karaites:

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

    So yeah, that’s (((Russian mafia))) mafia for you Goyim. And BTW, the Jewish Mob was also very strong in the US around the same period. Often these people came from Jewish families who migrated from the Tsarist Empire.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish-American_organized_crime

    Therefore, no surprise that after the fall of the USSR the Russian Mafiosi and the US banksters had no trouble at all finding a common language.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/russian-mafia-laundered-10bn-at-bank-of-new-york-p-1113796.html

    As early as 1999, 10 Bln USD have been laundered by the bank of New York alone. It was just 8 years after the fall of the USSR, that’s more than a billion (would be probably equivalent to 2 -3 Bln in today’s fiat) a year. Now you understand better how it all worked.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Greasy William

    And BTW, the Jewish Mob was also very strong in the US around the same period

    My grandad had to work with the Jewish mob in 1920’s Chicago. If you were engaged in any commerce you in the Chicago Jewish ghetto, you had to deal with them.

    I asked him about it and he said that it may have been different in Philadelphia or Detroit but that in Chicago it was definitely the Italian gangsters, led by Al Capone, who ran the place. The Jewish gangsters all either worked for Al or paid up to him.

    Once Prohibition ended, that ended Jewish organized crime in the United States until the “Red Mafia” emerged in the 1970’s.

    For those who are not familiar with the Karaites

    Karaites aren’t Jews, they don’t consider themselves Jews and they were spared extermination during the Holocaust.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Greasy William

    Have you read about the history of the Karaites ?

    Replies: @Greasy William

  229. @Mikel
    @AnonfromTN


    I am too lazy to dig it all out.
     
    I knew you would be. But this is like publishing the results of a scientific experiment in a peer-reviewed journal versus posting them on Twitter. Why should we believe you with no data to examine by anyone?

    In fact, I have taken the trouble of verifying just one of your claims, out of curiosity ("Biden got fewer votes than Obama in crazy red Kentucky") and look what I found:

    Obama 2008: 751,985 votes
    Obama 2012: 679,370 votes
    Biden 2024: 772,474 votes.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_States_presidential_election_in_Kentucky
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_presidential_election_in_Kentucky
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election_in_Kentucky

    You were WRONG on an easily verifiable claim, as you often are.


    Sigma-3 results of counting hundreds of thousands of votes means only one thing, fraud.
     
    You were talking about geographical inconsistencies in total amount of votes and that is totally normal in election results. Much more unexpected results than the ones you (wrongly) provided would have also been a normal result in a very heterogeneous nation of 300+ million people that proves nothing.

    Replies: @Gerard1234, @AnonfromTN

    Obama 2008: 751,985 votes
    Obama 2012: 679,370 votes
    Biden 2024: 772,474 votes.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_States_presidential_election_in_Kentucky
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_presidential_election_in_Kentucky
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election_in_Kentucky

    You were WRONG on an easily verifiable claim, as you often are.

    Cmon, don’t be a clown. It’s blatantly obvious that AnonFromTn is intending to talk about voter percentage when talking about less votes. American population increases by about 20-30 million each decade. so purely numerical comparisons aren’t that important compared to voter percentage.
    And as AnonFromTN says, Biden less than both Obama elections (Biden 36% vs Obama’s 38 & 41%.

    I’ve heard Trump boast about getting the most voters ever of a losing candidate to imply he was cheated out of winning. Maybe he was, but in reality that number of 75M or 80M votes is obviously irrelevant because the US population increasing each year and maybe more pensioners compared to younger people is further increasing this eligible voting number.

    The “mail-in” voting in an ultra-corrupt country like America is blatantly open vote fixing. Pensioners, active pensioners in states as Florida can be trusted to vote honestly by mail – I very much doubt that states with different age demographics can be trusted . Some psychotically anti-Trump woman Democrat living with her young adult children and any of her elderly parents is blatantly going to force everybody in the house to vote Democrat, and watch them do it.

    The coronavirus enabled them to do it, but the principle of mail-in voting should be for elderly ( like in a pensioner dominated state like Florida), invalid or those away on the day of election. Not for everyone else.

    It’s certainly not proof, but indicative that Trump is the first person to win Florida but lose the election in 100 years?

    • Replies: @Mikel
    @Gerard1234


    It’s blatantly obvious that AnonFromTn is intending to talk about voter percentage when talking about less votes.
     
    It's anything but blatantly obvious. "Less votes" means "less votes" in English, Russian or Tagalog. As opposed to "worse results" or "lower percentage".

    The “mail-in” voting in an ultra-corrupt country like America is blatantly open vote fixing
     
    Rubbish. People have been voting by mail in Utah for many years. It's a very convenient way of voting if you don't want to wait in lines or drive to a voting center the day of the election. You can only deposit the vote that was sent to you as a registered voter, you can track your vote online with a bar code and it has an additional security layer with your signature, that is associated to your voter registration. It never was a problem until 2020.

    Some psychotically anti-Trump woman Democrat living with her young adult children and any of her elderly parents is blatantly going to force everybody in the house to vote Democrat
     
    That has been happening forever in any country with regular elections. Motivated voters convince apathetic relatives and friends to vote for their preferred candidate. That is in fact what republican ads I hear all the time ask people to do: convince everybody around you to vote GOP. And it's totally legitimate too. You can't possibly prevent that in any sensible system with universal suffrage.

    It’s certainly not proof, but indicative that Trump is the first person to win Florida but lose the election in 100 years?
     
    My point precisely. Such historical anomalies are proof of nothing. There is a reason why people take the trouble of counting every vote, rather than counting just the votes in the bellwether states or counties. In every election you're going to find anomalous results here and there. 'Oh look, the party X candidate increased his votes in every county but in Daggett he got less votes. This has never happened before in recorded history'. So? People have fun looking for anomalies like that in every single election. Finding some statistical anomaly is the worst possible argument to prove fraud.

    Replies: @songbird, @Beckow, @Gerard1234

  230. A123 says: • Website
    @AnonfromTN
    @Mikel


    the Dems will deserve to have beaten you.
     
    Will the country deserve to be driven to the cliff with acceleration? I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer the US not to crash and burn.

    As to 2020, there were many cases where the observers were forced by the threats to them and their families to sign off. There was also the case of Philadelphia, where the proof was glaring, but the court decided that it does not constitute grounds for “disenfranchising” voters (as if fraud does not disenfranchise them). Remember sudden jumps in the curves, allegedly due to mail-in votes, which inexplicably arrived during the night (when US mail does not work). Biden got fewer votes than Obama in crazy red Kentucky and in crazy blue San Francisco, but a lot more votes than Obama in all swing states except Florida.

    Key point is, when the same cabal perpetrates the fraud and controls the courts, the courts will never find proof of anything untoward. In fact, the courts chose the safest way out: dismissed all cases w/o investigation. Classical situation: the fox investigated the break-in into the chicken coup and found itself to be innocent. If you believe that the elections in 2020 were honest, God help you (I can’t).

    Replies: @Mikel, @A123

    There is undeniable evidence of vote fraud in Georgia.

    I believe I previously shared this video of blatant double counting of ballots.

    After a water main burst, suitcases mysteriously showed up at the counting site. This was investigated by parties with an interest in not finding anything. Surprise, surprise, those with an agenda did not find anything. The “fact checker” cover up is wholly unconvincing.

    Anyone who believes the 2020 result was accurate exhibits a distinct lack of common sense.
    ___

    Giving up on 2024 because 2020 was stolen is faulty logic. There are huge differences between then and now.

    First and foremost, there were all sorts of special and easily exploited WUHAN-19 virus one-time exceptions in 2020. No one will buy another plague. Therefore, many of those unique vulnerabilities will not recur in 2024.

    Given the obvious theft in 2020, many states have tightened rules. Physically counting the presence of individual ballots at every site before they reach the counting center prevents vote multiplication techniques like that in the above video.

    Many more independent observers will be watching the entire process. This will greatly reduce the opportunity to tamper.

    Months ago, Trump’s 2024 campaign started assembling a large roster of election lawyers on retainer. Where irregularities occur, they will be able to quickly and effectively fight multiple violations across swing states.

    PEACE 😇

  231. @Mikel
    @AnonfromTN


    I am too lazy to dig it all out.
     
    I knew you would be. But this is like publishing the results of a scientific experiment in a peer-reviewed journal versus posting them on Twitter. Why should we believe you with no data to examine by anyone?

    In fact, I have taken the trouble of verifying just one of your claims, out of curiosity ("Biden got fewer votes than Obama in crazy red Kentucky") and look what I found:

    Obama 2008: 751,985 votes
    Obama 2012: 679,370 votes
    Biden 2024: 772,474 votes.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_States_presidential_election_in_Kentucky
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_presidential_election_in_Kentucky
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election_in_Kentucky

    You were WRONG on an easily verifiable claim, as you often are.


    Sigma-3 results of counting hundreds of thousands of votes means only one thing, fraud.
     
    You were talking about geographical inconsistencies in total amount of votes and that is totally normal in election results. Much more unexpected results than the ones you (wrongly) provided would have also been a normal result in a very heterogeneous nation of 300+ million people that proves nothing.

    Replies: @Gerard1234, @AnonfromTN

    If you trust Wiki, even God might not be able to help you.

    • Replies: @Mikel
    @AnonfromTN


    If you trust Wiki, even God might not be able to help you.
     
    LOL. That's even sillier than claiming that Biden lost in the US because he got less votes than Obama in Kentucky. Are you saying that Wikipedia conspired with the lizard people to publish false results for the elections in Kentucky? Why has no Republican or impartial reader tried to change that page with the correct results? Have all those who have tried also received death threats, like the election observers?

    How can I trust anything at all you say when you show such an infantile level of gullibility on the most trivial subjects?

    Replies: @AnonfromTN

  232. @Greasy William
    @Bashibuzuk


    And BTW, the Jewish Mob was also very strong in the US around the same period
     
    My grandad had to work with the Jewish mob in 1920's Chicago. If you were engaged in any commerce you in the Chicago Jewish ghetto, you had to deal with them.

    I asked him about it and he said that it may have been different in Philadelphia or Detroit but that in Chicago it was definitely the Italian gangsters, led by Al Capone, who ran the place. The Jewish gangsters all either worked for Al or paid up to him.

    Once Prohibition ended, that ended Jewish organized crime in the United States until the "Red Mafia" emerged in the 1970's.

    For those who are not familiar with the Karaites
     
    Karaites aren't Jews, they don't consider themselves Jews and they were spared extermination during the Holocaust.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    Have you read about the history of the Karaites ?

    • Replies: @Greasy William
    @Bashibuzuk

    I know a little bit about them. They don't practice rabbinical Judaism, the only true Judaism. They aren't part of the Jewish people and they don't regard themselves as such. They are possibly an offshoot of the Sadducees.

    Karaites are like Samaritans or Palestinian Muslims (not Palestinian Christians) in that they are groups that are genetically Israelite but not Jewish.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  233. @Bashibuzuk
    @Greasy William

    Have you read about the history of the Karaites ?

    Replies: @Greasy William

    I know a little bit about them. They don’t practice rabbinical Judaism, the only true Judaism. They aren’t part of the Jewish people and they don’t regard themselves as such. They are possibly an offshoot of the Sadducees.

    Karaites are like Samaritans or Palestinian Muslims (not Palestinian Christians) in that they are groups that are genetically Israelite but not Jewish.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Greasy William


    They don’t practice rabbinical Judaism, the only true Judaism.
     
    You know that Jews had a leader Resh Galuta (Exilarch) in the diaspora that resided in Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq, until the middle Abbasid Caliphate era ?

    The Jewish Exilarch was an official title in the Abbasid times, similar to ambassador. He resided in a palace in Baghdad and had his own court, including guards.

    The last Exilarch decided to purify Rabbinical Jewish faith from everything that was not in the Tanakh. He wanted to go back to the pure prophetic tradition. He wanted all Jews to read and understand the Bible without any interference by the priestly class. Therefore he rejected the Talmud and asked from the congregation to read the Bible in its entirety each one of them.

    To read in Arabic is karaa / yakraoo, the reading is kiraa’h. Hence these Jews who read only the Tanakh and rejected the Talmud became known as Karaim / Karaites.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Greasy William

  234. @Gerard1234
    @Mikel


    Obama 2008: 751,985 votes
    Obama 2012: 679,370 votes
    Biden 2024: 772,474 votes.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_States_presidential_election_in_Kentucky
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_presidential_election_in_Kentucky
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election_in_Kentucky

    You were WRONG on an easily verifiable claim, as you often are.
     
    Cmon, don't be a clown. It's blatantly obvious that AnonFromTn is intending to talk about voter percentage when talking about less votes. American population increases by about 20-30 million each decade. so purely numerical comparisons aren't that important compared to voter percentage.
    And as AnonFromTN says, Biden less than both Obama elections (Biden 36% vs Obama's 38 & 41%.

    I've heard Trump boast about getting the most voters ever of a losing candidate to imply he was cheated out of winning. Maybe he was, but in reality that number of 75M or 80M votes is obviously irrelevant because the US population increasing each year and maybe more pensioners compared to younger people is further increasing this eligible voting number.

    The "mail-in" voting in an ultra-corrupt country like America is blatantly open vote fixing. Pensioners, active pensioners in states as Florida can be trusted to vote honestly by mail - I very much doubt that states with different age demographics can be trusted . Some psychotically anti-Trump woman Democrat living with her young adult children and any of her elderly parents is blatantly going to force everybody in the house to vote Democrat, and watch them do it.

    The coronavirus enabled them to do it, but the principle of mail-in voting should be for elderly ( like in a pensioner dominated state like Florida), invalid or those away on the day of election. Not for everyone else.

    It's certainly not proof, but indicative that Trump is the first person to win Florida but lose the election in 100 years?

    Replies: @Mikel

    It’s blatantly obvious that AnonFromTn is intending to talk about voter percentage when talking about less votes.

    It’s anything but blatantly obvious. “Less votes” means “less votes” in English, Russian or Tagalog. As opposed to “worse results” or “lower percentage”.

    The “mail-in” voting in an ultra-corrupt country like America is blatantly open vote fixing

    Rubbish. People have been voting by mail in Utah for many years. It’s a very convenient way of voting if you don’t want to wait in lines or drive to a voting center the day of the election. You can only deposit the vote that was sent to you as a registered voter, you can track your vote online with a bar code and it has an additional security layer with your signature, that is associated to your voter registration. It never was a problem until 2020.

    Some psychotically anti-Trump woman Democrat living with her young adult children and any of her elderly parents is blatantly going to force everybody in the house to vote Democrat

    That has been happening forever in any country with regular elections. Motivated voters convince apathetic relatives and friends to vote for their preferred candidate. That is in fact what republican ads I hear all the time ask people to do: convince everybody around you to vote GOP. And it’s totally legitimate too. You can’t possibly prevent that in any sensible system with universal suffrage.

    It’s certainly not proof, but indicative that Trump is the first person to win Florida but lose the election in 100 years?

    My point precisely. Such historical anomalies are proof of nothing. There is a reason why people take the trouble of counting every vote, rather than counting just the votes in the bellwether states or counties. In every election you’re going to find anomalous results here and there. ‘Oh look, the party X candidate increased his votes in every county but in Daggett he got less votes. This has never happened before in recorded history’. So? People have fun looking for anomalies like that in every single election. Finding some statistical anomaly is the worst possible argument to prove fraud.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Mikel


    “Less votes” means “less votes” in English, Russian or Tagalog.
     
    Have heard this story - I don't know whether it is truthful or urban legend:

    When Kamala was running for office in CA, she had a friend who knew her come up with a Chinese language version of her name for the Chinese ballot. This friend decided that the most appropriate Chinese surname - the thing closest to "Harris" in spirit - was "Ho."

    I don't know if it true, but it sounds awfully plausible.
    , @Beckow
    @Mikel

    It is unknowable – too many variables and an enormous amount of data. ‘Mail-in-voting’ is by definition open to fraud – nobody in the past did it because they were less full of sh..t. Normal election – like UK this month – is in person and votes are counted physically the same night. The results were available within hours. The UK system doesn't allow for fraud. The US one does.

    2020 election had unusual patterns: each close state went one way late in the count and some districts voted 90%+ for Biden with 95% turnout, Phillie, Detroit, Atlanta... You will never convince any fair observer that it can be proved that it was a free. Maybe it was, maybe not. Demonizing and criminalizing people who expressed doubt and the obsessive one-sided banning of any skepticism in the media added to the suspicion.

    It can’t really be investigated because it would require a level of detail and intrusive power that simply doesn’t exist in the US. ‘He said, she said‘ and complexity are too much – 200 million pieces of data. How can you be so certain that all 200 million votes were ‘legitimate’? Nobody checks ‘signatures’ and there are millions of out-of-date records in the databases. It is a mess – and fraud benefits from having a mess.

    Utah is fine, you can probably vote by sending self-certified pieces of paper, it will be ok.

    As with many other systems US is far behind the current world standards – it is very silly for Washington to preach to others. US also just had a genocidial maniac screaming in Congress how he wants to kill more Palies – and the ‘elected’ ones cheered like at a good fascist rally. You are too far gone, it is a freak-show now.

    Replies: @A123, @Mikel

    , @Gerard1234
    @Mikel


    Rubbish. People have been voting by mail in Utah for many years. It’s a very convenient way of voting if you don’t want to wait in lines or drive to a voting center the day of the election
     
    I am happy to have my ignorance corrected by you - but isn't Utah in a similar situation to Florida when I am talking about the mail-in voting more likely to be honest there compared to other states?

    In my limited understanding of the American system , didn't lots of people squeal about the idea of voter Identification for voting being "racist" when Republicans tried to increase these controls after the disputed 2020 election?
    For similarish reasons that people would think Utah and Florida are likely to have honest and strictly controlled mail-in voting.......those on the states accused of being less than honest are likely to claim "racism". Or at least the Democrats in those states will - though the issue is about more than racial demographics.

    You can only deposit the vote that was sent to you as a registered voter
     
    Standard practise across the world. But the issue is large number adult households, or apartment blocks if the mail is fairly open between the residents - where it could be easy for 1 person to do multiple votes.

    you can track your vote online with a bar code and it has an additional security layer with your signature,
     
    Not impressed. My signature wildly deviates every day. Somebody looking at my signature and practising for 10 minutes could easily get a better match for my own than what I do. Particularly in this era. Surely a person's signature naturally changes over the decades , even if they try hard to make it the same? What's even the purpose of them if the elderly has quite bad arthritis in their hands and struggle to get even 10% signature match?

    Is somebody going to report their mother or son for voting on their behalf without permission?
    And even if its not a family member - how many are going to bother to check?

    It never was a problem until 2020.
     
    I am sure that's true. But as I understand, the issue is that only 0.3% of the total votes (maybe even lower) needed to be faked to change the election result, while the other 99.7% of votes could be perfectly fine and honest. Enough officials in the US rabidly despise Trump to the point that 100000 votes across 4 states in a 130 million vote election could be falsified,particularly if the result is looking to be very close.

    It’s anything but blatantly obvious. “Less votes” means “less votes” in English, Russian or Tagalog. As opposed to “worse results” or “lower percentage”.

     

    Except in this instance when it means "lower percentage". Anon is an honest and highly intellectual commentator so deserves trust. John Kerry presumably got more votes than Ronald Reagan or Eisenhower - but clearly its the percentage vote that is relevant.

    I suppose your issue with AnonFromTN is, quite fairly, about proof. To me the proof is irrelevant - the US has accused others of falsifying elections based on much less evidence and strange circumstances........to me its more about logic, the entire process , the lying constantly before and the opportunity & motive to cheat. There is no scientifically determined number at which the mail-in voting number is "too much", but appears clear it was too much for that election

    Replies: @LondonBob, @Mikel

  235. @AnonfromTN
    @Mikel

    If you trust Wiki, even God might not be able to help you.

    Replies: @Mikel

    If you trust Wiki, even God might not be able to help you.

    LOL. That’s even sillier than claiming that Biden lost in the US because he got less votes than Obama in Kentucky. Are you saying that Wikipedia conspired with the lizard people to publish false results for the elections in Kentucky? Why has no Republican or impartial reader tried to change that page with the correct results? Have all those who have tried also received death threats, like the election observers?

    How can I trust anything at all you say when you show such an infantile level of gullibility on the most trivial subjects?

    • Replies: @AnonfromTN
    @Mikel


    Why has no Republican or impartial reader tried to change that page with the correct results?
     
    Try a simple experiment: edit any Wiki entry in “politically incorrect” direction and then watch how fast your edits disappear. Censors at work, no need to threaten anyone.

    How can I trust anything at all you say
     
    What on Earth makes you think that I want you to trust what I say? I don’t give a hoot.

    On a more general level, you (along with 80-85% of my fellow university faculty) are proof positive that the West is doomed. Exactly like schizophrenics: intelligent and reasonable most of the time, but when someone touches points where screws are loose the insanity comes gushing out. You guys fully deserve demented half-corpses and half-crazy dimwits as presidents: their quality just reflects the quality of “educated” residents. It is rightly said that every country has the government it deserves. I just feel sorry for the uneducated ones who retain common sense, but will be buried along with you under the debris.

    Thank goodness I have a place to run away to. I will do that as soon as I transfer the second half of my money off the sinking ship. Your Alzheimer-in-Chief tried to make it impossible, but he just made it more complicated, but still possible. Morons can never do anything right. Vote Kamala, speed up the demise.

    Replies: @Mikel, @YetAnotherAnon

  236. @Mikel
    @Gerard1234


    It’s blatantly obvious that AnonFromTn is intending to talk about voter percentage when talking about less votes.
     
    It's anything but blatantly obvious. "Less votes" means "less votes" in English, Russian or Tagalog. As opposed to "worse results" or "lower percentage".

    The “mail-in” voting in an ultra-corrupt country like America is blatantly open vote fixing
     
    Rubbish. People have been voting by mail in Utah for many years. It's a very convenient way of voting if you don't want to wait in lines or drive to a voting center the day of the election. You can only deposit the vote that was sent to you as a registered voter, you can track your vote online with a bar code and it has an additional security layer with your signature, that is associated to your voter registration. It never was a problem until 2020.

    Some psychotically anti-Trump woman Democrat living with her young adult children and any of her elderly parents is blatantly going to force everybody in the house to vote Democrat
     
    That has been happening forever in any country with regular elections. Motivated voters convince apathetic relatives and friends to vote for their preferred candidate. That is in fact what republican ads I hear all the time ask people to do: convince everybody around you to vote GOP. And it's totally legitimate too. You can't possibly prevent that in any sensible system with universal suffrage.

    It’s certainly not proof, but indicative that Trump is the first person to win Florida but lose the election in 100 years?
     
    My point precisely. Such historical anomalies are proof of nothing. There is a reason why people take the trouble of counting every vote, rather than counting just the votes in the bellwether states or counties. In every election you're going to find anomalous results here and there. 'Oh look, the party X candidate increased his votes in every county but in Daggett he got less votes. This has never happened before in recorded history'. So? People have fun looking for anomalies like that in every single election. Finding some statistical anomaly is the worst possible argument to prove fraud.

    Replies: @songbird, @Beckow, @Gerard1234

    “Less votes” means “less votes” in English, Russian or Tagalog.

    Have heard this story – I don’t know whether it is truthful or urban legend:

    When Kamala was running for office in CA, she had a friend who knew her come up with a Chinese language version of her name for the Chinese ballot. This friend decided that the most appropriate Chinese surname – the thing closest to “Harris” in spirit – was “Ho.”

    I don’t know if it true, but it sounds awfully plausible.

    • LOL: Mikel
  237. A123 says: • Website

    Here is a good aggregation of key problems with Harris: (1)

    Democrats’ enjoyment of the Kamala Harris campaign’s ‘new car smell’ may prove short-lived, as a brand new poll (2) shows the vice president trailing former President Trump by a whopping 11 points among likely voters — matching up even worse than President Biden, who trailed by 10.”

    Even Leftoids like the race reparations candidate RFKjr has doubts.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=59226

    (2) https://www.zerohedge.com/political/stumbling-out-gate-harris-starts-race-down-9-points-even-worse-biden

  238. AP says:
    @AnonfromTN
    Nazis kill Nazis in Ukraine.

    Ukrainian Neonazi group “National-Socialism/White Power»” took responsibility for the murder of another Ukrainian Nazi Farion.

    This explains many strange details of this murder.

    One, while in Ukraine “recruiters” drag men from stores, churches, buses, and their own cars, so that men in Ukraine either do not venture outside or move in short spurts looking around, a young man of clearly draft age was sitting and waiting for Farion for two weeks in a very noticeable outfit (https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2024/07/21/7466767/) and no “recruiter” ever approached him.

    Two, in the middle of the heat wave the murderer was wearing shirt with long sleeves all that time.

    Three, she was an old woman and she was shot in the head from very close quarters.

    Simple explanations.

    One. The fact that “recruiters” did not try to approach him suggests the complicity of powers-that-be. In Ukraine the most favored groups are Nazis, the rest cannon count on authorities’ cooperation.

    Two. Long sleeves in hot weather suggest that he was hiding tattoos on his arms. The most tattooed people in Ukraine are ideological Nazis. In fact, when the RF army took Mariupol, many Azov Nazis tried to escape by dressing in civilian clothes and pretending that they are non-combatants. Russians demanded that men take their shirts off. Those that had swasticas tattooed on their arms, chest, back, and/or neck were identified as Azov fighters.

    Three. A normal person would not shoot an old woman in the head being face-to-face with her, no matter how obnoxious she is. Humans simply cannot do that. Nazis can.

    Replies: @Mikhail, @Gerard1234, @AP

    One, while in Ukraine “recruiters” drag men from stores, churches, buses, and their own cars, so that men in Ukraine either do not venture outside or move in short spurts looking around

    Again proving your incredible gullibility.

    Kiev 2024:

    More women than men, but plenty of men walking around:

    Lviv 2024:

    Also plenty of men wandering around.

    Odessa 2024, same:

    Where are those men scurrying in short spurts?

    So far, none of my male relatives have been mobilized and none are hiding. Nor are any of them Nazis.

    You just blindly believe whatever nonsense the Russian websites write about Ukraine.

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @AP

    Are these people friends and family of modern Ukrainian nomenklatura?

    If this is a real war it is surprising these folks are walking around as if nothing is going on.

    Maybe Malyuk is putting Prozac in the water.

    Replies: @AP

    , @AnonfromTN
    @AP

    Sure enough, “recruiters” don’t hunt men in Kiev. Too high probability of getting someone with influential relatives, so that hapless “recruiter” can end up at the front himself. They do it in most other cities, though, including Lvov.

    Replies: @AP

    , @Gerard1234
    @AP


    Again proving your incredible gullibility.
     
    What type of insecure bimbo retard posts videos ( again) showing the exact OPPOSITE of what intending to claim? I suspect only posting them because you are attempting to learn about places you have NEVER been to from these videos and are faking trying to have done for other posts.


    Further LMAO in the extremely high Soviet/Russian things in these videos ( from panning over them, obviously not wasting time by going through entire thing as the tactics of a pitiful socopathic scumbag as yourself is well known.

    So far, none of my male relatives have been mobilized and none are hiding
     
    For once you are telling the truth. You have none in 404, so of course none are hiding. Wasn't this AP freak the same retard claiming "family" who were "witnesses at Bucha"? LOL

    Replies: @AP

  239. @AnonfromTN
    @Mikhail


    There were probably Confederate diehards spinning similarly about a year or so before their effort ended.
     
    Remember the classical five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance? Denial is always the first stage. Some people remain stuck at it even when more perceptive ones move to subsequent stages.

    There are also more modern examples of this phenomenon than American civil war. E.g., Goebbels propaganda droned on about glorious German victory until early days of May 1945.

    Take-home message: the patient does not present anything new to medical science.

    Replies: @Mikhail

    Barndon as well.

  240. @Mikel
    @Gerard1234


    It’s blatantly obvious that AnonFromTn is intending to talk about voter percentage when talking about less votes.
     
    It's anything but blatantly obvious. "Less votes" means "less votes" in English, Russian or Tagalog. As opposed to "worse results" or "lower percentage".

    The “mail-in” voting in an ultra-corrupt country like America is blatantly open vote fixing
     
    Rubbish. People have been voting by mail in Utah for many years. It's a very convenient way of voting if you don't want to wait in lines or drive to a voting center the day of the election. You can only deposit the vote that was sent to you as a registered voter, you can track your vote online with a bar code and it has an additional security layer with your signature, that is associated to your voter registration. It never was a problem until 2020.

    Some psychotically anti-Trump woman Democrat living with her young adult children and any of her elderly parents is blatantly going to force everybody in the house to vote Democrat
     
    That has been happening forever in any country with regular elections. Motivated voters convince apathetic relatives and friends to vote for their preferred candidate. That is in fact what republican ads I hear all the time ask people to do: convince everybody around you to vote GOP. And it's totally legitimate too. You can't possibly prevent that in any sensible system with universal suffrage.

    It’s certainly not proof, but indicative that Trump is the first person to win Florida but lose the election in 100 years?
     
    My point precisely. Such historical anomalies are proof of nothing. There is a reason why people take the trouble of counting every vote, rather than counting just the votes in the bellwether states or counties. In every election you're going to find anomalous results here and there. 'Oh look, the party X candidate increased his votes in every county but in Daggett he got less votes. This has never happened before in recorded history'. So? People have fun looking for anomalies like that in every single election. Finding some statistical anomaly is the worst possible argument to prove fraud.

    Replies: @songbird, @Beckow, @Gerard1234

    It is unknowable – too many variables and an enormous amount of data. ‘Mail-in-voting’ is by definition open to fraud – nobody in the past did it because they were less full of sh..t. Normal election – like UK this month – is in person and votes are counted physically the same night. The results were available within hours. The UK system doesn’t allow for fraud. The US one does.

    2020 election had unusual patterns: each close state went one way late in the count and some districts voted 90%+ for Biden with 95% turnout, Phillie, Detroit, Atlanta… You will never convince any fair observer that it can be proved that it was a free. Maybe it was, maybe not. Demonizing and criminalizing people who expressed doubt and the obsessive one-sided banning of any skepticism in the media added to the suspicion.

    It can’t really be investigated because it would require a level of detail and intrusive power that simply doesn’t exist in the US. ‘He said, she said‘ and complexity are too much – 200 million pieces of data. How can you be so certain that all 200 million votes were ‘legitimate’? Nobody checks ‘signatures’ and there are millions of out-of-date records in the databases. It is a mess – and fraud benefits from having a mess.

    Utah is fine, you can probably vote by sending self-certified pieces of paper, it will be ok.

    As with many other systems US is far behind the current world standards – it is very silly for Washington to preach to others. US also just had a genocidial maniac screaming in Congress how he wants to kill more Palies – and the ‘elected’ ones cheered like at a good fascist rally. You are too far gone, it is a freak-show now.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Beckow


    Utah is fine, you can probably vote by sending self-certified pieces of paper, it will be ok.
     
    Yep. Utah is one of the most orderly states in the Union.

    It can’t really be investigated because it would require a level of detail and intrusive power that simply doesn’t exist in the US. ... ‘Nobody checks ‘signatures’ and there are millions of out-of-date records in the databases. It is a mess – and fraud benefits from having a mess.
    ..
    2020 election had unusual patterns: each close state went one way late in the count and some districts voted 90%+ for Biden with 95% turnout, Phillie, Detroit, Atlanta… You will never convince any fair observer that it can be proved that it was a free
     
    Thus the obvious path to making things better is monitoring particularly corruptable districts in swing states. Instead of trying to counter the fraud everywhere, expend campaign resources on those key areas most likely to damage the result. The impossible record of multiple statistical anomalies in 2020 shows locations where resources must be concentrated.

    Is it possible that a House or Senate race may come back with a fraudulent result? Yes. Key is preventing the Presidency from being compromised.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Beckow

    , @Mikel
    @Beckow

    I don't have the energy to debate the "stolen election" with everyone who has already made up their minds on the subject. Too much effort for no reward.

    In any case, my main point was that in 2024 there is no excuse for anyone to keep lamenting that voting in the US is useless because some obscure forces rig the results and all that crap. Sign up at protectthevote.com or shut up, as simple as that. If I am convinced that someone will try to break into my house tonight but I decide to leave the doors wide open anyway, my wife doesn't deserve to hear my complaints of how bad those thieves are.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Gerard1234

  241. A123 says: • Website
    @Beckow
    @Mikel

    It is unknowable – too many variables and an enormous amount of data. ‘Mail-in-voting’ is by definition open to fraud – nobody in the past did it because they were less full of sh..t. Normal election – like UK this month – is in person and votes are counted physically the same night. The results were available within hours. The UK system doesn't allow for fraud. The US one does.

    2020 election had unusual patterns: each close state went one way late in the count and some districts voted 90%+ for Biden with 95% turnout, Phillie, Detroit, Atlanta... You will never convince any fair observer that it can be proved that it was a free. Maybe it was, maybe not. Demonizing and criminalizing people who expressed doubt and the obsessive one-sided banning of any skepticism in the media added to the suspicion.

    It can’t really be investigated because it would require a level of detail and intrusive power that simply doesn’t exist in the US. ‘He said, she said‘ and complexity are too much – 200 million pieces of data. How can you be so certain that all 200 million votes were ‘legitimate’? Nobody checks ‘signatures’ and there are millions of out-of-date records in the databases. It is a mess – and fraud benefits from having a mess.

    Utah is fine, you can probably vote by sending self-certified pieces of paper, it will be ok.

    As with many other systems US is far behind the current world standards – it is very silly for Washington to preach to others. US also just had a genocidial maniac screaming in Congress how he wants to kill more Palies – and the ‘elected’ ones cheered like at a good fascist rally. You are too far gone, it is a freak-show now.

    Replies: @A123, @Mikel

    Utah is fine, you can probably vote by sending self-certified pieces of paper, it will be ok.

    Yep. Utah is one of the most orderly states in the Union.

    It can’t really be investigated because it would require a level of detail and intrusive power that simply doesn’t exist in the US. … ‘Nobody checks ‘signatures’ and there are millions of out-of-date records in the databases. It is a mess – and fraud benefits from having a mess.
    ..
    2020 election had unusual patterns: each close state went one way late in the count and some districts voted 90%+ for Biden with 95% turnout, Phillie, Detroit, Atlanta… You will never convince any fair observer that it can be proved that it was a free

    Thus the obvious path to making things better is monitoring particularly corruptable districts in swing states. Instead of trying to counter the fraud everywhere, expend campaign resources on those key areas most likely to damage the result. The impossible record of multiple statistical anomalies in 2020 shows locations where resources must be concentrated.

    Is it possible that a House or Senate race may come back with a fraudulent result? Yes. Key is preventing the Presidency from being compromised.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @A123


    ...Instead of trying to counter the fraud everywhere, expend campaign resources on those key areas most likely to damage the result.
     
    Those are the areas that have a local judicial system, police, prosecutors from the same side that would presumably be behind any fraud - do you really think any judge or a political hack in Phillie or Detroit would seriously investigate the rotten precincts?

    It doesn't work. There is no other solution than an enforceable universal ID of some kind and same-day in person voting with that ID (as is done everywhere around the world). Possibly some mail-ins that are actually validated - but I am not sure how. Otherwise you have a broken system where the result will be what people in charge want it to be.

    There is no shortcut to an honest system. Utah is one of the exceptions.

    Replies: @A123

  242. @A123
    How is Harris going to win independent and moderate votes when her policy record is terrible?

     
    https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMTS9YFj-4GpeWqYLwfB5USSIPvb5HKkkylv9xzJc-iAnyU7vWiCbfBAXU2cc0FI4DnMI_mz6JuKx9W7CCGYapee5PiE1QV7EvztGxxUVhURx9_gbIwkn-N2d5qqRvKdnaT7tOpmX9JeCphd27wRRfytmF_5HQYV0sOJMMLzRG-F57p1Kxpt1UVf6B0XE/s644/1%20kjhgfdgdfgdf.jpg
     

    Given how bad things look, how many Democrats are willing to be her VP?

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @AnonfromTN, @John Johnson

    How is Harris going to win independent and moderate votes when her policy record is terrible?

    Most of the MSM isn’t even reporting her swing state numbers.

    They’ve already gone full cheerleader.

    I bet they’ll pick some patronizing VP for the swing states in an attempt to grab independent Whites and blue collar swing voters. Some union guy or occasional farmer. Or a military background. No one light in the loafers.

    LOOK AT THIS WHITE GUY WE FOUND FOR VP

    HERE IS A PICTURE OF HIM ON A TRACTOR

    NOT GAY AT ALL

    SO YOU CAN VOTE FOR HARRIS NOW

    EVERYONE IS HAPPY

  243. @Beckow
    @Mikel

    It is unknowable – too many variables and an enormous amount of data. ‘Mail-in-voting’ is by definition open to fraud – nobody in the past did it because they were less full of sh..t. Normal election – like UK this month – is in person and votes are counted physically the same night. The results were available within hours. The UK system doesn't allow for fraud. The US one does.

    2020 election had unusual patterns: each close state went one way late in the count and some districts voted 90%+ for Biden with 95% turnout, Phillie, Detroit, Atlanta... You will never convince any fair observer that it can be proved that it was a free. Maybe it was, maybe not. Demonizing and criminalizing people who expressed doubt and the obsessive one-sided banning of any skepticism in the media added to the suspicion.

    It can’t really be investigated because it would require a level of detail and intrusive power that simply doesn’t exist in the US. ‘He said, she said‘ and complexity are too much – 200 million pieces of data. How can you be so certain that all 200 million votes were ‘legitimate’? Nobody checks ‘signatures’ and there are millions of out-of-date records in the databases. It is a mess – and fraud benefits from having a mess.

    Utah is fine, you can probably vote by sending self-certified pieces of paper, it will be ok.

    As with many other systems US is far behind the current world standards – it is very silly for Washington to preach to others. US also just had a genocidial maniac screaming in Congress how he wants to kill more Palies – and the ‘elected’ ones cheered like at a good fascist rally. You are too far gone, it is a freak-show now.

    Replies: @A123, @Mikel

    I don’t have the energy to debate the “stolen election” with everyone who has already made up their minds on the subject. Too much effort for no reward.

    In any case, my main point was that in 2024 there is no excuse for anyone to keep lamenting that voting in the US is useless because some obscure forces rig the results and all that crap. Sign up at protectthevote.com or shut up, as simple as that. If I am convinced that someone will try to break into my house tonight but I decide to leave the doors wide open anyway, my wife doesn’t deserve to hear my complaints of how bad those thieves are.

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Mikel

    The list of credible voting irregularities identified in 2020 was striking. IIRC there were many different methods applied to rig the vote count. Some were old classics and some were new.

    On the other hand, the fraud in 2000 seemed to be largely at the top.

    Your advice is good, especially for people living in swing states.

    , @Gerard1234
    @Mikel

    In your favour - Fox News paid 800M USD as compensation for saying the voting machines were faking results.
    Also in your favour - some of these high profile clowns supporting the Republicans then directly linked the vote-rigging machines.........to being owned, controlled, manufactured by......Hugo Chavez (????!!!!!!!), China in there somewhere and probably Iran.

    Not in your favour - everything else.

    Replies: @LondonBob

  244. @Mikel
    @AnonfromTN


    If you trust Wiki, even God might not be able to help you.
     
    LOL. That's even sillier than claiming that Biden lost in the US because he got less votes than Obama in Kentucky. Are you saying that Wikipedia conspired with the lizard people to publish false results for the elections in Kentucky? Why has no Republican or impartial reader tried to change that page with the correct results? Have all those who have tried also received death threats, like the election observers?

    How can I trust anything at all you say when you show such an infantile level of gullibility on the most trivial subjects?

    Replies: @AnonfromTN

    Why has no Republican or impartial reader tried to change that page with the correct results?

    Try a simple experiment: edit any Wiki entry in “politically incorrect” direction and then watch how fast your edits disappear. Censors at work, no need to threaten anyone.

    How can I trust anything at all you say

    What on Earth makes you think that I want you to trust what I say? I don’t give a hoot.

    On a more general level, you (along with 80-85% of my fellow university faculty) are proof positive that the West is doomed. Exactly like schizophrenics: intelligent and reasonable most of the time, but when someone touches points where screws are loose the insanity comes gushing out. You guys fully deserve demented half-corpses and half-crazy dimwits as presidents: their quality just reflects the quality of “educated” residents. It is rightly said that every country has the government it deserves. I just feel sorry for the uneducated ones who retain common sense, but will be buried along with you under the debris.

    Thank goodness I have a place to run away to. I will do that as soon as I transfer the second half of my money off the sinking ship. Your Alzheimer-in-Chief tried to make it impossible, but he just made it more complicated, but still possible. Morons can never do anything right. Vote Kamala, speed up the demise.

    • Agree: YetAnotherAnon
    • Replies: @Mikel
    @AnonfromTN


    edit any Wiki entry in “politically incorrect” direction and then watch how fast your edits disappear
     
    I was watching the edit wars on politically correct topics on wikipedia 20 years ago, you don't need to explain to me how wikipedia works because I clearly know it much better than you. Besides, what you're doing is saying that the election results in Kentucky posted on wikipedia are false, which is as dumb as saying that if wikipedia says that the capital of Russia is Moscow, I should distrust that information.

    With such claims all you do is actually show why arguments of the type "election results in the US don't matter" are less than useless. Wrong problem, wrong analysis, wrong mindset altogether. You may need to believe that Putin/Maduro/Xi are more democratic leaders than the American ones for your own personal reasons but those of us who don't plan on escaping anywhere need to deal with the real issues that we have in the US and the West in general, not with the imaginary ones. Btw, with all its faults, that are open to see for everybody on the planet, the US has just shown that it still has self-correcting mechanisms in place and a visibly senile president could not perpetuate himself in power, no matter how much he wanted to. Could anyone in United Russia convince Putin to resign if he became senile and also decided to remain in power in that state?

    As even A123 (of all people) has had to explain to you, "they" couldn't prevent Trump from winning the elections in 2016. Focusing on the lizard people who steal the elections is a useless distraction from the real problem with the woke crowd who try to impose their destructive worldview everywhere they can. In fact, the elections are indeed rigged but in a much more subtle and complicated way than your lazy slogans depict. They are rigged because the leftists control the narrative in most of the places that matter: the MSM, big tech, academia and mass entertainment. This isn't even a new problem. People of my generation have lived with this our entire lives. The difference is that leftism (that used to be Communist, perhaps even worse) has now adopted the insidious woke form and censorship has suddenly become prevalent. Those are the real problems worth worrying about. "Don't bother voting because they will steal the election" is exactly what the woke want to hear us say and you're doing their job for free.

    Replies: @Derer, @Gerard1234

    , @YetAnotherAnon
    @AnonfromTN

    I agree with you about Wiki, I mean, it's utterly compromised on anything political or with political implications.

    It's ok on electrical laws, mechanics, chemistry or hydrogen electron levels.

  245. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Greasy William
    @Bashibuzuk

    I know a little bit about them. They don't practice rabbinical Judaism, the only true Judaism. They aren't part of the Jewish people and they don't regard themselves as such. They are possibly an offshoot of the Sadducees.

    Karaites are like Samaritans or Palestinian Muslims (not Palestinian Christians) in that they are groups that are genetically Israelite but not Jewish.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    They don’t practice rabbinical Judaism, the only true Judaism.

    You know that Jews had a leader Resh Galuta (Exilarch) in the diaspora that resided in Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq, until the middle Abbasid Caliphate era ?

    The Jewish Exilarch was an official title in the Abbasid times, similar to ambassador. He resided in a palace in Baghdad and had his own court, including guards.

    The last Exilarch decided to purify Rabbinical Jewish faith from everything that was not in the Tanakh. He wanted to go back to the pure prophetic tradition. He wanted all Jews to read and understand the Bible without any interference by the priestly class. Therefore he rejected the Talmud and asked from the congregation to read the Bible in its entirety each one of them.

    To read in Arabic is karaa / yakraoo, the reading is kiraa’h. Hence these Jews who read only the Tanakh and rejected the Talmud became known as Karaim / Karaites.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Bashibuzuk

    I remember asking Another Polish Perspective how he knew so darn much about Jews but the fellow never answered me. : (

    Have you read Gershom Scholem's Sabati Zevi book? I bought it online and I didn't realize the sucker was over a thousand pages and it has been sitting on my shelf for years and I have hardly skimmed it.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    , @Greasy William
    @Bashibuzuk


    Hence these Jews who read only the Tanakh and rejected the Talmud became known as Karaim / Karaites.
     
    I know. And Judaism without the Talmud isn't Judaism.

    The Sadducees also opposed the oral tradition. They disappeared.

    I don't have a problem with the Karaites and I admit that they are Israelites, but they aren't Jews and they themselves will be the first to tell you as much.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  246. @Greasy William
    @Torna atrás

    A. Fully accurate

    Replies: @QCIC

    Where does Chabad fit in?

    • Replies: @Greasy William
    @QCIC

    Chabad is really their own thing. With the other Hasidic sects, the bulk are descended from the region of their rabbinical dynasties: Ger and Bobov are overwhelmingly descendants of Polish Jews and Satmar are descended from Hungarian Jews (which is why Satmar Jews usually don't have the facial features that commonly associated with Ashkenazic Jews, particularly the nose).

    But Chabad are totally different. Lot's of converts, mixed breeds and Baal Teshuvas. Lot's of Mizrahim as well. So they end up being the most modern in a lot of ways because they have so much outside energy pouring in. Also, whereas most hasidic groups are extremely insular, Chabad cannot be because of the ultra high premium it places on outreach.

    The comment that started this whole conversation also didn't mention anything about the Syrian Jews of NYC, who on the outside look Yeshivish but are actually very separate from the rest of the American Jewish world.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Torna atrás

  247. @AP
    @AnonfromTN


    One, while in Ukraine “recruiters” drag men from stores, churches, buses, and their own cars, so that men in Ukraine either do not venture outside or move in short spurts looking around
     
    Again proving your incredible gullibility.

    Kiev 2024:

    More women than men, but plenty of men walking around:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMq8mG_d1wI

    Lviv 2024:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOJuKE2O32Y

    Also plenty of men wandering around.

    Odessa 2024, same:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIWRjWjNeJE

    Where are those men scurrying in short spurts?

    So far, none of my male relatives have been mobilized and none are hiding. Nor are any of them Nazis.

    You just blindly believe whatever nonsense the Russian websites write about Ukraine.

    Replies: @QCIC, @AnonfromTN, @Gerard1234

    Are these people friends and family of modern Ukrainian nomenklatura?

    If this is a real war it is surprising these folks are walking around as if nothing is going on.

    Maybe Malyuk is putting Prozac in the water.

    • Replies: @AP
    @QCIC


    Are these people friends and family of modern Ukrainian nomenklatura?
     
    Suuure.

    In Ukraine mobilization starts after age 25 and people in important or money-generating industries are mostly exempt - Ukraine isn’t going to kill that cash cow. In a Lviv tech company I’m familiar with only 2 guys out of several hundred employees were mobilized. Of course some of these volunteer (thanks to such volunteers Ukraine’s drone warfare is very effective). People who work as electricians or in construction are also often exempt - they are needed to repair and rebuild stuff. And farmers harvesting crops. Also those who work in hospitals, etc.

    If this is a real war it is surprising these folks are walking around as if nothing is going on
     
    There seem to be two mutually exclusive conspiracy theories out there. One is that 400,000 or 500,000 in Ukraine have been killed, double that number crippled, and there are no men left in the country and the few who exist are hiding from mobilization. This seems to be what AnoninTN believes. Any views of Ukraine demonstrate that this is absurd.

    The other is that the war is fake, everyone is fine, it’s all a money-making scheme.

    Which one is yours?

    The reality is that for Ukraine, this war is a lot worse than Vietnam was for the USA, but not nearly as bad as World War II was.

    UK had 46 million people during World War II, and 380,000 dead after 5 years. Ukraine had about 30 million people when the war started, and so far has around 100,000 killed. Relative to population, this war seems to be for Ukraine like World War II was for the Brits in terms of casualties. Very much a real war.

    Remember that there were plenty of busy dancehalls in wartime Britain, good for morale. Some American isolationist would have pointed to them and claimed it was stolen American money and Britain should be cut off:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/61/a2553761.shtml#:~:text=A%20Morale%20Booster,records%2C%20sometimes%20only%20a%20piano.

    Today's generation have no idea what part the dance halls played in keeping up morale during the war. Every town and village had a hall where dancing could take place. The bigger dance halls had orchestras, the smaller ones had a three piece band or records, sometimes only a piano.
    In the large halls you danced on sprung floors, or at least highly polished and prepared floors. In small halls it was plank floors with nails sticking up or concrete with linoleum squares glued down. NAAFI or Garrison Theatre type floors were..

    Replies: @QCIC

  248. @Bashibuzuk
    @Greasy William


    They don’t practice rabbinical Judaism, the only true Judaism.
     
    You know that Jews had a leader Resh Galuta (Exilarch) in the diaspora that resided in Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq, until the middle Abbasid Caliphate era ?

    The Jewish Exilarch was an official title in the Abbasid times, similar to ambassador. He resided in a palace in Baghdad and had his own court, including guards.

    The last Exilarch decided to purify Rabbinical Jewish faith from everything that was not in the Tanakh. He wanted to go back to the pure prophetic tradition. He wanted all Jews to read and understand the Bible without any interference by the priestly class. Therefore he rejected the Talmud and asked from the congregation to read the Bible in its entirety each one of them.

    To read in Arabic is karaa / yakraoo, the reading is kiraa’h. Hence these Jews who read only the Tanakh and rejected the Talmud became known as Karaim / Karaites.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Greasy William

    I remember asking Another Polish Perspective how he knew so darn much about Jews but the fellow never answered me. : (

    Have you read Gershom Scholem’s Sabati Zevi book? I bought it online and I didn’t realize the sucker was over a thousand pages and it has been sitting on my shelf for years and I have hardly skimmed it.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    I’ve read about the Sabbatean Frankists, but not the Sholem’s book. It’s a very interesting and important story, especially when one wonders why people such as Soros behave the way they do. Also a many of Gentile thinkers, writers and politicians have Frankist roots, but to understand the heritage of YHWH-ism and to do that we need to go back into the Persian Empire’s time.

    https://www.degruyter.com/document/isbn/9783111018638/html

    Also, I am surprised that none has ever thought of the many parallels between Mazdakism and Sabbatean-derived Judeo-Bolshevism.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

  249. @AnonfromTN
    @Mikel


    Why has no Republican or impartial reader tried to change that page with the correct results?
     
    Try a simple experiment: edit any Wiki entry in “politically incorrect” direction and then watch how fast your edits disappear. Censors at work, no need to threaten anyone.

    How can I trust anything at all you say
     
    What on Earth makes you think that I want you to trust what I say? I don’t give a hoot.

    On a more general level, you (along with 80-85% of my fellow university faculty) are proof positive that the West is doomed. Exactly like schizophrenics: intelligent and reasonable most of the time, but when someone touches points where screws are loose the insanity comes gushing out. You guys fully deserve demented half-corpses and half-crazy dimwits as presidents: their quality just reflects the quality of “educated” residents. It is rightly said that every country has the government it deserves. I just feel sorry for the uneducated ones who retain common sense, but will be buried along with you under the debris.

    Thank goodness I have a place to run away to. I will do that as soon as I transfer the second half of my money off the sinking ship. Your Alzheimer-in-Chief tried to make it impossible, but he just made it more complicated, but still possible. Morons can never do anything right. Vote Kamala, speed up the demise.

    Replies: @Mikel, @YetAnotherAnon

    edit any Wiki entry in “politically incorrect” direction and then watch how fast your edits disappear

    I was watching the edit wars on politically correct topics on wikipedia 20 years ago, you don’t need to explain to me how wikipedia works because I clearly know it much better than you. Besides, what you’re doing is saying that the election results in Kentucky posted on wikipedia are false, which is as dumb as saying that if wikipedia says that the capital of Russia is Moscow, I should distrust that information.

    With such claims all you do is actually show why arguments of the type “election results in the US don’t matter” are less than useless. Wrong problem, wrong analysis, wrong mindset altogether. You may need to believe that Putin/Maduro/Xi are more democratic leaders than the American ones for your own personal reasons but those of us who don’t plan on escaping anywhere need to deal with the real issues that we have in the US and the West in general, not with the imaginary ones. Btw, with all its faults, that are open to see for everybody on the planet, the US has just shown that it still has self-correcting mechanisms in place and a visibly senile president could not perpetuate himself in power, no matter how much he wanted to. Could anyone in United Russia convince Putin to resign if he became senile and also decided to remain in power in that state?

    As even A123 (of all people) has had to explain to you, “they” couldn’t prevent Trump from winning the elections in 2016. Focusing on the lizard people who steal the elections is a useless distraction from the real problem with the woke crowd who try to impose their destructive worldview everywhere they can. In fact, the elections are indeed rigged but in a much more subtle and complicated way than your lazy slogans depict. They are rigged because the leftists control the narrative in most of the places that matter: the MSM, big tech, academia and mass entertainment. This isn’t even a new problem. People of my generation have lived with this our entire lives. The difference is that leftism (that used to be Communist, perhaps even worse) has now adopted the insidious woke form and censorship has suddenly become prevalent. Those are the real problems worth worrying about. “Don’t bother voting because they will steal the election” is exactly what the woke want to hear us say and you’re doing their job for free.

    • Replies: @Derer
    @Mikel


    “they” couldn’t prevent Trump from winning the elections in 2016.
     
    But "they" succeeded in 2022 by perfecting their scheme. A Dems candidate who received 2% support in primaries, of curse prior to DNC manipulation and screwing Sanders by super delegates and dead people voting, won the election by a record vote, more than registered. This happened over night, because in the evening of the election day the old geezer was losing.

    the US has just shown that it still has self-correcting mechanisms in place
     
    Are you referring to the "assassination move"? It was done before. A mentally incompetent president is still in WH until January 2025.
    , @Gerard1234
    @Mikel


    Btw, with all its faults, that are open to see for everybody on the planet, the US has just shown that it still has self-correcting mechanisms in place and a visibly senile president could not perpetuate himself in power, no matter how much he wanted to. Could anyone in United Russia convince Putin to resign if he became senile and also decided to remain in power in that state?
     
    LOL - "Self-correcting"? He was already senile when he became President! Those who have half a billion dollars to give, including the worst Batman actor.........decided they would not give it if he stayed on. No money, no President.

    That is more shitocracy than "self-correcting mechanism" in my view.

    If I remember correctly, he was only able to become President at all because one US oligarch FAKED his own candidacy so to split the votes of Biden's Democratic rivals, and without this manipulation he would have been eliminated

    Any banana Republic can have a small elite decide who is the best figurehead. As in US, as in 1996 when the oligarchs and especially the Americans decided Yeltsin must win ahead of Zyuganov. Russian people, not shit-Batman should elect President.

    As the selection of Presidential candidate is supposed to go through some all-states public votes, it looks as if America is having Harris forced on them.

    Could anyone in United Russia convince Putin to resign if he became senile and also decided to remain in power in that state?
     
    That's just ridiculous. Putin is highly capable, highly intelligent and successful President. 80%+ support. You can't insinuate something based on an unreasonable hypothetical. Most of us think Putin is responsible enough, and patriotic enough to leave the position if his health becomes bad - but clearly he is healthy and very good at his job at this moment. Khrushchev was removed - does not indicate any meaningfully good "self-correcting mechanism" in my view though

    Oligarchs, many who would be angry at VVP as he has changed their life instantly after February 2022......have zero influence on the ability to manipulate people opinion, so of course the democracy in Russia is much purer than in America.

    And it angers me than some random cretins with zero knowledge of Russia as Vance, Trump, Sullivan etc are having influence on hugely important events . In the case of first 2 people, we are supposed to rely on these clueless idiots to conduct "pro-Russian policy"? The most important thing we can do is continue our SMO and non-military actions as if there was no US election occurring and treat it as the irrelevance and freakshow that it is,

    That is why I believe we should increase our pre-SMO demands. Not just NATO pre-1997 borders, but force a 24th or whatever is the latest Amendment to the Pindostan Constitution . Make completely illegal any individual or group allied to or supporting any foreign state to be a donor or lobby group to ANY US politician.....EXCEPT Israel and Cuba (because 1. the moaning about it would be too extreme 2. Florida Cubans) . Make commitment to end Communism in Cuba and to supporting Israel part of US Constitution - not because I agree , but because it defacto is part of the Constitution anyway.

    American diaspora subhuman, narcissists have disproportionate influence on foreign policy events of which they and general lazy american population have minimal knowledge of , but still talk alot about.

    The amendment would remove threat of Polish diaspora psychopaths and other anti-communist diaspora doing blood-libel against us. Jews can be loyal to Israel and the US - those who are rabid ,anti-Russian dickhead scum who are descendants of gangsters in Odessa and liberasts can't have 3 loyalties. So the Amendment would help in that. Putin can cite the example of Irish Americans helping to fund the IRA to conduct terrorism or the slimeball Brzezinski from helping to setup Islamic terrorism based on anti-Russianism.

    With Muslim communities in America getting larger, forcing anti-Russian psychopaths who are Zionist to choose between their sick policies against Russia.... and their support for Israel, could bring tangible results for us. Selling it as an extremely pro-Israel and pro-Cuban Amendment would be the only way to get it through.
  250. @Mikel
    @Beckow

    I don't have the energy to debate the "stolen election" with everyone who has already made up their minds on the subject. Too much effort for no reward.

    In any case, my main point was that in 2024 there is no excuse for anyone to keep lamenting that voting in the US is useless because some obscure forces rig the results and all that crap. Sign up at protectthevote.com or shut up, as simple as that. If I am convinced that someone will try to break into my house tonight but I decide to leave the doors wide open anyway, my wife doesn't deserve to hear my complaints of how bad those thieves are.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Gerard1234

    The list of credible voting irregularities identified in 2020 was striking. IIRC there were many different methods applied to rig the vote count. Some were old classics and some were new.

    On the other hand, the fraud in 2000 seemed to be largely at the top.

    Your advice is good, especially for people living in swing states.

  251. @AP
    @AnonfromTN


    One, while in Ukraine “recruiters” drag men from stores, churches, buses, and their own cars, so that men in Ukraine either do not venture outside or move in short spurts looking around
     
    Again proving your incredible gullibility.

    Kiev 2024:

    More women than men, but plenty of men walking around:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMq8mG_d1wI

    Lviv 2024:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOJuKE2O32Y

    Also plenty of men wandering around.

    Odessa 2024, same:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIWRjWjNeJE

    Where are those men scurrying in short spurts?

    So far, none of my male relatives have been mobilized and none are hiding. Nor are any of them Nazis.

    You just blindly believe whatever nonsense the Russian websites write about Ukraine.

    Replies: @QCIC, @AnonfromTN, @Gerard1234

    Sure enough, “recruiters” don’t hunt men in Kiev. Too high probability of getting someone with influential relatives, so that hapless “recruiter” can end up at the front himself. They do it in most other cities, though, including Lvov.

    • Replies: @AP
    @AnonfromTN


    Sure enough, “recruiters” don’t hunt men in Kiev. Too high probability of getting someone with influential relatives, so that hapless “recruiter” can end up at the front himself. They do it in most other cities, though, including Lvov.
     
    Is that why all those men were hanging around in Lviv and Odessa? You can see it with your own eyes.

    I discussed this in detail in another comment, won’t repeat it.
  252. @Mikel
    @Gerard1234


    It’s blatantly obvious that AnonFromTn is intending to talk about voter percentage when talking about less votes.
     
    It's anything but blatantly obvious. "Less votes" means "less votes" in English, Russian or Tagalog. As opposed to "worse results" or "lower percentage".

    The “mail-in” voting in an ultra-corrupt country like America is blatantly open vote fixing
     
    Rubbish. People have been voting by mail in Utah for many years. It's a very convenient way of voting if you don't want to wait in lines or drive to a voting center the day of the election. You can only deposit the vote that was sent to you as a registered voter, you can track your vote online with a bar code and it has an additional security layer with your signature, that is associated to your voter registration. It never was a problem until 2020.

    Some psychotically anti-Trump woman Democrat living with her young adult children and any of her elderly parents is blatantly going to force everybody in the house to vote Democrat
     
    That has been happening forever in any country with regular elections. Motivated voters convince apathetic relatives and friends to vote for their preferred candidate. That is in fact what republican ads I hear all the time ask people to do: convince everybody around you to vote GOP. And it's totally legitimate too. You can't possibly prevent that in any sensible system with universal suffrage.

    It’s certainly not proof, but indicative that Trump is the first person to win Florida but lose the election in 100 years?
     
    My point precisely. Such historical anomalies are proof of nothing. There is a reason why people take the trouble of counting every vote, rather than counting just the votes in the bellwether states or counties. In every election you're going to find anomalous results here and there. 'Oh look, the party X candidate increased his votes in every county but in Daggett he got less votes. This has never happened before in recorded history'. So? People have fun looking for anomalies like that in every single election. Finding some statistical anomaly is the worst possible argument to prove fraud.

    Replies: @songbird, @Beckow, @Gerard1234

    Rubbish. People have been voting by mail in Utah for many years. It’s a very convenient way of voting if you don’t want to wait in lines or drive to a voting center the day of the election

    I am happy to have my ignorance corrected by you – but isn’t Utah in a similar situation to Florida when I am talking about the mail-in voting more likely to be honest there compared to other states?

    In my limited understanding of the American system , didn’t lots of people squeal about the idea of voter Identification for voting being “racist” when Republicans tried to increase these controls after the disputed 2020 election?
    For similarish reasons that people would think Utah and Florida are likely to have honest and strictly controlled mail-in voting…….those on the states accused of being less than honest are likely to claim “racism”. Or at least the Democrats in those states will – though the issue is about more than racial demographics.

    You can only deposit the vote that was sent to you as a registered voter

    Standard practise across the world. But the issue is large number adult households, or apartment blocks if the mail is fairly open between the residents – where it could be easy for 1 person to do multiple votes.

    you can track your vote online with a bar code and it has an additional security layer with your signature,

    Not impressed. My signature wildly deviates every day. Somebody looking at my signature and practising for 10 minutes could easily get a better match for my own than what I do. Particularly in this era. Surely a person’s signature naturally changes over the decades , even if they try hard to make it the same? What’s even the purpose of them if the elderly has quite bad arthritis in their hands and struggle to get even 10% signature match?

    Is somebody going to report their mother or son for voting on their behalf without permission?
    And even if its not a family member – how many are going to bother to check?

    It never was a problem until 2020.

    I am sure that’s true. But as I understand, the issue is that only 0.3% of the total votes (maybe even lower) needed to be faked to change the election result, while the other 99.7% of votes could be perfectly fine and honest. Enough officials in the US rabidly despise Trump to the point that 100000 votes across 4 states in a 130 million vote election could be falsified,particularly if the result is looking to be very close.

    It’s anything but blatantly obvious. “Less votes” means “less votes” in English, Russian or Tagalog. As opposed to “worse results” or “lower percentage”.

    Except in this instance when it means “lower percentage”. Anon is an honest and highly intellectual commentator so deserves trust. John Kerry presumably got more votes than Ronald Reagan or Eisenhower – but clearly its the percentage vote that is relevant.

    I suppose your issue with AnonFromTN is, quite fairly, about proof. To me the proof is irrelevant – the US has accused others of falsifying elections based on much less evidence and strange circumstances……..to me its more about logic, the entire process , the lying constantly before and the opportunity & motive to cheat. There is no scientifically determined number at which the mail-in voting number is “too much”, but appears clear it was too much for that election

    • Replies: @LondonBob
    @Gerard1234

    I remember a European journalist showing he'd had been sent a dozen ballots for the 2020 election to his address in DC, he wasn't even eligible to vote.

    Good reason France outlawed mail in ballots, and Labour introduced them here in Britain.

    Besides it is easy to show fraud in the 2020 elections a lot of places vote in a similar manner to others, 2020 saw a lot of these relationships break down.

    Replies: @Beckow

    , @Mikel
    @Gerard1234


    I am happy to have my ignorance corrected by you
     
    Are you the usual Gerard? You sound a bit strange here.

    But you are surprisingly doing a better job than anyone else in this thread at defending the stolen election narrative. You are admitting some points, presenting some counterarguments, engaging in rational debate,... very different from repeating the less than useless mantra that "votes don't count" in the US.

    Reality is indeed complicated. We would all like to live in a world where simple recipes lead us to constant success and the good and the bad people are easily identifiable like in the Hollywood movies. But sadly, distinguishing reality from falsehood is a messy process, we don't always succeed and what happens is that the stubborn reality bites us in the rear. It may happen this coming November too.

    More to the point, there was fraud in 2020, it was probably concentrated in some locations (many of them in swing states) that have also seen fraud in the past, some allegations were never properly investigated, it was tremendously disappointing to see how what looked like another surprise victory by Trump turned into a defeat as the night progressed, the people in the media who kept saying that all fraud allegations were "a lie" were the brazen liars who had tried to hide the Hunter laptop story from us,....... but sorry, there wasn't really enough fraud to change the election results.

    This was proven as conclusively as reasonably possible in Arizona and most likely in Georgia too (though I don't have that much information about Georgia). But even before the MAGA-led recounts were carried out with disappointing results, there were plenty of signs that some people on "our" side were full of crap or being outright dishonest too, just like the leftist media. Those Black ladies that we all saw on video allegedly committing fraud were actually passing a chewing gum bar to one another and a judge granted them a hefty compensation for the wildly speculative allegations against them, Republican officials on the ground in Georgia with direct access to the vote counting process were unable to verify all the fraud allegations, Giuliani was clearly unable to answer simple questions that Republican members of state legislatures asked him to see how much all the cases of fraud he was presenting mattered for the final results even if they were all true,... And let's not forget: Trump exhausted all legal avenues to revert the election results but all failed. His team of lawyers failed at convincing the judges, their own republican state legislatures, the Supreme Court and his own Vice President.

    There's just a point at which a rational person has to admit to himself that there's not enough evidence in favor of what originally appeared to be true and, as usual in life, it was all a messy process of humans being passionate and dishonest on both sides. But whatever one chooses to believe, the most important thing is what I keep saying about abandoning defeatist mantras of "voting doesn't matter". It keeps mattering a lot. There's a world of a difference between sending to Washington congressmen who will align themselves with the established powers or new faces that will vote against foreign military adventures and will really put up a fight against the woke culture. We live in times when it could actually mean the difference between sleepwalking to a nuclear war or being able to avoid it. Motivated voters in some states have opted for the second while apathetic votes in others (the majority) have gone the first route.

    In the midst of all this, nothing plays better in the hands of the powerful people winning the battles of woke culture, forever wars and open borders than having an adversary stupidly focused on fighting the wrong battles: Qanon, Stop the Steal, the Kraken, the Jews, Votes don't Count... excellent recipe to get 4 years of Kamala.

    Replies: @A123

  253. @Mikel
    @Beckow

    I don't have the energy to debate the "stolen election" with everyone who has already made up their minds on the subject. Too much effort for no reward.

    In any case, my main point was that in 2024 there is no excuse for anyone to keep lamenting that voting in the US is useless because some obscure forces rig the results and all that crap. Sign up at protectthevote.com or shut up, as simple as that. If I am convinced that someone will try to break into my house tonight but I decide to leave the doors wide open anyway, my wife doesn't deserve to hear my complaints of how bad those thieves are.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Gerard1234

    In your favour – Fox News paid 800M USD as compensation for saying the voting machines were faking results.
    Also in your favour – some of these high profile clowns supporting the Republicans then directly linked the vote-rigging machines………to being owned, controlled, manufactured by……Hugo Chavez (????!!!!!!!), China in there somewhere and probably Iran.

    Not in your favour – everything else.

    • Replies: @LondonBob
    @Gerard1234

    Voting machines were a (deliberate?) red herring, it was just good old fashioned ballot stuffing.

  254. @AP
    @AnonfromTN


    One, while in Ukraine “recruiters” drag men from stores, churches, buses, and their own cars, so that men in Ukraine either do not venture outside or move in short spurts looking around
     
    Again proving your incredible gullibility.

    Kiev 2024:

    More women than men, but plenty of men walking around:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMq8mG_d1wI

    Lviv 2024:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOJuKE2O32Y

    Also plenty of men wandering around.

    Odessa 2024, same:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIWRjWjNeJE

    Where are those men scurrying in short spurts?

    So far, none of my male relatives have been mobilized and none are hiding. Nor are any of them Nazis.

    You just blindly believe whatever nonsense the Russian websites write about Ukraine.

    Replies: @QCIC, @AnonfromTN, @Gerard1234

    Again proving your incredible gullibility.

    What type of insecure bimbo retard posts videos ( again) showing the exact OPPOSITE of what intending to claim? I suspect only posting them because you are attempting to learn about places you have NEVER been to from these videos and are faking trying to have done for other posts.

    Further LMAO in the extremely high Soviet/Russian things in these videos ( from panning over them, obviously not wasting time by going through entire thing as the tactics of a pitiful socopathic scumbag as yourself is well known.

    So far, none of my male relatives have been mobilized and none are hiding

    For once you are telling the truth. You have none in 404, so of course none are hiding. Wasn’t this AP freak the same retard claiming “family” who were “witnesses at Bucha”? LOL

    • Replies: @AP
    @Gerard1234


    What type of insecure bimbo retard posts videos ( again) showing the exact OPPOSITE of what intending to claim
     
    Getard only had to watch the videos from the 3 Ukrainian cities to see plenty of men hanging around, no one is running around scurrying for fear of being mobilised. AnoninTN wrote “men in Ukraine either do not venture outside or move in short spurts looking around” because he gulllibly believes the nonsense out there.

    Wasn’t this AP freak the same retard claiming “family” who were “witnesses at Bucha
     
    They left Bucha after hiding tnd first night during the shooting, when there was a window before the Russians established control. They weren’t there when the Russians were killing people. Some of their neighbours were witnesses of Russian brutality.

    Replies: @Mikhail

  255. @Bashibuzuk
    @AP

    For shmata it’s the other way around:


    почему украинский словарь говорит только о рванине и обрывках?
    Да потому, что у древнееврейского "шамат" (שמט) есть и другие значения: отделял, отрезал,
    разъединял, прерывал соединение. Именно от этих значений и были образованы украинские шмат,
    шматок, шматувати (кусок, часть).

    Шмат, шматок (буквально) – отрезок, обрывок, обломок, часть, кусок.

    Собственно, значение "делать рыхлым, слабым, мягким" естественным образом происходит от значения
    "разъединял, прерывал соединение" – то есть разреживал, убирал плотность и жёсткость. Древнееврейское
    "шамат" (שמט) образовано и получило свои значения от древнееврейского же "шамА" (שמה – разрушение, разруха,
    разорение, опустошение, уничтожение; страх, ужас).

    Однокоренные слова (корень Ш-М):
    древнееврейский – "шамА" (שמה – разрушение, разруха, разорение,
    опустошение, уничтожение; страх, ужас),
    "шмама" (שממה – разрушение, разорение, крушение, уничтожение, руина;
    отходы, потери, отбросы),
    "шамам" (שמם – быть опустошенным; быть потрясённым),
    "шимамон" (שממון – страх, ужас)
    русский – шмат (кусок), шмотки, шмон (обыск)
    украинский – шмат, шматок, шматувати, пошматований
    белорусский – шматкі (клочья)

     

    https://moya-lepta.livejournal.com/170707.html

    Don’t think the Algérois dialectal chmetah = rascal (which is absent from both Arabic and Berber) derives from Ukrainian, but it might certainly come from Hebrew given that Mizrahi and Sefardi Jews represented a substantial part of Algiers city population before the French conquest living in the same Casbah as their Muslim neighbours.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ

    Makes one wonder whether both Algerians and Ukrainians adopted shmata from the Jews.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Mr. XYZ

    We should ask the Rabbi’s cat about it:

    https://youtu.be/wk6IB_Kgl4E?si=rwoClPSpzVyGCtrV

  256. AP says:
    @QCIC
    @AP

    Are these people friends and family of modern Ukrainian nomenklatura?

    If this is a real war it is surprising these folks are walking around as if nothing is going on.

    Maybe Malyuk is putting Prozac in the water.

    Replies: @AP

    Are these people friends and family of modern Ukrainian nomenklatura?

    Suuure.

    In Ukraine mobilization starts after age 25 and people in important or money-generating industries are mostly exempt – Ukraine isn’t going to kill that cash cow. In a Lviv tech company I’m familiar with only 2 guys out of several hundred employees were mobilized. Of course some of these volunteer (thanks to such volunteers Ukraine’s drone warfare is very effective). People who work as electricians or in construction are also often exempt – they are needed to repair and rebuild stuff. And farmers harvesting crops. Also those who work in hospitals, etc.

    If this is a real war it is surprising these folks are walking around as if nothing is going on

    There seem to be two mutually exclusive conspiracy theories out there. One is that 400,000 or 500,000 in Ukraine have been killed, double that number crippled, and there are no men left in the country and the few who exist are hiding from mobilization. This seems to be what AnoninTN believes. Any views of Ukraine demonstrate that this is absurd.

    The other is that the war is fake, everyone is fine, it’s all a money-making scheme.

    Which one is yours?

    The reality is that for Ukraine, this war is a lot worse than Vietnam was for the USA, but not nearly as bad as World War II was.

    UK had 46 million people during World War II, and 380,000 dead after 5 years. Ukraine had about 30 million people when the war started, and so far has around 100,000 killed. Relative to population, this war seems to be for Ukraine like World War II was for the Brits in terms of casualties. Very much a real war.

    Remember that there were plenty of busy dancehalls in wartime Britain, good for morale. Some American isolationist would have pointed to them and claimed it was stolen American money and Britain should be cut off:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/61/a2553761.shtml#:~:text=A%20Morale%20Booster,records%2C%20sometimes%20only%20a%20piano.

    Today’s generation have no idea what part the dance halls played in keeping up morale during the war. Every town and village had a hall where dancing could take place. The bigger dance halls had orchestras, the smaller ones had a three piece band or records, sometimes only a piano.
    In the large halls you danced on sprung floors, or at least highly polished and prepared floors. In small halls it was plank floors with nails sticking up or concrete with linoleum squares glued down. NAAFI or Garrison Theatre type floors were..

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @AP

    This is a strange war and I don't have solid theories about many aspects of the chaos.

    The age of conscription of 25 years seems very strange, is this a cultural thing or just a peacetime policy?

    I suspect casualties on both sides are much higher than 100,000 if only based on the amount of explosive ordinance expended as demonstrated by vast fields of craters.

    I am not a war history buff. I think comparisons to earlier wars should be made carefully. War often involves a lot of propaganda and smart phones represent a quantum leap for propagandists.

    If I accept the SMO as real, I think this progression makes sense:

    - Some Ukrainian and Western plan in 2021 forced Russia into action since not preempting this plan would have been an existential mistake. While Russian strategic defenses were sound, her tactical ability to thwart a serious Ukrainian-NATO effort in Ukraine was weak. At the time she could have possibly destroyed Ukraine but not removed it intact from Western influence.

    - This led to the slow campaign we see. At the beginning it was not clear that Russia could survive the sanctions but now she has for two years. While the economic war has been raging, the conventional combat on the ground has been slow, incremental and deadly. Along the way, Russia has offered several diplomatic outs for Ukraine.

    - This may continue until Ukraine kicks out the West. I think Russia is gradually getting stronger so in some ways continuation of the war is to her benefit.

    - The most meaningful change for the Russian military is the development of a large cadre of combat hardened soldiers, many of whom will stay in the military. This should lead to a cultural shift from earlier Soviet and recent post-Soviet attitudes back to a realist pro-Russia military culture. This process is inevitably nationalistic so there may be challenges for the Noviop bureaucrats and politicians.

    Replies: @Mikhail

  257. @Mr. XYZ
    @Bashibuzuk

    Makes one wonder whether both Algerians and Ukrainians adopted shmata from the Jews.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    We should ask the Rabbi’s cat about it:

  258. AP says:
    @AnonfromTN
    @AP

    Sure enough, “recruiters” don’t hunt men in Kiev. Too high probability of getting someone with influential relatives, so that hapless “recruiter” can end up at the front himself. They do it in most other cities, though, including Lvov.

    Replies: @AP

    Sure enough, “recruiters” don’t hunt men in Kiev. Too high probability of getting someone with influential relatives, so that hapless “recruiter” can end up at the front himself. They do it in most other cities, though, including Lvov.

    Is that why all those men were hanging around in Lviv and Odessa? You can see it with your own eyes.

    I discussed this in detail in another comment, won’t repeat it.

  259. AP says:
    @Gerard1234
    @AP


    Again proving your incredible gullibility.
     
    What type of insecure bimbo retard posts videos ( again) showing the exact OPPOSITE of what intending to claim? I suspect only posting them because you are attempting to learn about places you have NEVER been to from these videos and are faking trying to have done for other posts.


    Further LMAO in the extremely high Soviet/Russian things in these videos ( from panning over them, obviously not wasting time by going through entire thing as the tactics of a pitiful socopathic scumbag as yourself is well known.

    So far, none of my male relatives have been mobilized and none are hiding
     
    For once you are telling the truth. You have none in 404, so of course none are hiding. Wasn't this AP freak the same retard claiming "family" who were "witnesses at Bucha"? LOL

    Replies: @AP

    What type of insecure bimbo retard posts videos ( again) showing the exact OPPOSITE of what intending to claim

    Getard only had to watch the videos from the 3 Ukrainian cities to see plenty of men hanging around, no one is running around scurrying for fear of being mobilised. AnoninTN wrote “men in Ukraine either do not venture outside or move in short spurts looking around” because he gulllibly believes the nonsense out there.

    Wasn’t this AP freak the same retard claiming “family” who were “witnesses at Bucha

    They left Bucha after hiding tnd first night during the shooting, when there was a window before the Russians established control. They weren’t there when the Russians were killing people. Some of their neighbours were witnesses of Russian brutality.

    • Replies: @Mikhail
    @AP

    Numerous witnesses of neo-Nazi Kiev regime affiliated Ukrainian nationalist brutality in Mariupol and other areas in Donbass.

  260. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Bashibuzuk

    I remember asking Another Polish Perspective how he knew so darn much about Jews but the fellow never answered me. : (

    Have you read Gershom Scholem's Sabati Zevi book? I bought it online and I didn't realize the sucker was over a thousand pages and it has been sitting on my shelf for years and I have hardly skimmed it.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    I’ve read about the Sabbatean Frankists, but not the Sholem’s book. It’s a very interesting and important story, especially when one wonders why people such as Soros behave the way they do. Also a many of Gentile thinkers, writers and politicians have Frankist roots, but to understand the heritage of YHWH-ism and to do that we need to go back into the Persian Empire’s time.

    https://www.degruyter.com/document/isbn/9783111018638/html

    Also, I am surprised that none has ever thought of the many parallels between Mazdakism and Sabbatean-derived Judeo-Bolshevism.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Bashibuzuk


    Also, I am surprised that none has ever thought of the many parallels between Mazdakism and Sabbatean-derived Judeo-Bolshevism.
     
    Jason Jorjani has that covered. Of course he may be a psycho.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  261. @Mikel
    @AnonfromTN


    edit any Wiki entry in “politically incorrect” direction and then watch how fast your edits disappear
     
    I was watching the edit wars on politically correct topics on wikipedia 20 years ago, you don't need to explain to me how wikipedia works because I clearly know it much better than you. Besides, what you're doing is saying that the election results in Kentucky posted on wikipedia are false, which is as dumb as saying that if wikipedia says that the capital of Russia is Moscow, I should distrust that information.

    With such claims all you do is actually show why arguments of the type "election results in the US don't matter" are less than useless. Wrong problem, wrong analysis, wrong mindset altogether. You may need to believe that Putin/Maduro/Xi are more democratic leaders than the American ones for your own personal reasons but those of us who don't plan on escaping anywhere need to deal with the real issues that we have in the US and the West in general, not with the imaginary ones. Btw, with all its faults, that are open to see for everybody on the planet, the US has just shown that it still has self-correcting mechanisms in place and a visibly senile president could not perpetuate himself in power, no matter how much he wanted to. Could anyone in United Russia convince Putin to resign if he became senile and also decided to remain in power in that state?

    As even A123 (of all people) has had to explain to you, "they" couldn't prevent Trump from winning the elections in 2016. Focusing on the lizard people who steal the elections is a useless distraction from the real problem with the woke crowd who try to impose their destructive worldview everywhere they can. In fact, the elections are indeed rigged but in a much more subtle and complicated way than your lazy slogans depict. They are rigged because the leftists control the narrative in most of the places that matter: the MSM, big tech, academia and mass entertainment. This isn't even a new problem. People of my generation have lived with this our entire lives. The difference is that leftism (that used to be Communist, perhaps even worse) has now adopted the insidious woke form and censorship has suddenly become prevalent. Those are the real problems worth worrying about. "Don't bother voting because they will steal the election" is exactly what the woke want to hear us say and you're doing their job for free.

    Replies: @Derer, @Gerard1234

    “they” couldn’t prevent Trump from winning the elections in 2016.

    But “they” succeeded in 2022 by perfecting their scheme. A Dems candidate who received 2% support in primaries, of curse prior to DNC manipulation and screwing Sanders by super delegates and dead people voting, won the election by a record vote, more than registered. This happened over night, because in the evening of the election day the old geezer was losing.

    the US has just shown that it still has self-correcting mechanisms in place

    Are you referring to the “assassination move”? It was done before. A mentally incompetent president is still in WH until January 2025.

  262. @AP
    @Gerard1234


    What type of insecure bimbo retard posts videos ( again) showing the exact OPPOSITE of what intending to claim
     
    Getard only had to watch the videos from the 3 Ukrainian cities to see plenty of men hanging around, no one is running around scurrying for fear of being mobilised. AnoninTN wrote “men in Ukraine either do not venture outside or move in short spurts looking around” because he gulllibly believes the nonsense out there.

    Wasn’t this AP freak the same retard claiming “family” who were “witnesses at Bucha
     
    They left Bucha after hiding tnd first night during the shooting, when there was a window before the Russians established control. They weren’t there when the Russians were killing people. Some of their neighbours were witnesses of Russian brutality.

    Replies: @Mikhail

    Numerous witnesses of neo-Nazi Kiev regime affiliated Ukrainian nationalist brutality in Mariupol and other areas in Donbass.

  263. @Mr. Hack
    @Derer

    Why that's toady man Viktor Orban. You can tell by the little Hungarian flag on his coffee tray.

    I try not to judge people by their physical appearances, but in Orban's case I just can't help but to exhibit displeasure at looking at his thuggish appearance,

    More and more rumblings coming from Brussels to cede Hungary away from the EU. I say, go for it. Let Orban really hitch his star to the Kremlin and we'll see how his electorate responds.

    https://s3-eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/cartoons-s3/styles/product_detail_image/s3/Orb%C4%81ns-Orbaneklis.jpg?itok=9vih1I01
    Is that brown stuff really what I think that it is that Putler is placing on Orban's head? :-)

    Replies: @Negronicus, @Derer

    I think the EU dictatorship has no mechanism to expel members. Remember how hard it was for the UK to leave the club, especially for those that paying more than receiving. Actually they need people like Victor Orban for the appearance of “democracy”.

  264. @QCIC
    @Greasy William

    Where does Chabad fit in?

    Replies: @Greasy William

    Chabad is really their own thing. With the other Hasidic sects, the bulk are descended from the region of their rabbinical dynasties: Ger and Bobov are overwhelmingly descendants of Polish Jews and Satmar are descended from Hungarian Jews (which is why Satmar Jews usually don’t have the facial features that commonly associated with Ashkenazic Jews, particularly the nose).

    But Chabad are totally different. Lot’s of converts, mixed breeds and Baal Teshuvas. Lot’s of Mizrahim as well. So they end up being the most modern in a lot of ways because they have so much outside energy pouring in. Also, whereas most hasidic groups are extremely insular, Chabad cannot be because of the ultra high premium it places on outreach.

    The comment that started this whole conversation also didn’t mention anything about the Syrian Jews of NYC, who on the outside look Yeshivish but are actually very separate from the rest of the American Jewish world.

    • Thanks: QCIC
    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Greasy William

    Is the purpose of Chabad's outreach to counteract the secularization of Jews?

    Replies: @Greasy William

    , @Torna atrás
    @Greasy William


    The comment that started this whole conversation also didn’t mention anything about the Syrian Jews of NYC, who on the outside look Yeshivish but are actually very separate from the rest of the American Jewish world
     
    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GMxWH8TWEAA8XE6.jpg

    He looked white when he was doing his show but Jerry Seinfeld is looking increasingly Levantine as he gets older.
  265. https://thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com/2024/07/20/but-if-you-try-sometimes-you-just-might-find-you-get-what-you-need-or-alternatively-what-you-deserve/comment-page-1/#comment-99647

    Filip Siman, a Czech mercenary who allegedly fought with the Carpathian Sich Battalion of Ukraine against Russia, has allegedly testified in his trial that while he and his fellow mercenaries were operating in Irpen and Bucha in the Spring of 2022, “We were the police, we were the judge, we were in charge of the firing squad”.

    https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/07/21/nato-foreign-mercenaries-carried-out-the-false-flag-bucha-massacre/

    Stand by for a blast of scornful rhetoric from the western noise machine; fake news, it’s all made up, he said no such thing – alternatively, the poor soul was tortured almost to death to make him invent such an absurd story. NATO will never admit to being involved, however indirectly, in wholesale and completely-discretionary murder of civilians, and therefore the insistence that Russia did it and is now trying to squirm out of it will be shouted to the rooftops.

    Siman is being tried for participating in a foreign military operation without government permission. The relevant part of the text is in Czech. In the English reference, he admits only to looting and being in possession of stolen property. The comments express surprise that there are no toilets on the list.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Mikhail

    Bucha had about 30,000 people. It’s kind of hard to lie about events there, as your source (a website ending in .su does lol) because there are too many witnesses or friends and family of witnesses who can verify or deny what has been said. This isn’t some village of 100 people in the middle of nowhere that was “visited” by UFOs.

    Such stories that you post will be believed by either stupidly extreme contrarians or by gullible 95 IQ people - the same sorts who are convinced Ukrainian jets shot down the Malaysian plane. Or that Sandy Hook was a hoax (Newtown has a similar population to Sandy Hook).

    Replies: @Mikhail

  266. @Bashibuzuk
    @Greasy William


    They don’t practice rabbinical Judaism, the only true Judaism.
     
    You know that Jews had a leader Resh Galuta (Exilarch) in the diaspora that resided in Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq, until the middle Abbasid Caliphate era ?

    The Jewish Exilarch was an official title in the Abbasid times, similar to ambassador. He resided in a palace in Baghdad and had his own court, including guards.

    The last Exilarch decided to purify Rabbinical Jewish faith from everything that was not in the Tanakh. He wanted to go back to the pure prophetic tradition. He wanted all Jews to read and understand the Bible without any interference by the priestly class. Therefore he rejected the Talmud and asked from the congregation to read the Bible in its entirety each one of them.

    To read in Arabic is karaa / yakraoo, the reading is kiraa’h. Hence these Jews who read only the Tanakh and rejected the Talmud became known as Karaim / Karaites.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Greasy William

    Hence these Jews who read only the Tanakh and rejected the Talmud became known as Karaim / Karaites.

    I know. And Judaism without the Talmud isn’t Judaism.

    The Sadducees also opposed the oral tradition. They disappeared.

    I don’t have a problem with the Karaites and I admit that they are Israelites, but they aren’t Jews and they themselves will be the first to tell you as much.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Greasy William

    What you wrote here is extremely interesting. Could you please elaborate more about the distinction between those you describe as Israelites and the Rabbinical Jews ?

    Why do you see the Talmud and not the Torah as the foundation of the Jewish identity ?

    After all, if we believe the academic historiography, for most of their history, those whose descendants would become Rabbinical Jews lived without the Talmud, which only became codified starting from the first century AD and IIRC was under development up until the fifth century in the Babylonian rabbinical academies. The formative period of the Jewish people, the time which heroic mythology supposedly justifies the existence of the state of Israel, lays entirely outside the Talmudic period. So why hold on to the Talmud to such a degree? Why is the Tanakh alone not enough?

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Greasy William

  267. @Mikhail
    @Mr. Hack

    There were probably Confederate diehards spinning similarly about a year or so before their effort ended.

    Replies: @AnonfromTN, @Mr. Hack

    Who’s spinning? Kharkiv is still in Ukrainian hands and is only 30 miles away from the Russian border. It’s been in play since the invasion in 2022. When is the Russian military going to take it?

    • Replies: @Mikhail
    @Mr. Hack

    You're quite impatient. "Slog" (slow deliberate) and "attrition" are the two key words related to the Special Military Operation.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  268. @Mr. Hack
    @Mikhail

    Who's spinning? Kharkiv is still in Ukrainian hands and is only 30 miles away from the Russian border. It's been in play since the invasion in 2022. When is the Russian military going to take it?

    Replies: @Mikhail

    You’re quite impatient. “Slog” (slow deliberate) and “attrition” are the two key words related to the Special Military Operation.

    • LOL: Mr. Hack
    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Mikhail

    So the Russian military is slowly and deliberately attriting away from the borders of Kharkiv back to the borders of Russia. I think that I understand perfectly well what's going on there.

    Replies: @John Johnson, @Mikhail

  269. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Mikel

    Were you awake past midnight on election night 2020?

    When I went to bed there was not a declared winner, but based on state elections called number of electoral votes and the up-to-midnight counts on the not decided big states I was 95% sure Donald the Fat had it in the bag.

    When I got up Wednesday morning it took me 2 seconds to look at Biden's victory and conclude fix.

    Biased? Paranoid?

    Whatever.

    Replies: @Mikel, @LondonBob

    I went to bed in London with Trump miles ahead, the NYTimes election tracker had him winning all the states he needed with 95% plus certainty. Very confusing when I woke up.

    The fraud was done through mail in votes, we had people who had voted in Arizona who hadn’t actually voted when asked on TV. Dead people in Michigan requesting and returning votes. When they realised this wasn’t enough in places like Georgia, they just stopped the voting and brought in improbable stacks of votes going 99% for Biden, not even vaguely plausible. Lockdowns were so these rule changes were brought in for mail in, and a lot have been maintained. Clear that the illegals are now also a tool, they are being brought in and registered.

    • Thanks: S1
    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @LondonBob

    It looks like you were paying a lot closer attention than I was. It sounds like a communist plot to mess with our minds.

    , @S1
    @LondonBob


    When they realised this wasn’t enough in places like Georgia, they just stopped the voting and brought in improbable stacks of votes going 99% for Biden, not even vaguely plausible.
     
    And wasn't it multiple states that the vote counting simply was stopped midcount in the middle of the night, for hours (or was it days sometimes?) on end, something IIRC hadn't ever occurred before?

    Yeah, the 2020 election was blatantly stolen, and I say that as someone who sees Trump, a person I don't particularly care for, as ultimately being controlled go nowhere opposition.

    Joe Biden, utterly corrupt and morally debased, and half to three quarters deranged, is the wholly appropriate symbolic representative of the present state of modern Anglosphere progressivism.

    Even so, and as shockingly unlikely as it may seem, even he once let slip the truth about the 2020 election, which some have tried to claim was taken 'out of context'.

    But the truth is the truth.

    https://youtu.be/MA8a2g6tTp0?si=P6Mb5-gpF2WmBZ3e

    Replies: @Mikel

  270. @Gerard1234
    @Mikel

    In your favour - Fox News paid 800M USD as compensation for saying the voting machines were faking results.
    Also in your favour - some of these high profile clowns supporting the Republicans then directly linked the vote-rigging machines.........to being owned, controlled, manufactured by......Hugo Chavez (????!!!!!!!), China in there somewhere and probably Iran.

    Not in your favour - everything else.

    Replies: @LondonBob

    Voting machines were a (deliberate?) red herring, it was just good old fashioned ballot stuffing.

    • Thanks: Gerard1234
  271. @Gerard1234
    @Mikel


    Rubbish. People have been voting by mail in Utah for many years. It’s a very convenient way of voting if you don’t want to wait in lines or drive to a voting center the day of the election
     
    I am happy to have my ignorance corrected by you - but isn't Utah in a similar situation to Florida when I am talking about the mail-in voting more likely to be honest there compared to other states?

    In my limited understanding of the American system , didn't lots of people squeal about the idea of voter Identification for voting being "racist" when Republicans tried to increase these controls after the disputed 2020 election?
    For similarish reasons that people would think Utah and Florida are likely to have honest and strictly controlled mail-in voting.......those on the states accused of being less than honest are likely to claim "racism". Or at least the Democrats in those states will - though the issue is about more than racial demographics.

    You can only deposit the vote that was sent to you as a registered voter
     
    Standard practise across the world. But the issue is large number adult households, or apartment blocks if the mail is fairly open between the residents - where it could be easy for 1 person to do multiple votes.

    you can track your vote online with a bar code and it has an additional security layer with your signature,
     
    Not impressed. My signature wildly deviates every day. Somebody looking at my signature and practising for 10 minutes could easily get a better match for my own than what I do. Particularly in this era. Surely a person's signature naturally changes over the decades , even if they try hard to make it the same? What's even the purpose of them if the elderly has quite bad arthritis in their hands and struggle to get even 10% signature match?

    Is somebody going to report their mother or son for voting on their behalf without permission?
    And even if its not a family member - how many are going to bother to check?

    It never was a problem until 2020.
     
    I am sure that's true. But as I understand, the issue is that only 0.3% of the total votes (maybe even lower) needed to be faked to change the election result, while the other 99.7% of votes could be perfectly fine and honest. Enough officials in the US rabidly despise Trump to the point that 100000 votes across 4 states in a 130 million vote election could be falsified,particularly if the result is looking to be very close.

    It’s anything but blatantly obvious. “Less votes” means “less votes” in English, Russian or Tagalog. As opposed to “worse results” or “lower percentage”.

     

    Except in this instance when it means "lower percentage". Anon is an honest and highly intellectual commentator so deserves trust. John Kerry presumably got more votes than Ronald Reagan or Eisenhower - but clearly its the percentage vote that is relevant.

    I suppose your issue with AnonFromTN is, quite fairly, about proof. To me the proof is irrelevant - the US has accused others of falsifying elections based on much less evidence and strange circumstances........to me its more about logic, the entire process , the lying constantly before and the opportunity & motive to cheat. There is no scientifically determined number at which the mail-in voting number is "too much", but appears clear it was too much for that election

    Replies: @LondonBob, @Mikel

    I remember a European journalist showing he’d had been sent a dozen ballots for the 2020 election to his address in DC, he wasn’t even eligible to vote.

    Good reason France outlawed mail in ballots, and Labour introduced them here in Britain.

    Besides it is easy to show fraud in the 2020 elections a lot of places vote in a similar manner to others, 2020 saw a lot of these relationships break down.

    • Agree: S1
    • Replies: @Beckow
    @LondonBob


    Good reason France outlawed mail in ballots
     
    In most countries they are not allowed. It goes against elementary logic - there is no way to prevent fraud. It would be like taking a medical school exam remotely over a period of time with no oversight. Simply a bad idea.

    ...Clear that the illegals are now also a tool, they are being brought in and registered.
     
    30 million legal US residents are non-citizens: legal residents, people on different visas, spouses...they are not allowed to vote but it is based on the 'honor system', they can easily register. They are more likely to vote than the illegals.
  272. @LondonBob
    @Gerard1234

    I remember a European journalist showing he'd had been sent a dozen ballots for the 2020 election to his address in DC, he wasn't even eligible to vote.

    Good reason France outlawed mail in ballots, and Labour introduced them here in Britain.

    Besides it is easy to show fraud in the 2020 elections a lot of places vote in a similar manner to others, 2020 saw a lot of these relationships break down.

    Replies: @Beckow

    Good reason France outlawed mail in ballots

    In most countries they are not allowed. It goes against elementary logic – there is no way to prevent fraud. It would be like taking a medical school exam remotely over a period of time with no oversight. Simply a bad idea.

    …Clear that the illegals are now also a tool, they are being brought in and registered.

    30 million legal US residents are non-citizens: legal residents, people on different visas, spouses…they are not allowed to vote but it is based on the ‘honor system’, they can easily register. They are more likely to vote than the illegals.

  273. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Greasy William
    @Bashibuzuk


    Hence these Jews who read only the Tanakh and rejected the Talmud became known as Karaim / Karaites.
     
    I know. And Judaism without the Talmud isn't Judaism.

    The Sadducees also opposed the oral tradition. They disappeared.

    I don't have a problem with the Karaites and I admit that they are Israelites, but they aren't Jews and they themselves will be the first to tell you as much.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    What you wrote here is extremely interesting. Could you please elaborate more about the distinction between those you describe as Israelites and the Rabbinical Jews ?

    Why do you see the Talmud and not the Torah as the foundation of the Jewish identity ?

    After all, if we believe the academic historiography, for most of their history, those whose descendants would become Rabbinical Jews lived without the Talmud, which only became codified starting from the first century AD and IIRC was under development up until the fifth century in the Babylonian rabbinical academies. The formative period of the Jewish people, the time which heroic mythology supposedly justifies the existence of the state of Israel, lays entirely outside the Talmudic period. So why hold on to the Talmud to such a degree? Why is the Tanakh alone not enough?

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk

    He doesn't understand a letter of Hebrew, so how could he understand complicated academic questions about Judaism.

    He wouldn't understand the content even in the most Americanized and liberal Reform sermon which is in Hebrew (just watch them on YouTube).

    , @Greasy William
    @Bashibuzuk


    Why do you see the Talmud and not the Torah as the foundation of the Jewish identity ?
     
    The Torah contains two parts, the written tradition (Torah/Tanach) and the oral tradition (Talmud).

    The "written Torah only" approach of the Sadducees and Karaites sounds really appealing at first glance but in practice it creates a lot of difficulties and simply isn't consistent with how Judaism has operated since Sinai.

    In the Gospels, Jesus even says that the Pharisees sit in the "chair of Moses" and that Jews are obligated to follow their rulings. This shows that even in the first century there was a well established tradition of viewing the oral tradition as binding and sacred.

    The rules for things like prayer are not spelled out at all in the written Torah so we only know how to do that stuff through the oral tradition.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  274. AP says:
    @Mikhail
    https://thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com/2024/07/20/but-if-you-try-sometimes-you-just-might-find-you-get-what-you-need-or-alternatively-what-you-deserve/comment-page-1/#comment-99647

    Filip Siman, a Czech mercenary who allegedly fought with the Carpathian Sich Battalion of Ukraine against Russia, has allegedly testified in his trial that while he and his fellow mercenaries were operating in Irpen and Bucha in the Spring of 2022, “We were the police, we were the judge, we were in charge of the firing squad”.

    https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/07/21/nato-foreign-mercenaries-carried-out-the-false-flag-bucha-massacre/

    Stand by for a blast of scornful rhetoric from the western noise machine; fake news, it’s all made up, he said no such thing – alternatively, the poor soul was tortured almost to death to make him invent such an absurd story. NATO will never admit to being involved, however indirectly, in wholesale and completely-discretionary murder of civilians, and therefore the insistence that Russia did it and is now trying to squirm out of it will be shouted to the rooftops.

    Siman is being tried for participating in a foreign military operation without government permission. The relevant part of the text is in Czech. In the English reference, he admits only to looting and being in possession of stolen property. The comments express surprise that there are no toilets on the list.
     

    Replies: @AP

    Bucha had about 30,000 people. It’s kind of hard to lie about events there, as your source (a website ending in .su does lol) because there are too many witnesses or friends and family of witnesses who can verify or deny what has been said. This isn’t some village of 100 people in the middle of nowhere that was “visited” by UFOs.

    Such stories that you post will be believed by either stupidly extreme contrarians or by gullible 95 IQ people – the same sorts who are convinced Ukrainian jets shot down the Malaysian plane. Or that Sandy Hook was a hoax (Newtown has a similar population to Sandy Hook).

    • Disagree: Mikhail
    • Replies: @Mikhail
    @AP

    Upon Kiev regime entry, a 48 hour non-comment of such supposed atrocities, followed by a sudden presentation of corpses with white arm bands relating to the Belarusian neo-Nazi who arrived there being asked on tape whether it was okay to shoot such people? (The white arm band suggests being neutral to pro-Russian, which pro-Kiev regime extremists view with suspicion.) At least one pro-Kiev regime source says that tape is doctored from reality. Haven't seen any further verification of that claim.

    The SCF didn't invent the Spaniard making the claim of Kiev regime involvement in Bucha atrocities. Aaron Mate interviewed a US vet who went to Bucha (offhand think he was with Rolling Stone), who said he didn't see sign of atrocities while believing they occurred - an anomaly of sorts.

    When in Bucha, Russian forces allowed residents to use cell phones. No claims then of atrocities.
    Quite possible there were some limited in number abuses regarding residents believed to have been giving Intel to Kiev regime forces.

    For sure, a number of Bucha residents killed by Kiev regime firings on that area when Russian forces were stationed there.

  275. @AP
    @QCIC


    Are these people friends and family of modern Ukrainian nomenklatura?
     
    Suuure.

    In Ukraine mobilization starts after age 25 and people in important or money-generating industries are mostly exempt - Ukraine isn’t going to kill that cash cow. In a Lviv tech company I’m familiar with only 2 guys out of several hundred employees were mobilized. Of course some of these volunteer (thanks to such volunteers Ukraine’s drone warfare is very effective). People who work as electricians or in construction are also often exempt - they are needed to repair and rebuild stuff. And farmers harvesting crops. Also those who work in hospitals, etc.

    If this is a real war it is surprising these folks are walking around as if nothing is going on
     
    There seem to be two mutually exclusive conspiracy theories out there. One is that 400,000 or 500,000 in Ukraine have been killed, double that number crippled, and there are no men left in the country and the few who exist are hiding from mobilization. This seems to be what AnoninTN believes. Any views of Ukraine demonstrate that this is absurd.

    The other is that the war is fake, everyone is fine, it’s all a money-making scheme.

    Which one is yours?

    The reality is that for Ukraine, this war is a lot worse than Vietnam was for the USA, but not nearly as bad as World War II was.

    UK had 46 million people during World War II, and 380,000 dead after 5 years. Ukraine had about 30 million people when the war started, and so far has around 100,000 killed. Relative to population, this war seems to be for Ukraine like World War II was for the Brits in terms of casualties. Very much a real war.

    Remember that there were plenty of busy dancehalls in wartime Britain, good for morale. Some American isolationist would have pointed to them and claimed it was stolen American money and Britain should be cut off:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/61/a2553761.shtml#:~:text=A%20Morale%20Booster,records%2C%20sometimes%20only%20a%20piano.

    Today's generation have no idea what part the dance halls played in keeping up morale during the war. Every town and village had a hall where dancing could take place. The bigger dance halls had orchestras, the smaller ones had a three piece band or records, sometimes only a piano.
    In the large halls you danced on sprung floors, or at least highly polished and prepared floors. In small halls it was plank floors with nails sticking up or concrete with linoleum squares glued down. NAAFI or Garrison Theatre type floors were..

    Replies: @QCIC

    This is a strange war and I don’t have solid theories about many aspects of the chaos.

    The age of conscription of 25 years seems very strange, is this a cultural thing or just a peacetime policy?

    I suspect casualties on both sides are much higher than 100,000 if only based on the amount of explosive ordinance expended as demonstrated by vast fields of craters.

    I am not a war history buff. I think comparisons to earlier wars should be made carefully. War often involves a lot of propaganda and smart phones represent a quantum leap for propagandists.

    If I accept the SMO as real, I think this progression makes sense:

    – Some Ukrainian and Western plan in 2021 forced Russia into action since not preempting this plan would have been an existential mistake. While Russian strategic defenses were sound, her tactical ability to thwart a serious Ukrainian-NATO effort in Ukraine was weak. At the time she could have possibly destroyed Ukraine but not removed it intact from Western influence.

    – This led to the slow campaign we see. At the beginning it was not clear that Russia could survive the sanctions but now she has for two years. While the economic war has been raging, the conventional combat on the ground has been slow, incremental and deadly. Along the way, Russia has offered several diplomatic outs for Ukraine.

    – This may continue until Ukraine kicks out the West. I think Russia is gradually getting stronger so in some ways continuation of the war is to her benefit.

    – The most meaningful change for the Russian military is the development of a large cadre of combat hardened soldiers, many of whom will stay in the military. This should lead to a cultural shift from earlier Soviet and recent post-Soviet attitudes back to a realist pro-Russia military culture. This process is inevitably nationalistic so there may be challenges for the Noviop bureaucrats and politicians.

    • Replies: @Mikhail
    @QCIC


    The age of conscription of 25 years seems very strange, is this a cultural thing or just a peacetime policy?
     
    This has been previously discussed. Ukraine doesn't have a comparatively good percentage of people ages 18-25. The Kiev regime understands Ukraine's future depends on having such people around. This explains why people forty and over have been especially sought for military service.

    The best guesstimate of armed combatant casualties are 500,000-600,000 for the Kiev regime and 70,000-150,000 for Russia.

  276. @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    Basically, the corporate world isn’t an island separated from wider generational trends.
     
    It is not separate from the power of the government either.

    I remember the kind of thing Songbird was talking about, there was a particular period when watching a video from D/R content creators would produce an autoplay list predictably filled with many JBP video suggestions, it became a kind of meme. Before that the algorithm had seemed to operate more freely.

    The belief that it was being manipulated may be related to the prominence that counter-extremism and anti-radicalism initiatives run by the security services had at the same time. In Britain the public facing element of this was the Prevent program and semi-governmental NGOs like Hope not Hate. Under the Prevent guidelines if you worked in education, the civil service or local government you had a duty to notify Prevent of any signs of possible radicialisation or extremism among young people or service users, in case it developed into terrorism. I remember that observing someone viewing something like a Murdoch Murdoch video with swastikas in public could have been enough for a Prevent referral.

    There are also connections between certain spheres of academic study and the official counter-extremism sphere.

    Given things like this, it doesn't seem impossible that some suggestions may have been made to Google about corporate social responsibility and limiting the spread of extremist content. Perhaps JBP autoplay lists were a part of that.

    Since then a range of D/R channels have been progressively banned, at the same time some of the issues have become more mainstream, with more mainstream creators making that type of content, so it is harder to see them as extremist.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Dmitry

    D/R content creators would produce an autoplay list predictably filled with many JBP video ss,

    They are often doing experiments with different results. For example if they use are changing the vector similarity measures for the embedding space, you can have results where popular videos are measured as becoming measured as more or less similar to each other.

    When you are trying to watch more content from the Drs you are just getting recommendations from viral content. This is more like Instagram or TikTok where the recommendations are usually going to be more viral content.

    Perhaps JBP autoplay lists were a part of that.

    Not really, as the machine learning is not working like that in a manual way. If both you and Songbird are recommended the same JBP podcast, it’s probably because it’s getting high rankings.

    been progressively banned, at the same time some of the issues

    It’s a business, which is not just requiring just watch time (which can be seen like increasing the size of the billboard), but watch time on the content which the advertiser wants to be connected to (it can be seen like the background of the billboard).

    So, you can understand the content which is not useful for the advertisers, is also not generating money overall while they have to pay to host it.

    • Replies: @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    It’s a business, which is not just requiring just watch time (which can be seen like increasing the size of the billboard), but watch time on the content which the advertiser wants to be connected to (it can be seen like the background of the billboard).
     
    This sounds more credible, many Ads would seem incongruous with some of the Dissident Right content, given the general political and social environment.

    More mainstream content producers have had problems with advertising algorithms and different agencies which advise about the problem of disinformation:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILEMV0xKGh4

    The concept of 'adversarial content' is interesting here (at around 11 minutes). This is something in addition to what could be considered extreme or radical content.

    There seems to be a general question, if government agencies were concerned about online radicalisation and potentially extremist content, and they contacted a firm like Google about integrating counter-radicalisation measures into their terms of service, would Google refuse to collaborate on principle and instead trust it to the free market and the discretion of advertisers? (Who after all may be advised by expert bodies connected to and funded by government agencies).

    Replies: @Dmitry

  277. @Bashibuzuk
    @Greasy William

    What you wrote here is extremely interesting. Could you please elaborate more about the distinction between those you describe as Israelites and the Rabbinical Jews ?

    Why do you see the Talmud and not the Torah as the foundation of the Jewish identity ?

    After all, if we believe the academic historiography, for most of their history, those whose descendants would become Rabbinical Jews lived without the Talmud, which only became codified starting from the first century AD and IIRC was under development up until the fifth century in the Babylonian rabbinical academies. The formative period of the Jewish people, the time which heroic mythology supposedly justifies the existence of the state of Israel, lays entirely outside the Talmudic period. So why hold on to the Talmud to such a degree? Why is the Tanakh alone not enough?

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Greasy William

    He doesn’t understand a letter of Hebrew, so how could he understand complicated academic questions about Judaism.

    He wouldn’t understand the content even in the most Americanized and liberal Reform sermon which is in Hebrew (just watch them on YouTube).

  278. @Bashibuzuk
    @Greasy William

    What you wrote here is extremely interesting. Could you please elaborate more about the distinction between those you describe as Israelites and the Rabbinical Jews ?

    Why do you see the Talmud and not the Torah as the foundation of the Jewish identity ?

    After all, if we believe the academic historiography, for most of their history, those whose descendants would become Rabbinical Jews lived without the Talmud, which only became codified starting from the first century AD and IIRC was under development up until the fifth century in the Babylonian rabbinical academies. The formative period of the Jewish people, the time which heroic mythology supposedly justifies the existence of the state of Israel, lays entirely outside the Talmudic period. So why hold on to the Talmud to such a degree? Why is the Tanakh alone not enough?

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Greasy William

    Why do you see the Talmud and not the Torah as the foundation of the Jewish identity ?

    The Torah contains two parts, the written tradition (Torah/Tanach) and the oral tradition (Talmud).

    The “written Torah only” approach of the Sadducees and Karaites sounds really appealing at first glance but in practice it creates a lot of difficulties and simply isn’t consistent with how Judaism has operated since Sinai.

    In the Gospels, Jesus even says that the Pharisees sit in the “chair of Moses” and that Jews are obligated to follow their rulings. This shows that even in the first century there was a well established tradition of viewing the oral tradition as binding and sacred.

    The rules for things like prayer are not spelled out at all in the written Torah so we only know how to do that stuff through the oral tradition.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Greasy William


    The “written Torah only” approach of the Sadducees and Karaites sounds really appealing at first glance but in practice it creates a lot of difficulties and simply isn’t consistent with how Judaism has operated since Sinai.
     
    What would these difficulties be?

    According to historians of Judaism, it has been an evolving tradition. Archaic (proto ?)-Judaism might have been very different from what we have recorded in the Talmudic texts. Closer to the common era, the texts found in the Dead Sea Scrolls are somewhat different from what we would think of as typical Jewish theology. We had a competing subset of sects at the times of Jesus, one of these becoming Christianity other leading to Mandean (Sabean) spiritual tradition through John the Baptist, another the Pharisee sect that evolved into the Rabbinical Judaism. They all were considered Jewish at their beginning. So what makes you think that Judaism had the same modus operandi since its very inception (let’s say at Sinai if you want to believe it has an historical truth to it)?

    In the Gospels, Jesus even says that the Pharisees sit in the “chair of Moses” and that Jews are obligated to follow their rulings.
     
    Can you please provide a citation for this?

    I don’t remember reading this in the Gospels.

    The rules for things like prayer are not spelled out at all in the written Torah so we only know how to do that stuff through the oral tradition.
     
    I agree that oral tradition is very important in any spiritual teaching. What I am wondering is whether any Religious tradition can be defined as adherence to the oral tradition above all else.

    Replies: @Greasy William

  279. @Mikhail
    @Mr. Hack

    You're quite impatient. "Slog" (slow deliberate) and "attrition" are the two key words related to the Special Military Operation.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    So the Russian military is slowly and deliberately attriting away from the borders of Kharkiv back to the borders of Russia. I think that I understand perfectly well what’s going on there.

    • LOL: Mikhail
    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @Mr. Hack

    So the Russian military is slowly and deliberately attriting away from the borders of Kharkiv back to the borders of Russia. I think that I understand perfectly well what’s going on there.

    The plan is to use up their remaining tanks so when they invade Kharkov on horseback it will be a complete surprise to the Ukrainians. They'll assume the fighting has subsided and then a massive cavalry will descend on the city. Ritter's claim of a massive pending invasion will be proven correct.

    This is from Vochansk which is a few miles from the Russian border

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O_-6HF1FnU

    Vochansk has been completely destroyed.

    An 82% Ukrainian city has been liberated into ruins.

    HOOORAY FOR THE DWARF

    THANK YOU FOR DESTROYING OUR HOMES

    TAKE THAT WESTERN POWERS

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    , @Mikhail
    @Mr. Hack

    That's quite a bubble you're in along with some others. Kharkov is by no means the entire area of armed conflict.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  280. @Bashibuzuk
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    I’ve read about the Sabbatean Frankists, but not the Sholem’s book. It’s a very interesting and important story, especially when one wonders why people such as Soros behave the way they do. Also a many of Gentile thinkers, writers and politicians have Frankist roots, but to understand the heritage of YHWH-ism and to do that we need to go back into the Persian Empire’s time.

    https://www.degruyter.com/document/isbn/9783111018638/html

    Also, I am surprised that none has ever thought of the many parallels between Mazdakism and Sabbatean-derived Judeo-Bolshevism.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    Also, I am surprised that none has ever thought of the many parallels between Mazdakism and Sabbatean-derived Judeo-Bolshevism.

    Jason Jorjani has that covered. Of course he may be a psycho.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    This is a very important topic for those who are interested in the arising of revolutionary situations in any society. Basically, what kind of social environment do we need to have to end up with people of a radical revolutionary mindset to take control of the society.

    I came to the conclusion that the type of psychology needed for a revolutionary outlook and actions is present in a certain proportion of people in any given “civilized” society at any given historical period. However, most of the time these Che Guevara, Lenin, Mao or Mazdak types do not get to seize power. So the question is: what needs happening in a society to stop preventing them from seizing power. What must happen for a society to engage with the radical change that might either lead to a radical transformation of its societal structure or a destruction of the society and its exiting the historical scene altogether.

    My answer is that it requires a profound degeneracy and spread of psychological deviancy among the elites as the primary cause of revolutionary change. It doesn’t mean all the elites need being corrupt, but enough of them have to be very corrupt to the point of destroying the system as a cancer destroys the body. The societal political and spiritual immunity needs being thoroughly weakened for radical political and/or spiritual movements to seize power. Then antinomian leaders decree the need to destroy the rotten product of the « flawed historical process » and replace it with something « utopian ». But these revolutionary leaders are often even more extreme sociopaths than the pre-revolutionary elites.

    As I get older, I come to the conclusion that revolutions are rarely a good thing and revolutionaries are rarely sane people. Better avoid both.

  281. @LondonBob
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    I went to bed in London with Trump miles ahead, the NYTimes election tracker had him winning all the states he needed with 95% plus certainty. Very confusing when I woke up.

    The fraud was done through mail in votes, we had people who had voted in Arizona who hadn't actually voted when asked on TV. Dead people in Michigan requesting and returning votes. When they realised this wasn't enough in places like Georgia, they just stopped the voting and brought in improbable stacks of votes going 99% for Biden, not even vaguely plausible. Lockdowns were so these rule changes were brought in for mail in, and a lot have been maintained. Clear that the illegals are now also a tool, they are being brought in and registered.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @S1

    It looks like you were paying a lot closer attention than I was. It sounds like a communist plot to mess with our minds.

  282. YouTube is streamed more on TVs now more than Netflix?

    Netflix has a much smaller “corpus”, so their recommendations are less personalized as the corpus itself is more universal.

    I think it’s more wider topic though. This concept of the personalized recommendation is something which can be a problem for world culture, as it reduces the public sphere and throws people into little zones where they mix with the people with the same preferences.

    It’s also increasing “obsessiveness”, as people’s attentions are starting to follow the funnelling pattern which results in narrow markets, with more repeated themes.

    YouTube is aggressively personalizing. So, resetting the app to get more universalized recommendations should be probably recommended for everyone.

    They are doing it because it must be good for their business. It will be increasing watch time so it’s valuable for them from the financial view. They say it’s like “having a professional concierge who deeply understands what you’re looking for now”. It’s arguably better to not have the personalization from the user view, but it seems effective from their view for serving.

    By the way, in their marketing video there is nice picture in the video at 4:20 to illustrate the simple concept of a two-dimensional vector embedding between two films, which allows numerical measurement of similarity by presenting the concept of similarity as a vector space. The users of the product are also being constantly embedded in this way as vector space to measure their similarity in relation to the other users.

    Western Europe is already worse off for the middle class,

    This can make sense if it’s a comparison of the quality of living between potential scenarios, like if Germany followed Japan’s immigration policy in 1970, someone could argue the quality of life would be better in 2024 Germany, than the current quality of life in Germany in 2024 which is result of not following Japan’s policy in 1970.

    But it doesn’t make sense that the quality of life in Europe 2024, is worse than in 1970, if you are not talking the psychological or cultural perception. I explained I was separating the two topics. Culture or psychological perceptions are a lot more dystopian in 2024, compared to 1970. But obviously, the situation in the social science metrics like working conditions, life expectancy, housing condition are a lot higher today than 1970.

    This is one of the significant features in 2024, which is what I wanted to explain to AP. It’s the best living conditions in the West, combined with one of one of the more pessimistic cultural times in the West.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Dmitry

    vector space

    When you have 80 000 000 dimensions your usage of the words vector and space are strained beyond recognition.

    B and R in fubar stand for beyond and recognition by the way. ****

    **** 80 000 000 is an arbitrary number. The actual number is however big it gets when they run out of computers.

    , @songbird
    @Dmitry

    From the discussion with Coconuts:


    >Perhaps JBP autoplay lists were a part of that.

    Not really, as the machine learning is not working like that in a manual way.
     
    Was under the impression that their algorithm is closed and not open to scrutiny.

    There are certainly a lot of people that accuse it of bias. For instance, saying that subscribers have told them that they were somehow automatically unsubscribed, even though they like the creator.

    Another Google product, gemini, was clearly doing some weird things with image creation, making nearly all historical figures into blacks, depicting blacks when Euros were requested, etc.

    I don't really watch the normie content, but I suspect that there is some affirmative action involved in the promotion of it. Of course, it is hard to be scientific about it - as there are a lot of ways this AA could evolve. Technically, it could be off-site - involving other websites promoting videos , or involving the advertisers.

    But for example , there is Marques Brownlee, who does tech reviews. The Boston Globes tech writer is also a back guy, Hiawatha Bray. Maybe, they are both good enough, but, I don't think either would have the job but for AA.

    Netflix has a much smaller “corpus”, so their recommendations are less personalized as the corpus itself is more universal.
     
    I feel pretty disappointed with the way Netflix has evolved, technologically. The dream of it seemed to be that it could be leveraged to skip the costs of promotion and to target to niche audiences. To use scale and statistics to produce high quality stuff, but there is very little on it that I find engaging, except the odd foreign movie.

    A lot of their investments seem to have been in horrible things, like Adam Sandler movies, which they consider a success as long as a lot of people watch them.

    YouTube doubtlessly has better content, though some of it (movies) is subrosa (and legally questionable) and difficult to find.

    But obviously, the situation in the social science metrics like working conditions, life expectancy, housing condition are a lot higher today than 1970.
     
    I think the housing situation in Ireland is certainly worse. In America and many other places like Canada and New Zealand too. Maybe, that doesn't translate into higher costs everywhere, but if you want to live among Europeans seems like that would be harder in a lot of places. In Ireland, it is not even possible in the countryside anymore, to a large degree.

    Some working conditions may have improved from the elimination of those jobs. But working conditions have gotten worse in other ways. In the US, pensions are very rare today. As is job stability. Many workplaces have very unpleasant political ideology which manifests in a pretty personal way - stuff which was impossible in 1970.

    It’s the best living conditions in the West, combined with one of one of the more pessimistic cultural times in the West.
     
    a lot of the trends aren't encouraging. It does not seem clear that the migration problem will ever be put under control. I'm not sure it is even politically possible to talk about a better future for Europeans - the narrative space is taken up speaking about the grievances of other groups.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  283. S1 says:
    @LondonBob
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    I went to bed in London with Trump miles ahead, the NYTimes election tracker had him winning all the states he needed with 95% plus certainty. Very confusing when I woke up.

    The fraud was done through mail in votes, we had people who had voted in Arizona who hadn't actually voted when asked on TV. Dead people in Michigan requesting and returning votes. When they realised this wasn't enough in places like Georgia, they just stopped the voting and brought in improbable stacks of votes going 99% for Biden, not even vaguely plausible. Lockdowns were so these rule changes were brought in for mail in, and a lot have been maintained. Clear that the illegals are now also a tool, they are being brought in and registered.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @S1

    When they realised this wasn’t enough in places like Georgia, they just stopped the voting and brought in improbable stacks of votes going 99% for Biden, not even vaguely plausible.

    And wasn’t it multiple states that the vote counting simply was stopped midcount in the middle of the night, for hours (or was it days sometimes?) on end, something IIRC hadn’t ever occurred before?

    Yeah, the 2020 election was blatantly stolen, and I say that as someone who sees Trump, a person I don’t particularly care for, as ultimately being controlled go nowhere opposition.

    Joe Biden, utterly corrupt and morally debased, and half to three quarters deranged, is the wholly appropriate symbolic representative of the present state of modern Anglosphere progressivism.

    Even so, and as shockingly unlikely as it may seem, even he once let slip the truth about the 2020 election, which some have tried to claim was taken ‘out of context’.

    But the truth is the truth.

    • Replies: @Mikel
    @S1


    But the truth is the truth.

    https://youtu.be/MA8a2g6tTp0
     
    LOL.

    But unfortunately, Biden's Freudian and non-Freudian slips are not The Truth. They're just the natural product of a senile brain. He did not mean to say that Trump was a very competent person when he mixed up his name with Kamala's the other day. Sadly, the truth is harder to arrive at than any of this.
  284. @AP
    @Mikhail

    Bucha had about 30,000 people. It’s kind of hard to lie about events there, as your source (a website ending in .su does lol) because there are too many witnesses or friends and family of witnesses who can verify or deny what has been said. This isn’t some village of 100 people in the middle of nowhere that was “visited” by UFOs.

    Such stories that you post will be believed by either stupidly extreme contrarians or by gullible 95 IQ people - the same sorts who are convinced Ukrainian jets shot down the Malaysian plane. Or that Sandy Hook was a hoax (Newtown has a similar population to Sandy Hook).

    Replies: @Mikhail

    Upon Kiev regime entry, a 48 hour non-comment of such supposed atrocities, followed by a sudden presentation of corpses with white arm bands relating to the Belarusian neo-Nazi who arrived there being asked on tape whether it was okay to shoot such people? (The white arm band suggests being neutral to pro-Russian, which pro-Kiev regime extremists view with suspicion.) At least one pro-Kiev regime source says that tape is doctored from reality. Haven’t seen any further verification of that claim.

    The SCF didn’t invent the Spaniard making the claim of Kiev regime involvement in Bucha atrocities. Aaron Mate interviewed a US vet who went to Bucha (offhand think he was with Rolling Stone), who said he didn’t see sign of atrocities while believing they occurred – an anomaly of sorts.

    When in Bucha, Russian forces allowed residents to use cell phones. No claims then of atrocities.
    Quite possible there were some limited in number abuses regarding residents believed to have been giving Intel to Kiev regime forces.

    For sure, a number of Bucha residents killed by Kiev regime firings on that area when Russian forces were stationed there.

  285. @QCIC
    @AP

    This is a strange war and I don't have solid theories about many aspects of the chaos.

    The age of conscription of 25 years seems very strange, is this a cultural thing or just a peacetime policy?

    I suspect casualties on both sides are much higher than 100,000 if only based on the amount of explosive ordinance expended as demonstrated by vast fields of craters.

    I am not a war history buff. I think comparisons to earlier wars should be made carefully. War often involves a lot of propaganda and smart phones represent a quantum leap for propagandists.

    If I accept the SMO as real, I think this progression makes sense:

    - Some Ukrainian and Western plan in 2021 forced Russia into action since not preempting this plan would have been an existential mistake. While Russian strategic defenses were sound, her tactical ability to thwart a serious Ukrainian-NATO effort in Ukraine was weak. At the time she could have possibly destroyed Ukraine but not removed it intact from Western influence.

    - This led to the slow campaign we see. At the beginning it was not clear that Russia could survive the sanctions but now she has for two years. While the economic war has been raging, the conventional combat on the ground has been slow, incremental and deadly. Along the way, Russia has offered several diplomatic outs for Ukraine.

    - This may continue until Ukraine kicks out the West. I think Russia is gradually getting stronger so in some ways continuation of the war is to her benefit.

    - The most meaningful change for the Russian military is the development of a large cadre of combat hardened soldiers, many of whom will stay in the military. This should lead to a cultural shift from earlier Soviet and recent post-Soviet attitudes back to a realist pro-Russia military culture. This process is inevitably nationalistic so there may be challenges for the Noviop bureaucrats and politicians.

    Replies: @Mikhail

    The age of conscription of 25 years seems very strange, is this a cultural thing or just a peacetime policy?

    This has been previously discussed. Ukraine doesn’t have a comparatively good percentage of people ages 18-25. The Kiev regime understands Ukraine’s future depends on having such people around. This explains why people forty and over have been especially sought for military service.

    The best guesstimate of armed combatant casualties are 500,000-600,000 for the Kiev regime and 70,000-150,000 for Russia.

  286. @Mr. Hack
    @Mikhail

    So the Russian military is slowly and deliberately attriting away from the borders of Kharkiv back to the borders of Russia. I think that I understand perfectly well what's going on there.

    Replies: @John Johnson, @Mikhail

    So the Russian military is slowly and deliberately attriting away from the borders of Kharkiv back to the borders of Russia. I think that I understand perfectly well what’s going on there.

    The plan is to use up their remaining tanks so when they invade Kharkov on horseback it will be a complete surprise to the Ukrainians. They’ll assume the fighting has subsided and then a massive cavalry will descend on the city. Ritter’s claim of a massive pending invasion will be proven correct.

    This is from Vochansk which is a few miles from the Russian border

    Vochansk has been completely destroyed.

    An 82% Ukrainian city has been liberated into ruins.

    HOOORAY FOR THE DWARF

    THANK YOU FOR DESTROYING OUR HOMES

    TAKE THAT WESTERN POWERS

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @John Johnson


    The plan is to use up their remaining tanks so when they invade Kharkov on horseback it will be a complete surprise to the Ukrainians.
     
    I agree. And with a super smart military leader like Bonaparte Putler, how could they possibly lose?
    What ever happened to the motorcycle brigade? Horses must be better. :-)

    https://www.theispot.com/assets/images/source/tim_obrien_illustration_putin_on_horse_wsj_small.jpg

  287. @Mr. Hack
    @Mikhail

    So the Russian military is slowly and deliberately attriting away from the borders of Kharkiv back to the borders of Russia. I think that I understand perfectly well what's going on there.

    Replies: @John Johnson, @Mikhail

    That’s quite a bubble you’re in along with some others. Kharkov is by no means the entire area of armed conflict.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Mikhail

    Kremlin stooge bubbehead Mike Averko sharing some more of his precious insights:

    https://i.imgflip.com/7q2vya.png


    Kharkov is by no means the entire area of armed conflict.

     

    The Russian military's failure to take Kharkiv, a city of over 1 million citizens that were "Russia friendly" in the past, only 30 miles from the border in over two years of fighting, is indicative of Russia's losing cause. He might be able to convince somebody like kremlinstoogeA123 that Kharkiv is just another insignificant dot on the "entire area of armed conflict" (the kremlin stooge who thinks that Ukraine is fighting an offensive war against Russia, that is fighting a defensive war), but to anybody that is really interested in this war, and has a clear mind, everyone knows that Kharkiv is a key prize to be sought.

    Replies: @YetAnotherAnon, @Mikhail

  288. @Bashibuzuk
    @Dmitry

    Around 50% of the blatnaya fenya Vor thieves’ cant is derived from Yiddish and Hebrew. The word Blat itself comes from Yiddish/German (Yiddish being a German dialect after all). Examples of Yiddish/Hebrew terminology in the Vor jargon are way to numerous to innumerate here, but it points out the self-evident fact that many people spoke Yiddish during the formative period of the Russian organized crime, which was late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The so called Russian mafia was at the time quite kosher.

    The most important locations for the genesis of the Blatnoy way of life were Odessa (called Odessa mama in some Blatnoy songs) and Rostov on Don (called Rostov papa in the Blatnoy songs). Funnily enough, one of the most famous Blatnoy songs, “On Deribasovskaya street there was an opening of a beer pub” (На Дерибасовской открылася (sic) пивная) was actually written in Rostov and in the early days referred to Rostov street names. It was later adapted by the Jewish mobsters of Odessa to their own locality and it became a Russian mafia classic chanson.

    Here Alex Shinder continues the Odessite Blatnoy Jewish tradition by singing this song as it should be sung with the Yiddish / Hebrew words, name and intonations, after finding refuge from the war in Paris, France:

    https://youtu.be/EngiT3GPmLY?si=I06oHAopK5_VMKlZ

    Enjoy koresha , l’chayim ! 🙂

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Dmitry

    About Odessa, it’s part of the war of Russian and Ukrainian identity now.

    Are the Ukrainians going to have the cool culture, the old gangsters’ songs, the cossacks, ?

    I think already, today, half of the world will say Tokarev was taking “traditional Ukrainian national songs”

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Dmitry


    the old gangsters’ songs
     
    I don’t think Ukrainians would want to claim that part of common heritage, it’s loaded with many complex identity issues.

    Fact is, the so called Russian Mafia was a cosmopolitan structure with a strong Jewish influence in its formative years. Now the highest ranking Vors are mainly Caucasian. I would think that it would be hard to pinpoint a period in time when the Blatnoy Realm was dominated by ethnic Slavs, let alone Russians, but of course they played an important role in the activities of the criminal underworld.

    When it comes to Blatnoy Chanson, I am a purist. My favourite interpreter is Arkasha Severnyi, this guy gave his life to his art at a time when Soviet Regime nearly eradicated the organized crime. It was borderline antisocial during Brezhnev years to publicly sing these songs:

    https://youtu.be/fBaTNdsK4Ag?si=iDyVzUwW0udphPyO

    https://youtu.be/iCSFPRaGXUQ?si=WjHSwS8YpEJupmu-

    Notice that both songs are related to the situation in the post Civil War period, mostly NEP. That was the time when the crime in Russia began to become organized. That was also the time when the word blat started to be widely used in the Russian language. It was directly linked with the abolition of the Pale of Settlement and the migration of the Jews from the Pale and into the Russian heartland from which they were mostly excluded for many centuries.

    Blatnoy Chanson is a direct byproduct of the cultural interaction between the artistic tastes of the Jewish underworld newcomers and the local Russian criminals. It’s a unique cultural phenomenon produced by unique circumstances.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    , @John Johnson
    @Dmitry

    Many posters at Unz believe that Russia is justified in killing Ukrainians because it will ultimately protect them from Western degeneracy. Your new dictator knows best for your culture even if he killed your dad. Doesn't Russia have the higher abortion and alcoholism rates? Sure but on pro-Putin blogs we just censor anyone that points that out in favor of believing in a superior culture. We don't want to upset boomer cons in the West that like to believe that Russia is basically Leave it to Ivan but with long winters. Let them have their fantasy.

    DJ Blyatman explains the finer points of Russian culture and why you should welcome their invasion:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzTAPY4uEYE

    Replies: @Beckow

  289. @Mr. XYZ
    Anatoly Karlin blocked me on multiple platforms because I linked to his Rational Wiki article on a subreddit for Russians.

    I was trying to show the direct quotes, not the commentary.

    Are the direct quotes on his Rational Wiki (or RatWiki) article inaccurate and/or misleading?

    https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Anatoly_Karlin

    For clarification:

    https://akarlin.com/rationalwiki/rationalwiki-2019/

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @YetAnotherAnon

    RationalWiki should be renamed DerangedWiki.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/07/25/a-day-after-getting-surrounded-near-prohres-two-ukrainian-battalions-overruled-their-commander-and-fought-their-way-to-safety/?ss=aerospace-defense

    The Russian advance toward Prohres began last week after Russian warplanes “carried out powerful air strikes on the tactical rear,” according to the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies. Amid the confusion, one of the Ukrainian brigades in the sector—possibly the 110th Mechanized Brigade or the 111th Territorial Defense Brigade—collapsed.

    To be clear, it wasn’t the brigade’s rank and file who failed—it was their leaders. “The main problem,” Ukrainian correspondent Yuriy Butusov reported, “is primarily in the management and organization of our actions.”

    “When a poorly managed crew is attacked, it can’t hold,” Butusov explained.

    As Ukrainian troops fled, a clutch of motor rifle regiments from the Russian 1st Army Corps seized the opportunity—and marched four miles to the west in the span of a week, ultimately capturing Prohres and sweeping around those two Ukrainian battalions north of the village.

    The surrounded Ukrainians then experienced their own leadership crisis, according to Deep State. “The brigade commander never gave the order to break through, so the personnel who were in that area confronted him with the fact that the boys would break through with a fight.”

    That is to say, the encircled Ukrainian troops decided, on their own, to battle their way to the main Ukrainian line hundreds of yards to the west. “This case should be a reminder to many commanders not to neglect personnel and trust the [non-commissioned officers] and officers who are on the direct line of battle,” Deep State commented.

  290. @Gerard1234
    @Mikel


    Rubbish. People have been voting by mail in Utah for many years. It’s a very convenient way of voting if you don’t want to wait in lines or drive to a voting center the day of the election
     
    I am happy to have my ignorance corrected by you - but isn't Utah in a similar situation to Florida when I am talking about the mail-in voting more likely to be honest there compared to other states?

    In my limited understanding of the American system , didn't lots of people squeal about the idea of voter Identification for voting being "racist" when Republicans tried to increase these controls after the disputed 2020 election?
    For similarish reasons that people would think Utah and Florida are likely to have honest and strictly controlled mail-in voting.......those on the states accused of being less than honest are likely to claim "racism". Or at least the Democrats in those states will - though the issue is about more than racial demographics.

    You can only deposit the vote that was sent to you as a registered voter
     
    Standard practise across the world. But the issue is large number adult households, or apartment blocks if the mail is fairly open between the residents - where it could be easy for 1 person to do multiple votes.

    you can track your vote online with a bar code and it has an additional security layer with your signature,
     
    Not impressed. My signature wildly deviates every day. Somebody looking at my signature and practising for 10 minutes could easily get a better match for my own than what I do. Particularly in this era. Surely a person's signature naturally changes over the decades , even if they try hard to make it the same? What's even the purpose of them if the elderly has quite bad arthritis in their hands and struggle to get even 10% signature match?

    Is somebody going to report their mother or son for voting on their behalf without permission?
    And even if its not a family member - how many are going to bother to check?

    It never was a problem until 2020.
     
    I am sure that's true. But as I understand, the issue is that only 0.3% of the total votes (maybe even lower) needed to be faked to change the election result, while the other 99.7% of votes could be perfectly fine and honest. Enough officials in the US rabidly despise Trump to the point that 100000 votes across 4 states in a 130 million vote election could be falsified,particularly if the result is looking to be very close.

    It’s anything but blatantly obvious. “Less votes” means “less votes” in English, Russian or Tagalog. As opposed to “worse results” or “lower percentage”.

     

    Except in this instance when it means "lower percentage". Anon is an honest and highly intellectual commentator so deserves trust. John Kerry presumably got more votes than Ronald Reagan or Eisenhower - but clearly its the percentage vote that is relevant.

    I suppose your issue with AnonFromTN is, quite fairly, about proof. To me the proof is irrelevant - the US has accused others of falsifying elections based on much less evidence and strange circumstances........to me its more about logic, the entire process , the lying constantly before and the opportunity & motive to cheat. There is no scientifically determined number at which the mail-in voting number is "too much", but appears clear it was too much for that election

    Replies: @LondonBob, @Mikel

    I am happy to have my ignorance corrected by you

    Are you the usual Gerard? You sound a bit strange here.

    But you are surprisingly doing a better job than anyone else in this thread at defending the stolen election narrative. You are admitting some points, presenting some counterarguments, engaging in rational debate,… very different from repeating the less than useless mantra that “votes don’t count” in the US.

    Reality is indeed complicated. We would all like to live in a world where simple recipes lead us to constant success and the good and the bad people are easily identifiable like in the Hollywood movies. But sadly, distinguishing reality from falsehood is a messy process, we don’t always succeed and what happens is that the stubborn reality bites us in the rear. It may happen this coming November too.

    More to the point, there was fraud in 2020, it was probably concentrated in some locations (many of them in swing states) that have also seen fraud in the past, some allegations were never properly investigated, it was tremendously disappointing to see how what looked like another surprise victory by Trump turned into a defeat as the night progressed, the people in the media who kept saying that all fraud allegations were “a lie” were the brazen liars who had tried to hide the Hunter laptop story from us,……. but sorry, there wasn’t really enough fraud to change the election results.

    This was proven as conclusively as reasonably possible in Arizona and most likely in Georgia too (though I don’t have that much information about Georgia). But even before the MAGA-led recounts were carried out with disappointing results, there were plenty of signs that some people on “our” side were full of crap or being outright dishonest too, just like the leftist media. Those Black ladies that we all saw on video allegedly committing fraud were actually passing a chewing gum bar to one another and a judge granted them a hefty compensation for the wildly speculative allegations against them, Republican officials on the ground in Georgia with direct access to the vote counting process were unable to verify all the fraud allegations, Giuliani was clearly unable to answer simple questions that Republican members of state legislatures asked him to see how much all the cases of fraud he was presenting mattered for the final results even if they were all true,… And let’s not forget: Trump exhausted all legal avenues to revert the election results but all failed. His team of lawyers failed at convincing the judges, their own republican state legislatures, the Supreme Court and his own Vice President.

    There’s just a point at which a rational person has to admit to himself that there’s not enough evidence in favor of what originally appeared to be true and, as usual in life, it was all a messy process of humans being passionate and dishonest on both sides. But whatever one chooses to believe, the most important thing is what I keep saying about abandoning defeatist mantras of “voting doesn’t matter”. It keeps mattering a lot. There’s a world of a difference between sending to Washington congressmen who will align themselves with the established powers or new faces that will vote against foreign military adventures and will really put up a fight against the woke culture. We live in times when it could actually mean the difference between sleepwalking to a nuclear war or being able to avoid it. Motivated voters in some states have opted for the second while apathetic votes in others (the majority) have gone the first route.

    In the midst of all this, nothing plays better in the hands of the powerful people winning the battles of woke culture, forever wars and open borders than having an adversary stupidly focused on fighting the wrong battles: Qanon, Stop the Steal, the Kraken, the Jews, Votes don’t Count… excellent recipe to get 4 years of Kamala.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Mikel


    And let’s not forget: Trump exhausted all legal avenues to revert the election results but all failed.
     
    The 2020 campaign did not have enough lawyers to fight all of the necessary cases, in the right places, while constrained by a limited amount of time. Because of the unprecedented and unanticipated scale of the fraud, the DNC got away with election changing criminal activity in 2020. Sad, but true.

    As I indicated previously, Trump's 2024 campaign is much more aware of the legal hurdles, the vulnerable sites, and has been building up a cadre of lawyers on retainer that will be available to challenge any fraud. While the judiciary is corrupt in some locations, Trump would only have to win enough cases to move the outcome (not 100% of absolutely every case everywhere).

    Harris is such a horrible candidate, hopefully Trump will rack up a large margins in the battleground states. If the DNC has to steal millions of votes in 2024 (not 100-200K in 2020), they have an insoluble problem. They can only cheat so much without being caught, creating a national crisis, or both.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Mikel

  291. @Dmitry

    YouTube is streamed more on TVs now more than Netflix?
     
    Netflix has a much smaller "corpus", so their recommendations are less personalized as the corpus itself is more universal.

    I think it's more wider topic though. This concept of the personalized recommendation is something which can be a problem for world culture, as it reduces the public sphere and throws people into little zones where they mix with the people with the same preferences.

    It's also increasing "obsessiveness", as people's attentions are starting to follow the funnelling pattern which results in narrow markets, with more repeated themes.

    YouTube is aggressively personalizing. So, resetting the app to get more universalized recommendations should be probably recommended for everyone.

    -

    They are doing it because it must be good for their business. It will be increasing watch time so it's valuable for them from the financial view. They say it's like "having a professional concierge who deeply understands what you're looking for now". It's arguably better to not have the personalization from the user view, but it seems effective from their view for serving.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p10qOapgrAM


    By the way, in their marketing video there is nice picture in the video at 4:20 to illustrate the simple concept of a two-dimensional vector embedding between two films, which allows numerical measurement of similarity by presenting the concept of similarity as a vector space. The users of the product are also being constantly embedded in this way as vector space to measure their similarity in relation to the other users.


    Western Europe is already worse off for the middle class,

     

    This can make sense if it's a comparison of the quality of living between potential scenarios, like if Germany followed Japan's immigration policy in 1970, someone could argue the quality of life would be better in 2024 Germany, than the current quality of life in Germany in 2024 which is result of not following Japan's policy in 1970.

    But it doesn't make sense that the quality of life in Europe 2024, is worse than in 1970, if you are not talking the psychological or cultural perception. I explained I was separating the two topics. Culture or psychological perceptions are a lot more dystopian in 2024, compared to 1970. But obviously, the situation in the social science metrics like working conditions, life expectancy, housing condition are a lot higher today than 1970.

    This is one of the significant features in 2024, which is what I wanted to explain to AP. It's the best living conditions in the West, combined with one of one of the more pessimistic cultural times in the West.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @songbird

    vector space

    When you have 80 000 000 dimensions your usage of the words vector and space are strained beyond recognition.

    B and R in fubar stand for beyond and recognition by the way. ****

    **** 80 000 000 is an arbitrary number. The actual number is however big it gets when they run out of computers.

  292. @Mikhail
    @Mr. Hack

    That's quite a bubble you're in along with some others. Kharkov is by no means the entire area of armed conflict.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    Kremlin stooge bubbehead Mike Averko sharing some more of his precious insights:

    Kharkov is by no means the entire area of armed conflict.

    The Russian military’s failure to take Kharkiv, a city of over 1 million citizens that were “Russia friendly” in the past, only 30 miles from the border in over two years of fighting, is indicative of Russia’s losing cause. He might be able to convince somebody like kremlinstoogeA123 that Kharkiv is just another insignificant dot on the “entire area of armed conflict” (the kremlin stooge who thinks that Ukraine is fighting an offensive war against Russia, that is fighting a defensive war), but to anybody that is really interested in this war, and has a clear mind, everyone knows that Kharkiv is a key prize to be sought.

    • Replies: @YetAnotherAnon
    @Mr. Hack

    "Kharkiv is a key prize to be sought"

    Perhaps, but not sought Bakhmut style, no one wants to flatten the place and I'm not sure Ukraine have enough bodies to fight house to house.

    Odessa, the Danube delta, and a land bridge to Hungary and Transnistria are bigger prizes imho.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    , @Mikhail
    @Mr. Hack

    Keep babbling stupidity as your side is losing.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  293. @John Johnson
    @Mr. Hack

    So the Russian military is slowly and deliberately attriting away from the borders of Kharkiv back to the borders of Russia. I think that I understand perfectly well what’s going on there.

    The plan is to use up their remaining tanks so when they invade Kharkov on horseback it will be a complete surprise to the Ukrainians. They'll assume the fighting has subsided and then a massive cavalry will descend on the city. Ritter's claim of a massive pending invasion will be proven correct.

    This is from Vochansk which is a few miles from the Russian border

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O_-6HF1FnU

    Vochansk has been completely destroyed.

    An 82% Ukrainian city has been liberated into ruins.

    HOOORAY FOR THE DWARF

    THANK YOU FOR DESTROYING OUR HOMES

    TAKE THAT WESTERN POWERS

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    The plan is to use up their remaining tanks so when they invade Kharkov on horseback it will be a complete surprise to the Ukrainians.

    I agree. And with a super smart military leader like Bonaparte Putler, how could they possibly lose?
    What ever happened to the motorcycle brigade? Horses must be better. 🙂

  294. AP says:

    From Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and advisor David Urban (both still in his good graces).

    FWIW I’d assign a 20% probability of this happening – Vance was a negative indicator. If Trump had picked Rubio it would be 70% or 80%. But I would not be totally surprised if Trump went this route.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-trump-peace-plan-for-ukraine-russia-foreign-policy-926348cf

    Pundits claim that if Donald Trump is re-elected, he will cut off aid to Ukraine, give away its territory, and deal directly with Vladimir Putin to impose an ignominious “peace” on the country.

    There’s no evidence that such capitulation will be part of President Trump’s policy and much evidence to the contrary. It was Mr. Trump who in 2017 lifted the Obama administration’s arms embargo on Ukraine, providing it with the Javelin missiles that helped save Kyiv in the earliest days of Russia’s invasion. More recently, Mr. Trump gave political cover to House Speaker Mike Johnson when he maneuvered to pass additional military aid. Helping Ukraine while revitalizing the American defense industrial base in Alabama, Pennsylvania and Virginia is good policy—and good politics.

    [MORE]

    The Biden administration’s weakness has left Ukraine where it is today: two years into a full-scale war, with cities destroyed, hundreds of thousands killed, and millions of refugees, and without the means to win. The White House has no strategy for victory, and Americans are rightly concerned.

    While Mr. Biden stumbled into war through weakness, Mr. Trump could re-establish peace through strength. Here’s how a successful plan for Ukraine might look:

    • Unleash America’s energy potential. This will fire up the U.S. economy, drive down prices and shrink Mr. Putin’s war-crimes budget.

    • Rebuild ties with Saudi Arabia and Israel and work together against Iran. This will stabilize the Middle East, ease the Gaza crisis, and create an opening for the Saudis to join the U.S. in squeezing Russia out of global energy markets.

    • Impose real sanctions on Russia. The Biden administration’s sanctions sound good on paper but are hollow. The Treasury, for example, exempts Russian banks from U.S. sanctions if their transactions are related to energy production—the most important revenue source for the Kremlin’s war machine.

    • Bulk up America’s defense industry. We must show our adversaries, especially Russia and China, that they can’t compete with U.S. defense capabilities. Russia’s economy is smaller than Texas’. We can’t allow China to match and surpass the U.S.

    • Revitalize the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This includes making Europeans pay their fair share. It is time to raise the bar on spending to 3% of member countries’ gross domestic product.

    • Create a $500 billion “lend-lease” program for Ukraine. Instead of saddling U.S. taxpayers with more bills, let Ukraine borrow as much as it needs to buy American weapons to defeat Russia. This is how we helped Britain in World War II before Pearl Harbor. It’s how we can send a clear signal to Mr. Putin that he will never win.

    • Lift all restrictions on the type of weapons Ukraine can obtain and use. This will re-establish a position of strength, which Mr. Putin will understand means the war must end. He will face rising costs and no chance of further gain.

    These steps would position Mr. Trump to set the terms of a deal: The war stops immediately. Ukraine builds up substantial defense forces so Russia never attacks again. No one recognizes Russia’s occupation and claimed annexation of any Ukrainian territories—just as we never recognized the Soviet incorporation of the Baltic states and withheld recognition from East Germany until 1974. Crimea is demilitarized. Ukraine rebuilds with reparations from Russia’s frozen central-bank reserves, not U.S. taxpayer dollars.

    Ukraine joins NATO as soon as possible so all European allies assume the burden of protecting it. NATO should establish a $100 billion fund for arming Ukraine, with the U.S. share capped at 20%, as is the case with other alliance common budgets. The European Union should swiftly admit Ukraine and help it modernize and develop its economy.

    If Russia complies with these terms, the West will gradually lift sanctions. They will be fully removed once Ukraine is in both NATO and the EU.

    These steps, and not the half-measures of the Biden administration, will end the war, establish a lasting peace, ensure Europe bears the burden of maintaining it, and re-establish freedom and security on the Continent.

    • Thanks: Mr. XYZ
    • Replies: @YetAnotherAnon
    @AP

    I suppose we can all dream...

    "We must show our adversaries, especially Russia and China, that they can’t compete with U.S. defense capabilities. Russia’s economy is smaller than Texas’. We can’t allow China to match and surpass the U.S."

    But the US can't compete with China in consumer goods. It can't compete with Germany and Japan in cars. Russia's economy in PPP terms is #4 in the world, if the World Bank are correct.

    https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/search/dataset/0038129

    1 China 34,643,707
    2 United States 27,360,935
    3 India 14,537,384
    4 Russian Federation 6,452,309
    5 Japan 6,251,559
    6 Germany 5,857,856
    7 Brazil 4,454,930
    8 Indonesia 4,333,084


    Can a country stay top in military kit while being uncompetitive in consumer kit? Sometimes, perhaps, if the whole economy is devoted to military stuff, like North Korea's.

    Can't see the US doing that.

    This is classic overstretch.


    Great Power ascendancy (over the long term or in specific conflicts) correlates strongly to available resources and economic durability; military overstretch and a concomitant relative decline are the consistent threats facing powers whose ambitions and security requirements are greater than their resource base can provide for.

    He predicts that continued deficit spending, especially on military build-up, will be the single most important reason for decline of any great power.
     

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

    Replies: @Mikhail, @AP

    , @Mr. Hack
    @AP


    Pundits claim that if Donald Trump is re-elected, he will cut off aid to Ukraine, give away its territory, and deal directly with Vladimir Putin to impose an ignominious “peace” on the country.
     
    Has he given the impression that anything better for Ukraine is in the offing? One arms deal, that was done what seems ages ago, isn't enough to convince me that he seriously takes Ukraine's concerns to heart (especially after choosing Vance as his VP choice). From what I've read, he thinks that he'll be able to ride in on a white horse, offer and give away whatever territories that Russia has already taken, freeze the conflict and declare himself as the ultimate deal maker of the century (all within 3 days mind you). I hope that he doesn't chicken out and skip the debate with Harris, where I think that she'd draw him out more on his current sketchy plans for the war in Ukraine.

    Replies: @Torna atrás, @AP

    , @Beckow
    @AP

    20% chance that Trump would adopt the plan? Wow, you really have a low opinion of Trump's instinct to read the situation realistically. I would say 2% chance (ok, maybe 5-10% on a good day) and with a zero chance to actually succeed. There is a lot higher chance that this will end in a nuclear exchange. But by far the most likely outcome is Kiev-NATO losing and everyone trying to forget the whole insane 'let's defeat Russia by using up the Ukie men".

    At what point will you realize that NATO really screwed up? They went for a crazy expansion plan without thinking through what would happen if Russia resists militarily. Then they executed the plan badly and allowed ethnic radicals in Kiev-Galicia to get out of hand. And they waited so long that the West is basically de-industrialized - you can't defeat Russia (or China) with software apps and high-quality cortados.

    But keep on dreaming, what else you got? The best way for US to get out of this one is to buy their way out as always - the virtual money machine (or scam) is still strong, people are greedy, especially the aspiring elites outside of the West. But it would be a lot more expensive than pre-Maidan.

    Replies: @AP

  295. @Mr. Hack
    @Mikhail

    Kremlin stooge bubbehead Mike Averko sharing some more of his precious insights:

    https://i.imgflip.com/7q2vya.png


    Kharkov is by no means the entire area of armed conflict.

     

    The Russian military's failure to take Kharkiv, a city of over 1 million citizens that were "Russia friendly" in the past, only 30 miles from the border in over two years of fighting, is indicative of Russia's losing cause. He might be able to convince somebody like kremlinstoogeA123 that Kharkiv is just another insignificant dot on the "entire area of armed conflict" (the kremlin stooge who thinks that Ukraine is fighting an offensive war against Russia, that is fighting a defensive war), but to anybody that is really interested in this war, and has a clear mind, everyone knows that Kharkiv is a key prize to be sought.

    Replies: @YetAnotherAnon, @Mikhail

    “Kharkiv is a key prize to be sought”

    Perhaps, but not sought Bakhmut style, no one wants to flatten the place and I’m not sure Ukraine have enough bodies to fight house to house.

    Odessa, the Danube delta, and a land bridge to Hungary and Transnistria are bigger prizes imho.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @YetAnotherAnon


    no one wants to flatten the place
     
    Kind of hard to do on horseback or even motorcycle.

    Replies: @Mikhail

  296. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk

    About Odessa, it's part of the war of Russian and Ukrainian identity now.

    Are the Ukrainians going to have the cool culture, the old gangsters' songs, the cossacks, ?

    I think already, today, half of the world will say Tokarev was taking "traditional Ukrainian national songs"


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjZTB6JTB-Q

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @John Johnson

    the old gangsters’ songs

    I don’t think Ukrainians would want to claim that part of common heritage, it’s loaded with many complex identity issues.

    Fact is, the so called Russian Mafia was a cosmopolitan structure with a strong Jewish influence in its formative years. Now the highest ranking Vors are mainly Caucasian. I would think that it would be hard to pinpoint a period in time when the Blatnoy Realm was dominated by ethnic Slavs, let alone Russians, but of course they played an important role in the activities of the criminal underworld.

    When it comes to Blatnoy Chanson, I am a purist. My favourite interpreter is Arkasha Severnyi, this guy gave his life to his art at a time when Soviet Regime nearly eradicated the organized crime. It was borderline antisocial during Brezhnev years to publicly sing these songs:

    Notice that both songs are related to the situation in the post Civil War period, mostly NEP. That was the time when the crime in Russia began to become organized. That was also the time when the word blat started to be widely used in the Russian language. It was directly linked with the abolition of the Pale of Settlement and the migration of the Jews from the Pale and into the Russian heartland from which they were mostly excluded for many centuries.

    Blatnoy Chanson is a direct byproduct of the cultural interaction between the artistic tastes of the Jewish underworld newcomers and the local Russian criminals. It’s a unique cultural phenomenon produced by unique circumstances.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk

    In the 1990s, the Russian mafia is mainly Russian and Caucasian.

    Sometimes there are event which could be like ethnic conflict in the mafia wars, but it's not clear.

    For example, OPS "Uralmash" was Russian and they were often killing a lot of the Caucasian mafia groups, but these Caucasian mafia groups were also including many Russian and their first war was with a group with more Russian gangsters.* So, it's not very clear and they killed many people from every nationality.


    with a strong Jewish influence

     

    Maybe, the best Hollywood film to describe the history of the mafia in Russia in the 1990s, is "Once upon a time in America", about 1920s Jewish gangsters in New York, one who enters politics to become a senator in Washington DC.

    It's like in Russia. Most of the children of the mafia leaders, are just like middle class families in Russia now, with externally normal businesses.

    They became some of regional cities' normal and legitimate local business families, exiting the violent lifestyle, to be normal middle class families, who can be your neighbor.

    Just like every businessman in Russia, knows who are the mafia families, but it's some kind of mystery if they are different than normal middle class people now.

    The children of the mafia leaders, are following sometimes mysterious behavior, which isn't exactly like normal people.

    For example, the children of mafia leaders, seems enter a lot of their cousins into local elections for different political parties, sometimes against each other, without winning in the election.

    Typical mafia-origin families businesses nowadays, are like corporate events, party hosting, often reselling sneakers.

    One of the funny things, is having their YouTube channels with almost no views. Like here is a middle class lifestyle channel owned by a family who have almost no views.

    Maybe it is a kind of flex when you send young journalism students to the important national sports events, even if no-one watches your family's YouTube channel.

    -


    * Some of the victims of the massacres of the centers by OPS "Uralmash"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjbHP1uWMPw

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Dmitry, @AP

  297. @YetAnotherAnon
    @Mr. Hack

    "Kharkiv is a key prize to be sought"

    Perhaps, but not sought Bakhmut style, no one wants to flatten the place and I'm not sure Ukraine have enough bodies to fight house to house.

    Odessa, the Danube delta, and a land bridge to Hungary and Transnistria are bigger prizes imho.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    no one wants to flatten the place

    Kind of hard to do on horseback or even motorcycle.

    • Replies: @Mikhail
    @Mr. Hack

    With mega ton bombs it's quite easy to do. Russia has them. Kiev regime doesn't. Russia isn't carrying on like Israel in Gaza.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  298. @AP
    From Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and advisor David Urban (both still in his good graces).

    FWIW I’d assign a 20% probability of this happening - Vance was a negative indicator. If Trump had picked Rubio it would be 70% or 80%. But I would not be totally surprised if Trump went this route.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-trump-peace-plan-for-ukraine-russia-foreign-policy-926348cf

    Pundits claim that if Donald Trump is re-elected, he will cut off aid to Ukraine, give away its territory, and deal directly with Vladimir Putin to impose an ignominious “peace” on the country.

    There’s no evidence that such capitulation will be part of President Trump’s policy and much evidence to the contrary. It was Mr. Trump who in 2017 lifted the Obama administration’s arms embargo on Ukraine, providing it with the Javelin missiles that helped save Kyiv in the earliest days of Russia’s invasion. More recently, Mr. Trump gave political cover to House Speaker Mike Johnson when he maneuvered to pass additional military aid. Helping Ukraine while revitalizing the American defense industrial base in Alabama, Pennsylvania and Virginia is good policy—and good politics.

    The Biden administration’s weakness has left Ukraine where it is today: two years into a full-scale war, with cities destroyed, hundreds of thousands killed, and millions of refugees, and without the means to win. The White House has no strategy for victory, and Americans are rightly concerned.

    While Mr. Biden stumbled into war through weakness, Mr. Trump could re-establish peace through strength. Here’s how a successful plan for Ukraine might look:

    • Unleash America’s energy potential. This will fire up the U.S. economy, drive down prices and shrink Mr. Putin’s war-crimes budget.

    • Rebuild ties with Saudi Arabia and Israel and work together against Iran. This will stabilize the Middle East, ease the Gaza crisis, and create an opening for the Saudis to join the U.S. in squeezing Russia out of global energy markets.

    • Impose real sanctions on Russia. The Biden administration’s sanctions sound good on paper but are hollow. The Treasury, for example, exempts Russian banks from U.S. sanctions if their transactions are related to energy production—the most important revenue source for the Kremlin’s war machine.

    • Bulk up America’s defense industry. We must show our adversaries, especially Russia and China, that they can’t compete with U.S. defense capabilities. Russia’s economy is smaller than Texas’. We can’t allow China to match and surpass the U.S.

    • Revitalize the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This includes making Europeans pay their fair share. It is time to raise the bar on spending to 3% of member countries’ gross domestic product.

    • Create a $500 billion “lend-lease” program for Ukraine. Instead of saddling U.S. taxpayers with more bills, let Ukraine borrow as much as it needs to buy American weapons to defeat Russia. This is how we helped Britain in World War II before Pearl Harbor. It’s how we can send a clear signal to Mr. Putin that he will never win.

    • Lift all restrictions on the type of weapons Ukraine can obtain and use. This will re-establish a position of strength, which Mr. Putin will understand means the war must end. He will face rising costs and no chance of further gain.

    These steps would position Mr. Trump to set the terms of a deal: The war stops immediately. Ukraine builds up substantial defense forces so Russia never attacks again. No one recognizes Russia’s occupation and claimed annexation of any Ukrainian territories—just as we never recognized the Soviet incorporation of the Baltic states and withheld recognition from East Germany until 1974. Crimea is demilitarized. Ukraine rebuilds with reparations from Russia’s frozen central-bank reserves, not U.S. taxpayer dollars.

    Ukraine joins NATO as soon as possible so all European allies assume the burden of protecting it. NATO should establish a $100 billion fund for arming Ukraine, with the U.S. share capped at 20%, as is the case with other alliance common budgets. The European Union should swiftly admit Ukraine and help it modernize and develop its economy.

    If Russia complies with these terms, the West will gradually lift sanctions. They will be fully removed once Ukraine is in both NATO and the EU.

    These steps, and not the half-measures of the Biden administration, will end the war, establish a lasting peace, ensure Europe bears the burden of maintaining it, and re-establish freedom and security on the Continent.

    Replies: @YetAnotherAnon, @Mr. Hack, @Beckow

    I suppose we can all dream…

    “We must show our adversaries, especially Russia and China, that they can’t compete with U.S. defense capabilities. Russia’s economy is smaller than Texas’. We can’t allow China to match and surpass the U.S.”

    But the US can’t compete with China in consumer goods. It can’t compete with Germany and Japan in cars. Russia’s economy in PPP terms is #4 in the world, if the World Bank are correct.

    https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/search/dataset/0038129

    1 China 34,643,707
    2 United States 27,360,935
    3 India 14,537,384
    4 Russian Federation 6,452,309
    5 Japan 6,251,559
    6 Germany 5,857,856
    7 Brazil 4,454,930
    8 Indonesia 4,333,084

    Can a country stay top in military kit while being uncompetitive in consumer kit? Sometimes, perhaps, if the whole economy is devoted to military stuff, like North Korea’s.

    Can’t see the US doing that.

    This is classic overstretch.

    Great Power ascendancy (over the long term or in specific conflicts) correlates strongly to available resources and economic durability; military overstretch and a concomitant relative decline are the consistent threats facing powers whose ambitions and security requirements are greater than their resource base can provide for.

    He predicts that continued deficit spending, especially on military build-up, will be the single most important reason for decline of any great power.

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

    • Replies: @Mikhail
    @YetAnotherAnon

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1OG8cBkFjY

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    , @AP
    @YetAnotherAnon


    But the US can’t compete with China in consumer goods. It can’t compete with Germany and Japan in cars
     
    It competes fine with Japan and Germany in cars.

    Russia’s economy in PPP terms is #4 in the world, if the World Bank are correct.
     
    PPP deals with cost/standard of living. It means that Russian products are cheaper, to such an extent that although Russia is in 11th place in nominal GDP (right behind Canada) it is 4th place in GDP PPP (right ahead of Japan), but far behind #3 India).

    Can a country stay top in military kit while being uncompetitive in consumer kit?
     
    Why do you think America is "uncompetitive" in consumer goods? America is the second largest exporter of consumer goods in the world, behind only China.

    It is the world's #2 manufacturer (behind only China):

    https://www.safeguardglobal.com/resources/top-10-manufacturing-countries-in-the-world-2023/

    Russia does not even make the top ten.

    Unlike China, the USA is also blessed with massive natural resources. For example, it's the world's largest oil and gas producer:

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

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

    Surpassing Russia by a wide margin in both measures.

    USA leads in cutting edge also. Of the 7 most powerful supercomputers in the world, 4 (including the top 3) are in the USA:

    https://www.livescience.com/technology/computing/top-7-most-powerful-supercomputers-in-the-world-right-now

    Russia nowhere to be seen.

    China's own university rankings place American ones at the top (9 of the top 10):

    https://www.shanghairanking.com/rankings/arwu/2023

    Russia is not anywhere near to being in the same league here, either.

    Even in terms of steel production, USA beats Russia.

    Can a country stay top in military kit while being uncompetitive in consumer kit? Sometimes, perhaps, if the whole economy is devoted to military stuff, like North Korea’s.
     
    Well, Russia is trying to crank out 1970s tanks.

    Replies: @YetAnotherAnon

  299. @AP
    From Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and advisor David Urban (both still in his good graces).

    FWIW I’d assign a 20% probability of this happening - Vance was a negative indicator. If Trump had picked Rubio it would be 70% or 80%. But I would not be totally surprised if Trump went this route.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-trump-peace-plan-for-ukraine-russia-foreign-policy-926348cf

    Pundits claim that if Donald Trump is re-elected, he will cut off aid to Ukraine, give away its territory, and deal directly with Vladimir Putin to impose an ignominious “peace” on the country.

    There’s no evidence that such capitulation will be part of President Trump’s policy and much evidence to the contrary. It was Mr. Trump who in 2017 lifted the Obama administration’s arms embargo on Ukraine, providing it with the Javelin missiles that helped save Kyiv in the earliest days of Russia’s invasion. More recently, Mr. Trump gave political cover to House Speaker Mike Johnson when he maneuvered to pass additional military aid. Helping Ukraine while revitalizing the American defense industrial base in Alabama, Pennsylvania and Virginia is good policy—and good politics.

    The Biden administration’s weakness has left Ukraine where it is today: two years into a full-scale war, with cities destroyed, hundreds of thousands killed, and millions of refugees, and without the means to win. The White House has no strategy for victory, and Americans are rightly concerned.

    While Mr. Biden stumbled into war through weakness, Mr. Trump could re-establish peace through strength. Here’s how a successful plan for Ukraine might look:

    • Unleash America’s energy potential. This will fire up the U.S. economy, drive down prices and shrink Mr. Putin’s war-crimes budget.

    • Rebuild ties with Saudi Arabia and Israel and work together against Iran. This will stabilize the Middle East, ease the Gaza crisis, and create an opening for the Saudis to join the U.S. in squeezing Russia out of global energy markets.

    • Impose real sanctions on Russia. The Biden administration’s sanctions sound good on paper but are hollow. The Treasury, for example, exempts Russian banks from U.S. sanctions if their transactions are related to energy production—the most important revenue source for the Kremlin’s war machine.

    • Bulk up America’s defense industry. We must show our adversaries, especially Russia and China, that they can’t compete with U.S. defense capabilities. Russia’s economy is smaller than Texas’. We can’t allow China to match and surpass the U.S.

    • Revitalize the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This includes making Europeans pay their fair share. It is time to raise the bar on spending to 3% of member countries’ gross domestic product.

    • Create a $500 billion “lend-lease” program for Ukraine. Instead of saddling U.S. taxpayers with more bills, let Ukraine borrow as much as it needs to buy American weapons to defeat Russia. This is how we helped Britain in World War II before Pearl Harbor. It’s how we can send a clear signal to Mr. Putin that he will never win.

    • Lift all restrictions on the type of weapons Ukraine can obtain and use. This will re-establish a position of strength, which Mr. Putin will understand means the war must end. He will face rising costs and no chance of further gain.

    These steps would position Mr. Trump to set the terms of a deal: The war stops immediately. Ukraine builds up substantial defense forces so Russia never attacks again. No one recognizes Russia’s occupation and claimed annexation of any Ukrainian territories—just as we never recognized the Soviet incorporation of the Baltic states and withheld recognition from East Germany until 1974. Crimea is demilitarized. Ukraine rebuilds with reparations from Russia’s frozen central-bank reserves, not U.S. taxpayer dollars.

    Ukraine joins NATO as soon as possible so all European allies assume the burden of protecting it. NATO should establish a $100 billion fund for arming Ukraine, with the U.S. share capped at 20%, as is the case with other alliance common budgets. The European Union should swiftly admit Ukraine and help it modernize and develop its economy.

    If Russia complies with these terms, the West will gradually lift sanctions. They will be fully removed once Ukraine is in both NATO and the EU.

    These steps, and not the half-measures of the Biden administration, will end the war, establish a lasting peace, ensure Europe bears the burden of maintaining it, and re-establish freedom and security on the Continent.

    Replies: @YetAnotherAnon, @Mr. Hack, @Beckow

    Pundits claim that if Donald Trump is re-elected, he will cut off aid to Ukraine, give away its territory, and deal directly with Vladimir Putin to impose an ignominious “peace” on the country.

    Has he given the impression that anything better for Ukraine is in the offing? One arms deal, that was done what seems ages ago, isn’t enough to convince me that he seriously takes Ukraine’s concerns to heart (especially after choosing Vance as his VP choice). From what I’ve read, he thinks that he’ll be able to ride in on a white horse, offer and give away whatever territories that Russia has already taken, freeze the conflict and declare himself as the ultimate deal maker of the century (all within 3 days mind you). I hope that he doesn’t chicken out and skip the debate with Harris, where I think that she’d draw him out more on his current sketchy plans for the war in Ukraine.

    • Replies: @Torna atrás
    @Mr. Hack


    I’m too busy widening my appreciation for Indian culinary faire, especially as I’ve found out that there are several Indian restaurants in the Phoenix area that are counted as among the top 100 in the country.
     

    I hope that he doesn’t chicken out and skip the debate with Harris, where I think that she’d draw him out more on his current sketchy plans for the war in Ukraine
     
    .



    https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQDxIepFDFeKZlkHYIgJ7QwH0-4WW9ASmoGPw&usqp.jpg
    , @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    Has he given the impression that anything better for Ukraine is in the offing?
     
    The article was written by Trump's former Secretary of State. It presents a plan that goes much further than what Biden has done for Ukraine. And indeed Trump did much more than Obama had done before him. Will Trump do this? Who knows? I'm not terribly optimistic, and would give it a 20% chance. Vance was a bad sign. But as I said, I would not be surprised if Trump turned out to be better for Ukraine than Biden is, after all. Putin being difficult and refusing to be reasonable would be helpful in this case - Biden/s administration has much more tolerance for that than Trump would, I think.

    Replies: @A123, @Mr. XYZ

  300. Bashibuzuk says:

    In the second and third centuries, the world was lousy with prophets, magicians, mystery cults and heretical religious sects. Christianity was a swirl of competing tendencies, its fate as yet undetermined. Groups like the Marcionites, the Basilideans, and the Valentinians mounted a serious challenge to efforts to centralize the church. Early monks moved into the Egyptian wastes, some founding monasteries, others living in cemeteries or in holes they had dug in the ground. Stylites spent decades living on top of stone pillars, being pecked by vultures, trying to be dead in life. A central preoccupation of early Church fathers like Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Hippolytus was the study and refutation of heresy. With polemics like Against Heresies, Against Marcion, and A Refutation of All Heresies, they stomped out alternative doctrines, slowly laying the groundwork for an orthodox institution. The theology of Gnostic figures like Marcion, Basilides, Valentinus was so effectively snuffed out that for centuries it was known only in the quotes of their adversaries.

    In the early twentieth century, the fate of Marxism was also embryonic and as yet undetermined. Mensheviks, Bundists, Socialist-Revolutionaries, and Bolsheviks battled for control of the working-class movement in journals and party congresses. Lenin, a ruthless organizer and political tactician, worked to forge an institution out of disparate strands. Even after Lenin outflanked and dispatched his various competitors, the task remained of purifying the Bolshevik faction.

    Lenin cofounded the Bolsheviks with a fascinating and largely forgotten political economist named Alexander Bogdanov. He was a Renaissance man, a sort of Marxist Benjamin Franklin. One of the reasons for Bogdanov’s relative neglect is probably that he was too many things: revolutionary, doctor, philosopher, scientist, economic theorist, pioneer of the modern blood transfusion. It is hard, especially for academics, to write about such people, who excel across multiple disciplines. The subject always comes across like an all-you-can-eat buffet, with something for everyone. Even more off-putting is someone who was ahead of his time in multiple fields—an unrecognized, unsung pioneer. Those ahead of their time are usually not recognized for it; they often have only a limited following.

    https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2020/05/lenin-versus-the-god-builders/

    I have always been very impressed by Bogdanov-Malinovsky. It’s interesting to think what would have become of Russian communism if Lenin would not have overcome Bogdanov in both popularity and power. Bogdanov was a deep thinker who was so much ahead of his time on so many issues, while Lenin was an opportunistic power hungry sociopath…

    • Thanks: Torna atrás, S1
  301. @AP
    From Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and advisor David Urban (both still in his good graces).

    FWIW I’d assign a 20% probability of this happening - Vance was a negative indicator. If Trump had picked Rubio it would be 70% or 80%. But I would not be totally surprised if Trump went this route.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-trump-peace-plan-for-ukraine-russia-foreign-policy-926348cf

    Pundits claim that if Donald Trump is re-elected, he will cut off aid to Ukraine, give away its territory, and deal directly with Vladimir Putin to impose an ignominious “peace” on the country.

    There’s no evidence that such capitulation will be part of President Trump’s policy and much evidence to the contrary. It was Mr. Trump who in 2017 lifted the Obama administration’s arms embargo on Ukraine, providing it with the Javelin missiles that helped save Kyiv in the earliest days of Russia’s invasion. More recently, Mr. Trump gave political cover to House Speaker Mike Johnson when he maneuvered to pass additional military aid. Helping Ukraine while revitalizing the American defense industrial base in Alabama, Pennsylvania and Virginia is good policy—and good politics.

    The Biden administration’s weakness has left Ukraine where it is today: two years into a full-scale war, with cities destroyed, hundreds of thousands killed, and millions of refugees, and without the means to win. The White House has no strategy for victory, and Americans are rightly concerned.

    While Mr. Biden stumbled into war through weakness, Mr. Trump could re-establish peace through strength. Here’s how a successful plan for Ukraine might look:

    • Unleash America’s energy potential. This will fire up the U.S. economy, drive down prices and shrink Mr. Putin’s war-crimes budget.

    • Rebuild ties with Saudi Arabia and Israel and work together against Iran. This will stabilize the Middle East, ease the Gaza crisis, and create an opening for the Saudis to join the U.S. in squeezing Russia out of global energy markets.

    • Impose real sanctions on Russia. The Biden administration’s sanctions sound good on paper but are hollow. The Treasury, for example, exempts Russian banks from U.S. sanctions if their transactions are related to energy production—the most important revenue source for the Kremlin’s war machine.

    • Bulk up America’s defense industry. We must show our adversaries, especially Russia and China, that they can’t compete with U.S. defense capabilities. Russia’s economy is smaller than Texas’. We can’t allow China to match and surpass the U.S.

    • Revitalize the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This includes making Europeans pay their fair share. It is time to raise the bar on spending to 3% of member countries’ gross domestic product.

    • Create a $500 billion “lend-lease” program for Ukraine. Instead of saddling U.S. taxpayers with more bills, let Ukraine borrow as much as it needs to buy American weapons to defeat Russia. This is how we helped Britain in World War II before Pearl Harbor. It’s how we can send a clear signal to Mr. Putin that he will never win.

    • Lift all restrictions on the type of weapons Ukraine can obtain and use. This will re-establish a position of strength, which Mr. Putin will understand means the war must end. He will face rising costs and no chance of further gain.

    These steps would position Mr. Trump to set the terms of a deal: The war stops immediately. Ukraine builds up substantial defense forces so Russia never attacks again. No one recognizes Russia’s occupation and claimed annexation of any Ukrainian territories—just as we never recognized the Soviet incorporation of the Baltic states and withheld recognition from East Germany until 1974. Crimea is demilitarized. Ukraine rebuilds with reparations from Russia’s frozen central-bank reserves, not U.S. taxpayer dollars.

    Ukraine joins NATO as soon as possible so all European allies assume the burden of protecting it. NATO should establish a $100 billion fund for arming Ukraine, with the U.S. share capped at 20%, as is the case with other alliance common budgets. The European Union should swiftly admit Ukraine and help it modernize and develop its economy.

    If Russia complies with these terms, the West will gradually lift sanctions. They will be fully removed once Ukraine is in both NATO and the EU.

    These steps, and not the half-measures of the Biden administration, will end the war, establish a lasting peace, ensure Europe bears the burden of maintaining it, and re-establish freedom and security on the Continent.

    Replies: @YetAnotherAnon, @Mr. Hack, @Beckow

    20% chance that Trump would adopt the plan? Wow, you really have a low opinion of Trump’s instinct to read the situation realistically. I would say 2% chance (ok, maybe 5-10% on a good day) and with a zero chance to actually succeed. There is a lot higher chance that this will end in a nuclear exchange. But by far the most likely outcome is Kiev-NATO losing and everyone trying to forget the whole insane ‘let’s defeat Russia by using up the Ukie men“.

    At what point will you realize that NATO really screwed up? They went for a crazy expansion plan without thinking through what would happen if Russia resists militarily. Then they executed the plan badly and allowed ethnic radicals in Kiev-Galicia to get out of hand. And they waited so long that the West is basically de-industrialized – you can’t defeat Russia (or China) with software apps and high-quality cortados.

    But keep on dreaming, what else you got? The best way for US to get out of this one is to buy their way out as always – the virtual money machine (or scam) is still strong, people are greedy, especially the aspiring elites outside of the West. But it would be a lot more expensive than pre-Maidan.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Beckow


    20% chance that Trump would adopt the plan? Wow, you really have a low opinion of Trump’s instinct to read the situation realistically.
     
    You who insisted that Ukraine would fold in a month have no ability to judge what is realistic or not.

    the West is basically de-industrialized
     
    https://www.safeguardglobal.com/resources/top-10-manufacturing-countries-in-the-world-2023/

    Top 10 manufacturing countries in the world

    1. China – 28.4% Global Manufacturing Output
    2. United States – 16.6% Global Manufacturing Output
    3. Japan – 7.5% Global Manufacturing Output
    4. Germany – 5.8% Global Manufacturing Output
    5. India – 3.3% Global Manufacturing Output
    6. South Korea – 3% Global Manufacturing Output
    7. Italy – 2.3% Global Manufacturing Output
    8. France – 1.9% Global Manufacturing Output
    9. United Kingdom – 1.8% Global Manufacturing Output
    10. Indonesia – 1.4% Global Manufacturing Output

    Where is Russia on that list?

    USA has 1/4 of China's population but more than 1/2 of its manufacturing output.

    you can’t defeat Russia (or China) with software apps and high-quality cortados.
     
    USA makes more steel than Russia does. And about 12 times more cars:

    https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/car-production-by-country

    Replies: @Beckow, @Gerard1234

  302. A123 says: • Website
    @Mikel
    @Gerard1234


    I am happy to have my ignorance corrected by you
     
    Are you the usual Gerard? You sound a bit strange here.

    But you are surprisingly doing a better job than anyone else in this thread at defending the stolen election narrative. You are admitting some points, presenting some counterarguments, engaging in rational debate,... very different from repeating the less than useless mantra that "votes don't count" in the US.

    Reality is indeed complicated. We would all like to live in a world where simple recipes lead us to constant success and the good and the bad people are easily identifiable like in the Hollywood movies. But sadly, distinguishing reality from falsehood is a messy process, we don't always succeed and what happens is that the stubborn reality bites us in the rear. It may happen this coming November too.

    More to the point, there was fraud in 2020, it was probably concentrated in some locations (many of them in swing states) that have also seen fraud in the past, some allegations were never properly investigated, it was tremendously disappointing to see how what looked like another surprise victory by Trump turned into a defeat as the night progressed, the people in the media who kept saying that all fraud allegations were "a lie" were the brazen liars who had tried to hide the Hunter laptop story from us,....... but sorry, there wasn't really enough fraud to change the election results.

    This was proven as conclusively as reasonably possible in Arizona and most likely in Georgia too (though I don't have that much information about Georgia). But even before the MAGA-led recounts were carried out with disappointing results, there were plenty of signs that some people on "our" side were full of crap or being outright dishonest too, just like the leftist media. Those Black ladies that we all saw on video allegedly committing fraud were actually passing a chewing gum bar to one another and a judge granted them a hefty compensation for the wildly speculative allegations against them, Republican officials on the ground in Georgia with direct access to the vote counting process were unable to verify all the fraud allegations, Giuliani was clearly unable to answer simple questions that Republican members of state legislatures asked him to see how much all the cases of fraud he was presenting mattered for the final results even if they were all true,... And let's not forget: Trump exhausted all legal avenues to revert the election results but all failed. His team of lawyers failed at convincing the judges, their own republican state legislatures, the Supreme Court and his own Vice President.

    There's just a point at which a rational person has to admit to himself that there's not enough evidence in favor of what originally appeared to be true and, as usual in life, it was all a messy process of humans being passionate and dishonest on both sides. But whatever one chooses to believe, the most important thing is what I keep saying about abandoning defeatist mantras of "voting doesn't matter". It keeps mattering a lot. There's a world of a difference between sending to Washington congressmen who will align themselves with the established powers or new faces that will vote against foreign military adventures and will really put up a fight against the woke culture. We live in times when it could actually mean the difference between sleepwalking to a nuclear war or being able to avoid it. Motivated voters in some states have opted for the second while apathetic votes in others (the majority) have gone the first route.

    In the midst of all this, nothing plays better in the hands of the powerful people winning the battles of woke culture, forever wars and open borders than having an adversary stupidly focused on fighting the wrong battles: Qanon, Stop the Steal, the Kraken, the Jews, Votes don't Count... excellent recipe to get 4 years of Kamala.

    Replies: @A123

    And let’s not forget: Trump exhausted all legal avenues to revert the election results but all failed.

    The 2020 campaign did not have enough lawyers to fight all of the necessary cases, in the right places, while constrained by a limited amount of time. Because of the unprecedented and unanticipated scale of the fraud, the DNC got away with election changing criminal activity in 2020. Sad, but true.

    As I indicated previously, Trump’s 2024 campaign is much more aware of the legal hurdles, the vulnerable sites, and has been building up a cadre of lawyers on retainer that will be available to challenge any fraud. While the judiciary is corrupt in some locations, Trump would only have to win enough cases to move the outcome (not 100% of absolutely every case everywhere).

    Harris is such a horrible candidate, hopefully Trump will rack up a large margins in the battleground states. If the DNC has to steal millions of votes in 2024 (not 100-200K in 2020), they have an insoluble problem. They can only cheat so much without being caught, creating a national crisis, or both.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @Mikel
    @A123


    The 2020 campaign did not have enough lawyers to fight all of the necessary cases, in the right places
     
    Fortunately, it is not necessary to have an army of lawyers strategically located to win an election in the US. It's generally enough to have competent and well-trained observers at all counting stations, a very easy task for a national party (it's the method used by everyone all around the world btw). It won't harm repeating myself once again:

    protectthevote.com

    Guys, there are thousands of elections being held in the US all the time. It's actually been going on for longer than anywhere else in the world, which is precisely the reason why some practices have become sclerotic. But do you really think that so many thousands of candidates are conceding all the time with a system where rigging the results is so easy? The ways to verify that the votes are counted correctly were invented ages ago. And for those in doubt:

    protectthevote.com

    (Of course you may say that the Republicans behind this election integrity initiative are part of the conspiracy too. After all, AnonfromTN is capable of believing that wikipedia publishes false election results in Kentucky in order to hide some insignificant statistical anomaly. For that I don't have an answer. I have no proof that there aren't alien corpses in Area 51 either)

    Replies: @A123

  303. @Mr. Hack
    @AP


    Pundits claim that if Donald Trump is re-elected, he will cut off aid to Ukraine, give away its territory, and deal directly with Vladimir Putin to impose an ignominious “peace” on the country.
     
    Has he given the impression that anything better for Ukraine is in the offing? One arms deal, that was done what seems ages ago, isn't enough to convince me that he seriously takes Ukraine's concerns to heart (especially after choosing Vance as his VP choice). From what I've read, he thinks that he'll be able to ride in on a white horse, offer and give away whatever territories that Russia has already taken, freeze the conflict and declare himself as the ultimate deal maker of the century (all within 3 days mind you). I hope that he doesn't chicken out and skip the debate with Harris, where I think that she'd draw him out more on his current sketchy plans for the war in Ukraine.

    Replies: @Torna atrás, @AP

    I’m too busy widening my appreciation for Indian culinary faire, especially as I’ve found out that there are several Indian restaurants in the Phoenix area that are counted as among the top 100 in the country.

    I hope that he doesn’t chicken out and skip the debate with Harris, where I think that she’d draw him out more on his current sketchy plans for the war in Ukraine

    .

    [MORE]

    • Troll: Mr. Hack
  304. @Mr. Hack
    @Mikhail

    Kremlin stooge bubbehead Mike Averko sharing some more of his precious insights:

    https://i.imgflip.com/7q2vya.png


    Kharkov is by no means the entire area of armed conflict.

     

    The Russian military's failure to take Kharkiv, a city of over 1 million citizens that were "Russia friendly" in the past, only 30 miles from the border in over two years of fighting, is indicative of Russia's losing cause. He might be able to convince somebody like kremlinstoogeA123 that Kharkiv is just another insignificant dot on the "entire area of armed conflict" (the kremlin stooge who thinks that Ukraine is fighting an offensive war against Russia, that is fighting a defensive war), but to anybody that is really interested in this war, and has a clear mind, everyone knows that Kharkiv is a key prize to be sought.

    Replies: @YetAnotherAnon, @Mikhail

    Keep babbling stupidity as your side is losing.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Mikhail

    Did I miss something? Has Russia finally taken Kharkiv?

    Replies: @John Johnson, @Mikhail

  305. @Mr. Hack
    @YetAnotherAnon


    no one wants to flatten the place
     
    Kind of hard to do on horseback or even motorcycle.

    Replies: @Mikhail

    With mega ton bombs it’s quite easy to do. Russia has them. Kiev regime doesn’t. Russia isn’t carrying on like Israel in Gaza.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Mikhail

    Russia bombed out Mariupol (and over 100,000 civilians there too), why not Kharkiv?

    https://www.reviewjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/16469862_web1_web_rmz-may18.jpg

    Replies: @Mikhail

  306. @A123
    @Beckow


    Utah is fine, you can probably vote by sending self-certified pieces of paper, it will be ok.
     
    Yep. Utah is one of the most orderly states in the Union.

    It can’t really be investigated because it would require a level of detail and intrusive power that simply doesn’t exist in the US. ... ‘Nobody checks ‘signatures’ and there are millions of out-of-date records in the databases. It is a mess – and fraud benefits from having a mess.
    ..
    2020 election had unusual patterns: each close state went one way late in the count and some districts voted 90%+ for Biden with 95% turnout, Phillie, Detroit, Atlanta… You will never convince any fair observer that it can be proved that it was a free
     
    Thus the obvious path to making things better is monitoring particularly corruptable districts in swing states. Instead of trying to counter the fraud everywhere, expend campaign resources on those key areas most likely to damage the result. The impossible record of multiple statistical anomalies in 2020 shows locations where resources must be concentrated.

    Is it possible that a House or Senate race may come back with a fraudulent result? Yes. Key is preventing the Presidency from being compromised.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Beckow

    …Instead of trying to counter the fraud everywhere, expend campaign resources on those key areas most likely to damage the result.

    Those are the areas that have a local judicial system, police, prosecutors from the same side that would presumably be behind any fraud – do you really think any judge or a political hack in Phillie or Detroit would seriously investigate the rotten precincts?

    It doesn’t work. There is no other solution than an enforceable universal ID of some kind and same-day in person voting with that ID (as is done everywhere around the world). Possibly some mail-ins that are actually validated – but I am not sure how. Otherwise you have a broken system where the result will be what people in charge want it to be.

    There is no shortcut to an honest system. Utah is one of the exceptions.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Beckow


    Those are the areas that have a local judicial system, police, prosecutors from the same side that would presumably be behind any fraud – do you really think any judge or a political hack in Phillie or Detroit would seriously investigate the rotten precincts?
     
    In a Presidential election, with enough lawyers, the issues would be simultaneously raised thrice over -- Local, State, and Federal courts.

    Do I think that some corrupt officials would be co-conspirators in the crime if they thought they could get away both it? Yes. The trick is focusing enough scrutiny on events that the scum refuse to come out in the light.

    PEACE 😇
  307. @S1
    @LondonBob


    When they realised this wasn’t enough in places like Georgia, they just stopped the voting and brought in improbable stacks of votes going 99% for Biden, not even vaguely plausible.
     
    And wasn't it multiple states that the vote counting simply was stopped midcount in the middle of the night, for hours (or was it days sometimes?) on end, something IIRC hadn't ever occurred before?

    Yeah, the 2020 election was blatantly stolen, and I say that as someone who sees Trump, a person I don't particularly care for, as ultimately being controlled go nowhere opposition.

    Joe Biden, utterly corrupt and morally debased, and half to three quarters deranged, is the wholly appropriate symbolic representative of the present state of modern Anglosphere progressivism.

    Even so, and as shockingly unlikely as it may seem, even he once let slip the truth about the 2020 election, which some have tried to claim was taken 'out of context'.

    But the truth is the truth.

    https://youtu.be/MA8a2g6tTp0?si=P6Mb5-gpF2WmBZ3e

    Replies: @Mikel

    But the truth is the truth.

    LOL.

    But unfortunately, Biden’s Freudian and non-Freudian slips are not The Truth. They’re just the natural product of a senile brain. He did not mean to say that Trump was a very competent person when he mixed up his name with Kamala’s the other day. Sadly, the truth is harder to arrive at than any of this.

  308. @YetAnotherAnon
    @AP

    I suppose we can all dream...

    "We must show our adversaries, especially Russia and China, that they can’t compete with U.S. defense capabilities. Russia’s economy is smaller than Texas’. We can’t allow China to match and surpass the U.S."

    But the US can't compete with China in consumer goods. It can't compete with Germany and Japan in cars. Russia's economy in PPP terms is #4 in the world, if the World Bank are correct.

    https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/search/dataset/0038129

    1 China 34,643,707
    2 United States 27,360,935
    3 India 14,537,384
    4 Russian Federation 6,452,309
    5 Japan 6,251,559
    6 Germany 5,857,856
    7 Brazil 4,454,930
    8 Indonesia 4,333,084


    Can a country stay top in military kit while being uncompetitive in consumer kit? Sometimes, perhaps, if the whole economy is devoted to military stuff, like North Korea's.

    Can't see the US doing that.

    This is classic overstretch.


    Great Power ascendancy (over the long term or in specific conflicts) correlates strongly to available resources and economic durability; military overstretch and a concomitant relative decline are the consistent threats facing powers whose ambitions and security requirements are greater than their resource base can provide for.

    He predicts that continued deficit spending, especially on military build-up, will be the single most important reason for decline of any great power.
     

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

    Replies: @Mikhail, @AP

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Mikhail

    Is kremlinstoogeA123 sharing his glue bag with you Mickey? You're stupid enough to believe anything that the kremlin nomenklatura puts out as propaganda, you don't need KSA123's glue.

  309. @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk

    About Odessa, it's part of the war of Russian and Ukrainian identity now.

    Are the Ukrainians going to have the cool culture, the old gangsters' songs, the cossacks, ?

    I think already, today, half of the world will say Tokarev was taking "traditional Ukrainian national songs"


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjZTB6JTB-Q

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @John Johnson

    Many posters at Unz believe that Russia is justified in killing Ukrainians because it will ultimately protect them from Western degeneracy. Your new dictator knows best for your culture even if he killed your dad. Doesn’t Russia have the higher abortion and alcoholism rates? Sure but on pro-Putin blogs we just censor anyone that points that out in favor of believing in a superior culture. We don’t want to upset boomer cons in the West that like to believe that Russia is basically Leave it to Ivan but with long winters. Let them have their fantasy.

    DJ Blyatman explains the finer points of Russian culture and why you should welcome their invasion:

    • Troll: Mikhail
    • Replies: @Beckow
    @John Johnson


    Russia is justified in killing Ukrainians because...
     
    What in your view justifies the killing of Ukies by the West? Is it ok to kill hundreds of thousands for the slight geo-political advantage of having NATO in Ukraine and wave missiles in Russia's face?

    What justifies the Western blase attitude to killing all these Ukies? And Palestinians? Or Iraqis, Serbs, Syrians and many more previously? Do you lack any humanity and decency? There is always a high price to pay so you have that to look forward to.

    The Western degeneracy is a separate issue that shouldn't impact on the war, you need to deal with it at home and so do Russians and Ukies.

    Replies: @John Johnson

  310. @Mikhail
    @Mr. Hack

    Keep babbling stupidity as your side is losing.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    Did I miss something? Has Russia finally taken Kharkiv?

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @Mr. Hack

    They're intentionally delaying the invasion until winter so they can show off their new ski battalions.

    Here is a preview of what we can expect:

    https://youtu.be/RaEU_A405zA?t=16

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    , @Mikhail
    @Mr. Hack

    Idiots like yourself don't understand attrition over taking land and losing a lot of lives in the process. The latter pertaining to the Kiev regime's much vaunted offensive that flopped. Similar situations occurred when earlier taking positions in Kherson and Kharkov, in addition to its meat grinder fatalities when trying to defend Bakhmut and Avdeyevka.

    Compared to 2/24/22, the Russian military and economy have improved with the Kiev regime's going in the exact opposite direction.

    Figures you attract the likes of an anonymously sick moron who expresses glee when a certain ethnic group is killed while falsely suggesting a moral superiority, as he supports the NATO proxy war to the last Ukrainian.

  311. @Mikhail
    @YetAnotherAnon

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1OG8cBkFjY

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    Is kremlinstoogeA123 sharing his glue bag with you Mickey? You’re stupid enough to believe anything that the kremlin nomenklatura puts out as propaganda, you don’t need KSA123’s glue.

  312. @Mr. Hack
    @Mikhail

    Did I miss something? Has Russia finally taken Kharkiv?

    Replies: @John Johnson, @Mikhail

    They’re intentionally delaying the invasion until winter so they can show off their new ski battalions.

    Here is a preview of what we can expect:

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @John Johnson

    I'm not impressed. The new Russian ski battalion did not capture their target (The ghost of Kyiv).

    The Ghost of Kyiv has traded in his MIG-29 for a pair of skis and spent all of last winter fighting in the Luhansk oblast. It's all "hush hush" for now, although I've been told by reliable sources that the Ukrainian ghost will be moved incognito to Kharkiv sometime in the late autumn to wipe out the new Russian brigade.

    https://i.pinimg.com/originals/75/6d/3d/756d3db28f06554d7ca522e61889d4a5.jpg
    A rare photo of our hero in action in Luhansk - enjoy!

  313. Bashibuzuk says:

    Asia Times’ newsletter Global Risk-Reward Monitor reported exclusively July 11, “Modi asked Putin to help India resolve its longstanding border dispute with China. This is the most important military conflict in Asia, limited as it is, because it puts the region’s two largest countries at odds. Russian mediation, however informal, would entail a diplomatic revolution, and make a mockery of America’s hope of rallying Asian countries against China.”

    If true, this is great news for strategic security and economic development in Eurasia.

    https://asiatimes.com/2024/07/india-china-warming-pops-us-pipe-dream/

  314. @Mikhail
    @Mr. Hack

    With mega ton bombs it's quite easy to do. Russia has them. Kiev regime doesn't. Russia isn't carrying on like Israel in Gaza.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    Russia bombed out Mariupol (and over 100,000 civilians there too), why not Kharkiv?

    • Replies: @Mikhail
    @Mr. Hack

    Russia defeated the neo-Nazi Kiev regime forces in Mariupol who used civilians/civilian infrastructure as human shields.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  315. @A123
    @Mikel


    And let’s not forget: Trump exhausted all legal avenues to revert the election results but all failed.
     
    The 2020 campaign did not have enough lawyers to fight all of the necessary cases, in the right places, while constrained by a limited amount of time. Because of the unprecedented and unanticipated scale of the fraud, the DNC got away with election changing criminal activity in 2020. Sad, but true.

    As I indicated previously, Trump's 2024 campaign is much more aware of the legal hurdles, the vulnerable sites, and has been building up a cadre of lawyers on retainer that will be available to challenge any fraud. While the judiciary is corrupt in some locations, Trump would only have to win enough cases to move the outcome (not 100% of absolutely every case everywhere).

    Harris is such a horrible candidate, hopefully Trump will rack up a large margins in the battleground states. If the DNC has to steal millions of votes in 2024 (not 100-200K in 2020), they have an insoluble problem. They can only cheat so much without being caught, creating a national crisis, or both.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Mikel

    The 2020 campaign did not have enough lawyers to fight all of the necessary cases, in the right places

    Fortunately, it is not necessary to have an army of lawyers strategically located to win an election in the US. It’s generally enough to have competent and well-trained observers at all counting stations, a very easy task for a national party (it’s the method used by everyone all around the world btw). It won’t harm repeating myself once again:

    protectthevote.com

    Guys, there are thousands of elections being held in the US all the time. It’s actually been going on for longer than anywhere else in the world, which is precisely the reason why some practices have become sclerotic. But do you really think that so many thousands of candidates are conceding all the time with a system where rigging the results is so easy? The ways to verify that the votes are counted correctly were invented ages ago. And for those in doubt:

    protectthevote.com

    (Of course you may say that the Republicans behind this election integrity initiative are part of the conspiracy too. After all, AnonfromTN is capable of believing that wikipedia publishes false election results in Kentucky in order to hide some insignificant statistical anomaly. For that I don’t have an answer. I have no proof that there aren’t alien corpses in Area 51 either)

    • Replies: @A123
    @Mikel


    But do you really think that so many thousands of candidates are conceding all the time with a system where rigging the results is so easy?
     
    White collar criminals who want to stay out of jail have a decent grasp of "risk versus reward".

    How many elective offices are high value? What is the penalty for being caught? Most elections -- It is not worth trying to cheat, so minimal security is more then adequate.

    The amount of cheating is directly associated with the chances of getting caught. Realistically, only close elections can be stolen. Damaging or miscounting a few ballots could be explained away by incompetence. Double counting stacks of hundreds of ballots is convictable (in most places).

    The Presidency is the biggest office in America, possibly the world. It therefore has the most value if successfully stolen. "Risk versus reward" will encourage some to do the wrong thing.

    Poll watchers via https://protectthevote.com/ are a good start. However, that by itself is not a guarantee.

    To protect the Presidency, it really does take an army of lawyers strategically located to protect a close election:
        • Having them and not needing them, is the best case scenario.
        • Needing them and not having them, resulted in the stolen 2020 election.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Mikel

  316. A123 says: • Website
    @Mikel
    @A123


    The 2020 campaign did not have enough lawyers to fight all of the necessary cases, in the right places
     
    Fortunately, it is not necessary to have an army of lawyers strategically located to win an election in the US. It's generally enough to have competent and well-trained observers at all counting stations, a very easy task for a national party (it's the method used by everyone all around the world btw). It won't harm repeating myself once again:

    protectthevote.com

    Guys, there are thousands of elections being held in the US all the time. It's actually been going on for longer than anywhere else in the world, which is precisely the reason why some practices have become sclerotic. But do you really think that so many thousands of candidates are conceding all the time with a system where rigging the results is so easy? The ways to verify that the votes are counted correctly were invented ages ago. And for those in doubt:

    protectthevote.com

    (Of course you may say that the Republicans behind this election integrity initiative are part of the conspiracy too. After all, AnonfromTN is capable of believing that wikipedia publishes false election results in Kentucky in order to hide some insignificant statistical anomaly. For that I don't have an answer. I have no proof that there aren't alien corpses in Area 51 either)

    Replies: @A123

    But do you really think that so many thousands of candidates are conceding all the time with a system where rigging the results is so easy?

    White collar criminals who want to stay out of jail have a decent grasp of “risk versus reward”.

    How many elective offices are high value? What is the penalty for being caught? Most elections — It is not worth trying to cheat, so minimal security is more then adequate.

    The amount of cheating is directly associated with the chances of getting caught. Realistically, only close elections can be stolen. Damaging or miscounting a few ballots could be explained away by incompetence. Double counting stacks of hundreds of ballots is convictable (in most places).

    The Presidency is the biggest office in America, possibly the world. It therefore has the most value if successfully stolen. “Risk versus reward” will encourage some to do the wrong thing.

    Poll watchers via https://protectthevote.com/ are a good start. However, that by itself is not a guarantee.

    To protect the Presidency, it really does take an army of lawyers strategically located to protect a close election:
        • Having them and not needing them, is the best case scenario.
        • Needing them and not having them, resulted in the stolen 2020 election.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @Mikel
    @A123


    “Risk versus reward” will encourage some to do the wrong thing.
     
    Risk versus reward will also encourage some to do the wrong thing at a simple county auditor election. It may have life-changing implications for the parties involved, more than any election in DC. But the possibility of votes being counted fraudulently arose ages ago, as soon as popular elections were implemented, and the "technology" we use today was invented more than a century ago. It all revolves around keeping reliable registration records, observers of all parties allowed at the counting stations and randomly selected citizens acting as election officials. It's no more complicated than that.

    This is also how elections are conducted in Western Europe and you never hear about contested elections over there. I think that a recount may take place if the results are close but I don't remember the last time I heard about that happening in Europe. I'm not entirely sure what Beckow and others are talking about regarding mail-in ballots, btw. Mail voting for citizens residing abroad and people temporarily away from their residence at the time of the elections have been in place forever. In fact, I do remember mail-in votes being decisive for the allocation of some seats in parliamentary elections. Just a few months ago I received my ballots for the EU elections by mail and they included less security measures than the ones I receive for the Utah elections, that can't be so different from other states. If there was a barcode, I don't remember and there certainly were no electronic verification mechanisms some decades ago, when such technologies didn't even exist. With a proper registration roll, one person can only vote by mail once and it's trivial for the election officials to verify that the vote comes from that person. In case of any doubt, I presume the vote is voided but I'm certain it almost never happens.

    Replies: @A123, @Beckow

  317. @John Johnson
    @Dmitry

    Many posters at Unz believe that Russia is justified in killing Ukrainians because it will ultimately protect them from Western degeneracy. Your new dictator knows best for your culture even if he killed your dad. Doesn't Russia have the higher abortion and alcoholism rates? Sure but on pro-Putin blogs we just censor anyone that points that out in favor of believing in a superior culture. We don't want to upset boomer cons in the West that like to believe that Russia is basically Leave it to Ivan but with long winters. Let them have their fantasy.

    DJ Blyatman explains the finer points of Russian culture and why you should welcome their invasion:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzTAPY4uEYE

    Replies: @Beckow

    Russia is justified in killing Ukrainians because…

    What in your view justifies the killing of Ukies by the West? Is it ok to kill hundreds of thousands for the slight geo-political advantage of having NATO in Ukraine and wave missiles in Russia’s face?

    What justifies the Western blase attitude to killing all these Ukies? And Palestinians? Or Iraqis, Serbs, Syrians and many more previously? Do you lack any humanity and decency? There is always a high price to pay so you have that to look forward to.

    The Western degeneracy is a separate issue that shouldn’t impact on the war, you need to deal with it at home and so do Russians and Ukies.

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @Beckow


    Russia is justified in killing Ukrainians because…

     

    What in your view justifies the killing of Ukies by the West? Is it ok to kill hundreds of thousands for the slight geo-political advantage of having NATO in Ukraine and wave missiles in Russia’s face?

    I don't support the killing of Ukrainians.

    I was against this war from day one. In fact I was against it when Putin was still claiming it was a training exercise.

    I'm not sure how many Ukrainians have been killed but if Putin did not launch the war then tens of thousands of Orthodox Slavs on both sides would still be alive.

    I think death is the ultimate winner along with the US military industrial complex.

    What justifies the Western blase attitude to killing all these Ukies? And Palestinians? Or Iraqis, Serbs, Syrians and many more previously? Do you lack any humanity and decency?

    I agree with the UN on both Ukraine and Israel.

    The UN believes that both invasions are unjustified. So you disagree with the UN 143-5 vote that the Russian invasion is unjust?

    I've supported every UN vote on Israel in the last 10 years. So maybe take my positions individually instead of assuming I represent some generic all-American position. You and others here that take offense to dissenting views automatically assume they are somehow aggregated.

    The Western degeneracy is a separate issue that shouldn’t impact on the war, you need to deal with it at home and so do Russians and Ukies.

    I don't support Western degeneracy and I've long taken the position that siding with a mass murdering dwarf is worse than degenerate culture. You can choose to not be part of a degenerate culture while you can't choose to bring back someone that was killed in Putin's invasion.

    Replies: @Beckow

  318. A123 says: • Website
    @Beckow
    @A123


    ...Instead of trying to counter the fraud everywhere, expend campaign resources on those key areas most likely to damage the result.
     
    Those are the areas that have a local judicial system, police, prosecutors from the same side that would presumably be behind any fraud - do you really think any judge or a political hack in Phillie or Detroit would seriously investigate the rotten precincts?

    It doesn't work. There is no other solution than an enforceable universal ID of some kind and same-day in person voting with that ID (as is done everywhere around the world). Possibly some mail-ins that are actually validated - but I am not sure how. Otherwise you have a broken system where the result will be what people in charge want it to be.

    There is no shortcut to an honest system. Utah is one of the exceptions.

    Replies: @A123

    Those are the areas that have a local judicial system, police, prosecutors from the same side that would presumably be behind any fraud – do you really think any judge or a political hack in Phillie or Detroit would seriously investigate the rotten precincts?

    In a Presidential election, with enough lawyers, the issues would be simultaneously raised thrice over — Local, State, and Federal courts.

    Do I think that some corrupt officials would be co-conspirators in the crime if they thought they could get away both it? Yes. The trick is focusing enough scrutiny on events that the scum refuse to come out in the light.

    PEACE 😇

  319. @A123
    @Mikel


    But do you really think that so many thousands of candidates are conceding all the time with a system where rigging the results is so easy?
     
    White collar criminals who want to stay out of jail have a decent grasp of "risk versus reward".

    How many elective offices are high value? What is the penalty for being caught? Most elections -- It is not worth trying to cheat, so minimal security is more then adequate.

    The amount of cheating is directly associated with the chances of getting caught. Realistically, only close elections can be stolen. Damaging or miscounting a few ballots could be explained away by incompetence. Double counting stacks of hundreds of ballots is convictable (in most places).

    The Presidency is the biggest office in America, possibly the world. It therefore has the most value if successfully stolen. "Risk versus reward" will encourage some to do the wrong thing.

    Poll watchers via https://protectthevote.com/ are a good start. However, that by itself is not a guarantee.

    To protect the Presidency, it really does take an army of lawyers strategically located to protect a close election:
        • Having them and not needing them, is the best case scenario.
        • Needing them and not having them, resulted in the stolen 2020 election.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Mikel

    “Risk versus reward” will encourage some to do the wrong thing.

    Risk versus reward will also encourage some to do the wrong thing at a simple county auditor election. It may have life-changing implications for the parties involved, more than any election in DC. But the possibility of votes being counted fraudulently arose ages ago, as soon as popular elections were implemented, and the “technology” we use today was invented more than a century ago. It all revolves around keeping reliable registration records, observers of all parties allowed at the counting stations and randomly selected citizens acting as election officials. It’s no more complicated than that.

    This is also how elections are conducted in Western Europe and you never hear about contested elections over there. I think that a recount may take place if the results are close but I don’t remember the last time I heard about that happening in Europe. I’m not entirely sure what Beckow and others are talking about regarding mail-in ballots, btw. Mail voting for citizens residing abroad and people temporarily away from their residence at the time of the elections have been in place forever. In fact, I do remember mail-in votes being decisive for the allocation of some seats in parliamentary elections. Just a few months ago I received my ballots for the EU elections by mail and they included less security measures than the ones I receive for the Utah elections, that can’t be so different from other states. If there was a barcode, I don’t remember and there certainly were no electronic verification mechanisms some decades ago, when such technologies didn’t even exist. With a proper registration roll, one person can only vote by mail once and it’s trivial for the election officials to verify that the vote comes from that person. In case of any doubt, I presume the vote is voided but I’m certain it almost never happens.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Mikel


    It all revolves around keeping reliable registration records,
     
    Well... We all know this is a fiasco in the U.S.

    Bad registration includes the dead, illegal aliens, people who moved to another state, etc. More dramatic examples include pets (1) and farm animals.

    The Motor Voter concept has been a particularly horrid disaster as many locales do not verify U.S. citizenship before granting a driver's license. Non-citizens can easily wind up registered if the DMV desk clerk checks the box.


    I’m not entirely sure what Beckow and others are talking about regarding mail-in ballots, btw. Mail voting for citizens residing abroad and people temporarily away from their residence at the time of the elections have been in place forever
     
    Mail in ballots for medical/unable to reach the polls and overseas on election day have been around for awhile. The numbers of exceptional cases were limited. This allowed for extra scrutiny. Problems in this tiny pool were rarely election changing.

    The recent mail in corruption is largely about "no-excuse" ballot availability. There is a surge in volume which reduces scrutiny. Signature matching is at best marginal or skipped entirely.

    More abusive schemes involve registering the dead, illegals, etc. at a central point, then casting hundreds of ballots from that street address. As the problem is away from polling stations, observers there do not help. It takes armies of lawyers and other experts to get these fake votes out if the system.
    ___

    Ending "no-excuse" mail in as an option would immediately improve the American system. Photo ID, proof of citizenship, and in-person voting would greatly improve the reliability of the U.S. system. Facial recognition software could be deployed to identify people attempting to vote more than once.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://theweek.com/articles/477605/dog-whos-registered-vote-democrat

    Replies: @Beckow

    , @Beckow
    @Mikel


    ...regarding mail-in ballots, btw. Mail voting for citizens residing abroad and people temporarily away from their residence at the time of the elections have been in place forever.
     
    If you take a small, complementary system and suddenly enlarge it by two orders of magnitude - as happened in 2020 - you will not be able to police it. The previous mail-in voting was based on exceptions and was not tempting enough for a massive fraud - but some minor fraud always happened.

    The point is whether 'fraud, mistakes, inaccuracies' change the election result. There is a reasonable possibility that in 2020 it did. Dems claimed the same in 2016 and 2000, and I believe 1960 was also suspect, but the massive mail-in votes in 2020 were an order of magnitude worse.

    US has to do better - this is undermining elections around the world. If US does it, why not Ecuador, Rwanda, Romania? Just 'mail-it-in'...it is an obvious invitation to fraud.

    Replies: @Mikel

  320. @Dmitry

    YouTube is streamed more on TVs now more than Netflix?
     
    Netflix has a much smaller "corpus", so their recommendations are less personalized as the corpus itself is more universal.

    I think it's more wider topic though. This concept of the personalized recommendation is something which can be a problem for world culture, as it reduces the public sphere and throws people into little zones where they mix with the people with the same preferences.

    It's also increasing "obsessiveness", as people's attentions are starting to follow the funnelling pattern which results in narrow markets, with more repeated themes.

    YouTube is aggressively personalizing. So, resetting the app to get more universalized recommendations should be probably recommended for everyone.

    -

    They are doing it because it must be good for their business. It will be increasing watch time so it's valuable for them from the financial view. They say it's like "having a professional concierge who deeply understands what you're looking for now". It's arguably better to not have the personalization from the user view, but it seems effective from their view for serving.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p10qOapgrAM


    By the way, in their marketing video there is nice picture in the video at 4:20 to illustrate the simple concept of a two-dimensional vector embedding between two films, which allows numerical measurement of similarity by presenting the concept of similarity as a vector space. The users of the product are also being constantly embedded in this way as vector space to measure their similarity in relation to the other users.


    Western Europe is already worse off for the middle class,

     

    This can make sense if it's a comparison of the quality of living between potential scenarios, like if Germany followed Japan's immigration policy in 1970, someone could argue the quality of life would be better in 2024 Germany, than the current quality of life in Germany in 2024 which is result of not following Japan's policy in 1970.

    But it doesn't make sense that the quality of life in Europe 2024, is worse than in 1970, if you are not talking the psychological or cultural perception. I explained I was separating the two topics. Culture or psychological perceptions are a lot more dystopian in 2024, compared to 1970. But obviously, the situation in the social science metrics like working conditions, life expectancy, housing condition are a lot higher today than 1970.

    This is one of the significant features in 2024, which is what I wanted to explain to AP. It's the best living conditions in the West, combined with one of one of the more pessimistic cultural times in the West.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @songbird

    From the discussion with Coconuts:

    [MORE]

    >Perhaps JBP autoplay lists were a part of that.

    Not really, as the machine learning is not working like that in a manual way.

    Was under the impression that their algorithm is closed and not open to scrutiny.

    There are certainly a lot of people that accuse it of bias. For instance, saying that subscribers have told them that they were somehow automatically unsubscribed, even though they like the creator.

    Another Google product, gemini, was clearly doing some weird things with image creation, making nearly all historical figures into blacks, depicting blacks when Euros were requested, etc.

    I don’t really watch the normie content, but I suspect that there is some affirmative action involved in the promotion of it. Of course, it is hard to be scientific about it – as there are a lot of ways this AA could evolve. Technically, it could be off-site – involving other websites promoting videos , or involving the advertisers.

    But for example , there is Marques Brownlee, who does tech reviews. The Boston Globes tech writer is also a back guy, Hiawatha Bray. Maybe, they are both good enough, but, I don’t think either would have the job but for AA.

    Netflix has a much smaller “corpus”, so their recommendations are less personalized as the corpus itself is more universal.

    I feel pretty disappointed with the way Netflix has evolved, technologically. The dream of it seemed to be that it could be leveraged to skip the costs of promotion and to target to niche audiences. To use scale and statistics to produce high quality stuff, but there is very little on it that I find engaging, except the odd foreign movie.

    A lot of their investments seem to have been in horrible things, like Adam Sandler movies, which they consider a success as long as a lot of people watch them.

    YouTube doubtlessly has better content, though some of it (movies) is subrosa (and legally questionable) and difficult to find.

    But obviously, the situation in the social science metrics like working conditions, life expectancy, housing condition are a lot higher today than 1970.

    I think the housing situation in Ireland is certainly worse. In America and many other places like Canada and New Zealand too. Maybe, that doesn’t translate into higher costs everywhere, but if you want to live among Europeans seems like that would be harder in a lot of places. In Ireland, it is not even possible in the countryside anymore, to a large degree.

    Some working conditions may have improved from the elimination of those jobs. But working conditions have gotten worse in other ways. In the US, pensions are very rare today. As is job stability. Many workplaces have very unpleasant political ideology which manifests in a pretty personal way – stuff which was impossible in 1970.

    It’s the best living conditions in the West, combined with one of one of the more pessimistic cultural times in the West.

    a lot of the trends aren’t encouraging. It does not seem clear that the migration problem will ever be put under control. I’m not sure it is even politically possible to talk about a better future for Europeans – the narrative space is taken up speaking about the grievances of other groups.

    • Thanks: Torna atrás
    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @songbird


    housing situation in Ireland is certainly worse
     
    I've lived and worked in Republic of Ireland. If you walk around in the middle of the working day see a lot of Irish youth are half lazy people, waiting on the street smoking cannabis, wearing hoodies and talking to their friends. Often with free housing, maybe free food? Unemployed there are living like Ancient Greek aristocrats. Without risking to offend the country, it is not the stereotype of a hardworking native population.

    Also, the young people there are one of the world's most lucky in terms of jobs. They can attain good jobs with relatively weak qualifications, which in Russia the top technical students are competing for almost unpaid jobs in startups, you can see people hired there to quite good jobs with very weak qualifications technically.


    if you want to live among Europeans

     

    It depends if you would think about the largest immigrant nationalities like Poles or Romanians as European or not. If you have a more liberal view and think of them as European populations, then it's around 90% European. Maybe it's changing in the last few years as more immigrants enter every year.

    a lot of people that accuse it of bias
     
    It's a general problem of our time when people are using all this technology, they don't understand how it works or really think about it.

    In the 1970s, people who use computers usually know how they are working.

    If people think today the Google engineers are sitting down watching videos and choosing which ones to recommend to people, manually. Especially, Google, is obsessed with automation.


    Marques Brownlee, who does tech reviews. The Boston Globes tech writer is also a back guy, Hiawatha Bray. Maybe, they are both good enough, but, I don’t think either would have the job but for AA
     
    I think he's popular because he's a confident presenter, which is the skill to be successful on YouTube.

    A a lot of unboxing and review videos on YouTube are made by African Americans, usually they don't have many views. There is a very large layer of "failed" YouTube reviewers, or at least not very popular reviewers, only a small proportion are seeming like they are really successful there.

    Replies: @songbird

  321. A123 says: • Website
    @Mikel
    @A123


    “Risk versus reward” will encourage some to do the wrong thing.
     
    Risk versus reward will also encourage some to do the wrong thing at a simple county auditor election. It may have life-changing implications for the parties involved, more than any election in DC. But the possibility of votes being counted fraudulently arose ages ago, as soon as popular elections were implemented, and the "technology" we use today was invented more than a century ago. It all revolves around keeping reliable registration records, observers of all parties allowed at the counting stations and randomly selected citizens acting as election officials. It's no more complicated than that.

    This is also how elections are conducted in Western Europe and you never hear about contested elections over there. I think that a recount may take place if the results are close but I don't remember the last time I heard about that happening in Europe. I'm not entirely sure what Beckow and others are talking about regarding mail-in ballots, btw. Mail voting for citizens residing abroad and people temporarily away from their residence at the time of the elections have been in place forever. In fact, I do remember mail-in votes being decisive for the allocation of some seats in parliamentary elections. Just a few months ago I received my ballots for the EU elections by mail and they included less security measures than the ones I receive for the Utah elections, that can't be so different from other states. If there was a barcode, I don't remember and there certainly were no electronic verification mechanisms some decades ago, when such technologies didn't even exist. With a proper registration roll, one person can only vote by mail once and it's trivial for the election officials to verify that the vote comes from that person. In case of any doubt, I presume the vote is voided but I'm certain it almost never happens.

    Replies: @A123, @Beckow

    It all revolves around keeping reliable registration records,

    Well… We all know this is a fiasco in the U.S.

    Bad registration includes the dead, illegal aliens, people who moved to another state, etc. More dramatic examples include pets (1) and farm animals.

    The Motor Voter concept has been a particularly horrid disaster as many locales do not verify U.S. citizenship before granting a driver’s license. Non-citizens can easily wind up registered if the DMV desk clerk checks the box.

    I’m not entirely sure what Beckow and others are talking about regarding mail-in ballots, btw. Mail voting for citizens residing abroad and people temporarily away from their residence at the time of the elections have been in place forever

    Mail in ballots for medical/unable to reach the polls and overseas on election day have been around for awhile. The numbers of exceptional cases were limited. This allowed for extra scrutiny. Problems in this tiny pool were rarely election changing.

    The recent mail in corruption is largely about “no-excuse” ballot availability. There is a surge in volume which reduces scrutiny. Signature matching is at best marginal or skipped entirely.

    More abusive schemes involve registering the dead, illegals, etc. at a central point, then casting hundreds of ballots from that street address. As the problem is away from polling stations, observers there do not help. It takes armies of lawyers and other experts to get these fake votes out if the system.
    ___

    Ending “no-excuse” mail in as an option would immediately improve the American system. Photo ID, proof of citizenship, and in-person voting would greatly improve the reliability of the U.S. system. Facial recognition software could be deployed to identify people attempting to vote more than once.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://theweek.com/articles/477605/dog-whos-registered-vote-democrat

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @A123

    There are 30 million resident legal aliens living in US on different kinds of visas. They are not citizens so they cannot legally vote but they are in US legally and have DL and other documents.

    They can register to vote or be auto registered by DMV. There is nothing preventing them from voting - it's an honor system. When Obama and Biden 'legalized' millions of illegals and many states issued them papers they left it up to them whether they will vote.

    In a contested election the temptation by the 30 million resident aliens to vote is very high. Many are from ethnic communities that want unlimited immigration to bring their relatives and friends. The focus on 'illegal aliens' is misplaced, it is a red herring, it is much more likely that non-citizen legal residents from the large ethnic communities vote. It is after all an honor system...

  322. @John Johnson
    @Mr. Hack

    They're intentionally delaying the invasion until winter so they can show off their new ski battalions.

    Here is a preview of what we can expect:

    https://youtu.be/RaEU_A405zA?t=16

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    I’m not impressed. The new Russian ski battalion did not capture their target (The ghost of Kyiv).

    The Ghost of Kyiv has traded in his MIG-29 for a pair of skis and spent all of last winter fighting in the Luhansk oblast. It’s all “hush hush” for now, although I’ve been told by reliable sources that the Ukrainian ghost will be moved incognito to Kharkiv sometime in the late autumn to wipe out the new Russian brigade.


    A rare photo of our hero in action in Luhansk – enjoy!

  323. @Mikel
    @A123


    “Risk versus reward” will encourage some to do the wrong thing.
     
    Risk versus reward will also encourage some to do the wrong thing at a simple county auditor election. It may have life-changing implications for the parties involved, more than any election in DC. But the possibility of votes being counted fraudulently arose ages ago, as soon as popular elections were implemented, and the "technology" we use today was invented more than a century ago. It all revolves around keeping reliable registration records, observers of all parties allowed at the counting stations and randomly selected citizens acting as election officials. It's no more complicated than that.

    This is also how elections are conducted in Western Europe and you never hear about contested elections over there. I think that a recount may take place if the results are close but I don't remember the last time I heard about that happening in Europe. I'm not entirely sure what Beckow and others are talking about regarding mail-in ballots, btw. Mail voting for citizens residing abroad and people temporarily away from their residence at the time of the elections have been in place forever. In fact, I do remember mail-in votes being decisive for the allocation of some seats in parliamentary elections. Just a few months ago I received my ballots for the EU elections by mail and they included less security measures than the ones I receive for the Utah elections, that can't be so different from other states. If there was a barcode, I don't remember and there certainly were no electronic verification mechanisms some decades ago, when such technologies didn't even exist. With a proper registration roll, one person can only vote by mail once and it's trivial for the election officials to verify that the vote comes from that person. In case of any doubt, I presume the vote is voided but I'm certain it almost never happens.

    Replies: @A123, @Beckow

    …regarding mail-in ballots, btw. Mail voting for citizens residing abroad and people temporarily away from their residence at the time of the elections have been in place forever.

    If you take a small, complementary system and suddenly enlarge it by two orders of magnitude – as happened in 2020 – you will not be able to police it. The previous mail-in voting was based on exceptions and was not tempting enough for a massive fraud – but some minor fraud always happened.

    The point is whether ‘fraud, mistakes, inaccuracies’ change the election result. There is a reasonable possibility that in 2020 it did. Dems claimed the same in 2016 and 2000, and I believe 1960 was also suspect, but the massive mail-in votes in 2020 were an order of magnitude worse.

    US has to do better – this is undermining elections around the world. If US does it, why not Ecuador, Rwanda, Romania? Just ‘mail-it-in’…it is an obvious invitation to fraud.

    • Replies: @Mikel
    @Beckow


    The previous mail-in voting was based on exceptions
     
    No.

    It was commonplace in Utah and some other states. People could vote by mail if they so wished well before 2020 (also in 2016, when Trump won iirc) and thankfully nobody's planning to change that, even after all the 2020 controversies, that also reached Utah. I am one of the many voters who definitely prefers to deposit his ballot in a CCTV-monitored drop box whenever I feel like driving there rather than waiting in line the day of the election at a few places that are all farther away from my home. I didn't like the results of the elections last month at all but I know the system well enough and the problem is not that the winners committed fraud. Sadly, the problem is much worse: people really make very bad choices.


    it is much more likely that non-citizen legal residents from the large ethnic communities vote. It is after all an honor system…
     
    That is in general the big problem in the US now. Systems designed for high-trust societies are kept in place while people from low-trust societies flood the country and replace the native population. But I'm not sure you understand how the honor system works in the US. If you are caught abusing that trust system you are severely punished. In the case of voting in an election not being a citizen, you face jail time and you lose your eligibility to become a citizen. Do you really think that many people risk that because they want the Dems to win so that they can bring more relatives in (as if they couldn't bring tons of them already)?

    I am not saying that there wasn't any fraud in 2020 BTW. I have explicitly said the contrary above. But amid all these "votes don't count in the US" facile slogans, let's not forget what we are actually talking about and let's frame the question rationally. Votes are counted by bipartisan election officials (each of the thousands of counties has its own appointment system but they're typically ordinary citizens), while they are watched by partisan observers and supervised by the local election boards and the state electoral authorities, all of them bipartisan also and most actually ruled by the Republicans in the 2020 swing states. It is not an easy task to organize a massive fraud and get away with it, as those lazy slogans suggest.

    Replies: @Beckow

  324. @Dmitry
    @Coconuts


    D/R content creators would produce an autoplay list predictably filled with many JBP video ss,
     
    They are often doing experiments with different results. For example if they use are changing the vector similarity measures for the embedding space, you can have results where popular videos are measured as becoming measured as more or less similar to each other.

    When you are trying to watch more content from the Drs you are just getting recommendations from viral content. This is more like Instagram or TikTok where the recommendations are usually going to be more viral content.


    Perhaps JBP autoplay lists were a part of that.
     
    Not really, as the machine learning is not working like that in a manual way. If both you and Songbird are recommended the same JBP podcast, it's probably because it's getting high rankings.

    been progressively banned, at the same time some of the issues
     
    It's a business, which is not just requiring just watch time (which can be seen like increasing the size of the billboard), but watch time on the content which the advertiser wants to be connected to (it can be seen like the background of the billboard).

    So, you can understand the content which is not useful for the advertisers, is also not generating money overall while they have to pay to host it.

    Replies: @Coconuts

    It’s a business, which is not just requiring just watch time (which can be seen like increasing the size of the billboard), but watch time on the content which the advertiser wants to be connected to (it can be seen like the background of the billboard).

    This sounds more credible, many Ads would seem incongruous with some of the Dissident Right content, given the general political and social environment.

    More mainstream content producers have had problems with advertising algorithms and different agencies which advise about the problem of disinformation:

    The concept of ‘adversarial content’ is interesting here (at around 11 minutes). This is something in addition to what could be considered extreme or radical content.

    There seems to be a general question, if government agencies were concerned about online radicalisation and potentially extremist content, and they contacted a firm like Google about integrating counter-radicalisation measures into their terms of service, would Google refuse to collaborate on principle and instead trust it to the free market and the discretion of advertisers? (Who after all may be advised by expert bodies connected to and funded by government agencies).

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Coconuts


    contacted a firm like Google about
     
    I don't know about how those topics are. Maybe, they would have be working with the compliance team and it would be in the local area in Europe, so for EMEA in Dublin and it would be EU regulations which they mainly are following?

    Often, multinationals are having a little less oversight from the government, compared to smaller companies. They have better lawyers and some of these can afford even the EU penalties.

  325. @A123
    @Mikel


    It all revolves around keeping reliable registration records,
     
    Well... We all know this is a fiasco in the U.S.

    Bad registration includes the dead, illegal aliens, people who moved to another state, etc. More dramatic examples include pets (1) and farm animals.

    The Motor Voter concept has been a particularly horrid disaster as many locales do not verify U.S. citizenship before granting a driver's license. Non-citizens can easily wind up registered if the DMV desk clerk checks the box.


    I’m not entirely sure what Beckow and others are talking about regarding mail-in ballots, btw. Mail voting for citizens residing abroad and people temporarily away from their residence at the time of the elections have been in place forever
     
    Mail in ballots for medical/unable to reach the polls and overseas on election day have been around for awhile. The numbers of exceptional cases were limited. This allowed for extra scrutiny. Problems in this tiny pool were rarely election changing.

    The recent mail in corruption is largely about "no-excuse" ballot availability. There is a surge in volume which reduces scrutiny. Signature matching is at best marginal or skipped entirely.

    More abusive schemes involve registering the dead, illegals, etc. at a central point, then casting hundreds of ballots from that street address. As the problem is away from polling stations, observers there do not help. It takes armies of lawyers and other experts to get these fake votes out if the system.
    ___

    Ending "no-excuse" mail in as an option would immediately improve the American system. Photo ID, proof of citizenship, and in-person voting would greatly improve the reliability of the U.S. system. Facial recognition software could be deployed to identify people attempting to vote more than once.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://theweek.com/articles/477605/dog-whos-registered-vote-democrat

    Replies: @Beckow

    There are 30 million resident legal aliens living in US on different kinds of visas. They are not citizens so they cannot legally vote but they are in US legally and have DL and other documents.

    They can register to vote or be auto registered by DMV. There is nothing preventing them from voting – it’s an honor system. When Obama and Biden ‘legalized’ millions of illegals and many states issued them papers they left it up to them whether they will vote.

    In a contested election the temptation by the 30 million resident aliens to vote is very high. Many are from ethnic communities that want unlimited immigration to bring their relatives and friends. The focus on ‘illegal aliens’ is misplaced, it is a red herring, it is much more likely that non-citizen legal residents from the large ethnic communities vote. It is after all an honor system…

  326. AP says:
    @YetAnotherAnon
    @AP

    I suppose we can all dream...

    "We must show our adversaries, especially Russia and China, that they can’t compete with U.S. defense capabilities. Russia’s economy is smaller than Texas’. We can’t allow China to match and surpass the U.S."

    But the US can't compete with China in consumer goods. It can't compete with Germany and Japan in cars. Russia's economy in PPP terms is #4 in the world, if the World Bank are correct.

    https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/search/dataset/0038129

    1 China 34,643,707
    2 United States 27,360,935
    3 India 14,537,384
    4 Russian Federation 6,452,309
    5 Japan 6,251,559
    6 Germany 5,857,856
    7 Brazil 4,454,930
    8 Indonesia 4,333,084


    Can a country stay top in military kit while being uncompetitive in consumer kit? Sometimes, perhaps, if the whole economy is devoted to military stuff, like North Korea's.

    Can't see the US doing that.

    This is classic overstretch.


    Great Power ascendancy (over the long term or in specific conflicts) correlates strongly to available resources and economic durability; military overstretch and a concomitant relative decline are the consistent threats facing powers whose ambitions and security requirements are greater than their resource base can provide for.

    He predicts that continued deficit spending, especially on military build-up, will be the single most important reason for decline of any great power.
     

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

    Replies: @Mikhail, @AP

    But the US can’t compete with China in consumer goods. It can’t compete with Germany and Japan in cars

    It competes fine with Japan and Germany in cars.

    Russia’s economy in PPP terms is #4 in the world, if the World Bank are correct.

    PPP deals with cost/standard of living. It means that Russian products are cheaper, to such an extent that although Russia is in 11th place in nominal GDP (right behind Canada) it is 4th place in GDP PPP (right ahead of Japan), but far behind #3 India).

    Can a country stay top in military kit while being uncompetitive in consumer kit?

    Why do you think America is “uncompetitive” in consumer goods? America is the second largest exporter of consumer goods in the world, behind only China.

    It is the world’s #2 manufacturer (behind only China):

    https://www.safeguardglobal.com/resources/top-10-manufacturing-countries-in-the-world-2023/

    Russia does not even make the top ten.

    Unlike China, the USA is also blessed with massive natural resources. For example, it’s the world’s largest oil and gas producer:

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

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

    Surpassing Russia by a wide margin in both measures.

    USA leads in cutting edge also. Of the 7 most powerful supercomputers in the world, 4 (including the top 3) are in the USA:

    https://www.livescience.com/technology/computing/top-7-most-powerful-supercomputers-in-the-world-right-now

    Russia nowhere to be seen.

    China’s own university rankings place American ones at the top (9 of the top 10):

    https://www.shanghairanking.com/rankings/arwu/2023

    Russia is not anywhere near to being in the same league here, either.

    Even in terms of steel production, USA beats Russia.

    Can a country stay top in military kit while being uncompetitive in consumer kit? Sometimes, perhaps, if the whole economy is devoted to military stuff, like North Korea’s.

    Well, Russia is trying to crank out 1970s tanks.

    • Replies: @YetAnotherAnon
    @AP

    "Why do you think America is “uncompetitive” in consumer goods? America is the second largest exporter of consumer goods in the world, behind only China."

    None of them are going to Europe. Who's buying them?

    I can't remember the last time I bought something with "Made In USA" on it, probably 12-15 years ago. My last but one car was American, but that was in 2006, our latest is Korean.

    We used to buy US-made phones and laptops. No more.

    I used to see US medical and scientific kit a lot, but no more. All Chinese. Some does have American brand names, I admit.

    Same with computing stuff - where do HP and Dell make their kit these days? My newish HP laptop is from China.

    Replies: @AP

  327. AP says:
    @Mr. Hack
    @AP


    Pundits claim that if Donald Trump is re-elected, he will cut off aid to Ukraine, give away its territory, and deal directly with Vladimir Putin to impose an ignominious “peace” on the country.
     
    Has he given the impression that anything better for Ukraine is in the offing? One arms deal, that was done what seems ages ago, isn't enough to convince me that he seriously takes Ukraine's concerns to heart (especially after choosing Vance as his VP choice). From what I've read, he thinks that he'll be able to ride in on a white horse, offer and give away whatever territories that Russia has already taken, freeze the conflict and declare himself as the ultimate deal maker of the century (all within 3 days mind you). I hope that he doesn't chicken out and skip the debate with Harris, where I think that she'd draw him out more on his current sketchy plans for the war in Ukraine.

    Replies: @Torna atrás, @AP

    Has he given the impression that anything better for Ukraine is in the offing?

    The article was written by Trump’s former Secretary of State. It presents a plan that goes much further than what Biden has done for Ukraine. And indeed Trump did much more than Obama had done before him. Will Trump do this? Who knows? I’m not terribly optimistic, and would give it a 20% chance. Vance was a bad sign. But as I said, I would not be surprised if Trump turned out to be better for Ukraine than Biden is, after all. Putin being difficult and refusing to be reasonable would be helpful in this case – Biden/s administration has much more tolerance for that than Trump would, I think.

    • Replies: @A123
    @AP


    The article was written by Trump’s former Secretary of State.
     
    Pompeo is another figure that was pushed by the Senate, not a Trump 1st choice. He followed orders and didn't leak, which is much better than some others (e.g. Bolton). However, there is no sign that he is being considered to come back, or will have deep influence on Trump's 2nd term.

    It makes sense to consider this as a wishlist laying out what the old guard GOP establishment is after. Very little of it is likely to make it through. Though, as I have said elsewhere, the Senate will have some political capital.
    ___

    The piece from Trump’s former Director of National Intelligence, Richard Grenell, earlier in the thread (1) held together better as a proposal. It did not properly acknowledge Russia's strategic necessity for the "land bridge". But, it otherwise had solid decent talking points for for consideration.

    Trump reducing or eliminating support for senseless Azov neo-Nazi aggression is fairly obvious as future policy. Can the European Empire continue to push the conflict without U.S. money and material? Scholz and Macron will want to go on, but can they afford it? Neither is particularly strong at home.

    Realistically, very little can be negotiated until the Kiev regime is willing to be reasonable. And, that is controlled by Führer Zelensky's European owner operators. Despite Trump's rhetorical flourish, do not expect major developments on Day 1. The wind back while inevitable, will be measured.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-255/#comment-6677806
    , @Mr. XYZ
    @AP

    How would you rate Kamala on Ukraine? The same as Biden?

    I wonder if Kamala, being from liberal California, might be especially repulsed by Putin's LGBTQ+ phobia.

    Replies: @AP

  328. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Bashibuzuk


    Also, I am surprised that none has ever thought of the many parallels between Mazdakism and Sabbatean-derived Judeo-Bolshevism.
     
    Jason Jorjani has that covered. Of course he may be a psycho.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    This is a very important topic for those who are interested in the arising of revolutionary situations in any society. Basically, what kind of social environment do we need to have to end up with people of a radical revolutionary mindset to take control of the society.

    I came to the conclusion that the type of psychology needed for a revolutionary outlook and actions is present in a certain proportion of people in any given “civilized” society at any given historical period. However, most of the time these Che Guevara, Lenin, Mao or Mazdak types do not get to seize power. So the question is: what needs happening in a society to stop preventing them from seizing power. What must happen for a society to engage with the radical change that might either lead to a radical transformation of its societal structure or a destruction of the society and its exiting the historical scene altogether.

    My answer is that it requires a profound degeneracy and spread of psychological deviancy among the elites as the primary cause of revolutionary change. It doesn’t mean all the elites need being corrupt, but enough of them have to be very corrupt to the point of destroying the system as a cancer destroys the body. The societal political and spiritual immunity needs being thoroughly weakened for radical political and/or spiritual movements to seize power. Then antinomian leaders decree the need to destroy the rotten product of the « flawed historical process » and replace it with something « utopian ». But these revolutionary leaders are often even more extreme sociopaths than the pre-revolutionary elites.

    As I get older, I come to the conclusion that revolutions are rarely a good thing and revolutionaries are rarely sane people. Better avoid both.

    • Agree: S1
  329. AP says:
    @Beckow
    @AP

    20% chance that Trump would adopt the plan? Wow, you really have a low opinion of Trump's instinct to read the situation realistically. I would say 2% chance (ok, maybe 5-10% on a good day) and with a zero chance to actually succeed. There is a lot higher chance that this will end in a nuclear exchange. But by far the most likely outcome is Kiev-NATO losing and everyone trying to forget the whole insane 'let's defeat Russia by using up the Ukie men".

    At what point will you realize that NATO really screwed up? They went for a crazy expansion plan without thinking through what would happen if Russia resists militarily. Then they executed the plan badly and allowed ethnic radicals in Kiev-Galicia to get out of hand. And they waited so long that the West is basically de-industrialized - you can't defeat Russia (or China) with software apps and high-quality cortados.

    But keep on dreaming, what else you got? The best way for US to get out of this one is to buy their way out as always - the virtual money machine (or scam) is still strong, people are greedy, especially the aspiring elites outside of the West. But it would be a lot more expensive than pre-Maidan.

    Replies: @AP

    20% chance that Trump would adopt the plan? Wow, you really have a low opinion of Trump’s instinct to read the situation realistically.

    You who insisted that Ukraine would fold in a month have no ability to judge what is realistic or not.

    the West is basically de-industrialized

    https://www.safeguardglobal.com/resources/top-10-manufacturing-countries-in-the-world-2023/

    Top 10 manufacturing countries in the world

    1. China – 28.4% Global Manufacturing Output
    2. United States – 16.6% Global Manufacturing Output
    3. Japan – 7.5% Global Manufacturing Output
    4. Germany – 5.8% Global Manufacturing Output
    5. India – 3.3% Global Manufacturing Output
    6. South Korea – 3% Global Manufacturing Output
    7. Italy – 2.3% Global Manufacturing Output
    8. France – 1.9% Global Manufacturing Output
    9. United Kingdom – 1.8% Global Manufacturing Output
    10. Indonesia – 1.4% Global Manufacturing Output

    Where is Russia on that list?

    USA has 1/4 of China’s population but more than 1/2 of its manufacturing output.

    you can’t defeat Russia (or China) with software apps and high-quality cortados.

    USA makes more steel than Russia does. And about 12 times more cars:

    https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/car-production-by-country

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @AP

    You are stuck on your fake data and there is no way to help you. I don't know what US counts as manufacturing, but given the other statistics US produces it is probably everything from offloading ships to software upgrades and flipping houses. It is often fake and heavily exaggerated by high costs...US is not a mfg power.

    West is having problems producing something as basic as artillery shells - they are scrounging the world for 1970's discarded shells. It cost US $150 million to make a war plane - that's where your inflated 'numbers' come from.

    Get serious and stop dreaming and distracting:
    - is Ukraine winning the war?
    - how many NATO troops came to fight Russia? how many will in the future?
    - is losing 20% of territory considered a victory? since when?

    Pompeo is a paid moron who pushes for more wars. He himself won't go and he is not sending young US men, not even Euros yet - but the Ukies are dying while Pompeo talks and talks. You have to be an idiot to sign up for that. But the Ukies did...

    Replies: @QCIC, @Mikhail, @AP

    , @Gerard1234
    @AP

    You only reply to Beckow because you are a weirdo with zero life, access him as a serious threat to your spamtroll activities with his brilliant comments - and so use the pitiful lame trolling "techniques" that your account and your multitude of sockpuppet accounts use on about a million other websites to occupy your "life".

    LMAO - Replying to this bimbo idiocy that yourself directed at Beckow:


    You who insisted that Ukraine would fold in a month have no ability to judge what is realistic or not.
     
    LMAO - but they did fold, in much less than a month you dumb, compulsive liar, sack of shit. Beckow was right

    They literally gave away the Crimean corridor, even significant parts of the right bank, the most important power station in 404 ( capture of it worth several cities), large section of north, most important part of Kharkov oblast for liberating Donbass ( which enabled us to have 99% of Lugansk liberated in very quick time), and half of Donetsk that we didn't have. All while fighting at a hugely significant numerical disadvantage.


    Winter War - Key defensive line broken by Soviets, western powers can't give additional help in time, rate of Finns getting slaughtered massively increasing..........so they sign a peace ( effectively a major surrender) and end the war.
    When they do get a western partner ( the Nazis) , then in joint military effort they restart war against Soviets

    Nazis vs France - Key defensive line broken, Britain can only give minimal help at the time, Paris and all the major cities safe........France sign a surrender and end the war/Vichy France collaborate

    Nazis vs Poland - defensive lines broken, masses of Poles slaughtered in embarrassingly quick time, as soon as it becomes obvious that France and Britain were breaking their commitment and weren't going to lift a finger to help them.......the dickhead Poles surrendered.

    Ukronazis vs Russia - defensive lines broken all across the country, including the key one into Kherson, masses of ukronazis slaughtered, large numbers of surrenders. All the conditions for a surrender with the pitiful , cowardly retard VSU and the billions invested in them exposed comprehensively................but then occurs massive amounts of western money, weapons, ongoing training in western countries, integrated,& realtime intelligence network, and millions of the population who can't fight are allowed to get their dream and be allowed to live for free in Madrid, Rome, Paris, London, Switzerland, Germany, and then full-spectrum western apparatus propaganda brainwashing designed to attract maxiumum support for the least deserving of any country in history.

    Absolutely zero people expected the west to commit /sacrifice easily over 1 trillion dollars, to be this reckless, to blowup own pipeline , to support the war you dumb fuckhead. Its SOLELY because of the west this is continuing. So Beckow wasn't wrong within the parameters of logic you dumb prick. The other sides in the previous examples at least showed some value for their own people lives.

    The west hoped to destroy Russian economy as method to end the war - FAILED

    The west hoped to have Ukrainians and Russians kill each other in equal amounts as with Nazis and Soviets, as with Syrian Government vs Rebels - FAILED, very one-sided kill ratio of Ukrainians

    The west hoped to test their weapons and tactics in battlefield conditions with negligible loss of their own lives ( except Poles again). They just needed a willing lemming/deathcult/prostitute Nazi state to be cannon fodder - SUCCEEDED

    No "heroism" from the failure deathcult team - they simply banned a large section of the population from leaving, and lied to them that the SMO was about to begin. The aim of the satanists to destroy as much of Donbass as possible , simply coincides with Russia aim of annihilating ukronazis there and liberating the territory. Again there is zero heroism from this from 404 losers - most shockingly shown by the Azov pussies in Mariupol.

    As in the previous examples - breakthrough of major defensive line guarantees large area of territory. Here in 404 , in one of the most intensively industrialised and white-populated urbanised areas on the planet.........the Nazis have significant towns and cities AS the defensive line, the defensive circle itself! In a sane world, in history of war the fortifications are in advance of these populated areas.......here the satanism is that bad that the city is the fortification! Then in addition they have further conventional defensive lines between these well populated settlements

    Defensive line breakthroughs by our heroes in Donbass would have been enough to take more than half of Europe already you thick POS. That is the evil we are against - scum lying about wanting these territories and peoples in Donbass

    So why does a lowlife tramp as yourself lie about the 404 military so much?
    1. You have no other way to occupy your POS existence as somebody with no actual connection to Ukraine

    2. Khokhol military history is that embarrassing , for a fake country they have no choice but to invent fake military performance . Things are so embarassing that if the Vlasovites fought for Ukrainian independence.........it would be songs, streets, towns, awards named after them in 404! It would be Vlasovites military actions taught in schools. With the masses and masses and masses of ukronazi freshly dug graves across the country it would be the Vlasovite flag ( ironically, the same as the current Russian one now) , placed next to the graves of about 10% of dead ukronazis, in place of the current Red & Black one UPA one.

    The reason? Because at least the Vlasovites fought against the Nazis to help liberate Prague. The military "history" of ukronazi independence is that limpwristed and non-existent the UPA couldn't even attempt to fight for their "own" city of Lvov..........maybe because for them it was as foreign and unusual a place as Addis Ababa

    Replies: @sudden death

  330. @AP
    @YetAnotherAnon


    But the US can’t compete with China in consumer goods. It can’t compete with Germany and Japan in cars
     
    It competes fine with Japan and Germany in cars.

    Russia’s economy in PPP terms is #4 in the world, if the World Bank are correct.
     
    PPP deals with cost/standard of living. It means that Russian products are cheaper, to such an extent that although Russia is in 11th place in nominal GDP (right behind Canada) it is 4th place in GDP PPP (right ahead of Japan), but far behind #3 India).

    Can a country stay top in military kit while being uncompetitive in consumer kit?
     
    Why do you think America is "uncompetitive" in consumer goods? America is the second largest exporter of consumer goods in the world, behind only China.

    It is the world's #2 manufacturer (behind only China):

    https://www.safeguardglobal.com/resources/top-10-manufacturing-countries-in-the-world-2023/

    Russia does not even make the top ten.

    Unlike China, the USA is also blessed with massive natural resources. For example, it's the world's largest oil and gas producer:

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

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

    Surpassing Russia by a wide margin in both measures.

    USA leads in cutting edge also. Of the 7 most powerful supercomputers in the world, 4 (including the top 3) are in the USA:

    https://www.livescience.com/technology/computing/top-7-most-powerful-supercomputers-in-the-world-right-now

    Russia nowhere to be seen.

    China's own university rankings place American ones at the top (9 of the top 10):

    https://www.shanghairanking.com/rankings/arwu/2023

    Russia is not anywhere near to being in the same league here, either.

    Even in terms of steel production, USA beats Russia.

    Can a country stay top in military kit while being uncompetitive in consumer kit? Sometimes, perhaps, if the whole economy is devoted to military stuff, like North Korea’s.
     
    Well, Russia is trying to crank out 1970s tanks.

    Replies: @YetAnotherAnon

    “Why do you think America is “uncompetitive” in consumer goods? America is the second largest exporter of consumer goods in the world, behind only China.”

    None of them are going to Europe. Who’s buying them?

    I can’t remember the last time I bought something with “Made In USA” on it, probably 12-15 years ago. My last but one car was American, but that was in 2006, our latest is Korean.

    We used to buy US-made phones and laptops. No more.

    I used to see US medical and scientific kit a lot, but no more. All Chinese. Some does have American brand names, I admit.

    Same with computing stuff – where do HP and Dell make their kit these days? My newish HP laptop is from China.

    • Replies: @AP
    @YetAnotherAnon


    “Why do you think America is “uncompetitive” in consumer goods? America is the second largest exporter of consumer goods in the world, behind only China.”

    None of them are going to Europe. Who’s buying them?
     
    Why are you writing stuff that is easily verified as false?

    There are more American-made cars being exported to Europe in 2022 than in any year prior to 2019:

    https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/thumb/5/5a/EU_trade_with_the_United_States_in_motor_cars%2C_2002-2022.png/700px-EU_trade_with_the_United_States_in_motor_cars%2C_2002-2022.png

    I can’t remember the last time I bought something with “Made In USA” on it, probably 12-15 years ago. My last but one car was American, but that was in 2006, our latest is Korean.
     
    A lot of German cars are made in American factories, and sent to Germany.

    America sends a lot of pharmaceuticals and medical equipment to Europe. I guess those aren't consumer goods. Trinkets are best made in third world countries.

    I used to see US medical and scientific kit a lot, but no more. All Chinese.
     
    Again, easily verifiable false statement by you.

    https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2020/649387/EPRS_BRI(2020)649387_EN.pdf

    https://i.imgur.com/oV5kZ8j.png

    Same with computing stuff – where do HP and Dell make their kit these days? My newish HP laptop is from China.
     
    HP still has a factory in Indiana though they also have (many more) factories in China.

    Dell also still has factories in NC and Massachusetts.
  331. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Greasy William
    @Bashibuzuk


    Why do you see the Talmud and not the Torah as the foundation of the Jewish identity ?
     
    The Torah contains two parts, the written tradition (Torah/Tanach) and the oral tradition (Talmud).

    The "written Torah only" approach of the Sadducees and Karaites sounds really appealing at first glance but in practice it creates a lot of difficulties and simply isn't consistent with how Judaism has operated since Sinai.

    In the Gospels, Jesus even says that the Pharisees sit in the "chair of Moses" and that Jews are obligated to follow their rulings. This shows that even in the first century there was a well established tradition of viewing the oral tradition as binding and sacred.

    The rules for things like prayer are not spelled out at all in the written Torah so we only know how to do that stuff through the oral tradition.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    The “written Torah only” approach of the Sadducees and Karaites sounds really appealing at first glance but in practice it creates a lot of difficulties and simply isn’t consistent with how Judaism has operated since Sinai.

    What would these difficulties be?

    According to historians of Judaism, it has been an evolving tradition. Archaic (proto ?)-Judaism might have been very different from what we have recorded in the Talmudic texts. Closer to the common era, the texts found in the Dead Sea Scrolls are somewhat different from what we would think of as typical Jewish theology. We had a competing subset of sects at the times of Jesus, one of these becoming Christianity other leading to Mandean (Sabean) spiritual tradition through John the Baptist, another the Pharisee sect that evolved into the Rabbinical Judaism. They all were considered Jewish at their beginning. So what makes you think that Judaism had the same modus operandi since its very inception (let’s say at Sinai if you want to believe it has an historical truth to it)?

    In the Gospels, Jesus even says that the Pharisees sit in the “chair of Moses” and that Jews are obligated to follow their rulings.

    Can you please provide a citation for this?

    I don’t remember reading this in the Gospels.

    The rules for things like prayer are not spelled out at all in the written Torah so we only know how to do that stuff through the oral tradition.

    I agree that oral tradition is very important in any spiritual teaching. What I am wondering is whether any Religious tradition can be defined as adherence to the oral tradition above all else.

    • Replies: @Greasy William
    @Bashibuzuk


    What would these difficulties be?
     
    Well first of all, how to pray. Tefillin and how to where them. The Sadducees actually wore the tefillin right in between their eyes because that is the face value interpretation of what the written Torah says. But rabbinical tradition says that it is to be worn in the mid forehead, where we now know the so called "third eye" in the brain is.

    How to light Shabbat candles. How to properly prepare kashrut. And although it's not relevant today, how to properly prepare temple sacrifices.

    Also, the written Torah tells you to stone to death adulterers and even disobedient sons. You need rabbis who can tell their flocks not to take that stuff literally. There are also a lot of things in the Tanach that just appear to be bizarre non sequiturs if we don't have oral tradition to guide us as to their meaning.

    So what makes you think that Judaism had the same modus operandi since its very inception (let’s say at Sinai if you want to believe it has an historical truth to it)?
     
    eh, that was kinda a long journey and I don't have any evidence that would be convincing to even the most fair minded skeptic. For me it boils down to that I think the account of events given in Genesis is largely historically accurate from the time of Abraham on. I am aware that this position is regarded as rank nonsense by all secular historians but I think they missed on this one. I don't believe in evolution either and I have major doubts about climate change so I totally understand why someone would dismiss my views as crackpottery.

    Hell, maybe they're right, but I'm gonna call it like I see it.

    Can you please provide a citation for this?
     
    https://biblehub.com/matthew/23-2.htm
  332. @songbird
    @Coconuts


    I think the interview was post the October 7th attacks and all the demonstrations etc. following them
     
    ah, yes, there was an excess of rhetoric back then. Talk by the establishment of "mass deportations.". Maybe, there was even a certain logic (though crazy) for Ferguson, as presumably a lot of these migrants didn't get a Western education.

    Alex (who is looking obviously blonde iirc)
     
    she has an interesting background, IIRC. From Romania but an ethnic German or part German. AK did an episode with her, but that was a while back and I haven't listened to it yet.

    The last Bollywood I remember seeing was called Chot.
     
    This own I haven't seen, but the pastoralist in me is attracted to any movie with livestock, and I think in particular cows.

    It looks like the goat film hasn’t got Mr Hack interested this time 🙁
     
    for all his fondness for foreign food, I find it curious how Mr. Hack doesn't seem to have much of any interest in foreign movies. (Perhaps, excepting Ukrainian). I am thinking he doesn't like to read subtitles, which I can appreciate to a certain extent, but I think there is a benefit to subs over dubs. They are often rougher, and give you a better idea of the original dialogue. Plus, anything dubbed, there is a risk that it was foreign financed and that imperils the cultural cohesiveness of the story

    For my own part, foreign movies comprise most of the newer movies that I watch. I appreciate how they generally have a more cohesive cultural background. But unfortunately, you have to go far for this now - not really Western Europe.

    I was just a short while ago marvelling at the idea of this seemingly very woke German film, directed by an ethnic Turk. Good reviews. If I understand correctly, they got the idea to have a Turkish boy falsely accused of theft at a school by observing real Turkish boys at a school in Turkey stealing stuff. (But possibly they were Syrians or Kurds, etc.). I haven't watched it, as I don't think I could stomach it.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Teachers%27_Lounge

    Haven't tried to quantify it scientifically, but I suspect that current Germany's cultural footprint is sadly less than the GDR's was. (At least, if we count cohesive stuff.)

    Replies: @Coconuts

    Maybe, there was even a certain logic (though crazy) for Ferguson, as presumably a lot of these migrants didn’t get a Western education.

    Yes, there was some logic to it. I am not sure how much it means to them, it must be quite weird teaching it. We studied those topics in the 1990s but the cultural connection to that period was still obviously stronger then.

    [MORE]

    From Romania but an ethnic German or part German. AK did an episode with her, but that was a while back and I haven’t listened to it yet.

    Iirc she has mentioned Hungarian and Slavic ancestry as well, and she seems to speak fluent German. Often her pov on race or other culture war issues seems more typical of other Romanians or other Eastern Europeans, where there is less sensitivity around them than is usual in an Anglo context. She also has mentioned having a degree in Gender Studies and similar feminist subjects from a German university, then becoming disillusioned with it after working in HR for tech companies in London.

    I used to watch her fairly regularly a year or two ago, she used to have some good guests.

    For my own part, foreign movies comprise most of the newer movies that I watch. I appreciate how they generally have a more cohesive cultural background. But unfortunately, you have to go far for this now – not really Western Europe.

    I think you can find it still in EE films and dramas. The other weekend I saw an interesting Latvian nationalist war film on Amazon called ‘Blizzard of Souls’, based on the novel by this guy:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandrs_Gr%C4%ABns

    Often it feels like the contemporary British dramas have implausible instances of diverse casting (the usual thing is too many blacks and too few Indians and Asians). And even the ones with regional settings where irl diversity levels are very low, like the Shetland Islands.

    Haven’t tried to quantify it scientifically, but I suspect that current Germany’s cultural footprint is sadly less than the GDR’s was. (At least, if we count cohesive stuff.)

    It wouldn’t be surprising. I recall watching a German Netflix series or two 5+ years ago, I can’t think of anything since. I feel like the Goat Life film has much more obvious appeal than the one about the thefts in the school, that sounds similar to the story lines that sometimes used to come up in Swedish/Nordic police dramas on the same topic. It’s like when trying to refute stereotypes becomes in itself stereotypical.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Coconuts


    I am not sure how much it means to them, it must be quite weird teaching it.
     
    I believe the modern moral narrative of the war requires the substrate of a romance towards the conflict, which requires a vicarious connection. (Which many boomers have and which I think a lot of the migrants would be missing.)

    Iirc she has mentioned Hungarian and Slavic ancestry as well, and she seems to speak fluent German.

     

    her face does look a bit more EE than the average German. I did not know all that about her, but I think part of her views might come from this kind of German minority identity in EE, or part of her family's history with it.

    I used to watch her fairly regularly a year or two ago, she used to have some good guests
     
    Have only listened to her about twice or so, but I thought that episode she did with Eric Kaufmann was interesting. Have been meaning to glance over his new book. From what I remember from that interview, I got the vague idea that it might be a bit more pessimistic than Whiteshift.

    The other weekend I saw an interesting Latvian nationalist war film on Amazon called ‘Blizzard of Souls’,
     
    I suppose it must be about the Latvian Rifles, which AK often evoked. I'm afraid I would probably have to review some history, to make sense of it. I am surprised LatW hasn't mentioned it.

    Often it feels like the contemporary British dramas have implausible instances of diverse casting (the usual thing is too many blacks and too few Indians and Asians).
     
    I think the native diversity of the British Isles is much more compelling and neglected. Globalism just feels like they are trying to show different skin colors.

    What I seem to notice now is there seems to be a kind of lighter variant of the heavy diversity, where they make a historical drama and one of the minor characters is played by an Indian, and it is like they are vaguely trying to pass him off as a Frenchman, even though no Frenchman would have looked like that. It is at least a little more grounded. Though, it seems more minor than a trend. More often the Indians are playing major characters and are themselves overshadowed weirdly by blacks.
  333. @Beckow
    @Mikel


    ...regarding mail-in ballots, btw. Mail voting for citizens residing abroad and people temporarily away from their residence at the time of the elections have been in place forever.
     
    If you take a small, complementary system and suddenly enlarge it by two orders of magnitude - as happened in 2020 - you will not be able to police it. The previous mail-in voting was based on exceptions and was not tempting enough for a massive fraud - but some minor fraud always happened.

    The point is whether 'fraud, mistakes, inaccuracies' change the election result. There is a reasonable possibility that in 2020 it did. Dems claimed the same in 2016 and 2000, and I believe 1960 was also suspect, but the massive mail-in votes in 2020 were an order of magnitude worse.

    US has to do better - this is undermining elections around the world. If US does it, why not Ecuador, Rwanda, Romania? Just 'mail-it-in'...it is an obvious invitation to fraud.

    Replies: @Mikel

    The previous mail-in voting was based on exceptions

    No.

    It was commonplace in Utah and some other states. People could vote by mail if they so wished well before 2020 (also in 2016, when Trump won iirc) and thankfully nobody’s planning to change that, even after all the 2020 controversies, that also reached Utah. I am one of the many voters who definitely prefers to deposit his ballot in a CCTV-monitored drop box whenever I feel like driving there rather than waiting in line the day of the election at a few places that are all farther away from my home. I didn’t like the results of the elections last month at all but I know the system well enough and the problem is not that the winners committed fraud. Sadly, the problem is much worse: people really make very bad choices.

    it is much more likely that non-citizen legal residents from the large ethnic communities vote. It is after all an honor system…

    That is in general the big problem in the US now. Systems designed for high-trust societies are kept in place while people from low-trust societies flood the country and replace the native population. But I’m not sure you understand how the honor system works in the US. If you are caught abusing that trust system you are severely punished. In the case of voting in an election not being a citizen, you face jail time and you lose your eligibility to become a citizen. Do you really think that many people risk that because they want the Dems to win so that they can bring more relatives in (as if they couldn’t bring tons of them already)?

    I am not saying that there wasn’t any fraud in 2020 BTW. I have explicitly said the contrary above. But amid all these “votes don’t count in the US” facile slogans, let’s not forget what we are actually talking about and let’s frame the question rationally. Votes are counted by bipartisan election officials (each of the thousands of counties has its own appointment system but they’re typically ordinary citizens), while they are watched by partisan observers and supervised by the local election boards and the state electoral authorities, all of them bipartisan also and most actually ruled by the Republicans in the 2020 swing states. It is not an easy task to organize a massive fraud and get away with it, as those lazy slogans suggest.

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @Mikel

    I stay away from lazy slogans and am agnostic on 2020 elections - there is no way to know, the system is messy and in a close election it makes a difference. 2020 was decided by 150k votes in 6 states out of 200 million votes. Well placed local fraud could had made a difference.


    It was commonplace in Utah
     
    We have all agreed that Utah is not a problem so the system and honesty there don't matter much. It is the dozen states that all have large metro areas that are hard to police that decided the election.

    you understand how the honor system works in the US.
     
    I do. There are drastic laws that are meant to discourage abusing the system. But those laws are very rarely enforced and only a very tiny % of abuse is even theoretically investigated. An ethnic person who has strong views but is not a citizen will consider the odds - or not if they are totally lost in America - and the odds are overwhelming that nothing will happen. I would say 100k to 1 or more. But because of how messy the system is we will never know for sure.

    It was possible in 2020 to create 100-200k votes in a few key states by legal resident votes, mail-fraud, dead people, etc...It was not really possible to catch it given the absolute mess in the data. I don't know if it happened, or to what extent, but demonizing people who are skeptical suggests that there is some guilt.

    Having said it requires a very close election for it to matter. So most of the time the system maybe be imprecise but still works.

  334. @Mikel
    @Beckow


    The previous mail-in voting was based on exceptions
     
    No.

    It was commonplace in Utah and some other states. People could vote by mail if they so wished well before 2020 (also in 2016, when Trump won iirc) and thankfully nobody's planning to change that, even after all the 2020 controversies, that also reached Utah. I am one of the many voters who definitely prefers to deposit his ballot in a CCTV-monitored drop box whenever I feel like driving there rather than waiting in line the day of the election at a few places that are all farther away from my home. I didn't like the results of the elections last month at all but I know the system well enough and the problem is not that the winners committed fraud. Sadly, the problem is much worse: people really make very bad choices.


    it is much more likely that non-citizen legal residents from the large ethnic communities vote. It is after all an honor system…
     
    That is in general the big problem in the US now. Systems designed for high-trust societies are kept in place while people from low-trust societies flood the country and replace the native population. But I'm not sure you understand how the honor system works in the US. If you are caught abusing that trust system you are severely punished. In the case of voting in an election not being a citizen, you face jail time and you lose your eligibility to become a citizen. Do you really think that many people risk that because they want the Dems to win so that they can bring more relatives in (as if they couldn't bring tons of them already)?

    I am not saying that there wasn't any fraud in 2020 BTW. I have explicitly said the contrary above. But amid all these "votes don't count in the US" facile slogans, let's not forget what we are actually talking about and let's frame the question rationally. Votes are counted by bipartisan election officials (each of the thousands of counties has its own appointment system but they're typically ordinary citizens), while they are watched by partisan observers and supervised by the local election boards and the state electoral authorities, all of them bipartisan also and most actually ruled by the Republicans in the 2020 swing states. It is not an easy task to organize a massive fraud and get away with it, as those lazy slogans suggest.

    Replies: @Beckow

    I stay away from lazy slogans and am agnostic on 2020 elections – there is no way to know, the system is messy and in a close election it makes a difference. 2020 was decided by 150k votes in 6 states out of 200 million votes. Well placed local fraud could had made a difference.

    It was commonplace in Utah

    We have all agreed that Utah is not a problem so the system and honesty there don’t matter much. It is the dozen states that all have large metro areas that are hard to police that decided the election.

    you understand how the honor system works in the US.

    I do. There are drastic laws that are meant to discourage abusing the system. But those laws are very rarely enforced and only a very tiny % of abuse is even theoretically investigated. An ethnic person who has strong views but is not a citizen will consider the odds – or not if they are totally lost in America – and the odds are overwhelming that nothing will happen. I would say 100k to 1 or more. But because of how messy the system is we will never know for sure.

    It was possible in 2020 to create 100-200k votes in a few key states by legal resident votes, mail-fraud, dead people, etc…It was not really possible to catch it given the absolute mess in the data. I don’t know if it happened, or to what extent, but demonizing people who are skeptical suggests that there is some guilt.

    Having said it requires a very close election for it to matter. So most of the time the system maybe be imprecise but still works.

  335. @Bashibuzuk
    @Greasy William


    The “written Torah only” approach of the Sadducees and Karaites sounds really appealing at first glance but in practice it creates a lot of difficulties and simply isn’t consistent with how Judaism has operated since Sinai.
     
    What would these difficulties be?

    According to historians of Judaism, it has been an evolving tradition. Archaic (proto ?)-Judaism might have been very different from what we have recorded in the Talmudic texts. Closer to the common era, the texts found in the Dead Sea Scrolls are somewhat different from what we would think of as typical Jewish theology. We had a competing subset of sects at the times of Jesus, one of these becoming Christianity other leading to Mandean (Sabean) spiritual tradition through John the Baptist, another the Pharisee sect that evolved into the Rabbinical Judaism. They all were considered Jewish at their beginning. So what makes you think that Judaism had the same modus operandi since its very inception (let’s say at Sinai if you want to believe it has an historical truth to it)?

    In the Gospels, Jesus even says that the Pharisees sit in the “chair of Moses” and that Jews are obligated to follow their rulings.
     
    Can you please provide a citation for this?

    I don’t remember reading this in the Gospels.

    The rules for things like prayer are not spelled out at all in the written Torah so we only know how to do that stuff through the oral tradition.
     
    I agree that oral tradition is very important in any spiritual teaching. What I am wondering is whether any Religious tradition can be defined as adherence to the oral tradition above all else.

    Replies: @Greasy William

    What would these difficulties be?

    Well first of all, how to pray. Tefillin and how to where them. The Sadducees actually wore the tefillin right in between their eyes because that is the face value interpretation of what the written Torah says. But rabbinical tradition says that it is to be worn in the mid forehead, where we now know the so called “third eye” in the brain is.

    How to light Shabbat candles. How to properly prepare kashrut. And although it’s not relevant today, how to properly prepare temple sacrifices.

    Also, the written Torah tells you to stone to death adulterers and even disobedient sons. You need rabbis who can tell their flocks not to take that stuff literally. There are also a lot of things in the Tanach that just appear to be bizarre non sequiturs if we don’t have oral tradition to guide us as to their meaning.

    So what makes you think that Judaism had the same modus operandi since its very inception (let’s say at Sinai if you want to believe it has an historical truth to it)?

    eh, that was kinda a long journey and I don’t have any evidence that would be convincing to even the most fair minded skeptic. For me it boils down to that I think the account of events given in Genesis is largely historically accurate from the time of Abraham on. I am aware that this position is regarded as rank nonsense by all secular historians but I think they missed on this one. I don’t believe in evolution either and I have major doubts about climate change so I totally understand why someone would dismiss my views as crackpottery.

    Hell, maybe they’re right, but I’m gonna call it like I see it.

    Can you please provide a citation for this?

    https://biblehub.com/matthew/23-2.htm

  336. @AP
    @Beckow


    20% chance that Trump would adopt the plan? Wow, you really have a low opinion of Trump’s instinct to read the situation realistically.
     
    You who insisted that Ukraine would fold in a month have no ability to judge what is realistic or not.

    the West is basically de-industrialized
     
    https://www.safeguardglobal.com/resources/top-10-manufacturing-countries-in-the-world-2023/

    Top 10 manufacturing countries in the world

    1. China – 28.4% Global Manufacturing Output
    2. United States – 16.6% Global Manufacturing Output
    3. Japan – 7.5% Global Manufacturing Output
    4. Germany – 5.8% Global Manufacturing Output
    5. India – 3.3% Global Manufacturing Output
    6. South Korea – 3% Global Manufacturing Output
    7. Italy – 2.3% Global Manufacturing Output
    8. France – 1.9% Global Manufacturing Output
    9. United Kingdom – 1.8% Global Manufacturing Output
    10. Indonesia – 1.4% Global Manufacturing Output

    Where is Russia on that list?

    USA has 1/4 of China's population but more than 1/2 of its manufacturing output.

    you can’t defeat Russia (or China) with software apps and high-quality cortados.
     
    USA makes more steel than Russia does. And about 12 times more cars:

    https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/car-production-by-country

    Replies: @Beckow, @Gerard1234

    You are stuck on your fake data and there is no way to help you. I don’t know what US counts as manufacturing, but given the other statistics US produces it is probably everything from offloading ships to software upgrades and flipping houses. It is often fake and heavily exaggerated by high costs…US is not a mfg power.

    West is having problems producing something as basic as artillery shells – they are scrounging the world for 1970’s discarded shells. It cost US $150 million to make a war plane – that’s where your inflated ‘numbers’ come from.

    Get serious and stop dreaming and distracting:
    – is Ukraine winning the war?
    – how many NATO troops came to fight Russia? how many will in the future?
    – is losing 20% of territory considered a victory? since when?

    Pompeo is a paid moron who pushes for more wars. He himself won’t go and he is not sending young US men, not even Euros yet – but the Ukies are dying while Pompeo talks and talks. You have to be an idiot to sign up for that. But the Ukies did…

    • Agree: Mikhail
    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Beckow

    The US still manufactures a lot of products, though many of the parts are foreign made. It seems that Russian manufacturing production is still modest, though increasing as they rebuild industries which were lost in the collapse of the USSR.

    Probably 25% of US manufacturing is very high end equipment which in many cases is not visible to the average person. Airliners, business jets and helicopters are notable exceptions which are visible.

    Russia has an economy based on resource extraction, though with a broad manufacturing sector as well. In the past 10-15 years Russia made great strides in agricultural production. The next 10 years may show similar gains in the manufacturing sectors, in large part due to the Western sanctions.

    , @Mikhail
    @Beckow

    Among other things, a good overview from Robert Barnes on what a new Trump administration might look like:

    Biden passes "torch" to Kamala w/ Robert Barnes (Live)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8RmAY_Yzp4

    , @AP
    @Beckow


    You are stuck on your fake data
     
    Because well-known liar Beckow claims something is "fake" does not make it so.

    I don’t know what US counts as manufacturing
     
    USA produces more steel and 12 times more cars than Russia does.

    Data provided by World Steel Association and The International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers.


    US is not a mfg power
     
    World's second largest automobile producer.

    By far, the world's largest aircraft producer. This is in number of aircraft, not their cost (in case you wanted to weasel out of this by claimng American planes are too expensive)

    https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/top-10-aircraft-producing-countries-in-the-world/

    In the world, only China manufactures more than does the USA, and nobody else comes close.

    Your lies are getting progressively more stupid. Sign of desperation?


    West is having problems producing something as basic as artillery shells – they are scrounging the world for 1970’s discarded shells
     
    You mean Russia begging North Korea for old artillery shells?

    Increasing artillery production is not a problem, if there is a will. And now there is.

    https://www.defenseone.com/business/2024/04/goal-100k-artillery-shells-month-sight-army-says/396047/


    It cost US $150 million to make a war plane – that’s where your inflated ‘numbers’ come from.
     
    Thanks for demonstrating that you are the only one who consistently cherry-picks here.

    The newest F-16s costs $63 million. Cheaper than Chinese jets.

    https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/27553-top-10-most-expensive-fighter-jets


    Get serious and stop dreaming and distracting:
    – is Ukraine winning the war?
    – is losing 20% of territory considered a victory? since when?
     
    Ukraine is preventing Russia from accomplishing its goals of regime change in Ukraine, demilitarization of Ukraine, conquest of Ukraine, etc. But it has not expelled Russia from Ukraine, either. So it's a stalemate.

    Also, 10% was lost in 2014-2015. The invasion began in 2022.

    I'll remind you that in January 1944 Germany still controlled large parts of the USSR, all of France, Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Norway. Much more than Russia has now.

    Was Germany winning the war in 1944?

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/36/1944-01-01GerWW2BattlefrontAtlas.jpg/220px-1944-01-01GerWW2BattlefrontAtlas.jpg

    Replies: @QCIC, @Beckow

  337. A123 says: • Website
    @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    Has he given the impression that anything better for Ukraine is in the offing?
     
    The article was written by Trump's former Secretary of State. It presents a plan that goes much further than what Biden has done for Ukraine. And indeed Trump did much more than Obama had done before him. Will Trump do this? Who knows? I'm not terribly optimistic, and would give it a 20% chance. Vance was a bad sign. But as I said, I would not be surprised if Trump turned out to be better for Ukraine than Biden is, after all. Putin being difficult and refusing to be reasonable would be helpful in this case - Biden/s administration has much more tolerance for that than Trump would, I think.

    Replies: @A123, @Mr. XYZ

    The article was written by Trump’s former Secretary of State.

    Pompeo is another figure that was pushed by the Senate, not a Trump 1st choice. He followed orders and didn’t leak, which is much better than some others (e.g. Bolton). However, there is no sign that he is being considered to come back, or will have deep influence on Trump’s 2nd term.

    It makes sense to consider this as a wishlist laying out what the old guard GOP establishment is after. Very little of it is likely to make it through. Though, as I have said elsewhere, the Senate will have some political capital.
    ___

    The piece from Trump’s former Director of National Intelligence, Richard Grenell, earlier in the thread (1) held together better as a proposal. It did not properly acknowledge Russia’s strategic necessity for the “land bridge”. But, it otherwise had solid decent talking points for for consideration.

    Trump reducing or eliminating support for senseless Azov neo-Nazi aggression is fairly obvious as future policy. Can the European Empire continue to push the conflict without U.S. money and material? Scholz and Macron will want to go on, but can they afford it? Neither is particularly strong at home.

    Realistically, very little can be negotiated until the Kiev regime is willing to be reasonable. And, that is controlled by Führer Zelensky’s European owner operators. Despite Trump’s rhetorical flourish, do not expect major developments on Day 1. The wind back while inevitable, will be measured.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-255/#comment-6677806

  338. @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    Has he given the impression that anything better for Ukraine is in the offing?
     
    The article was written by Trump's former Secretary of State. It presents a plan that goes much further than what Biden has done for Ukraine. And indeed Trump did much more than Obama had done before him. Will Trump do this? Who knows? I'm not terribly optimistic, and would give it a 20% chance. Vance was a bad sign. But as I said, I would not be surprised if Trump turned out to be better for Ukraine than Biden is, after all. Putin being difficult and refusing to be reasonable would be helpful in this case - Biden/s administration has much more tolerance for that than Trump would, I think.

    Replies: @A123, @Mr. XYZ

    How would you rate Kamala on Ukraine? The same as Biden?

    I wonder if Kamala, being from liberal California, might be especially repulsed by Putin’s LGBTQ+ phobia.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Mr. XYZ

    Kamala’s National Security Advisor is more of an hawk against Russia than is Biden’s Sullivan.

    https://www.kyivpost.com/analysis/36313

    I think that Kamala, like Vance, is mostly a cynical opportunist who doesn’t hold strong beliefs.

    Replies: @Greasy William, @Mr. XYZ

  339. Bashibuzuk says:

    Yeah, you’re right about Matthew 23-2, I completely forgot about it. Thanks for pointing that out. I think I will have to re-read the Gospels again. Nice catch here Greasy. 🙂

    Now, about the largely correct historical narrative in the Bible, I agree that if we don’t look too closely into details, the overall historical narrative is largely corespondent with what the official historical narrative is nowadays. But this might be due to three different reasons: 1) the Bible is more or less accurate historically because it recorded historical events as they happened 2) the Bible is more or less accurate historically because it has been put together post hoc by some literati who had a good grasp of the history of that region 3) the Bible does seem more or less historically accurate because we live in the realm of Abrahamic civilizations which imposed its historical narrative upon the people who have come to accept and self-identify with the Abrahamic religious traditions.

    I have recently taken a great interest in listening to YouTube videos of Israeli historians and archaeologists working in the field of the history of religion. And they clearly seem very sceptical of the older part of the Bible being written at the time of the events described in the text. For example, if you have some time to watch this presentation by Yonathan Adler, it’s quite interesting that according to him, from the pov of archeology, there aren’t any signs of Judaic religious activity that adheres to strict Biblical rules before the 3rd century BC.

    Now, if you disregard his experimental work because you are a religious person, I’d understand and would respect that. For me a belief doesn’t have to be rational. But I would appreciate your perspective on that video if you have time to watch it.

    • Replies: @S1
    @Bashibuzuk

    Dr Adler would seem to be an independent original thinker, a rare commodity in any age.

    I can't help but notice how very carefully he parses his words on this sensitive subject...

    Adler goes to extraordinary lengths to separate 'history', which though it is unsaid is implied to be truth, from 'stories'/'myths', which also unsaid, though implied, might well ultimately be untruth.

    Adler then states the stories/myths 'are far more important than history', at it's core a simple observable reality at present (but perhaps said also as a bit of a sop on his part to appease would be detractors?) while still being quite careful to not endorse the 'stories'/'myths' as being true.

    I suppose he feels compelled to be quite careful with his words so as to be able to maintain the funding for his work.

    , @Greasy William
    @Bashibuzuk


    Now, if you disregard his experimental work because you are a religious person, I’d understand and would respect that
     
    I don't disregard it, I'm just unconvinced. The first fixed date we have for ancient near eastern chronology, as I'm sure this Yair Lapid voting gentleman would admit, is the sack of Thebes in 663 BC. Before that it isn't clear what goes where, not that we are totally flying blind but there is a tremendous amount of uncertainty at how you fit the pieces together and how you date things.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  340. @songbird
    @Mr. Hack


    A caste of thousands dancing and singing in synchronized fashion around a plot of boy/girl unrequited love for two hours or more, is just…a bit too much for me.
     
    There is an exotic quality which verges on the alien. I must admit that I find it incomprehensible how there is a market for such films, even if in a very abstract way I can understand that being lighthearted (ie. in this case singing and dancing) has an appeal (though I personally don't like singing and dancing.). But many films don't have that and are shorter.

    I sometimes get a similar sense of the alien while watching mainland Chinese movies. It is not every time, but sometimes, I feel like they just have too many characters, or too many or too much onscreen at the same time.

    I can't help but suspect that it is somehow related, despite there being fairly hard geographic and historical divisions between the two places. Like something to do with a long history of cities, or communism/socialism.

    You need to look for somebody a bit more immersed in the culture to be able to decipher the vagaries and nuances of this sort of thing.

     

    Well, Thulean is on extended hiatus and you have cunningly ducked my attempts to assign part of his duties to you, incorporating it under your appreciation of cinema.

    I’d much rather listen to you tell us more about your own personal experience of seeing people being shipped to “work camps”.
     
    Grammatically, I suppose I should have said "former", but more dramatic language does appeal to me.

    I was talking about kids having a school field trip to a concentration camp. "Work camp" generally being the label given to the camps local to Germany, where deaths were mainly due to disease.

    I remember the name of the place, but don't want to be too specific.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    Well, Thulean is on extended hiatus and you have cunningly ducked my attempts to assign part of his duties to you, incorporating it under your appreciation of cinema.

    I don’t see how I’ve “cunningly” managed to duck your attempts to get me to watch a long, probably boring bollywood film, especially as both of our general opinions about this sort of faire dovetail quite closely? Besides, I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes (Thulean?) if he’s already shown promise in reviewing this sort of thing.

    I think that perhaps you’re a bit more cuning than I am in ducking a fuller explanation about your own experience(s) viewing German children visit a “work camp” in Germany? You see, I have a personal interest in this sort of thing because my own family lived in one of these places for a few years before I was born, and have heard some stories about their experiences…

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Mr. Hack


    I don’t see how I’ve “cunningly” managed to duck your attempts to get me to watch a long, probably boring bollywood film
     
    If you don't mind my asking, what is the last foreign film (non-Ukrainian) you have watched? Or how long has it been since you have seen one?

    I think the last one I saw was a Russian one Silver Skates (2020). I thought it was too feminist. Definitely felt like it was made for teenage girls, whereas I think they could have made it a better film by cutting the girl power stuff out. Not strictly to my morals either.

    Last one I saw that I thought was worth watching was the newer Godzilla movie.

    A few other ones that I saw over the past half year or so that I thought had some interesting aspect but were flawed:
    Miss Granny (Korean)
    Bad Genius (Thai)
    Hello, Ghost! (Taiwan remake)

    I think that perhaps you’re a bit more cuning than I am in ducking a fuller explanation about your own experience(s) viewing German children visit a “work camp” in Germany?
     
    Some of the specific, personal details would be too identifying, and stripping those, there is not much to tell.

    There wasn't much left to the place. The main building was new, and I don't even know whether any of the old ones were really intact.
    I recall a few low brick walls, which I think were from the barracks, but they were not roofed, or possible to enter.

    Most of it was really narrative (an old film) and art exhibit (I though rather abstract statues - Holocaust art is I am afraid never good). And some large plaque with the names of the people who died there inscribed. I do not recall any artifacts, and believe there were none.

    The guy giving the tour was an obvious homo. The teacher asked him some leading question, and he said the locals, were not happy with him telling the story of the camp. He seemed to feel self-valorized in his role. The film was rather disgustingly graphic and might have had something to do with gays with syphilis in it. (We could not figure out what that part was meant to be, not even the homo)

    There was a modern prison nearby. I think I was more impressed visiting some old civil war forts, which don't have much left to them either.

    But I think there is a sort of logistical idea to keeping it open. It is for bringing the school kids of the region to it, even though there really isn't anything to see there.

    I might have liked to see Stalag Luft III (from the Great Escape and the Wooden Horse), but there is no trace of it left. Though I guess there is still Colditz.

    Replies: @John Johnson, @Mr. Hack

  341. @Mr. XYZ
    @AP

    How would you rate Kamala on Ukraine? The same as Biden?

    I wonder if Kamala, being from liberal California, might be especially repulsed by Putin's LGBTQ+ phobia.

    Replies: @AP

    Kamala’s National Security Advisor is more of an hawk against Russia than is Biden’s Sullivan.

    https://www.kyivpost.com/analysis/36313

    I think that Kamala, like Vance, is mostly a cynical opportunist who doesn’t hold strong beliefs.

    • Replies: @Greasy William
    @AP

    I think that Vance can behave in a cynical fashion but is actually fairly principled at his core. As someone who is part of the same internet subculture that he is, I think that Vance (and Thiel, for that matter) genuinely do believe the whole "Russia only invaded because NATO provoked them" line.

    They are in for a very rude awakening in a few months

    , @Mr. XYZ
    @AP

    I still think that she might be more personally offended by Putin's culture wars and toxic masculinity than Biden himself was.

    Good point about her NSA apparently being a Russia hawk!

  342. @Beckow
    @John Johnson


    Russia is justified in killing Ukrainians because...
     
    What in your view justifies the killing of Ukies by the West? Is it ok to kill hundreds of thousands for the slight geo-political advantage of having NATO in Ukraine and wave missiles in Russia's face?

    What justifies the Western blase attitude to killing all these Ukies? And Palestinians? Or Iraqis, Serbs, Syrians and many more previously? Do you lack any humanity and decency? There is always a high price to pay so you have that to look forward to.

    The Western degeneracy is a separate issue that shouldn't impact on the war, you need to deal with it at home and so do Russians and Ukies.

    Replies: @John Johnson

    Russia is justified in killing Ukrainians because…

    What in your view justifies the killing of Ukies by the West? Is it ok to kill hundreds of thousands for the slight geo-political advantage of having NATO in Ukraine and wave missiles in Russia’s face?

    I don’t support the killing of Ukrainians.

    I was against this war from day one. In fact I was against it when Putin was still claiming it was a training exercise.

    I’m not sure how many Ukrainians have been killed but if Putin did not launch the war then tens of thousands of Orthodox Slavs on both sides would still be alive.

    I think death is the ultimate winner along with the US military industrial complex.

    What justifies the Western blase attitude to killing all these Ukies? And Palestinians? Or Iraqis, Serbs, Syrians and many more previously? Do you lack any humanity and decency?

    I agree with the UN on both Ukraine and Israel.

    The UN believes that both invasions are unjustified. So you disagree with the UN 143-5 vote that the Russian invasion is unjust?

    I’ve supported every UN vote on Israel in the last 10 years. So maybe take my positions individually instead of assuming I represent some generic all-American position. You and others here that take offense to dissenting views automatically assume they are somehow aggregated.

    The Western degeneracy is a separate issue that shouldn’t impact on the war, you need to deal with it at home and so do Russians and Ukies.

    I don’t support Western degeneracy and I’ve long taken the position that siding with a mass murdering dwarf is worse than degenerate culture. You can choose to not be part of a degenerate culture while you can’t choose to bring back someone that was killed in Putin’s invasion.

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @John Johnson


    ...I was against this war from day one.
     
    What day would that be? When Kiev started to bomb its Donbas citizens in 2014? Or earlier when NATO in 2008 officially declared that they are moving to Ukraine? NATO repeated it every year since - 17 times. Do you think they were only kidding?

    The war started in 2014, where you against it then? Or did you wait until 2022? UN doesn't believe anything, UN Assembly is a discussion club, the only decisions that matter are made by the Security Council. There is no official UN position on Ukraine or Israel.


    take my positions individually instead of assuming I represent some generic all-American position. ...they are somehow aggregated.
     
    That's a fair point and all of us do it because it is easier to aggregate. But if you get to cherrypick what you agree with it becomes very academic. If your positions are not taken seriously at home, why should outsiders listen to you? It may not be fair or clean, but to large extent you own the American missteps - from bombing Serbia and Iraq to having a genocidial fanatic speak to applause in your Congress yesterday. How can anyone take the US positions now seriously? You are tagged with all of it whether you agree or not...

    Replies: @John Johnson

  343. @AP
    @Mr. XYZ

    Kamala’s National Security Advisor is more of an hawk against Russia than is Biden’s Sullivan.

    https://www.kyivpost.com/analysis/36313

    I think that Kamala, like Vance, is mostly a cynical opportunist who doesn’t hold strong beliefs.

    Replies: @Greasy William, @Mr. XYZ

    I think that Vance can behave in a cynical fashion but is actually fairly principled at his core. As someone who is part of the same internet subculture that he is, I think that Vance (and Thiel, for that matter) genuinely do believe the whole “Russia only invaded because NATO provoked them” line.

    They are in for a very rude awakening in a few months

  344. Anon[419] • Disclaimer says:

    Dude, you can simply click on the citations/references to find the sources.

    Example:

    Britain isn’t a shithole country – well, it sort of is becoming one, thanks to all the Negroes and Mohammedans it is importing, but it’s not there yet… Leaving because your own country is a shithole country is something that is more specific to Negroes.

    https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Anatoly_Karlin#White_supremacism_and_racism
    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/sweden-no/#comment-2344221

    Anatoly Karlin was writing racist and white supremacist comments like this up to 2022.

  345. @Mr. Hack
    @songbird


    Well, Thulean is on extended hiatus and you have cunningly ducked my attempts to assign part of his duties to you, incorporating it under your appreciation of cinema.
     
    I don't see how I've "cunningly" managed to duck your attempts to get me to watch a long, probably boring bollywood film, especially as both of our general opinions about this sort of faire dovetail quite closely? Besides, I don't want to step on anybody's toes (Thulean?) if he's already shown promise in reviewing this sort of thing.

    I think that perhaps you're a bit more cuning than I am in ducking a fuller explanation about your own experience(s) viewing German children visit a "work camp" in Germany? You see, I have a personal interest in this sort of thing because my own family lived in one of these places for a few years before I was born, and have heard some stories about their experiences...

    Replies: @songbird

    I don’t see how I’ve “cunningly” managed to duck your attempts to get me to watch a long, probably boring bollywood film

    If you don’t mind my asking, what is the last foreign film (non-Ukrainian) you have watched? Or how long has it been since you have seen one?

    I think the last one I saw was a Russian one Silver Skates (2020). I thought it was too feminist. Definitely felt like it was made for teenage girls, whereas I think they could have made it a better film by cutting the girl power stuff out. Not strictly to my morals either.

    Last one I saw that I thought was worth watching was the newer Godzilla movie.

    [MORE]

    A few other ones that I saw over the past half year or so that I thought had some interesting aspect but were flawed:
    Miss Granny (Korean)
    Bad Genius (Thai)
    Hello, Ghost! (Taiwan remake)

    I think that perhaps you’re a bit more cuning than I am in ducking a fuller explanation about your own experience(s) viewing German children visit a “work camp” in Germany?

    Some of the specific, personal details would be too identifying, and stripping those, there is not much to tell.

    There wasn’t much left to the place. The main building was new, and I don’t even know whether any of the old ones were really intact.
    I recall a few low brick walls, which I think were from the barracks, but they were not roofed, or possible to enter.

    Most of it was really narrative (an old film) and art exhibit (I though rather abstract statues – Holocaust art is I am afraid never good). And some large plaque with the names of the people who died there inscribed. I do not recall any artifacts, and believe there were none.

    The guy giving the tour was an obvious homo. The teacher asked him some leading question, and he said the locals, were not happy with him telling the story of the camp. He seemed to feel self-valorized in his role. The film was rather disgustingly graphic and might have had something to do with gays with syphilis in it. (We could not figure out what that part was meant to be, not even the homo)

    There was a modern prison nearby. I think I was more impressed visiting some old civil war forts, which don’t have much left to them either.

    But I think there is a sort of logistical idea to keeping it open. It is for bringing the school kids of the region to it, even though there really isn’t anything to see there.

    I might have liked to see Stalag Luft III (from the Great Escape and the Wooden Horse), but there is no trace of it left. Though I guess there is still Colditz.

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @songbird

    I toured a US attack submarine and they had a copy of Das Boot. It really cracked me up to imagine them watching Das Boot while underwater.

    I prefer a lot of the foreign war films. The pre-60s American military movies are too corny.

    Come and See is also underrated. Even most historians don't realize how Belarus was devastated during the war. The wanton killing and ransacking in the movie happened all over the country.

    Belarus is kind of the unknown country of WW2.

    It's also largely unknown that Belarus heavily depended on Jews to manage the capital. Minsk was actually more than half Jewish in 1939. They were more dependent on Jewish skilled labor than Poland.

    Replies: @songbird

    , @Mr. Hack
    @songbird


    If you don’t mind my asking, what is the last foreign film (non-Ukrainian) you have watched? Or how long has it been since you have seen one?
     
    Well, lately I've been watching some British noir movies through YouTube. Seems like youtube has been adding a lot of such faire, mostly non-descript IMHO. The only two that I can recommend are spy yarns that I think are just fine. "Candlelight in Algeria" features James Mason, a perennial favorite player of mine. A fine story, great acting, high quality photography, what's not to like?

    https://youtu.be/WUTBQmJlzCo

    The other choice "Storm Over Lisbon" (American and not British), although not including any real superstars from the era does have an interesting plot and includes shots of old Portugal, nightclubs, cityscapes etc; a real feast for the eyes, oh and a great musical score too. If you like the famous film "Casablanca" (and who doesn't?), you'll probably enjoy watching this one too:

    https://c8.alamy.com/comp/EFBETC/movie-poster-storm-over-lisbon-1944-EFBETC.jpg

    The real undisputed connoisseur of film at this blogsite is undoubtedly Dmitry. He used his time wisely during the pandemic and was feverishly building up his own private library, including many Criterion collection productions. He used to share his new additions here quite frequently, don't think that he's done so in quite a while?........

  346. @Beckow
    @AP

    You are stuck on your fake data and there is no way to help you. I don't know what US counts as manufacturing, but given the other statistics US produces it is probably everything from offloading ships to software upgrades and flipping houses. It is often fake and heavily exaggerated by high costs...US is not a mfg power.

    West is having problems producing something as basic as artillery shells - they are scrounging the world for 1970's discarded shells. It cost US $150 million to make a war plane - that's where your inflated 'numbers' come from.

    Get serious and stop dreaming and distracting:
    - is Ukraine winning the war?
    - how many NATO troops came to fight Russia? how many will in the future?
    - is losing 20% of territory considered a victory? since when?

    Pompeo is a paid moron who pushes for more wars. He himself won't go and he is not sending young US men, not even Euros yet - but the Ukies are dying while Pompeo talks and talks. You have to be an idiot to sign up for that. But the Ukies did...

    Replies: @QCIC, @Mikhail, @AP

    The US still manufactures a lot of products, though many of the parts are foreign made. It seems that Russian manufacturing production is still modest, though increasing as they rebuild industries which were lost in the collapse of the USSR.

    Probably 25% of US manufacturing is very high end equipment which in many cases is not visible to the average person. Airliners, business jets and helicopters are notable exceptions which are visible.

    Russia has an economy based on resource extraction, though with a broad manufacturing sector as well. In the past 10-15 years Russia made great strides in agricultural production. The next 10 years may show similar gains in the manufacturing sectors, in large part due to the Western sanctions.

  347. As someone who is part of the same internet subculture that he is, I think that Vance (and Thiel, for that matter) genuinely do believe the whole “Russia only invaded because NATO provoked them” line.

    He wants to believe it as an excuse to cut off funding.

    I guarantee that in a debate he would fumble the facts and show everyone that he only half-assed studied what happened in 2014.

    Libertarians like Vance are extremely predictable. They will choose to not support funding first and then try to justify that decision…..poorly. They are used to talking out of their assholes and aren’t used to a serious fact-based discussion. This also results from watching too much Fox. They just assume that everything they heard from non-liberal sources must be true or at least half-true.

    His beliefs are entirely relative to GOP culture. Just look at how much time he spends on abortion. How is it “America First” to spend so much time on an issue that doesn’t affect most people and certainly not most Whites? Of course he doesn’t have the balls to discuss the racial breakdown of abortions.

    Vance’s beliefs are relative to whatever the GOP tells him. If the GOP had pushed for Ukraine aid and it was opposed by Democrats then he would completely support it.

    This type of politician is very easy for someone like Trump to manipulate. It will be just like Johnson where “big spending” is completely fine if Trump yanks on his leash.

    Vance is really a poor pick. He should have picked someone that draws independents. A red meat MAGA pick is a waste.

  348. @AP
    @Mr. XYZ

    Kamala’s National Security Advisor is more of an hawk against Russia than is Biden’s Sullivan.

    https://www.kyivpost.com/analysis/36313

    I think that Kamala, like Vance, is mostly a cynical opportunist who doesn’t hold strong beliefs.

    Replies: @Greasy William, @Mr. XYZ

    I still think that she might be more personally offended by Putin’s culture wars and toxic masculinity than Biden himself was.

    Good point about her NSA apparently being a Russia hawk!

  349. Mayor Nobby Clark censured at extraordinary Invercargill City Council meeting
    6:20 pm on 26 July 2024

    Invercargill mayor Nobby Clark will be censured for a second time this year after he was found to have breached the council’s Code of Conduct multiple times.

    Two councillors complained after an interview where the mayor defended the previous times he had used the N-word at events, again repeating the slur as well as using homophobic slurs.

    Invercargill city councillors voted to formally censure the mayor and ask him to make a sincere public verbal apology, during an extraordinary meeting this afternoon.

    Councillors also voted to review the outcomes of the resolutions in their October council meeting.

    It was an emotional meeting with a lot of frustration and disappointment at what councillors described as a pattern of behaviour. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/523231/mayor-nobby-clark-censured-at-extraordinary-invercargill-city-council-meeting

  350. @songbird
    @Mr. Hack


    I don’t see how I’ve “cunningly” managed to duck your attempts to get me to watch a long, probably boring bollywood film
     
    If you don't mind my asking, what is the last foreign film (non-Ukrainian) you have watched? Or how long has it been since you have seen one?

    I think the last one I saw was a Russian one Silver Skates (2020). I thought it was too feminist. Definitely felt like it was made for teenage girls, whereas I think they could have made it a better film by cutting the girl power stuff out. Not strictly to my morals either.

    Last one I saw that I thought was worth watching was the newer Godzilla movie.

    A few other ones that I saw over the past half year or so that I thought had some interesting aspect but were flawed:
    Miss Granny (Korean)
    Bad Genius (Thai)
    Hello, Ghost! (Taiwan remake)

    I think that perhaps you’re a bit more cuning than I am in ducking a fuller explanation about your own experience(s) viewing German children visit a “work camp” in Germany?
     
    Some of the specific, personal details would be too identifying, and stripping those, there is not much to tell.

    There wasn't much left to the place. The main building was new, and I don't even know whether any of the old ones were really intact.
    I recall a few low brick walls, which I think were from the barracks, but they were not roofed, or possible to enter.

    Most of it was really narrative (an old film) and art exhibit (I though rather abstract statues - Holocaust art is I am afraid never good). And some large plaque with the names of the people who died there inscribed. I do not recall any artifacts, and believe there were none.

    The guy giving the tour was an obvious homo. The teacher asked him some leading question, and he said the locals, were not happy with him telling the story of the camp. He seemed to feel self-valorized in his role. The film was rather disgustingly graphic and might have had something to do with gays with syphilis in it. (We could not figure out what that part was meant to be, not even the homo)

    There was a modern prison nearby. I think I was more impressed visiting some old civil war forts, which don't have much left to them either.

    But I think there is a sort of logistical idea to keeping it open. It is for bringing the school kids of the region to it, even though there really isn't anything to see there.

    I might have liked to see Stalag Luft III (from the Great Escape and the Wooden Horse), but there is no trace of it left. Though I guess there is still Colditz.

    Replies: @John Johnson, @Mr. Hack

    I toured a US attack submarine and they had a copy of Das Boot. It really cracked me up to imagine them watching Das Boot while underwater.

    I prefer a lot of the foreign war films. The pre-60s American military movies are too corny.

    Come and See is also underrated. Even most historians don’t realize how Belarus was devastated during the war. The wanton killing and ransacking in the movie happened all over the country.

    Belarus is kind of the unknown country of WW2.

    It’s also largely unknown that Belarus heavily depended on Jews to manage the capital. Minsk was actually more than half Jewish in 1939. They were more dependent on Jewish skilled labor than Poland.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @John Johnson


    I toured a US attack submarine and they had a copy of Das Boot.
     
    Seems to be especially well-regarded among submariners, but it is not a cheerful film. I myself did not enjoy it

    The pre-60s American military movies are too corny.
     
    Hollywood made so many WW2 films that I believe I never heard of most of them, though I think that even these forgotten ones had a lot of resources put into them, to do explosions and stuff, but maybe they had a lot of surplus tanks, etc.

    I find it difficult to watch nearly any WW2 movie because many of them seem to be a low kind of propaganda. At their best, a lot of the German ones seem to be derivative of All Quiet on the Western Front, which is not a film that really needed to be remade, IMO. Meanwhile, Hollywood is so taken with the theme of evil Germans that it seems to crossover into WWI films.

    I don't think I have actually ever seen an EE one, but I have seen a few Chinese ones. What I find interesting is that they sometimes have a strain of humor in them.

    Replies: @John Johnson

  351. @Mr. Hack
    @Mikhail

    Did I miss something? Has Russia finally taken Kharkiv?

    Replies: @John Johnson, @Mikhail

    Idiots like yourself don’t understand attrition over taking land and losing a lot of lives in the process. The latter pertaining to the Kiev regime’s much vaunted offensive that flopped. Similar situations occurred when earlier taking positions in Kherson and Kharkov, in addition to its meat grinder fatalities when trying to defend Bakhmut and Avdeyevka.

    Compared to 2/24/22, the Russian military and economy have improved with the Kiev regime’s going in the exact opposite direction.

    Figures you attract the likes of an anonymously sick moron who expresses glee when a certain ethnic group is killed while falsely suggesting a moral superiority, as he supports the NATO proxy war to the last Ukrainian.

  352. @Mr. Hack
    @Mikhail

    Russia bombed out Mariupol (and over 100,000 civilians there too), why not Kharkiv?

    https://www.reviewjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/16469862_web1_web_rmz-may18.jpg

    Replies: @Mikhail

    Russia defeated the neo-Nazi Kiev regime forces in Mariupol who used civilians/civilian infrastructure as human shields.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Mikhail


    Russia defeated the neo-Nazi Kiev regime forces in Mariupol who used civilians/civilian infrastructure as human shields.
     
    You didn't really think that I was going to let this stupid little canned, kremlin stooge, pat answer fly with no rebuttal? It's 100% a lie as is so much of the kremlin stooge propaganda that you try and float here and elsewhere. To get some idea of the numbers of civilians that died in Mariupol and who was responsible, I would suggest that you read the Human Rights Watch report on the devastation. The visuals that accompany the report are excellent, including maps etc:

    https://features.hrw.org/features/features/mariupol/images/report/map_5_hospitals_en.jpg

    Are you serious in insinuating that Russia's military wasn't involved in the vast destruction of Mariupol and its infrastructure that resulted in the deaths of 10,000's of civilians? Read this report, it's not too late Mickey, then go and privately kneel in your room by your bed and ask the Lord for his forgiveness to you for lying and trying to whitewash and coverup Russia's culpability in starting and continuing this horrific war. Wash all of the blood off of your hands Mickey, you'll feel much better. If you don't, your culpability will haunt you till your last day. :-(
    https://www.hrw.org/feature/russia-ukraine-war-mariupol/report

    Replies: @Mikhail, @Derer

  353. @Beckow
    @AP

    You are stuck on your fake data and there is no way to help you. I don't know what US counts as manufacturing, but given the other statistics US produces it is probably everything from offloading ships to software upgrades and flipping houses. It is often fake and heavily exaggerated by high costs...US is not a mfg power.

    West is having problems producing something as basic as artillery shells - they are scrounging the world for 1970's discarded shells. It cost US $150 million to make a war plane - that's where your inflated 'numbers' come from.

    Get serious and stop dreaming and distracting:
    - is Ukraine winning the war?
    - how many NATO troops came to fight Russia? how many will in the future?
    - is losing 20% of territory considered a victory? since when?

    Pompeo is a paid moron who pushes for more wars. He himself won't go and he is not sending young US men, not even Euros yet - but the Ukies are dying while Pompeo talks and talks. You have to be an idiot to sign up for that. But the Ukies did...

    Replies: @QCIC, @Mikhail, @AP

    Among other things, a good overview from Robert Barnes on what a new Trump administration might look like:

    Biden passes “torch” to Kamala w/ Robert Barnes (Live)

  354. @John Johnson
    @Beckow


    Russia is justified in killing Ukrainians because…

     

    What in your view justifies the killing of Ukies by the West? Is it ok to kill hundreds of thousands for the slight geo-political advantage of having NATO in Ukraine and wave missiles in Russia’s face?

    I don't support the killing of Ukrainians.

    I was against this war from day one. In fact I was against it when Putin was still claiming it was a training exercise.

    I'm not sure how many Ukrainians have been killed but if Putin did not launch the war then tens of thousands of Orthodox Slavs on both sides would still be alive.

    I think death is the ultimate winner along with the US military industrial complex.

    What justifies the Western blase attitude to killing all these Ukies? And Palestinians? Or Iraqis, Serbs, Syrians and many more previously? Do you lack any humanity and decency?

    I agree with the UN on both Ukraine and Israel.

    The UN believes that both invasions are unjustified. So you disagree with the UN 143-5 vote that the Russian invasion is unjust?

    I've supported every UN vote on Israel in the last 10 years. So maybe take my positions individually instead of assuming I represent some generic all-American position. You and others here that take offense to dissenting views automatically assume they are somehow aggregated.

    The Western degeneracy is a separate issue that shouldn’t impact on the war, you need to deal with it at home and so do Russians and Ukies.

    I don't support Western degeneracy and I've long taken the position that siding with a mass murdering dwarf is worse than degenerate culture. You can choose to not be part of a degenerate culture while you can't choose to bring back someone that was killed in Putin's invasion.

    Replies: @Beckow

    …I was against this war from day one.

    What day would that be? When Kiev started to bomb its Donbas citizens in 2014? Or earlier when NATO in 2008 officially declared that they are moving to Ukraine? NATO repeated it every year since – 17 times. Do you think they were only kidding?

    The war started in 2014, where you against it then? Or did you wait until 2022? UN doesn’t believe anything, UN Assembly is a discussion club, the only decisions that matter are made by the Security Council. There is no official UN position on Ukraine or Israel.

    take my positions individually instead of assuming I represent some generic all-American position. …they are somehow aggregated.

    That’s a fair point and all of us do it because it is easier to aggregate. But if you get to cherrypick what you agree with it becomes very academic. If your positions are not taken seriously at home, why should outsiders listen to you? It may not be fair or clean, but to large extent you own the American missteps – from bombing Serbia and Iraq to having a genocidial fanatic speak to applause in your Congress yesterday. How can anyone take the US positions now seriously? You are tagged with all of it whether you agree or not…

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @Beckow


    …I was against this war from day one.

     

    What day would that be? When Kiev started to bomb its Donbas citizens in 2014?

    So you are going back to claiming that Russia had to launch a war to protect ethnic Russians? By launching a bloody war to take the entire country?

    Should we again pull UN data that shows Slavs on both sides were more likely to drown than be killed in sectarian fighting?

    Casualties on both sides were less than 150 in the last year. For the entire year. That is what required launching an invasion which included launching cruise missiles at downtown Kiev? That's the required response to less than 150 casualties? Killing a few thousand people in a day?

    I fully supported an end to the less than 150 casualties and I also support swimming education to reduce drowning deaths.

    Or earlier when NATO in 2008 officially declared that they are moving to Ukraine? NATO repeated it every year since – 17 times. Do you think they were only kidding?

    Yes and they were later told that they weren't welcome and that France and Germany would vote against them.

    NATO is not a hierarchy and a single state can block the admission of a new member. France and Germany were opposed before the war and it was thought that Turkey would side with Russia if a vote actually occurred. However there was no plan for a vote as they didn't qualify after DPR/LPR declared themselves to be independent. You can't join with a contended border.

    Are you going to deny any of that?

    UN doesn’t believe anything, UN Assembly is a discussion club, the only decisions that matter are made by the Security Council.

    No they have beliefs in relation to human rights that are stated clearly:
    https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights

    So you disagree with the 143-5 vote then? For the record you are taking the side of Russia, Nicaragua, Belarus, North Korea, and Syria?

    But if you get to cherrypick what you agree with it becomes very academic.

    How am I cherry-picking? By being against Russia and Israel's invasions? That's the normal position outside of Unz. Most people in global polls do not support Russia or Israel. Which also parallels UN votes.

    You and others here clearly have a very hard time with dissenting views in relation to Ukraine. I can't count the number of times at Unz and especially in the Anglin thread where a response has been prefaced along the lines of "Since you support funding Israel" and then they can't provide a SINGLE quote to back their assumption. I have in fact pointed out numerous times that Putin is friends with Netanyahu and the Putin supporters who heavily overlap with Jew blamers whistle Dixie in response. They hilariously don't like talking about Putin's Jewish connections but will spend huge amounts of time on the Jewish backgrounds and connections of US politicians that are no longer in power. They talk about Nuland and Blinken as if they have supernatural Jew powers that transcend time and space.

    Replies: @Beckow

  355. S1 says:
    @Bashibuzuk
    Yeah, you’re right about Matthew 23-2, I completely forgot about it. Thanks for pointing that out. I think I will have to re-read the Gospels again. Nice catch here Greasy. 🙂

    Now, about the largely correct historical narrative in the Bible, I agree that if we don’t look too closely into details, the overall historical narrative is largely corespondent with what the official historical narrative is nowadays. But this might be due to three different reasons: 1) the Bible is more or less accurate historically because it recorded historical events as they happened 2) the Bible is more or less accurate historically because it has been put together post hoc by some literati who had a good grasp of the history of that region 3) the Bible does seem more or less historically accurate because we live in the realm of Abrahamic civilizations which imposed its historical narrative upon the people who have come to accept and self-identify with the Abrahamic religious traditions.

    I have recently taken a great interest in listening to YouTube videos of Israeli historians and archaeologists working in the field of the history of religion. And they clearly seem very sceptical of the older part of the Bible being written at the time of the events described in the text. For example, if you have some time to watch this presentation by Yonathan Adler, it’s quite interesting that according to him, from the pov of archeology, there aren’t any signs of Judaic religious activity that adheres to strict Biblical rules before the 3rd century BC.

    https://youtu.be/xnZahlZJIgc?si=1O-_-Tl_7vS5Ka_2

    Now, if you disregard his experimental work because you are a religious person, I’d understand and would respect that. For me a belief doesn’t have to be rational. But I would appreciate your perspective on that video if you have time to watch it.

    Replies: @S1, @Greasy William

    Dr Adler would seem to be an independent original thinker, a rare commodity in any age.

    I can’t help but notice how very carefully he parses his words on this sensitive subject…

    Adler goes to extraordinary lengths to separate ‘history’, which though it is unsaid is implied to be truth, from ‘stories’/’myths’, which also unsaid, though implied, might well ultimately be untruth.

    Adler then states the stories/myths ‘are far more important than history’, at it’s core a simple observable reality at present (but perhaps said also as a bit of a sop on his part to appease would be detractors?) while still being quite careful to not endorse the ‘stories’/’myths’ as being true.

    I suppose he feels compelled to be quite careful with his words so as to be able to maintain the funding for his work.

  356. @Beckow
    @John Johnson


    ...I was against this war from day one.
     
    What day would that be? When Kiev started to bomb its Donbas citizens in 2014? Or earlier when NATO in 2008 officially declared that they are moving to Ukraine? NATO repeated it every year since - 17 times. Do you think they were only kidding?

    The war started in 2014, where you against it then? Or did you wait until 2022? UN doesn't believe anything, UN Assembly is a discussion club, the only decisions that matter are made by the Security Council. There is no official UN position on Ukraine or Israel.


    take my positions individually instead of assuming I represent some generic all-American position. ...they are somehow aggregated.
     
    That's a fair point and all of us do it because it is easier to aggregate. But if you get to cherrypick what you agree with it becomes very academic. If your positions are not taken seriously at home, why should outsiders listen to you? It may not be fair or clean, but to large extent you own the American missteps - from bombing Serbia and Iraq to having a genocidial fanatic speak to applause in your Congress yesterday. How can anyone take the US positions now seriously? You are tagged with all of it whether you agree or not...

    Replies: @John Johnson

    …I was against this war from day one.

    What day would that be? When Kiev started to bomb its Donbas citizens in 2014?

    So you are going back to claiming that Russia had to launch a war to protect ethnic Russians? By launching a bloody war to take the entire country?

    Should we again pull UN data that shows Slavs on both sides were more likely to drown than be killed in sectarian fighting?

    Casualties on both sides were less than 150 in the last year. For the entire year. That is what required launching an invasion which included launching cruise missiles at downtown Kiev? That’s the required response to less than 150 casualties? Killing a few thousand people in a day?

    I fully supported an end to the less than 150 casualties and I also support swimming education to reduce drowning deaths.

    Or earlier when NATO in 2008 officially declared that they are moving to Ukraine? NATO repeated it every year since – 17 times. Do you think they were only kidding?

    Yes and they were later told that they weren’t welcome and that France and Germany would vote against them.

    NATO is not a hierarchy and a single state can block the admission of a new member. France and Germany were opposed before the war and it was thought that Turkey would side with Russia if a vote actually occurred. However there was no plan for a vote as they didn’t qualify after DPR/LPR declared themselves to be independent. You can’t join with a contended border.

    Are you going to deny any of that?

    UN doesn’t believe anything, UN Assembly is a discussion club, the only decisions that matter are made by the Security Council.

    No they have beliefs in relation to human rights that are stated clearly:
    https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights

    So you disagree with the 143-5 vote then? For the record you are taking the side of Russia, Nicaragua, Belarus, North Korea, and Syria?

    But if you get to cherrypick what you agree with it becomes very academic.

    How am I cherry-picking? By being against Russia and Israel’s invasions? That’s the normal position outside of Unz. Most people in global polls do not support Russia or Israel. Which also parallels UN votes.

    You and others here clearly have a very hard time with dissenting views in relation to Ukraine. I can’t count the number of times at Unz and especially in the Anglin thread where a response has been prefaced along the lines of “Since you support funding Israel” and then they can’t provide a SINGLE quote to back their assumption. I have in fact pointed out numerous times that Putin is friends with Netanyahu and the Putin supporters who heavily overlap with Jew blamers whistle Dixie in response. They hilariously don’t like talking about Putin’s Jewish connections but will spend huge amounts of time on the Jewish backgrounds and connections of US politicians that are no longer in power. They talk about Nuland and Blinken as if they have supernatural Jew powers that transcend time and space.

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @John Johnson

    Post-Maidan Kiev government killed 3,000 civilians in Donbas. Same as 911. US went to two (or more) wars for 3,000 killed, you would expect Russia to sit back? Would US? And the timing is entirely up to them...they waited until they were ready.

    Your swimming 'analogy' is very stupid and it reflects badly on your reasoning skills. How many people died in US in 2001 in car accidents? It is stupid to compare 911 to it.

    Your usual denial of NATO moving to Ukraine is desperate. For 17 years each year NATO officially declared that Ukraine will join NATO. Germany-France never officially objected, they just leaked wimpy statements like 'not yet'. It was a done deal before 2022, now it is impossible. Russia won that one.

    UN Assembly has no power - people talk and 'vote' to show sympathy. 40 countries representing half of the world's population abstained. That speaks for itself. US, UK, EU have no standing to critizise anyone after what they are doing in Israel...you can try to distance from it, but you are not the government. Everyone judges US based on the official policy. So that's that - a thief screaming 'catch him he is a thief!'...it is pointless and a bit silly.

    Russia has not supported Israel's bloody assault on Palis, not supplied arms, not provided cover in UN, etc...US has done all of those things. If you think that is the same you have basic comprehension problems.

    But I appreciate your position on Gaza-Isreal (see we can agree on some things).

    Replies: @John Johnson

  357. @Coconuts
    @songbird


    Maybe, there was even a certain logic (though crazy) for Ferguson, as presumably a lot of these migrants didn’t get a Western education.
     
    Yes, there was some logic to it. I am not sure how much it means to them, it must be quite weird teaching it. We studied those topics in the 1990s but the cultural connection to that period was still obviously stronger then.


    From Romania but an ethnic German or part German. AK did an episode with her, but that was a while back and I haven’t listened to it yet.
     
    Iirc she has mentioned Hungarian and Slavic ancestry as well, and she seems to speak fluent German. Often her pov on race or other culture war issues seems more typical of other Romanians or other Eastern Europeans, where there is less sensitivity around them than is usual in an Anglo context. She also has mentioned having a degree in Gender Studies and similar feminist subjects from a German university, then becoming disillusioned with it after working in HR for tech companies in London.

    I used to watch her fairly regularly a year or two ago, she used to have some good guests.

    For my own part, foreign movies comprise most of the newer movies that I watch. I appreciate how they generally have a more cohesive cultural background. But unfortunately, you have to go far for this now – not really Western Europe.
     
    I think you can find it still in EE films and dramas. The other weekend I saw an interesting Latvian nationalist war film on Amazon called 'Blizzard of Souls', based on the novel by this guy:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandrs_Gr%C4%ABns

    Often it feels like the contemporary British dramas have implausible instances of diverse casting (the usual thing is too many blacks and too few Indians and Asians). And even the ones with regional settings where irl diversity levels are very low, like the Shetland Islands.

    Haven’t tried to quantify it scientifically, but I suspect that current Germany’s cultural footprint is sadly less than the GDR’s was. (At least, if we count cohesive stuff.)
     
    It wouldn't be surprising. I recall watching a German Netflix series or two 5+ years ago, I can't think of anything since. I feel like the Goat Life film has much more obvious appeal than the one about the thefts in the school, that sounds similar to the story lines that sometimes used to come up in Swedish/Nordic police dramas on the same topic. It's like when trying to refute stereotypes becomes in itself stereotypical.

    Replies: @songbird

    I am not sure how much it means to them, it must be quite weird teaching it.

    I believe the modern moral narrative of the war requires the substrate of a romance towards the conflict, which requires a vicarious connection. (Which many boomers have and which I think a lot of the migrants would be missing.)

    [MORE]

    Iirc she has mentioned Hungarian and Slavic ancestry as well, and she seems to speak fluent German.

    her face does look a bit more EE than the average German. I did not know all that about her, but I think part of her views might come from this kind of German minority identity in EE, or part of her family’s history with it.

    I used to watch her fairly regularly a year or two ago, she used to have some good guests

    Have only listened to her about twice or so, but I thought that episode she did with Eric Kaufmann was interesting. Have been meaning to glance over his new book. From what I remember from that interview, I got the vague idea that it might be a bit more pessimistic than Whiteshift.

    The other weekend I saw an interesting Latvian nationalist war film on Amazon called ‘Blizzard of Souls’,

    I suppose it must be about the Latvian Rifles, which AK often evoked. I’m afraid I would probably have to review some history, to make sense of it. I am surprised LatW hasn’t mentioned it.

    Often it feels like the contemporary British dramas have implausible instances of diverse casting (the usual thing is too many blacks and too few Indians and Asians).

    I think the native diversity of the British Isles is much more compelling and neglected. Globalism just feels like they are trying to show different skin colors.

    What I seem to notice now is there seems to be a kind of lighter variant of the heavy diversity, where they make a historical drama and one of the minor characters is played by an Indian, and it is like they are vaguely trying to pass him off as a Frenchman, even though no Frenchman would have looked like that. It is at least a little more grounded. Though, it seems more minor than a trend. More often the Indians are playing major characters and are themselves overshadowed weirdly by blacks.

  358. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/18/german-living-standards-plummeted-after-russia-invaded-ukraine-say-economists

    The energy shock caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to the biggest collapse in German living standards since the second world war and a downturn in economic output comparable to the 2008 financial crisis, a stark assessment has found.

    In a joint paper designed to underline the depth of the economic crisis in Europe’s erstwhile powerhouse, two former economic advisers to the German government have said that real wages in the country slumped further in 2022 than in any year since 1950.

    A failure to protect German industry from the energy price spike may turn the 2020s into “a lost decade for Germany” and further fuel the rise of the populist far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the authors warned in a working paper published by the Forum for a New Economy.

    Naturally the authors don’t go into too much detail about the exact mechanics of the “energy shock”. Some things are best left unexplored.

  359. @AnonfromTN
    @Mikel


    Why has no Republican or impartial reader tried to change that page with the correct results?
     
    Try a simple experiment: edit any Wiki entry in “politically incorrect” direction and then watch how fast your edits disappear. Censors at work, no need to threaten anyone.

    How can I trust anything at all you say
     
    What on Earth makes you think that I want you to trust what I say? I don’t give a hoot.

    On a more general level, you (along with 80-85% of my fellow university faculty) are proof positive that the West is doomed. Exactly like schizophrenics: intelligent and reasonable most of the time, but when someone touches points where screws are loose the insanity comes gushing out. You guys fully deserve demented half-corpses and half-crazy dimwits as presidents: their quality just reflects the quality of “educated” residents. It is rightly said that every country has the government it deserves. I just feel sorry for the uneducated ones who retain common sense, but will be buried along with you under the debris.

    Thank goodness I have a place to run away to. I will do that as soon as I transfer the second half of my money off the sinking ship. Your Alzheimer-in-Chief tried to make it impossible, but he just made it more complicated, but still possible. Morons can never do anything right. Vote Kamala, speed up the demise.

    Replies: @Mikel, @YetAnotherAnon

    I agree with you about Wiki, I mean, it’s utterly compromised on anything political or with political implications.

    It’s ok on electrical laws, mechanics, chemistry or hydrogen electron levels.

  360. @John Johnson
    @songbird

    I toured a US attack submarine and they had a copy of Das Boot. It really cracked me up to imagine them watching Das Boot while underwater.

    I prefer a lot of the foreign war films. The pre-60s American military movies are too corny.

    Come and See is also underrated. Even most historians don't realize how Belarus was devastated during the war. The wanton killing and ransacking in the movie happened all over the country.

    Belarus is kind of the unknown country of WW2.

    It's also largely unknown that Belarus heavily depended on Jews to manage the capital. Minsk was actually more than half Jewish in 1939. They were more dependent on Jewish skilled labor than Poland.

    Replies: @songbird

    I toured a US attack submarine and they had a copy of Das Boot.

    Seems to be especially well-regarded among submariners, but it is not a cheerful film. I myself did not enjoy it

    The pre-60s American military movies are too corny.

    Hollywood made so many WW2 films that I believe I never heard of most of them, though I think that even these forgotten ones had a lot of resources put into them, to do explosions and stuff, but maybe they had a lot of surplus tanks, etc.

    I find it difficult to watch nearly any WW2 movie because many of them seem to be a low kind of propaganda. At their best, a lot of the German ones seem to be derivative of All Quiet on the Western Front, which is not a film that really needed to be remade, IMO. Meanwhile, Hollywood is so taken with the theme of evil Germans that it seems to crossover into WWI films.

    I don’t think I have actually ever seen an EE one, but I have seen a few Chinese ones. What I find interesting is that they sometimes have a strain of humor in them.

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @songbird

    I find it difficult to watch nearly any WW2 movie because many of them seem to be a low kind of propaganda. At their best, a lot of the German ones seem to be derivative of All Quiet on the Western Front, which is not a film that really needed to be remade, IMO.

    I enjoyed the remake but the original is still one of the harshest war movies ever made. The hands on the fence is still one of the most haunting scenes I have seen. I still prefer the book to both.

    Did you see Stalingrad 1993? Kind of hard to find and rather gory but it's probably the only movie that gives a good sense of what happened to the Germans in the last days.

    Dunkirk was a huge disappointment. I completely noticed the lack of blood and had not been told about the movie. Nolan supposedly had this theory that the audience won't notice a lack of blood like in older movies. I noticed right away but I did enjoy the dogfight scenes in the theater.

    I also really like Tora Tora Tora! One of the few movies that really works at showing the battle development.

    I don’t think I have actually ever seen an EE one, but I have seen a few Chinese ones. What I find interesting is that they sometimes have a strain of humor in them.

    The Chinese ones are bizarre for that reason. They'll make some weird joke before being blown into bits. Both the Chinese and Japanese like over the top war movies with a lot of slow motion scenes. I complain about Hollywood but the action movies from abroad are pretty bad. I do like some of the Japanese anime though. I would rather watch My Friend Totoro over most Hollywood movies.

    Replies: @songbird

  361. @Bashibuzuk
    @Dmitry


    the old gangsters’ songs
     
    I don’t think Ukrainians would want to claim that part of common heritage, it’s loaded with many complex identity issues.

    Fact is, the so called Russian Mafia was a cosmopolitan structure with a strong Jewish influence in its formative years. Now the highest ranking Vors are mainly Caucasian. I would think that it would be hard to pinpoint a period in time when the Blatnoy Realm was dominated by ethnic Slavs, let alone Russians, but of course they played an important role in the activities of the criminal underworld.

    When it comes to Blatnoy Chanson, I am a purist. My favourite interpreter is Arkasha Severnyi, this guy gave his life to his art at a time when Soviet Regime nearly eradicated the organized crime. It was borderline antisocial during Brezhnev years to publicly sing these songs:

    https://youtu.be/fBaTNdsK4Ag?si=iDyVzUwW0udphPyO

    https://youtu.be/iCSFPRaGXUQ?si=WjHSwS8YpEJupmu-

    Notice that both songs are related to the situation in the post Civil War period, mostly NEP. That was the time when the crime in Russia began to become organized. That was also the time when the word blat started to be widely used in the Russian language. It was directly linked with the abolition of the Pale of Settlement and the migration of the Jews from the Pale and into the Russian heartland from which they were mostly excluded for many centuries.

    Blatnoy Chanson is a direct byproduct of the cultural interaction between the artistic tastes of the Jewish underworld newcomers and the local Russian criminals. It’s a unique cultural phenomenon produced by unique circumstances.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    In the 1990s, the Russian mafia is mainly Russian and Caucasian.

    Sometimes there are event which could be like ethnic conflict in the mafia wars, but it’s not clear.

    For example, OPS “Uralmash” was Russian and they were often killing a lot of the Caucasian mafia groups, but these Caucasian mafia groups were also including many Russian and their first war was with a group with more Russian gangsters.* So, it’s not very clear and they killed many people from every nationality.

    with a strong Jewish influence

    Maybe, the best Hollywood film to describe the history of the mafia in Russia in the 1990s, is “Once upon a time in America”, about 1920s Jewish gangsters in New York, one who enters politics to become a senator in Washington DC.

    It’s like in Russia. Most of the children of the mafia leaders, are just like middle class families in Russia now, with externally normal businesses.

    They became some of regional cities’ normal and legitimate local business families, exiting the violent lifestyle, to be normal middle class families, who can be your neighbor.

    Just like every businessman in Russia, knows who are the mafia families, but it’s some kind of mystery if they are different than normal middle class people now.

    The children of the mafia leaders, are following sometimes mysterious behavior, which isn’t exactly like normal people.

    For example, the children of mafia leaders, seems enter a lot of their cousins into local elections for different political parties, sometimes against each other, without winning in the election.

    Typical mafia-origin families businesses nowadays, are like corporate events, party hosting, often reselling sneakers.

    One of the funny things, is having their YouTube channels with almost no views. Like here is a middle class lifestyle channel owned by a family who have almost no views.

    Maybe it is a kind of flex when you send young journalism students to the important national sports events, even if no-one watches your family’s YouTube channel.

    * Some of the victims of the massacres of the centers by OPS “Uralmash”

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Dmitry


    Maybe it is a kind of flex when you send young journalism students to the important national sports events, even if no-one watches your family’s YouTube channel.
     
    Maybe it is a kind of flex when you send young journalism students important national sports events, even if no-one watches your family’s YouTube channel.
    , @Dmitry
    @Dmitry


    Typical mafia-origin families businesses nowadays, are like corporate events, party hosting, often reselling sneakers.

    One of the funny things, is having their YouTube channels with almost no views. Like here is a middle class lifestyle channel owned by a family who have almost no views.

    Maybe it is a kind of flex when you send young journalism students to the important national sports events, even if no-one watches your family’s YouTube channel.
     

    That example are doing stereotypical business of the families of the 1990s leaders as well, the business of renting conference halls for business events. .

    The families follow the stereotypes, as they like to be the intermediary between the local business community, nowadays fortunately in a more supportive and helpful role than in the 1990s.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    , @AP
    @Dmitry

    In the early 90s-mid 90s I studied at university alongside various Russians who were sent to the USA. There were two types, separated by a large cultural gulf: kids of Soviet-era elite families, and kids of "New Russians" (this was the term used - it's a euphemism for gangsters, essentially).

    The difference in age was only a couple of years (many of the Soviet-era elite students were in grad school). The two groups did not mix, the former held the latter in contempt. I was friendly with both groups. The kids of New Russians were richer, but engaged in crimes such as shoplifting (pizdyt) for sport. They used curse words all the time, while the ones who came from Soviet-era elite families almost never did, and never did in mixed company. When Rostropovich performed on a tour nearby in the mid-90s, the Soviet-era kids managed to get him to come to a party at a sponsor's house (where despite his age he propositioned one of our friends). The New Russian kids preferred to listen to Sector Gaza or metal music.

    The New Russian kids would do stuff like buy cars in cash, drive with no license or insurance, then just leave the car with keys in some parking lot when they returned to Russia, Georgia, etc. One guy was thrown out of the university dorm because he got caught shooting bottles out of his window with a pistol. Most didn't read, but one of the New Russian kids had a taste for Schopenhauer.

    I hadn't kept in touch with the New Russian kids. I heard that the most degenerate of the New Russian kids became a diplomat in Africa. Others got medical degrees, or work in pharma, and have respectable adult lives in the West.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  362. Have not been watching the Olympics at all, but I have heard rumors and seen a few clips:

    -A tranny carrying the torch.
    -A (different?) tranny taking center stage at the opening and dancing
    -blacks dancing at the opening, accompanied by French band
    -a replica of Marie Antoinette’s severed head

    (As an aside: I also saw an American commerical, in which black athletes seemed to be disproportionately represented and celebrated)

    • Replies: @songbird
    @songbird

    Apparently, it was even much worse than I thought.

    And they recreated The Last Supper but with trannies.
    https://youtu.be/ZcGAP40vEoM?si=Em1vPkgKbNf_BVdR

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Matra

  363. @songbird
    Have not been watching the Olympics at all, but I have heard rumors and seen a few clips:

    -A tranny carrying the torch.
    -A (different?) tranny taking center stage at the opening and dancing
    -blacks dancing at the opening, accompanied by French band
    -a replica of Marie Antoinette's severed head

    (As an aside: I also saw an American commerical, in which black athletes seemed to be disproportionately represented and celebrated)

    Replies: @songbird

    Apparently, it was even much worse than I thought.

    And they recreated The Last Supper but with trannies.

    [MORE]

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @songbird

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

    , @Matra
    @songbird

    NATO values



    https://twitter.com/Gottemoeller/status/864874129597640704/photo/1

    Replies: @Mikhail

  364. @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk

    In the 1990s, the Russian mafia is mainly Russian and Caucasian.

    Sometimes there are event which could be like ethnic conflict in the mafia wars, but it's not clear.

    For example, OPS "Uralmash" was Russian and they were often killing a lot of the Caucasian mafia groups, but these Caucasian mafia groups were also including many Russian and their first war was with a group with more Russian gangsters.* So, it's not very clear and they killed many people from every nationality.


    with a strong Jewish influence

     

    Maybe, the best Hollywood film to describe the history of the mafia in Russia in the 1990s, is "Once upon a time in America", about 1920s Jewish gangsters in New York, one who enters politics to become a senator in Washington DC.

    It's like in Russia. Most of the children of the mafia leaders, are just like middle class families in Russia now, with externally normal businesses.

    They became some of regional cities' normal and legitimate local business families, exiting the violent lifestyle, to be normal middle class families, who can be your neighbor.

    Just like every businessman in Russia, knows who are the mafia families, but it's some kind of mystery if they are different than normal middle class people now.

    The children of the mafia leaders, are following sometimes mysterious behavior, which isn't exactly like normal people.

    For example, the children of mafia leaders, seems enter a lot of their cousins into local elections for different political parties, sometimes against each other, without winning in the election.

    Typical mafia-origin families businesses nowadays, are like corporate events, party hosting, often reselling sneakers.

    One of the funny things, is having their YouTube channels with almost no views. Like here is a middle class lifestyle channel owned by a family who have almost no views.

    Maybe it is a kind of flex when you send young journalism students to the important national sports events, even if no-one watches your family's YouTube channel.

    -


    * Some of the victims of the massacres of the centers by OPS "Uralmash"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjbHP1uWMPw

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Dmitry, @AP

    Maybe it is a kind of flex when you send young journalism students to the important national sports events, even if no-one watches your family’s YouTube channel.

    Maybe it is a kind of flex when you send young journalism students important national sports events, even if no-one watches your family’s YouTube channel.

  365. @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk

    In the 1990s, the Russian mafia is mainly Russian and Caucasian.

    Sometimes there are event which could be like ethnic conflict in the mafia wars, but it's not clear.

    For example, OPS "Uralmash" was Russian and they were often killing a lot of the Caucasian mafia groups, but these Caucasian mafia groups were also including many Russian and their first war was with a group with more Russian gangsters.* So, it's not very clear and they killed many people from every nationality.


    with a strong Jewish influence

     

    Maybe, the best Hollywood film to describe the history of the mafia in Russia in the 1990s, is "Once upon a time in America", about 1920s Jewish gangsters in New York, one who enters politics to become a senator in Washington DC.

    It's like in Russia. Most of the children of the mafia leaders, are just like middle class families in Russia now, with externally normal businesses.

    They became some of regional cities' normal and legitimate local business families, exiting the violent lifestyle, to be normal middle class families, who can be your neighbor.

    Just like every businessman in Russia, knows who are the mafia families, but it's some kind of mystery if they are different than normal middle class people now.

    The children of the mafia leaders, are following sometimes mysterious behavior, which isn't exactly like normal people.

    For example, the children of mafia leaders, seems enter a lot of their cousins into local elections for different political parties, sometimes against each other, without winning in the election.

    Typical mafia-origin families businesses nowadays, are like corporate events, party hosting, often reselling sneakers.

    One of the funny things, is having their YouTube channels with almost no views. Like here is a middle class lifestyle channel owned by a family who have almost no views.

    Maybe it is a kind of flex when you send young journalism students to the important national sports events, even if no-one watches your family's YouTube channel.

    -


    * Some of the victims of the massacres of the centers by OPS "Uralmash"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjbHP1uWMPw

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Dmitry, @AP

    Typical mafia-origin families businesses nowadays, are like corporate events, party hosting, often reselling sneakers.

    One of the funny things, is having their YouTube channels with almost no views. Like here is a middle class lifestyle channel owned by a family who have almost no views.

    Maybe it is a kind of flex when you send young journalism students to the important national sports events, even if no-one watches your family’s YouTube channel.

    That example are doing stereotypical business of the families of the 1990s leaders as well, the business of renting conference halls for business events. .

    The families follow the stereotypes, as they like to be the intermediary between the local business community, nowadays fortunately in a more supportive and helpful role than in the 1990s.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Dmitry



    https://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/1580089814069948416

    William Gibson summarizes the results of the Mafia State evolution in one simple word: Klept.

    Replies: @AP

  366. @Mikel
    @AnonfromTN


    edit any Wiki entry in “politically incorrect” direction and then watch how fast your edits disappear
     
    I was watching the edit wars on politically correct topics on wikipedia 20 years ago, you don't need to explain to me how wikipedia works because I clearly know it much better than you. Besides, what you're doing is saying that the election results in Kentucky posted on wikipedia are false, which is as dumb as saying that if wikipedia says that the capital of Russia is Moscow, I should distrust that information.

    With such claims all you do is actually show why arguments of the type "election results in the US don't matter" are less than useless. Wrong problem, wrong analysis, wrong mindset altogether. You may need to believe that Putin/Maduro/Xi are more democratic leaders than the American ones for your own personal reasons but those of us who don't plan on escaping anywhere need to deal with the real issues that we have in the US and the West in general, not with the imaginary ones. Btw, with all its faults, that are open to see for everybody on the planet, the US has just shown that it still has self-correcting mechanisms in place and a visibly senile president could not perpetuate himself in power, no matter how much he wanted to. Could anyone in United Russia convince Putin to resign if he became senile and also decided to remain in power in that state?

    As even A123 (of all people) has had to explain to you, "they" couldn't prevent Trump from winning the elections in 2016. Focusing on the lizard people who steal the elections is a useless distraction from the real problem with the woke crowd who try to impose their destructive worldview everywhere they can. In fact, the elections are indeed rigged but in a much more subtle and complicated way than your lazy slogans depict. They are rigged because the leftists control the narrative in most of the places that matter: the MSM, big tech, academia and mass entertainment. This isn't even a new problem. People of my generation have lived with this our entire lives. The difference is that leftism (that used to be Communist, perhaps even worse) has now adopted the insidious woke form and censorship has suddenly become prevalent. Those are the real problems worth worrying about. "Don't bother voting because they will steal the election" is exactly what the woke want to hear us say and you're doing their job for free.

    Replies: @Derer, @Gerard1234

    Btw, with all its faults, that are open to see for everybody on the planet, the US has just shown that it still has self-correcting mechanisms in place and a visibly senile president could not perpetuate himself in power, no matter how much he wanted to. Could anyone in United Russia convince Putin to resign if he became senile and also decided to remain in power in that state?

    LOL – “Self-correcting”? He was already senile when he became President! Those who have half a billion dollars to give, including the worst Batman actor………decided they would not give it if he stayed on. No money, no President.

    That is more shitocracy than “self-correcting mechanism” in my view.

    If I remember correctly, he was only able to become President at all because one US oligarch FAKED his own candidacy so to split the votes of Biden’s Democratic rivals, and without this manipulation he would have been eliminated

    Any banana Republic can have a small elite decide who is the best figurehead. As in US, as in 1996 when the oligarchs and especially the Americans decided Yeltsin must win ahead of Zyuganov. Russian people, not shit-Batman should elect President.

    As the selection of Presidential candidate is supposed to go through some all-states public votes, it looks as if America is having Harris forced on them.

    Could anyone in United Russia convince Putin to resign if he became senile and also decided to remain in power in that state?

    That’s just ridiculous. Putin is highly capable, highly intelligent and successful President. 80%+ support. You can’t insinuate something based on an unreasonable hypothetical. Most of us think Putin is responsible enough, and patriotic enough to leave the position if his health becomes bad – but clearly he is healthy and very good at his job at this moment. Khrushchev was removed – does not indicate any meaningfully good “self-correcting mechanism” in my view though

    Oligarchs, many who would be angry at VVP as he has changed their life instantly after February 2022……have zero influence on the ability to manipulate people opinion, so of course the democracy in Russia is much purer than in America.

    And it angers me than some random cretins with zero knowledge of Russia as Vance, Trump, Sullivan etc are having influence on hugely important events . In the case of first 2 people, we are supposed to rely on these clueless idiots to conduct “pro-Russian policy”? The most important thing we can do is continue our SMO and non-military actions as if there was no US election occurring and treat it as the irrelevance and freakshow that it is,

    That is why I believe we should increase our pre-SMO demands. Not just NATO pre-1997 borders, but force a 24th or whatever is the latest Amendment to the Pindostan Constitution . Make completely illegal any individual or group allied to or supporting any foreign state to be a donor or lobby group to ANY US politician…..EXCEPT Israel and Cuba (because 1. the moaning about it would be too extreme 2. Florida Cubans) . Make commitment to end Communism in Cuba and to supporting Israel part of US Constitution – not because I agree , but because it defacto is part of the Constitution anyway.

    American diaspora subhuman, narcissists have disproportionate influence on foreign policy events of which they and general lazy american population have minimal knowledge of , but still talk alot about.

    The amendment would remove threat of Polish diaspora psychopaths and other anti-communist diaspora doing blood-libel against us. Jews can be loyal to Israel and the US – those who are rabid ,anti-Russian dickhead scum who are descendants of gangsters in Odessa and liberasts can’t have 3 loyalties. So the Amendment would help in that. Putin can cite the example of Irish Americans helping to fund the IRA to conduct terrorism or the slimeball Brzezinski from helping to setup Islamic terrorism based on anti-Russianism.

    With Muslim communities in America getting larger, forcing anti-Russian psychopaths who are Zionist to choose between their sick policies against Russia…. and their support for Israel, could bring tangible results for us. Selling it as an extremely pro-Israel and pro-Cuban Amendment would be the only way to get it through.

  367. Wow, this is pretty scary! I thought the air crews were more elite than this.

    [MORE]

  368. A123 says: • Website

    If you thought PLO Joe was bad, the understudy shows she is worse: (1)

    Kamala Harris wants to keep Hamas in power

    Vice President Kamala Harris has made it clear that she wants to protect Hamas in ways that essentially would keep the terrorist organization in power in Gaza and that she will continue President Joe Biden’s policies that embolden and empower terrorists.

    She then pivoted to shaming Israel. “What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating,” Harris said. “The images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third, or fourth time. We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering. And I will not be silent.”

    It is clear what the implications of Harris’s position are. She says this can end “in a way where Israel is secure” while demanding that Israel allow the genocidal terrorist organization that massacred 1,200 Israeli and American civilians to remain in power. She places the responsibility for the suffering of Gazans on Israel, not Hamas, which is why she is using their suffering to pressure Netanyahu into reaching a deal. Harris’s decision to shame Israel more than Hamas also helps give Hamas more leverage in hostage negotiations — you know, the hostages, including five remaining Americans, that Hamas took while massacring 1,200 civilians.

    Getting the Jihadist kidnappers to a fair cease fire was always going to be difficult. Has warmonger Harris’s anti-Semitism effectively ended peace negotiations? Signs point to, “Yes”.

    Genocidal Hamas leaders in Qatar and Iran see a potential ally in Harris. From the terrorist point of view, waiting for U.S. Presidential outcome is now worthwhile. All it costs is more martyrs among their expendable coreligionists.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/beltway-confidential/3100863/harris-wants-hamas-in-power/

    • Replies: @Derer
    @A123


    Has warmonger Harris’s anti-Semitism effectively ended peace negotiations?
     
    If Harris is viewed by the American public as being anti-Semitic...she will beat Trump in November.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

  369. AP says:
    @YetAnotherAnon
    @AP

    "Why do you think America is “uncompetitive” in consumer goods? America is the second largest exporter of consumer goods in the world, behind only China."

    None of them are going to Europe. Who's buying them?

    I can't remember the last time I bought something with "Made In USA" on it, probably 12-15 years ago. My last but one car was American, but that was in 2006, our latest is Korean.

    We used to buy US-made phones and laptops. No more.

    I used to see US medical and scientific kit a lot, but no more. All Chinese. Some does have American brand names, I admit.

    Same with computing stuff - where do HP and Dell make their kit these days? My newish HP laptop is from China.

    Replies: @AP

    “Why do you think America is “uncompetitive” in consumer goods? America is the second largest exporter of consumer goods in the world, behind only China.”

    None of them are going to Europe. Who’s buying them?

    Why are you writing stuff that is easily verified as false?

    There are more American-made cars being exported to Europe in 2022 than in any year prior to 2019:

    I can’t remember the last time I bought something with “Made In USA” on it, probably 12-15 years ago. My last but one car was American, but that was in 2006, our latest is Korean.

    A lot of German cars are made in American factories, and sent to Germany.

    America sends a lot of pharmaceuticals and medical equipment to Europe. I guess those aren’t consumer goods. Trinkets are best made in third world countries.

    I used to see US medical and scientific kit a lot, but no more. All Chinese.

    Again, easily verifiable false statement by you.

    https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2020/649387/EPRS_BRI(2020)649387_EN.pdf

    Same with computing stuff – where do HP and Dell make their kit these days? My newish HP laptop is from China.

    HP still has a factory in Indiana though they also have (many more) factories in China.

    Dell also still has factories in NC and Massachusetts.

  370. @songbird
    @Dmitry

    From the discussion with Coconuts:


    >Perhaps JBP autoplay lists were a part of that.

    Not really, as the machine learning is not working like that in a manual way.
     
    Was under the impression that their algorithm is closed and not open to scrutiny.

    There are certainly a lot of people that accuse it of bias. For instance, saying that subscribers have told them that they were somehow automatically unsubscribed, even though they like the creator.

    Another Google product, gemini, was clearly doing some weird things with image creation, making nearly all historical figures into blacks, depicting blacks when Euros were requested, etc.

    I don't really watch the normie content, but I suspect that there is some affirmative action involved in the promotion of it. Of course, it is hard to be scientific about it - as there are a lot of ways this AA could evolve. Technically, it could be off-site - involving other websites promoting videos , or involving the advertisers.

    But for example , there is Marques Brownlee, who does tech reviews. The Boston Globes tech writer is also a back guy, Hiawatha Bray. Maybe, they are both good enough, but, I don't think either would have the job but for AA.

    Netflix has a much smaller “corpus”, so their recommendations are less personalized as the corpus itself is more universal.
     
    I feel pretty disappointed with the way Netflix has evolved, technologically. The dream of it seemed to be that it could be leveraged to skip the costs of promotion and to target to niche audiences. To use scale and statistics to produce high quality stuff, but there is very little on it that I find engaging, except the odd foreign movie.

    A lot of their investments seem to have been in horrible things, like Adam Sandler movies, which they consider a success as long as a lot of people watch them.

    YouTube doubtlessly has better content, though some of it (movies) is subrosa (and legally questionable) and difficult to find.

    But obviously, the situation in the social science metrics like working conditions, life expectancy, housing condition are a lot higher today than 1970.
     
    I think the housing situation in Ireland is certainly worse. In America and many other places like Canada and New Zealand too. Maybe, that doesn't translate into higher costs everywhere, but if you want to live among Europeans seems like that would be harder in a lot of places. In Ireland, it is not even possible in the countryside anymore, to a large degree.

    Some working conditions may have improved from the elimination of those jobs. But working conditions have gotten worse in other ways. In the US, pensions are very rare today. As is job stability. Many workplaces have very unpleasant political ideology which manifests in a pretty personal way - stuff which was impossible in 1970.

    It’s the best living conditions in the West, combined with one of one of the more pessimistic cultural times in the West.
     
    a lot of the trends aren't encouraging. It does not seem clear that the migration problem will ever be put under control. I'm not sure it is even politically possible to talk about a better future for Europeans - the narrative space is taken up speaking about the grievances of other groups.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    housing situation in Ireland is certainly worse

    I’ve lived and worked in Republic of Ireland. If you walk around in the middle of the working day see a lot of Irish youth are half lazy people, waiting on the street smoking cannabis, wearing hoodies and talking to their friends. Often with free housing, maybe free food? Unemployed there are living like Ancient Greek aristocrats. Without risking to offend the country, it is not the stereotype of a hardworking native population.

    Also, the young people there are one of the world’s most lucky in terms of jobs. They can attain good jobs with relatively weak qualifications, which in Russia the top technical students are competing for almost unpaid jobs in startups, you can see people hired there to quite good jobs with very weak qualifications technically.

    if you want to live among Europeans

    It depends if you would think about the largest immigrant nationalities like Poles or Romanians as European or not. If you have a more liberal view and think of them as European populations, then it’s around 90% European. Maybe it’s changing in the last few years as more immigrants enter every year.

    a lot of people that accuse it of bias

    It’s a general problem of our time when people are using all this technology, they don’t understand how it works or really think about it.

    In the 1970s, people who use computers usually know how they are working.

    If people think today the Google engineers are sitting down watching videos and choosing which ones to recommend to people, manually. Especially, Google, is obsessed with automation.

    Marques Brownlee, who does tech reviews. The Boston Globes tech writer is also a back guy, Hiawatha Bray. Maybe, they are both good enough, but, I don’t think either would have the job but for AA

    I think he’s popular because he’s a confident presenter, which is the skill to be successful on YouTube.

    A a lot of unboxing and review videos on YouTube are made by African Americans, usually they don’t have many views. There is a very large layer of “failed” YouTube reviewers, or at least not very popular reviewers, only a small proportion are seeming like they are really successful there.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Dmitry


    If you walk around in the middle of the working day see a lot of Irish youth are half lazy people, waiting on the street smoking cannabis,
     
    this is stuff I never saw in my youth. Somehow, I don't think these ganja people feel like they have good prospects for family formation.

    Most of my relatives have moved away from Dublin. I fear for those who remain.

    It’s a general problem of our time when people are using all this technology, they don’t understand how it works or really think about it.
     
    We can't really know how it works, unless it is open source. We can only speculate based on observations, suspicions, and revelations about other sites, like "shadowbanning" on Twitter, which Musk has confirmed.

    We also know that there was a press campaign in 2018, which specifically brought up the algorithm, obviously lobbying to change it, as one can read in this story:
    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/sep/18/report-youtubes-alternative-influence-network-breeds-rightwing-radicalisation

    Molyneux, who was one of the targets of this campaign, had his channel terminated eventually. But there were many others.

    Some of these terminated accounts were pretty popular, and I find the idea that they were impossible to monetize on an individual basis very unlikely, unless we consider that there was some kind of organized cartel pressure to threaten YouTube over them.

    Many of these people have had their banking services terminated, over political pressure.

    Many will live broadcast on YouTube, like Ed Dutton, but immediately take down their videos afterward. Many have removed their old videos to be cautious.

    Anyway, if you have a suspicious mind (as I do), I think there is enough evidence to speculate that the JBP videos were there as some deradicalization campaign. It is not necessarily true, but it does make a certain kind of sense.

    If people think today the Google engineers are sitting down watching videos and choosing which ones to recommend to people, manually. Especially, Google, is obsessed with automation.
     
    any political filter would be quite easy to automate or outsource to NGOs. The subtitles are automatically generated, so the audio can pretty easily be run through a filter looking for controversial terms, which is exactly what the NSA does with telephone calls.

    Once someone is tagged, that would put their guests under a lot of scrutiny and those guests often have their own channels and guests of their own.

    I think he’s popular because he’s a confident presenter, which is the skill to be successful on YouTube.
     
    It's possible.

    But at a minimum, I think it is related to his guests. People like Musk are looking for positive PR, and are anxious to show they are not racist.

    I just try to make the comparison - maybe, it is not a good one - to Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut. He is probably not the best presenter or best-looking guy, but he is very technically knowledgeable. When he meets with Musk, I feel like it is because he has the background knowledge.

    It is not obvious to me that Brownlee is as knowledgeable. But maybe that is not the best comparison.

    Replies: @Torna atrás, @Dmitry

  371. AP says:
    @Beckow
    @AP

    You are stuck on your fake data and there is no way to help you. I don't know what US counts as manufacturing, but given the other statistics US produces it is probably everything from offloading ships to software upgrades and flipping houses. It is often fake and heavily exaggerated by high costs...US is not a mfg power.

    West is having problems producing something as basic as artillery shells - they are scrounging the world for 1970's discarded shells. It cost US $150 million to make a war plane - that's where your inflated 'numbers' come from.

    Get serious and stop dreaming and distracting:
    - is Ukraine winning the war?
    - how many NATO troops came to fight Russia? how many will in the future?
    - is losing 20% of territory considered a victory? since when?

    Pompeo is a paid moron who pushes for more wars. He himself won't go and he is not sending young US men, not even Euros yet - but the Ukies are dying while Pompeo talks and talks. You have to be an idiot to sign up for that. But the Ukies did...

    Replies: @QCIC, @Mikhail, @AP

    You are stuck on your fake data

    Because well-known liar Beckow claims something is “fake” does not make it so.

    I don’t know what US counts as manufacturing

    USA produces more steel and 12 times more cars than Russia does.

    Data provided by World Steel Association and The International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers.

    US is not a mfg power

    World’s second largest automobile producer.

    By far, the world’s largest aircraft producer. This is in number of aircraft, not their cost (in case you wanted to weasel out of this by claimng American planes are too expensive)

    https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/top-10-aircraft-producing-countries-in-the-world/

    In the world, only China manufactures more than does the USA, and nobody else comes close.

    Your lies are getting progressively more stupid. Sign of desperation?

    West is having problems producing something as basic as artillery shells – they are scrounging the world for 1970’s discarded shells

    You mean Russia begging North Korea for old artillery shells?

    Increasing artillery production is not a problem, if there is a will. And now there is.

    https://www.defenseone.com/business/2024/04/goal-100k-artillery-shells-month-sight-army-says/396047/

    It cost US $150 million to make a war plane – that’s where your inflated ‘numbers’ come from.

    Thanks for demonstrating that you are the only one who consistently cherry-picks here.

    The newest F-16s costs $63 million. Cheaper than Chinese jets.

    https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/27553-top-10-most-expensive-fighter-jets

    Get serious and stop dreaming and distracting:
    – is Ukraine winning the war?
    – is losing 20% of territory considered a victory? since when?

    Ukraine is preventing Russia from accomplishing its goals of regime change in Ukraine, demilitarization of Ukraine, conquest of Ukraine, etc. But it has not expelled Russia from Ukraine, either. So it’s a stalemate.

    Also, 10% was lost in 2014-2015. The invasion began in 2022.

    I’ll remind you that in January 1944 Germany still controlled large parts of the USSR, all of France, Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Norway. Much more than Russia has now.

    Was Germany winning the war in 1944?

    • LOL: Mikhail
    • Replies: @QCIC
    @AP

    The steel industry is a poor choice to compare the two economies since production of the metal is roughly the same for the USA and Russia while the USA has more than twice the population.

    An important concern for USA manufacturing is that loss of industries over time has contributed to the growth of the service industry as well as the FIRE economy. It seems that continual increases in American debt will eventually be unsustainable and having such a distorted economy will entail a greater risk of upheaval. Unfortunately, the government and other factors have made production more expensive in the US, so bringing industries with lower value-added back to the USA through tariffs raises prices.

    Another distortion in the system is that many qualified production people have fallen into the fentanyl and other traps. Combined with the baby boom peak there are probably fewer skilled workers here compared to previous decades. On the other hand, large numbers of low-skilled immigrants are employed in jobs directly related to the FIRE bubble. DIE intentionally pushes less-skilled people into jobs for which they are not qualified.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @A123, @Mikhail

    , @Beckow
    @AP

    ...and AP against demonstrates he is an idiot.

    Stalemate? Really? Preventing 'regime change' in Kiev? You have a wild imagination, the governments come and go, countries remain. Ukraine is a lot less of a country than it was in 2014 or 1991, or what it could have been. All else is noise that nobody will remember.

    Do you know anyone outside US who buys American-made cars? Tell us. Or clothes, electronics, appliances...US has lost its manufacturing dominance and its mfg shrunk. Even the planes have a huge number of foreign parts, as do processors, pharma...

    What is left are some building and agro machines (based on parts from China) and weapons...But hide in your fake 'numbers' if it makes you feel better. No serious person outside US sees US as a manufacturing powerhouse. Unless you count issuing 'virtual' currency as manufacturing.

    Replies: @QCIC, @AP

  372. @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    It’s a business, which is not just requiring just watch time (which can be seen like increasing the size of the billboard), but watch time on the content which the advertiser wants to be connected to (it can be seen like the background of the billboard).
     
    This sounds more credible, many Ads would seem incongruous with some of the Dissident Right content, given the general political and social environment.

    More mainstream content producers have had problems with advertising algorithms and different agencies which advise about the problem of disinformation:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILEMV0xKGh4

    The concept of 'adversarial content' is interesting here (at around 11 minutes). This is something in addition to what could be considered extreme or radical content.

    There seems to be a general question, if government agencies were concerned about online radicalisation and potentially extremist content, and they contacted a firm like Google about integrating counter-radicalisation measures into their terms of service, would Google refuse to collaborate on principle and instead trust it to the free market and the discretion of advertisers? (Who after all may be advised by expert bodies connected to and funded by government agencies).

    Replies: @Dmitry

    contacted a firm like Google about

    I don’t know about how those topics are. Maybe, they would have be working with the compliance team and it would be in the local area in Europe, so for EMEA in Dublin and it would be EU regulations which they mainly are following?

    Often, multinationals are having a little less oversight from the government, compared to smaller companies. They have better lawyers and some of these can afford even the EU penalties.

  373. @Dmitry
    @Dmitry


    Typical mafia-origin families businesses nowadays, are like corporate events, party hosting, often reselling sneakers.

    One of the funny things, is having their YouTube channels with almost no views. Like here is a middle class lifestyle channel owned by a family who have almost no views.

    Maybe it is a kind of flex when you send young journalism students to the important national sports events, even if no-one watches your family’s YouTube channel.
     

    That example are doing stereotypical business of the families of the 1990s leaders as well, the business of renting conference halls for business events. .

    The families follow the stereotypes, as they like to be the intermediary between the local business community, nowadays fortunately in a more supportive and helpful role than in the 1990s.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    [MORE]

    William Gibson summarizes the results of the Mafia State evolution in one simple word: Klept.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Bashibuzuk

    Such as Musk, Sacks, etc.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  374. @songbird
    @songbird

    Apparently, it was even much worse than I thought.

    And they recreated The Last Supper but with trannies.
    https://youtu.be/ZcGAP40vEoM?si=Em1vPkgKbNf_BVdR

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Matra

    • Thanks: songbird
  375. AP says:
    @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk

    In the 1990s, the Russian mafia is mainly Russian and Caucasian.

    Sometimes there are event which could be like ethnic conflict in the mafia wars, but it's not clear.

    For example, OPS "Uralmash" was Russian and they were often killing a lot of the Caucasian mafia groups, but these Caucasian mafia groups were also including many Russian and their first war was with a group with more Russian gangsters.* So, it's not very clear and they killed many people from every nationality.


    with a strong Jewish influence

     

    Maybe, the best Hollywood film to describe the history of the mafia in Russia in the 1990s, is "Once upon a time in America", about 1920s Jewish gangsters in New York, one who enters politics to become a senator in Washington DC.

    It's like in Russia. Most of the children of the mafia leaders, are just like middle class families in Russia now, with externally normal businesses.

    They became some of regional cities' normal and legitimate local business families, exiting the violent lifestyle, to be normal middle class families, who can be your neighbor.

    Just like every businessman in Russia, knows who are the mafia families, but it's some kind of mystery if they are different than normal middle class people now.

    The children of the mafia leaders, are following sometimes mysterious behavior, which isn't exactly like normal people.

    For example, the children of mafia leaders, seems enter a lot of their cousins into local elections for different political parties, sometimes against each other, without winning in the election.

    Typical mafia-origin families businesses nowadays, are like corporate events, party hosting, often reselling sneakers.

    One of the funny things, is having their YouTube channels with almost no views. Like here is a middle class lifestyle channel owned by a family who have almost no views.

    Maybe it is a kind of flex when you send young journalism students to the important national sports events, even if no-one watches your family's YouTube channel.

    -


    * Some of the victims of the massacres of the centers by OPS "Uralmash"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjbHP1uWMPw

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Dmitry, @AP

    In the early 90s-mid 90s I studied at university alongside various Russians who were sent to the USA. There were two types, separated by a large cultural gulf: kids of Soviet-era elite families, and kids of “New Russians” (this was the term used – it’s a euphemism for gangsters, essentially).

    [MORE]

    The difference in age was only a couple of years (many of the Soviet-era elite students were in grad school). The two groups did not mix, the former held the latter in contempt. I was friendly with both groups. The kids of New Russians were richer, but engaged in crimes such as shoplifting (pizdyt) for sport. They used curse words all the time, while the ones who came from Soviet-era elite families almost never did, and never did in mixed company. When Rostropovich performed on a tour nearby in the mid-90s, the Soviet-era kids managed to get him to come to a party at a sponsor’s house (where despite his age he propositioned one of our friends). The New Russian kids preferred to listen to Sector Gaza or metal music.

    The New Russian kids would do stuff like buy cars in cash, drive with no license or insurance, then just leave the car with keys in some parking lot when they returned to Russia, Georgia, etc. One guy was thrown out of the university dorm because he got caught shooting bottles out of his window with a pistol. Most didn’t read, but one of the New Russian kids had a taste for Schopenhauer.

    I hadn’t kept in touch with the New Russian kids. I heard that the most degenerate of the New Russian kids became a diplomat in Africa. Others got medical degrees, or work in pharma, and have respectable adult lives in the West.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @AP


    New Russians”
     

    Others got medical degrees, or work in pharma,
     
    I wouldn't say they are related to gangsters in the real sense, but if you mean in a wider sense, yes, a lot of wider areas of second world society behave like thieves, including the government.

    "New Russians" was euphemism for people who get money in the new capitalism. But in this case, if you call all the local elite "thieves", it is in a wider sense, they are not part of the criminal society from the legal point of view.

    The "brothers" in those years are killing thousands of people. But mostly they killing within their own criminal society, although sometimes there are stories of killing ordinary people for a box of sneakers.

    Normal business people from the legitimate society could usually avoid problems with the mafia, as long as they have some kind of popularity or friendships.

    There are still often cases when businessmen were being killed by the mafia, or hiring the mafia to kill their rivals. Some journalists say oligarchs were hiring the mafia to kill rivals and control the heavy industries, although it's maybe not a proven hypothesis exactly there were definitely unsolved deaths of many of the industrial workers. Russia just has a very large number of missing people.

    The most famous case of the killing of an industrial manager in Russia is Oleg Belonenko in 2000 which is actually still a mystery.

    There were also cases even of billlionaries/oligarchs' family being killed, like Vasily Anisimov's daughter was killed in 2000 which is probably the most famous case in Russia.

    Still, the vast majority of violence is related to the killing of other criminals.


    New Russian kids would do stuff like buy cars in cash, drive with no license or insurance, then just leave the car with keys

     

    That's normal behavior for many wealthy people in Russia, it's not related to gangster, but of the general impunity for wealthy people in second world countries. For wealthy people it's expected they can pay the police and escape from penalties. including traffic accidents. It's one of the areas which seems to getting worse and there are constant cases every year when they are killing people in traffic accidents without penalty.

    -

    Still, I wouldn't like to confuse too much the general upper middle class in the second world society and the children of the leaders of OPS "Uralmash".

    Replies: @AP

  376. @AP
    @Beckow


    You are stuck on your fake data
     
    Because well-known liar Beckow claims something is "fake" does not make it so.

    I don’t know what US counts as manufacturing
     
    USA produces more steel and 12 times more cars than Russia does.

    Data provided by World Steel Association and The International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers.


    US is not a mfg power
     
    World's second largest automobile producer.

    By far, the world's largest aircraft producer. This is in number of aircraft, not their cost (in case you wanted to weasel out of this by claimng American planes are too expensive)

    https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/top-10-aircraft-producing-countries-in-the-world/

    In the world, only China manufactures more than does the USA, and nobody else comes close.

    Your lies are getting progressively more stupid. Sign of desperation?


    West is having problems producing something as basic as artillery shells – they are scrounging the world for 1970’s discarded shells
     
    You mean Russia begging North Korea for old artillery shells?

    Increasing artillery production is not a problem, if there is a will. And now there is.

    https://www.defenseone.com/business/2024/04/goal-100k-artillery-shells-month-sight-army-says/396047/


    It cost US $150 million to make a war plane – that’s where your inflated ‘numbers’ come from.
     
    Thanks for demonstrating that you are the only one who consistently cherry-picks here.

    The newest F-16s costs $63 million. Cheaper than Chinese jets.

    https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/27553-top-10-most-expensive-fighter-jets


    Get serious and stop dreaming and distracting:
    – is Ukraine winning the war?
    – is losing 20% of territory considered a victory? since when?
     
    Ukraine is preventing Russia from accomplishing its goals of regime change in Ukraine, demilitarization of Ukraine, conquest of Ukraine, etc. But it has not expelled Russia from Ukraine, either. So it's a stalemate.

    Also, 10% was lost in 2014-2015. The invasion began in 2022.

    I'll remind you that in January 1944 Germany still controlled large parts of the USSR, all of France, Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Norway. Much more than Russia has now.

    Was Germany winning the war in 1944?

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/36/1944-01-01GerWW2BattlefrontAtlas.jpg/220px-1944-01-01GerWW2BattlefrontAtlas.jpg

    Replies: @QCIC, @Beckow

    The steel industry is a poor choice to compare the two economies since production of the metal is roughly the same for the USA and Russia while the USA has more than twice the population.

    An important concern for USA manufacturing is that loss of industries over time has contributed to the growth of the service industry as well as the FIRE economy. It seems that continual increases in American debt will eventually be unsustainable and having such a distorted economy will entail a greater risk of upheaval. Unfortunately, the government and other factors have made production more expensive in the US, so bringing industries with lower value-added back to the USA through tariffs raises prices.

    Another distortion in the system is that many qualified production people have fallen into the fentanyl and other traps. Combined with the baby boom peak there are probably fewer skilled workers here compared to previous decades. On the other hand, large numbers of low-skilled immigrants are employed in jobs directly related to the FIRE bubble. DIE intentionally pushes less-skilled people into jobs for which they are not qualified.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @QCIC

    https://www.wtae.com/article/largest-employers-pittsburgh-area-allegheny-county/38302884

    U.S. Steel is number 16.

    Lots of government, health care, banks, education.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-zs4lohmYc&list=PLNPGM2D7aODew2hs5OVlHiMAkWi_UYH_h&index=4

    Replies: @QCIC

    , @A123
    @QCIC


    bringing industries with lower value-added back to the USA through tariffs raises prices.
     
    Manufacturing does not have to be low value added. The goal of MAGA Reindustrialization is to bring back raw material extraction, refining, and manufacturing in a high value manner, assisted by technology.

    It is also key to understand the goal. Wage growth exceeding inflation. As long as compensation gains exceed price growth, it is a net win for American workers.

    To the extent that national security requires a low value add process, it is a price worth paying. Would you want inexpensive, generic drugs to become unavailable in a global crisis? No. Potentially paying a few cents more each prescription is very affordable insurance against that risk.

    there are probably fewer skilled workers here compared to previous decades.

     

    I concur. This is why the concept "gradual decoupling" is important.

    The lack of employment has depleted the skilled workforce. The way out of this situation is increasing the number of positions and paying better wages. Those wanting careers will seek out skills once they are confident it is worthwhile. Fixing schools to have more "trade ready" graduates is also important, but that is an entirely different discussion.

    Trump's 2nd term cannot instantly fix problems that took decades to create. All his administration can do in 4 years is to start the process of economic revitalization. It will take multiple MAGA administrations for tariff driven reindustrialization to show its full benefit to American workers.

    PEACE 😇
    , @Mikhail
    @QCIC

    Interacting with someone who suggests artillery shells from North Korea are a key difference maker, while ignoring Brandon's earlier request for South Korean arms to assist the NATO proxy war.

    Never mind that Western mainstream sources acknowledge that Russia far outproduces the entire West in artillery shells.

  377. @QCIC
    @AP

    The steel industry is a poor choice to compare the two economies since production of the metal is roughly the same for the USA and Russia while the USA has more than twice the population.

    An important concern for USA manufacturing is that loss of industries over time has contributed to the growth of the service industry as well as the FIRE economy. It seems that continual increases in American debt will eventually be unsustainable and having such a distorted economy will entail a greater risk of upheaval. Unfortunately, the government and other factors have made production more expensive in the US, so bringing industries with lower value-added back to the USA through tariffs raises prices.

    Another distortion in the system is that many qualified production people have fallen into the fentanyl and other traps. Combined with the baby boom peak there are probably fewer skilled workers here compared to previous decades. On the other hand, large numbers of low-skilled immigrants are employed in jobs directly related to the FIRE bubble. DIE intentionally pushes less-skilled people into jobs for which they are not qualified.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @A123, @Mikhail

    https://www.wtae.com/article/largest-employers-pittsburgh-area-allegheny-county/38302884

    U.S. Steel is number 16.

    Lots of government, health care, banks, education.

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    The largest employers in many US locales seem to be hospitals, educational organizations and government. Walmart and competitors are often one of the largest as well.

    There is still a lot of manufacturing in the USA but the scale is modest compared to fifty years ago when most products sold in the USA were made here.

    Replies: @Mikhail

  378. @Bashibuzuk
    @Dmitry



    https://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/1580089814069948416

    William Gibson summarizes the results of the Mafia State evolution in one simple word: Klept.

    Replies: @AP

    Such as Musk, Sacks, etc.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @AP

    Basically, what Gibson is hinting at is a convergence between the kleptocratic elites in RF and Western wanna be oligarchs. Think about it, the RF Klept managed to transform a very egalitarian society into one of the most unequal on the surface of the planet in more or less a single generation. This is actually an historic achievement (if a negative one).

    Now, if you battled the « entrenched privilege » of the Western Middle Class, and aimed to put it back to work in Chinese-like conditions to become competitive again against the global outreach of the Chinese system, wouldn’t you try to learn from the RF Klept to ensure a successful Westerstroika? Many Globalists believe that the West is no longer competitive because it’s over regulated, its population is spoiled by the « gibs » of different sorts, and its large middle class actually consumes way more than their share of the global GDP. We should remember that Musk, Thiel and others worked in the same environment where the Dark Enlightenment and NRX ideology were promoted a couple of decades back.

    If you’d want to go full Millei on the West, to radically reform it towards the TNC-friendly libertarian mindset, then the shock and awe strategy used by the RF (Noviop) Klept makes total sense. So Gibson in his last couple of books describes a future where a post-cataclysmic world is ruled by the global Klept aristocracy, some of which has New Russian (Noviop, although of course he doesn’t use the term) roots.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  379. @songbird
    @songbird

    Apparently, it was even much worse than I thought.

    And they recreated The Last Supper but with trannies.
    https://youtu.be/ZcGAP40vEoM?si=Em1vPkgKbNf_BVdR

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Matra

    • Thanks: songbird
    • Replies: @Mikhail
    @Matra

    Christianity Mocked

    Contrary to paranoid sleazy Western mass media/political elements, Iran and/or Russia don't need to subvert the Olympics:

    https://www.rt.com/news/601746-bishops-condemn-olympic-ceremony/

    This is what happens when a country steeped in great culture becomes "globalized".

  380. @songbird
    @Mr. Hack


    I don’t see how I’ve “cunningly” managed to duck your attempts to get me to watch a long, probably boring bollywood film
     
    If you don't mind my asking, what is the last foreign film (non-Ukrainian) you have watched? Or how long has it been since you have seen one?

    I think the last one I saw was a Russian one Silver Skates (2020). I thought it was too feminist. Definitely felt like it was made for teenage girls, whereas I think they could have made it a better film by cutting the girl power stuff out. Not strictly to my morals either.

    Last one I saw that I thought was worth watching was the newer Godzilla movie.

    A few other ones that I saw over the past half year or so that I thought had some interesting aspect but were flawed:
    Miss Granny (Korean)
    Bad Genius (Thai)
    Hello, Ghost! (Taiwan remake)

    I think that perhaps you’re a bit more cuning than I am in ducking a fuller explanation about your own experience(s) viewing German children visit a “work camp” in Germany?
     
    Some of the specific, personal details would be too identifying, and stripping those, there is not much to tell.

    There wasn't much left to the place. The main building was new, and I don't even know whether any of the old ones were really intact.
    I recall a few low brick walls, which I think were from the barracks, but they were not roofed, or possible to enter.

    Most of it was really narrative (an old film) and art exhibit (I though rather abstract statues - Holocaust art is I am afraid never good). And some large plaque with the names of the people who died there inscribed. I do not recall any artifacts, and believe there were none.

    The guy giving the tour was an obvious homo. The teacher asked him some leading question, and he said the locals, were not happy with him telling the story of the camp. He seemed to feel self-valorized in his role. The film was rather disgustingly graphic and might have had something to do with gays with syphilis in it. (We could not figure out what that part was meant to be, not even the homo)

    There was a modern prison nearby. I think I was more impressed visiting some old civil war forts, which don't have much left to them either.

    But I think there is a sort of logistical idea to keeping it open. It is for bringing the school kids of the region to it, even though there really isn't anything to see there.

    I might have liked to see Stalag Luft III (from the Great Escape and the Wooden Horse), but there is no trace of it left. Though I guess there is still Colditz.

    Replies: @John Johnson, @Mr. Hack

    If you don’t mind my asking, what is the last foreign film (non-Ukrainian) you have watched? Or how long has it been since you have seen one?

    Well, lately I’ve been watching some British noir movies through YouTube. Seems like youtube has been adding a lot of such faire, mostly non-descript IMHO. The only two that I can recommend are spy yarns that I think are just fine. “Candlelight in Algeria” features James Mason, a perennial favorite player of mine. A fine story, great acting, high quality photography, what’s not to like?

    The other choice “Storm Over Lisbon” (American and not British), although not including any real superstars from the era does have an interesting plot and includes shots of old Portugal, nightclubs, cityscapes etc; a real feast for the eyes, oh and a great musical score too. If you like the famous film “Casablanca” (and who doesn’t?), you’ll probably enjoy watching this one too:


    The real undisputed connoisseur of film at this blogsite is undoubtedly Dmitry. He used his time wisely during the pandemic and was feverishly building up his own private library, including many Criterion collection productions. He used to share his new additions here quite frequently, don’t think that he’s done so in quite a while?……..

    • Thanks: songbird
  381. @Dmitry
    @songbird


    housing situation in Ireland is certainly worse
     
    I've lived and worked in Republic of Ireland. If you walk around in the middle of the working day see a lot of Irish youth are half lazy people, waiting on the street smoking cannabis, wearing hoodies and talking to their friends. Often with free housing, maybe free food? Unemployed there are living like Ancient Greek aristocrats. Without risking to offend the country, it is not the stereotype of a hardworking native population.

    Also, the young people there are one of the world's most lucky in terms of jobs. They can attain good jobs with relatively weak qualifications, which in Russia the top technical students are competing for almost unpaid jobs in startups, you can see people hired there to quite good jobs with very weak qualifications technically.


    if you want to live among Europeans

     

    It depends if you would think about the largest immigrant nationalities like Poles or Romanians as European or not. If you have a more liberal view and think of them as European populations, then it's around 90% European. Maybe it's changing in the last few years as more immigrants enter every year.

    a lot of people that accuse it of bias
     
    It's a general problem of our time when people are using all this technology, they don't understand how it works or really think about it.

    In the 1970s, people who use computers usually know how they are working.

    If people think today the Google engineers are sitting down watching videos and choosing which ones to recommend to people, manually. Especially, Google, is obsessed with automation.


    Marques Brownlee, who does tech reviews. The Boston Globes tech writer is also a back guy, Hiawatha Bray. Maybe, they are both good enough, but, I don’t think either would have the job but for AA
     
    I think he's popular because he's a confident presenter, which is the skill to be successful on YouTube.

    A a lot of unboxing and review videos on YouTube are made by African Americans, usually they don't have many views. There is a very large layer of "failed" YouTube reviewers, or at least not very popular reviewers, only a small proportion are seeming like they are really successful there.

    Replies: @songbird

    If you walk around in the middle of the working day see a lot of Irish youth are half lazy people, waiting on the street smoking cannabis,

    this is stuff I never saw in my youth. Somehow, I don’t think these ganja people feel like they have good prospects for family formation.

    [MORE]

    Most of my relatives have moved away from Dublin. I fear for those who remain.

    It’s a general problem of our time when people are using all this technology, they don’t understand how it works or really think about it.

    We can’t really know how it works, unless it is open source. We can only speculate based on observations, suspicions, and revelations about other sites, like “shadowbanning” on Twitter, which Musk has confirmed.

    We also know that there was a press campaign in 2018, which specifically brought up the algorithm, obviously lobbying to change it, as one can read in this story:
    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/sep/18/report-youtubes-alternative-influence-network-breeds-rightwing-radicalisation

    Molyneux, who was one of the targets of this campaign, had his channel terminated eventually. But there were many others.

    Some of these terminated accounts were pretty popular, and I find the idea that they were impossible to monetize on an individual basis very unlikely, unless we consider that there was some kind of organized cartel pressure to threaten YouTube over them.

    Many of these people have had their banking services terminated, over political pressure.

    Many will live broadcast on YouTube, like Ed Dutton, but immediately take down their videos afterward. Many have removed their old videos to be cautious.

    Anyway, if you have a suspicious mind (as I do), I think there is enough evidence to speculate that the JBP videos were there as some deradicalization campaign. It is not necessarily true, but it does make a certain kind of sense.

    If people think today the Google engineers are sitting down watching videos and choosing which ones to recommend to people, manually. Especially, Google, is obsessed with automation.

    any political filter would be quite easy to automate or outsource to NGOs. The subtitles are automatically generated, so the audio can pretty easily be run through a filter looking for controversial terms, which is exactly what the NSA does with telephone calls.

    Once someone is tagged, that would put their guests under a lot of scrutiny and those guests often have their own channels and guests of their own.

    I think he’s popular because he’s a confident presenter, which is the skill to be successful on YouTube.

    It’s possible.

    But at a minimum, I think it is related to his guests. People like Musk are looking for positive PR, and are anxious to show they are not racist.

    I just try to make the comparison – maybe, it is not a good one – to Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut. He is probably not the best presenter or best-looking guy, but he is very technically knowledgeable. When he meets with Musk, I feel like it is because he has the background knowledge.

    It is not obvious to me that Brownlee is as knowledgeable. But maybe that is not the best comparison.

    • Replies: @Torna atrás
    @songbird

    Anti-immigration protest in Dundalk, Ireland.


    https://youtu.be/tLy03wrOTNY?si=0XCQMfZv7HuTkb4V

    I'm neither Anti Irish or Anti Ukrainian.

    Yet the YouTube Algorithm suggested this to me, why?

    , @Dmitry
    @songbird


    think these ganja people
     
    The "unemployed youth" hooligans in Dublin, generally seem like some very peaceful and gentle "hooligans". Which could be correlated, with the smell of cannabis, everywhere they are walking.

    -

    But maybe, even the popularity of peaceful narcotics was not enough to save Dublin's sneaker store this year.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecbRZYd3OQg

  382. @songbird
    @John Johnson


    I toured a US attack submarine and they had a copy of Das Boot.
     
    Seems to be especially well-regarded among submariners, but it is not a cheerful film. I myself did not enjoy it

    The pre-60s American military movies are too corny.
     
    Hollywood made so many WW2 films that I believe I never heard of most of them, though I think that even these forgotten ones had a lot of resources put into them, to do explosions and stuff, but maybe they had a lot of surplus tanks, etc.

    I find it difficult to watch nearly any WW2 movie because many of them seem to be a low kind of propaganda. At their best, a lot of the German ones seem to be derivative of All Quiet on the Western Front, which is not a film that really needed to be remade, IMO. Meanwhile, Hollywood is so taken with the theme of evil Germans that it seems to crossover into WWI films.

    I don't think I have actually ever seen an EE one, but I have seen a few Chinese ones. What I find interesting is that they sometimes have a strain of humor in them.

    Replies: @John Johnson

    I find it difficult to watch nearly any WW2 movie because many of them seem to be a low kind of propaganda. At their best, a lot of the German ones seem to be derivative of All Quiet on the Western Front, which is not a film that really needed to be remade, IMO.

    I enjoyed the remake but the original is still one of the harshest war movies ever made. The hands on the fence is still one of the most haunting scenes I have seen. I still prefer the book to both.

    Did you see Stalingrad 1993? Kind of hard to find and rather gory but it’s probably the only movie that gives a good sense of what happened to the Germans in the last days.

    Dunkirk was a huge disappointment. I completely noticed the lack of blood and had not been told about the movie. Nolan supposedly had this theory that the audience won’t notice a lack of blood like in older movies. I noticed right away but I did enjoy the dogfight scenes in the theater.

    I also really like Tora Tora Tora! One of the few movies that really works at showing the battle development.

    I don’t think I have actually ever seen an EE one, but I have seen a few Chinese ones. What I find interesting is that they sometimes have a strain of humor in them.

    The Chinese ones are bizarre for that reason. They’ll make some weird joke before being blown into bits. Both the Chinese and Japanese like over the top war movies with a lot of slow motion scenes. I complain about Hollywood but the action movies from abroad are pretty bad. I do like some of the Japanese anime though. I would rather watch My Friend Totoro over most Hollywood movies.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @John Johnson


    Did you see Stalingrad 1993?
     
    Saw this one a long time ago. The tank scene was memorable, if probably somewhat surreal. Guessing along with Das Boot one of the more expensive German movies ever made.

    Dunkirk was a huge disappointment.
     
    still haven't seen it.

    I also really like Tora Tora Tora!
     
    One of the few balanced films.

    I complain about Hollywood but the action movies from abroad are pretty bad.
     
    I think they are all linked to a degree.

    There were a lot of quick cuts in both places for a while. Then I think John Wick (not a fan) had some influence. In some films, I think the death totals got too high.

    I would rather watch My Friend Totoro over most Hollywood movies.
     
    Can be hard to find reliable budgets, but I think Japan seems able to accomplish more with less. Some kind of media PPP.

    But Japan's population is declining so their growth is in exports and there seems to be growing and negative influence from America.

    Apart from their last, it has been quite a number of years since Ghibli put out a traditional film. Some believe it may be their last hurrah.

    Replies: @Torna atrás

  383. @AP
    @Dmitry

    In the early 90s-mid 90s I studied at university alongside various Russians who were sent to the USA. There were two types, separated by a large cultural gulf: kids of Soviet-era elite families, and kids of "New Russians" (this was the term used - it's a euphemism for gangsters, essentially).

    The difference in age was only a couple of years (many of the Soviet-era elite students were in grad school). The two groups did not mix, the former held the latter in contempt. I was friendly with both groups. The kids of New Russians were richer, but engaged in crimes such as shoplifting (pizdyt) for sport. They used curse words all the time, while the ones who came from Soviet-era elite families almost never did, and never did in mixed company. When Rostropovich performed on a tour nearby in the mid-90s, the Soviet-era kids managed to get him to come to a party at a sponsor's house (where despite his age he propositioned one of our friends). The New Russian kids preferred to listen to Sector Gaza or metal music.

    The New Russian kids would do stuff like buy cars in cash, drive with no license or insurance, then just leave the car with keys in some parking lot when they returned to Russia, Georgia, etc. One guy was thrown out of the university dorm because he got caught shooting bottles out of his window with a pistol. Most didn't read, but one of the New Russian kids had a taste for Schopenhauer.

    I hadn't kept in touch with the New Russian kids. I heard that the most degenerate of the New Russian kids became a diplomat in Africa. Others got medical degrees, or work in pharma, and have respectable adult lives in the West.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    New Russians”

    Others got medical degrees, or work in pharma,

    I wouldn’t say they are related to gangsters in the real sense, but if you mean in a wider sense, yes, a lot of wider areas of second world society behave like thieves, including the government.

    “New Russians” was euphemism for people who get money in the new capitalism. But in this case, if you call all the local elite “thieves”, it is in a wider sense, they are not part of the criminal society from the legal point of view.

    The “brothers” in those years are killing thousands of people. But mostly they killing within their own criminal society, although sometimes there are stories of killing ordinary people for a box of sneakers.

    Normal business people from the legitimate society could usually avoid problems with the mafia, as long as they have some kind of popularity or friendships.

    There are still often cases when businessmen were being killed by the mafia, or hiring the mafia to kill their rivals. Some journalists say oligarchs were hiring the mafia to kill rivals and control the heavy industries, although it’s maybe not a proven hypothesis exactly there were definitely unsolved deaths of many of the industrial workers. Russia just has a very large number of missing people.

    The most famous case of the killing of an industrial manager in Russia is Oleg Belonenko in 2000 which is actually still a mystery.

    There were also cases even of billlionaries/oligarchs’ family being killed, like Vasily Anisimov’s daughter was killed in 2000 which is probably the most famous case in Russia.

    Still, the vast majority of violence is related to the killing of other criminals.

    New Russian kids would do stuff like buy cars in cash, drive with no license or insurance, then just leave the car with keys

    That’s normal behavior for many wealthy people in Russia, it’s not related to gangster, but of the general impunity for wealthy people in second world countries. For wealthy people it’s expected they can pay the police and escape from penalties. including traffic accidents. It’s one of the areas which seems to getting worse and there are constant cases every year when they are killing people in traffic accidents without penalty.

    Still, I wouldn’t like to confuse too much the general upper middle class in the second world society and the children of the leaders of OPS “Uralmash”.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Dmitry


    I wouldn’t say they are related to gangsters in the real sense...“New Russians” was euphemism for people who get money in the new capitalism. But in this case, if you call all the local elite “thieves”, it is in a wider sense, they are not part of the criminal society from the legal point of view
     


    The backgrounds that I know, of the parents of the kids whose parents were considered "New Russians" were: a casino owner from a provincial city; a mafia guy from Moscow (from one of the Christian Caucasian republics - and this kid's uncle was a minister in that country's government); a new pro-Western "liberal" member of parliament; and the mp's best friend, head of the local mafia from the same town (these friends sent their kids to America together).

    The parents may not have literally been killers but I don't think anyone who became newly wealthy (versus middle class) in the late 80s/early 90s had clean hands.

    The kids told stories about being kidnapped occasionally, and held for ransom (it wasn't too bad). Or not always being able to reach the parents from the USA because the parents would change their phone number every few weeks.

    Still, I wouldn’t like to confuse too much the general upper middle class in the second world society and the children of the leaders of OPS “Uralmash”.
     
    People could be clean and be middle class, but not rich. For example Soviet-era elite families might have rented out their large central apartments and lived comfortably off the rent in a more modest neighborhood or smaller rented flat, or leveraged their high education or good Russian CV to get scholarships/grants to good Western universities and then work for Western companies in management positions, or generally use those Western degrees to do well in Russia (this was a huge advantage in the 90s). A smart kid from a modest background could likewise get hired by a Western company and work in Moscow. But this wasn't the level of "New Russian" wealth.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  384. Who would ride on top of a BMP at this stage of the 2.5 week special operation?

    https://funker530.com/video/bmp-in-russian-space-program/

  385. https://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/science-reveals-worlds-most-beautiful-woman

    The 10 most beautiful women in the world according to their Golden Ratio scores:

    1. Anya Taylor-Joy – 94.66%

    2. Zendaya – 94.37%

    3. Bella Hadid – 94.35%

    4. Margot Robbie – 93.43%

    5. Song Hye-kyo – 92.67%

    6. Beyoncé – 92.4%

    7. Taylor Swift – 91.64%

    8. Zhang Ziyi – 91.51%

    9. Alia Bhatt – 91.14%

    10. Nazanin Boniadi – 90.89%

    In case you are working on the glossy brochure at your plastic surgery firm.

    I do recognize 4 of the names on their list.

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Then there is this: https://youtube.com/shorts/xnX7NWaFGVo?si=IHslZ7BhVZMZGYdT

  386. A123 says: • Website
    @QCIC
    @AP

    The steel industry is a poor choice to compare the two economies since production of the metal is roughly the same for the USA and Russia while the USA has more than twice the population.

    An important concern for USA manufacturing is that loss of industries over time has contributed to the growth of the service industry as well as the FIRE economy. It seems that continual increases in American debt will eventually be unsustainable and having such a distorted economy will entail a greater risk of upheaval. Unfortunately, the government and other factors have made production more expensive in the US, so bringing industries with lower value-added back to the USA through tariffs raises prices.

    Another distortion in the system is that many qualified production people have fallen into the fentanyl and other traps. Combined with the baby boom peak there are probably fewer skilled workers here compared to previous decades. On the other hand, large numbers of low-skilled immigrants are employed in jobs directly related to the FIRE bubble. DIE intentionally pushes less-skilled people into jobs for which they are not qualified.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @A123, @Mikhail

    bringing industries with lower value-added back to the USA through tariffs raises prices.

    Manufacturing does not have to be low value added. The goal of MAGA Reindustrialization is to bring back raw material extraction, refining, and manufacturing in a high value manner, assisted by technology.

    It is also key to understand the goal. Wage growth exceeding inflation. As long as compensation gains exceed price growth, it is a net win for American workers.

    To the extent that national security requires a low value add process, it is a price worth paying. Would you want inexpensive, generic drugs to become unavailable in a global crisis? No. Potentially paying a few cents more each prescription is very affordable insurance against that risk.

    there are probably fewer skilled workers here compared to previous decades.

    I concur. This is why the concept “gradual decoupling” is important.

    The lack of employment has depleted the skilled workforce. The way out of this situation is increasing the number of positions and paying better wages. Those wanting careers will seek out skills once they are confident it is worthwhile. Fixing schools to have more “trade ready” graduates is also important, but that is an entirely different discussion.

    Trump’s 2nd term cannot instantly fix problems that took decades to create. All his administration can do in 4 years is to start the process of economic revitalization. It will take multiple MAGA administrations for tariff driven reindustrialization to show its full benefit to American workers.

    PEACE 😇

  387. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @QCIC

    https://www.wtae.com/article/largest-employers-pittsburgh-area-allegheny-county/38302884

    U.S. Steel is number 16.

    Lots of government, health care, banks, education.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-zs4lohmYc&list=PLNPGM2D7aODew2hs5OVlHiMAkWi_UYH_h&index=4

    Replies: @QCIC

    The largest employers in many US locales seem to be hospitals, educational organizations and government. Walmart and competitors are often one of the largest as well.

    There is still a lot of manufacturing in the USA but the scale is modest compared to fifty years ago when most products sold in the USA were made here.

    • Agree: Beckow
    • Replies: @Mikhail
    @QCIC

    Shop for car parts with caution -

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOm36FaFlL0

    Cheaper by the dozen.

  388. @QCIC
    @AP

    The steel industry is a poor choice to compare the two economies since production of the metal is roughly the same for the USA and Russia while the USA has more than twice the population.

    An important concern for USA manufacturing is that loss of industries over time has contributed to the growth of the service industry as well as the FIRE economy. It seems that continual increases in American debt will eventually be unsustainable and having such a distorted economy will entail a greater risk of upheaval. Unfortunately, the government and other factors have made production more expensive in the US, so bringing industries with lower value-added back to the USA through tariffs raises prices.

    Another distortion in the system is that many qualified production people have fallen into the fentanyl and other traps. Combined with the baby boom peak there are probably fewer skilled workers here compared to previous decades. On the other hand, large numbers of low-skilled immigrants are employed in jobs directly related to the FIRE bubble. DIE intentionally pushes less-skilled people into jobs for which they are not qualified.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @A123, @Mikhail

    Interacting with someone who suggests artillery shells from North Korea are a key difference maker, while ignoring Brandon’s earlier request for South Korean arms to assist the NATO proxy war.

    Never mind that Western mainstream sources acknowledge that Russia far outproduces the entire West in artillery shells.

  389. @Greasy William
    @QCIC

    Chabad is really their own thing. With the other Hasidic sects, the bulk are descended from the region of their rabbinical dynasties: Ger and Bobov are overwhelmingly descendants of Polish Jews and Satmar are descended from Hungarian Jews (which is why Satmar Jews usually don't have the facial features that commonly associated with Ashkenazic Jews, particularly the nose).

    But Chabad are totally different. Lot's of converts, mixed breeds and Baal Teshuvas. Lot's of Mizrahim as well. So they end up being the most modern in a lot of ways because they have so much outside energy pouring in. Also, whereas most hasidic groups are extremely insular, Chabad cannot be because of the ultra high premium it places on outreach.

    The comment that started this whole conversation also didn't mention anything about the Syrian Jews of NYC, who on the outside look Yeshivish but are actually very separate from the rest of the American Jewish world.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Torna atrás

    Is the purpose of Chabad’s outreach to counteract the secularization of Jews?

    • Replies: @Greasy William
    @QCIC

    Er... sorta. It's more that Chabad theology holds that every time a Jew performs a mitzvah, it hastens the redemption. Chabad does want to counteract secularization but even if they didn't bring a single Jew back to observance, they would consider their mission a success as long as they were getting Jews to put on tefillin or whatever.

    They have also started some small scale outreach to gentiles to get them to follow the Noahide laws.

  390. @QCIC
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    The largest employers in many US locales seem to be hospitals, educational organizations and government. Walmart and competitors are often one of the largest as well.

    There is still a lot of manufacturing in the USA but the scale is modest compared to fifty years ago when most products sold in the USA were made here.

    Replies: @Mikhail

    Shop for car parts with caution –

    Cheaper by the dozen.

  391. @songbird
    @Dmitry


    If you walk around in the middle of the working day see a lot of Irish youth are half lazy people, waiting on the street smoking cannabis,
     
    this is stuff I never saw in my youth. Somehow, I don't think these ganja people feel like they have good prospects for family formation.

    Most of my relatives have moved away from Dublin. I fear for those who remain.

    It’s a general problem of our time when people are using all this technology, they don’t understand how it works or really think about it.
     
    We can't really know how it works, unless it is open source. We can only speculate based on observations, suspicions, and revelations about other sites, like "shadowbanning" on Twitter, which Musk has confirmed.

    We also know that there was a press campaign in 2018, which specifically brought up the algorithm, obviously lobbying to change it, as one can read in this story:
    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/sep/18/report-youtubes-alternative-influence-network-breeds-rightwing-radicalisation

    Molyneux, who was one of the targets of this campaign, had his channel terminated eventually. But there were many others.

    Some of these terminated accounts were pretty popular, and I find the idea that they were impossible to monetize on an individual basis very unlikely, unless we consider that there was some kind of organized cartel pressure to threaten YouTube over them.

    Many of these people have had their banking services terminated, over political pressure.

    Many will live broadcast on YouTube, like Ed Dutton, but immediately take down their videos afterward. Many have removed their old videos to be cautious.

    Anyway, if you have a suspicious mind (as I do), I think there is enough evidence to speculate that the JBP videos were there as some deradicalization campaign. It is not necessarily true, but it does make a certain kind of sense.

    If people think today the Google engineers are sitting down watching videos and choosing which ones to recommend to people, manually. Especially, Google, is obsessed with automation.
     
    any political filter would be quite easy to automate or outsource to NGOs. The subtitles are automatically generated, so the audio can pretty easily be run through a filter looking for controversial terms, which is exactly what the NSA does with telephone calls.

    Once someone is tagged, that would put their guests under a lot of scrutiny and those guests often have their own channels and guests of their own.

    I think he’s popular because he’s a confident presenter, which is the skill to be successful on YouTube.
     
    It's possible.

    But at a minimum, I think it is related to his guests. People like Musk are looking for positive PR, and are anxious to show they are not racist.

    I just try to make the comparison - maybe, it is not a good one - to Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut. He is probably not the best presenter or best-looking guy, but he is very technically knowledgeable. When he meets with Musk, I feel like it is because he has the background knowledge.

    It is not obvious to me that Brownlee is as knowledgeable. But maybe that is not the best comparison.

    Replies: @Torna atrás, @Dmitry

    Anti-immigration protest in Dundalk, Ireland.

    [MORE]

    I’m neither Anti Irish or Anti Ukrainian.

    Yet the YouTube Algorithm suggested this to me, why?

    • LOL: songbird
  392. @Emil Nikola Richard
    https://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/science-reveals-worlds-most-beautiful-woman

    The 10 most beautiful women in the world according to their Golden Ratio scores:

    1. Anya Taylor-Joy - 94.66%

    2. Zendaya - 94.37%

    3. Bella Hadid - 94.35%

    4. Margot Robbie - 93.43%

    5. Song Hye-kyo - 92.67%

    6. Beyoncé - 92.4%

    7. Taylor Swift - 91.64%

    8. Zhang Ziyi - 91.51%

    9. Alia Bhatt - 91.14%

    10. Nazanin Boniadi - 90.89%

    In case you are working on the glossy brochure at your plastic surgery firm.

    I do recognize 4 of the names on their list.

    Replies: @QCIC

  393. @Bashibuzuk
    Yeah, you’re right about Matthew 23-2, I completely forgot about it. Thanks for pointing that out. I think I will have to re-read the Gospels again. Nice catch here Greasy. 🙂

    Now, about the largely correct historical narrative in the Bible, I agree that if we don’t look too closely into details, the overall historical narrative is largely corespondent with what the official historical narrative is nowadays. But this might be due to three different reasons: 1) the Bible is more or less accurate historically because it recorded historical events as they happened 2) the Bible is more or less accurate historically because it has been put together post hoc by some literati who had a good grasp of the history of that region 3) the Bible does seem more or less historically accurate because we live in the realm of Abrahamic civilizations which imposed its historical narrative upon the people who have come to accept and self-identify with the Abrahamic religious traditions.

    I have recently taken a great interest in listening to YouTube videos of Israeli historians and archaeologists working in the field of the history of religion. And they clearly seem very sceptical of the older part of the Bible being written at the time of the events described in the text. For example, if you have some time to watch this presentation by Yonathan Adler, it’s quite interesting that according to him, from the pov of archeology, there aren’t any signs of Judaic religious activity that adheres to strict Biblical rules before the 3rd century BC.

    https://youtu.be/xnZahlZJIgc?si=1O-_-Tl_7vS5Ka_2

    Now, if you disregard his experimental work because you are a religious person, I’d understand and would respect that. For me a belief doesn’t have to be rational. But I would appreciate your perspective on that video if you have time to watch it.

    Replies: @S1, @Greasy William

    Now, if you disregard his experimental work because you are a religious person, I’d understand and would respect that

    I don’t disregard it, I’m just unconvinced. The first fixed date we have for ancient near eastern chronology, as I’m sure this Yair Lapid voting gentleman would admit, is the sack of Thebes in 663 BC. Before that it isn’t clear what goes where, not that we are totally flying blind but there is a tremendous amount of uncertainty at how you fit the pieces together and how you date things.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Greasy William

    I think you are right that the official narrative chronology is unconvincing not only in MENA but other regions as well. But what Yonathan Adler seems to demonstrate is that there is no clear archeological record for what we would today identify as Judaism prior to the Hasmonean era. Basically, everything that was there before, doesn’t seem to be in accordance with the Biblical tradition. After the Maccabean revolt it becomes typically Jewish in a couple of generations. But before it doesn’t seem so. Anyway, if you have time to watch the video, I believe you might find it interesting.

  394. @AP
    @Beckow


    You are stuck on your fake data
     
    Because well-known liar Beckow claims something is "fake" does not make it so.

    I don’t know what US counts as manufacturing
     
    USA produces more steel and 12 times more cars than Russia does.

    Data provided by World Steel Association and The International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers.


    US is not a mfg power
     
    World's second largest automobile producer.

    By far, the world's largest aircraft producer. This is in number of aircraft, not their cost (in case you wanted to weasel out of this by claimng American planes are too expensive)

    https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/top-10-aircraft-producing-countries-in-the-world/

    In the world, only China manufactures more than does the USA, and nobody else comes close.

    Your lies are getting progressively more stupid. Sign of desperation?


    West is having problems producing something as basic as artillery shells – they are scrounging the world for 1970’s discarded shells
     
    You mean Russia begging North Korea for old artillery shells?

    Increasing artillery production is not a problem, if there is a will. And now there is.

    https://www.defenseone.com/business/2024/04/goal-100k-artillery-shells-month-sight-army-says/396047/


    It cost US $150 million to make a war plane – that’s where your inflated ‘numbers’ come from.
     
    Thanks for demonstrating that you are the only one who consistently cherry-picks here.

    The newest F-16s costs $63 million. Cheaper than Chinese jets.

    https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/27553-top-10-most-expensive-fighter-jets


    Get serious and stop dreaming and distracting:
    – is Ukraine winning the war?
    – is losing 20% of territory considered a victory? since when?
     
    Ukraine is preventing Russia from accomplishing its goals of regime change in Ukraine, demilitarization of Ukraine, conquest of Ukraine, etc. But it has not expelled Russia from Ukraine, either. So it's a stalemate.

    Also, 10% was lost in 2014-2015. The invasion began in 2022.

    I'll remind you that in January 1944 Germany still controlled large parts of the USSR, all of France, Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Norway. Much more than Russia has now.

    Was Germany winning the war in 1944?

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/36/1944-01-01GerWW2BattlefrontAtlas.jpg/220px-1944-01-01GerWW2BattlefrontAtlas.jpg

    Replies: @QCIC, @Beckow

    …and AP against demonstrates he is an idiot.

    Stalemate? Really? Preventing ‘regime change’ in Kiev? You have a wild imagination, the governments come and go, countries remain. Ukraine is a lot less of a country than it was in 2014 or 1991, or what it could have been. All else is noise that nobody will remember.

    Do you know anyone outside US who buys American-made cars? Tell us. Or clothes, electronics, appliances…US has lost its manufacturing dominance and its mfg shrunk. Even the planes have a huge number of foreign parts, as do processors, pharma…

    What is left are some building and agro machines (based on parts from China) and weapons…But hide in your fake ‘numbers’ if it makes you feel better. No serious person outside US sees US as a manufacturing powerhouse. Unless you count issuing ‘virtual’ currency as manufacturing.

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Beckow

    Companies in the USA still build higher tech equipment and quite a bit of it. Almost all production is multinational, but nonetheless a lot is still made here. Examples include gas turbines (GE), chip manufacturing (Applied Materials), machine tools (Haas), lasers (IPG) and medical equipment. I think much of the equipment used worldwide in the oil and petrochemical industries is still made in the USA (components, not offshore rigs anymore).

    Partnership agreements are used in many industries so the USA IP gradually ends up in the partner company/country. First they become suppliers and later competitors. As the US education system continues to enstupidate STEM graduates it will become more difficult to create new IP. AI may offset some of this trend, on the other hand the increasing loss of smart Asians back to their home countries is another problem.

    I would like to see production of consumer goods return to the USA because people need to do something. In other words, the left hand side of the bell curve should not all work in service jobs. Having said that, a lot of production jobs are pretty soul crushing unless a person has a high level of self-responsibility.

    On the other hand, AI and automation (including robots) will continue to increase productivity per person. A not so distant future is now clearly visible when 50% of jobs can be replaced by machines. I don't think this is good idea, but no one asked me.

    The influence of AI is tough to predict, but it is likely to be world changing. Without that crucial factor I think the USA is in a death spiral where the middle class will be destroyed, leaving oligarchs and a few prosperous people. The majority of citizens will be peons entirely supported by the government. Barring some tipping point, possibly AI, I think this new hierarchy in the USA will be substantially complete in about 20 years.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    , @AP
    @Beckow


    Stalemate? Really?
     
    When the lines don't change more than a few villages in months it is a stalemate.

    When Ukraine lost far fewer men in trying to take the Crimean corridor before ending their advance due it being too costly, you called it a defeat.

    But when Russia is stopped outside Kharkiv with far greater losses, or continues to grind and capture a few villages while continuing to lose many men and much equipment, you call it "winning."

    Were you lying then, or lying now?

    Ukraine is a lot less of a country than it was in 2014 or 1991
     
    Ukraine was better in 2020 than it was in 2014.

    Do you know anyone outside US who buys American-made cars?
     
    So you don't know anyone who drives a Tesla?

    Otherwise - Canadians. I only know a handful of people in Europe and haven't surveyed them about what cars they drive. I remember one of the people I know owns a Ford, but it may have been made in Europe.

    Did you know that a lot of German SUVs sold in Europe are made in the USA? BMW has a plant in South Carolina that exports to Europe.

    https://www.statista.com/statistics/260918/us-passenger-vehicle-exports/#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20U.S.%20light%20vehicle,exports%20based%20on%20export%20value.

    In 2021, U.S. light vehicle exports increased by around 12 percent year-on-year. About 1.6 million passenger cars and light vehicles were exported from the United States in 2021. Canada was the leading target country for U.S. passenger vehicle exports based on export value.

    No serious person outside US sees US as a manufacturing powerhouse
     
    Do you "think" you are a serious person?

    USA is the world's second largest manufacturer. Please name a single country other than China that manufactures more overall than does the USA. Russia doesn't come close.

    Replies: @Beckow

  395. @John Johnson
    @Beckow


    …I was against this war from day one.

     

    What day would that be? When Kiev started to bomb its Donbas citizens in 2014?

    So you are going back to claiming that Russia had to launch a war to protect ethnic Russians? By launching a bloody war to take the entire country?

    Should we again pull UN data that shows Slavs on both sides were more likely to drown than be killed in sectarian fighting?

    Casualties on both sides were less than 150 in the last year. For the entire year. That is what required launching an invasion which included launching cruise missiles at downtown Kiev? That's the required response to less than 150 casualties? Killing a few thousand people in a day?

    I fully supported an end to the less than 150 casualties and I also support swimming education to reduce drowning deaths.

    Or earlier when NATO in 2008 officially declared that they are moving to Ukraine? NATO repeated it every year since – 17 times. Do you think they were only kidding?

    Yes and they were later told that they weren't welcome and that France and Germany would vote against them.

    NATO is not a hierarchy and a single state can block the admission of a new member. France and Germany were opposed before the war and it was thought that Turkey would side with Russia if a vote actually occurred. However there was no plan for a vote as they didn't qualify after DPR/LPR declared themselves to be independent. You can't join with a contended border.

    Are you going to deny any of that?

    UN doesn’t believe anything, UN Assembly is a discussion club, the only decisions that matter are made by the Security Council.

    No they have beliefs in relation to human rights that are stated clearly:
    https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights

    So you disagree with the 143-5 vote then? For the record you are taking the side of Russia, Nicaragua, Belarus, North Korea, and Syria?

    But if you get to cherrypick what you agree with it becomes very academic.

    How am I cherry-picking? By being against Russia and Israel's invasions? That's the normal position outside of Unz. Most people in global polls do not support Russia or Israel. Which also parallels UN votes.

    You and others here clearly have a very hard time with dissenting views in relation to Ukraine. I can't count the number of times at Unz and especially in the Anglin thread where a response has been prefaced along the lines of "Since you support funding Israel" and then they can't provide a SINGLE quote to back their assumption. I have in fact pointed out numerous times that Putin is friends with Netanyahu and the Putin supporters who heavily overlap with Jew blamers whistle Dixie in response. They hilariously don't like talking about Putin's Jewish connections but will spend huge amounts of time on the Jewish backgrounds and connections of US politicians that are no longer in power. They talk about Nuland and Blinken as if they have supernatural Jew powers that transcend time and space.

    Replies: @Beckow

    Post-Maidan Kiev government killed 3,000 civilians in Donbas. Same as 911. US went to two (or more) wars for 3,000 killed, you would expect Russia to sit back? Would US? And the timing is entirely up to them…they waited until they were ready.

    Your swimming ‘analogy’ is very stupid and it reflects badly on your reasoning skills. How many people died in US in 2001 in car accidents? It is stupid to compare 911 to it.

    Your usual denial of NATO moving to Ukraine is desperate. For 17 years each year NATO officially declared that Ukraine will join NATO. Germany-France never officially objected, they just leaked wimpy statements like ‘not yet’. It was a done deal before 2022, now it is impossible. Russia won that one.

    UN Assembly has no power – people talk and ‘vote’ to show sympathy. 40 countries representing half of the world’s population abstained. That speaks for itself. US, UK, EU have no standing to critizise anyone after what they are doing in Israel…you can try to distance from it, but you are not the government. Everyone judges US based on the official policy. So that’s that – a thief screaming ‘catch him he is a thief!‘…it is pointless and a bit silly.

    Russia has not supported Israel’s bloody assault on Palis, not supplied arms, not provided cover in UN, etc…US has done all of those things. If you think that is the same you have basic comprehension problems.

    But I appreciate your position on Gaza-Isreal (see we can agree on some things).

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @Beckow

    Post-Maidan Kiev government killed 3,000 civilians in Donbas. Same as 911. US went to two (or more) wars for 3,000 killed, you would expect Russia to sit back?

    That 3000 number that has been rounded up is civilians on both sides and the fighting was mostly by militias and not the government.

    Here is the UN report
    https://ukraine.un.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/Conflict-related%20civilian%20casualties%20as%20of%2031%20December%202021%20%28rev%2027%20January%202022%29%20corr%20EN_0.pdf

    There was clearly a massive drop off in casualties in 2016. Do you deny that?

    So Russia in 2022 decides to invade over civilian casualties from 2014/2015? Is that what you are saying?

    Why did they try to take Kiev if the goal is to protect ethnic Russians in DPR/LPR? Why did they try a decapitation strike where thousands of Slavs died within 48 hours?

    For 17 years each year NATO officially declared that Ukraine will join NATO. Germany-France never officially objected, they just leaked wimpy statements like ‘not yet’.

    No that isn't the case at all and if you keep trying that bullshit I will post sources like this one:

    NATO Allies Oppose Bush on Georgia and Ukraine
    https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/03/world/europe/03nato.html

    Germany and France were opposed to Ukraine in NATO before Putin's invasion.

    I can post multiple sources. Just stop already. Your one quote doesn't represent all the members and the vote has to be unanimous.

    NATO is not a hierarchy. That was proven when half of NATO told GW to go F himself when he asked for their backing on Iraq. The US does not control NATO and they have rejected the will of the US president numerous times.

    Replies: @Beckow

  396. @Matra
    @songbird

    NATO values



    https://twitter.com/Gottemoeller/status/864874129597640704/photo/1

    Replies: @Mikhail

    Christianity Mocked

    Contrary to paranoid sleazy Western mass media/political elements, Iran and/or Russia don’t need to subvert the Olympics:

    https://www.rt.com/news/601746-bishops-condemn-olympic-ceremony/

    This is what happens when a country steeped in great culture becomes “globalized”.

  397. Bashibuzuk says:
    @AP
    @Bashibuzuk

    Such as Musk, Sacks, etc.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    Basically, what Gibson is hinting at is a convergence between the kleptocratic elites in RF and Western wanna be oligarchs. Think about it, the RF Klept managed to transform a very egalitarian society into one of the most unequal on the surface of the planet in more or less a single generation. This is actually an historic achievement (if a negative one).

    Now, if you battled the « entrenched privilege » of the Western Middle Class, and aimed to put it back to work in Chinese-like conditions to become competitive again against the global outreach of the Chinese system, wouldn’t you try to learn from the RF Klept to ensure a successful Westerstroika? Many Globalists believe that the West is no longer competitive because it’s over regulated, its population is spoiled by the « gibs » of different sorts, and its large middle class actually consumes way more than their share of the global GDP. We should remember that Musk, Thiel and others worked in the same environment where the Dark Enlightenment and NRX ideology were promoted a couple of decades back.

    If you’d want to go full Millei on the West, to radically reform it towards the TNC-friendly libertarian mindset, then the shock and awe strategy used by the RF (Noviop) Klept makes total sense. So Gibson in his last couple of books describes a future where a post-cataclysmic world is ruled by the global Klept aristocracy, some of which has New Russian (Noviop, although of course he doesn’t use the term) roots.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk

    I don't know enough about William Gibson to add anything interesting for that.

    -

    If you think about a comparison to Trump generally in Russia, his class origin, is similar to some Caucasian postsoviet property development families like especially Emin, who is the son of Agalarov.

    Trump is a prince, of a property development family, like Emin in Russia.

    Just in Russia, the property development is more of a centralized business today, so it's often controlled from the larger oligarchs who also own real industries. But Emin is an example where they don't really own any real industry.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuZUNjFsgS8

    -


    Trump isn't similar to the government in Russia, though.

    The top of the Russian government, are the former agents from the KGB, who as part of their job are managing an elite who own real industry.

    -

    If you imagine a similar government in the USA, it would like Washington which spills the country's heavy industry and natural resource extraction to their friends, with the government mainly controlled by former agents from the CIA, FBI and NSA.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  398. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Greasy William
    @Bashibuzuk


    Now, if you disregard his experimental work because you are a religious person, I’d understand and would respect that
     
    I don't disregard it, I'm just unconvinced. The first fixed date we have for ancient near eastern chronology, as I'm sure this Yair Lapid voting gentleman would admit, is the sack of Thebes in 663 BC. Before that it isn't clear what goes where, not that we are totally flying blind but there is a tremendous amount of uncertainty at how you fit the pieces together and how you date things.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    I think you are right that the official narrative chronology is unconvincing not only in MENA but other regions as well. But what Yonathan Adler seems to demonstrate is that there is no clear archeological record for what we would today identify as Judaism prior to the Hasmonean era. Basically, everything that was there before, doesn’t seem to be in accordance with the Biblical tradition. After the Maccabean revolt it becomes typically Jewish in a couple of generations. But before it doesn’t seem so. Anyway, if you have time to watch the video, I believe you might find it interesting.

  399. Battle of the Nations
    Serbia New Zealand

    [MORE]

    The Olympics are here and no bombs have exploded (yet (keep your fingers crossed)).
    Miss Romania is in women’s 49 kg weightlifting 7 Aug.

    Also: men’s 400 m hurdles final (this was the big event at the last olympics) is 9 Aug and the men’s decathlon is the 2 and 3 Aug.

    Miss Kazakhstan has withdrawn from the women’s tennis. : (
    Miss Poland has not. : )

    • Replies: @YetAnotherAnon
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    OTOH persons unknown sabotaged 4 out of 5 of the mail French high-speed rail lines on opening day. Someone had the knowledge of where the fibre-optic signalling cables were and set the trackside boxes alight.

    AFAIK there are still delays today.

    What intrigued me, given the Panopticon that is the modern internet, is how they were able to communicate securely. Of course it may be that their comms may yet land them in court.

    https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/26/vandals-target-french-rail-network-olympics-opening-ceremony


    SNCF’s chief executive, Jean-Pierre Farandou, said the attackers had set fires in conduits carrying cables that carry safety information for drivers or control points mechanisms. “There’s a huge number of bundled cables. We have to repair them one by one, it’s a manual operation” requiring hundreds of workers, he said.

    Farandou said five of the TGV network’s “strategic nerve centres” had been targeted on the main high-speed lines connecting Paris to big provincial cities such as Lille in the north, Bordeaux in the south-west, Strasbourg in the east and Marseille in the south-east.

    All the attacks took place between 1am and 5.30am on Friday, French media reported. Four were successful, leaving only the south-eastern line running normally after a night railway maintenance team surprised several saboteurs who fled, France Info radio reported.
     

    As someone said, "Snoop Dogg on the Seine, Massive Attack on the railways!".

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

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  400. @John Johnson
    @songbird

    I find it difficult to watch nearly any WW2 movie because many of them seem to be a low kind of propaganda. At their best, a lot of the German ones seem to be derivative of All Quiet on the Western Front, which is not a film that really needed to be remade, IMO.

    I enjoyed the remake but the original is still one of the harshest war movies ever made. The hands on the fence is still one of the most haunting scenes I have seen. I still prefer the book to both.

    Did you see Stalingrad 1993? Kind of hard to find and rather gory but it's probably the only movie that gives a good sense of what happened to the Germans in the last days.

    Dunkirk was a huge disappointment. I completely noticed the lack of blood and had not been told about the movie. Nolan supposedly had this theory that the audience won't notice a lack of blood like in older movies. I noticed right away but I did enjoy the dogfight scenes in the theater.

    I also really like Tora Tora Tora! One of the few movies that really works at showing the battle development.

    I don’t think I have actually ever seen an EE one, but I have seen a few Chinese ones. What I find interesting is that they sometimes have a strain of humor in them.

    The Chinese ones are bizarre for that reason. They'll make some weird joke before being blown into bits. Both the Chinese and Japanese like over the top war movies with a lot of slow motion scenes. I complain about Hollywood but the action movies from abroad are pretty bad. I do like some of the Japanese anime though. I would rather watch My Friend Totoro over most Hollywood movies.

    Replies: @songbird

    Did you see Stalingrad 1993?

    Saw this one a long time ago. The tank scene was memorable, if probably somewhat surreal. Guessing along with Das Boot one of the more expensive German movies ever made.

    Dunkirk was a huge disappointment.

    still haven’t seen it.

    I also really like Tora Tora Tora!

    One of the few balanced films.

    I complain about Hollywood but the action movies from abroad are pretty bad.

    I think they are all linked to a degree.

    There were a lot of quick cuts in both places for a while. Then I think John Wick (not a fan) had some influence. In some films, I think the death totals got too high.

    I would rather watch My Friend Totoro over most Hollywood movies.

    Can be hard to find reliable budgets, but I think Japan seems able to accomplish more with less. Some kind of media PPP.

    But Japan’s population is declining so their growth is in exports and there seems to be growing and negative influence from America.

    Apart from their last, it has been quite a number of years since Ghibli put out a traditional film. Some believe it may be their last hurrah.

    • Replies: @Torna atrás
    @songbird

    The code from the Matrix is actually a sushi recipe the production designer, Simon Whiteley, scanned from one of his wife's Japanese cookbooks.

    https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQgAd6GoG0bR9vwUuNZJv6cypR2g70ozlSeIIESDtO6tw&s.jpg

  401. @Mikhail
    @Mr. Hack

    Russia defeated the neo-Nazi Kiev regime forces in Mariupol who used civilians/civilian infrastructure as human shields.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    Russia defeated the neo-Nazi Kiev regime forces in Mariupol who used civilians/civilian infrastructure as human shields.

    You didn’t really think that I was going to let this stupid little canned, kremlin stooge, pat answer fly with no rebuttal? It’s 100% a lie as is so much of the kremlin stooge propaganda that you try and float here and elsewhere. To get some idea of the numbers of civilians that died in Mariupol and who was responsible, I would suggest that you read the Human Rights Watch report on the devastation. The visuals that accompany the report are excellent, including maps etc:

    Are you serious in insinuating that Russia’s military wasn’t involved in the vast destruction of Mariupol and its infrastructure that resulted in the deaths of 10,000’s of civilians? Read this report, it’s not too late Mickey, then go and privately kneel in your room by your bed and ask the Lord for his forgiveness to you for lying and trying to whitewash and coverup Russia’s culpability in starting and continuing this horrific war. Wash all of the blood off of your hands Mickey, you’ll feel much better. If you don’t, your culpability will haunt you till your last day. 🙁
    https://www.hrw.org/feature/russia-ukraine-war-mariupol/report

    • LOL: Mikhail
    • Replies: @Mikhail
    @Mr. Hack

    HRW is often enough Sorosian BS propaganda. Its own report gives a Mariupol civilian casualty figure which isn't in the tens of thousands.

    US killed many German and Japanese civilians during WW II. The point being that a civilian death toll isn't always used as a good indicator on who is right or more right in a conflict.

    No denying that neo-Nazi allied Kiev regime forces used civilians/civilian infrastructure in Mariupol as cover.

    , @Derer
    @Mr. Hack

    You are giving the HRW too much credence...the foot soldiers are basically honest but the elite massages their work to the liking of particular donors - nothing new. Compare reports on Serbia molestation vs Afghanistan or Iraq killings. The difficulty of revealing the dirty work is evidenced by the Assange's nightmare.

  402. @Beckow
    @AP

    ...and AP against demonstrates he is an idiot.

    Stalemate? Really? Preventing 'regime change' in Kiev? You have a wild imagination, the governments come and go, countries remain. Ukraine is a lot less of a country than it was in 2014 or 1991, or what it could have been. All else is noise that nobody will remember.

    Do you know anyone outside US who buys American-made cars? Tell us. Or clothes, electronics, appliances...US has lost its manufacturing dominance and its mfg shrunk. Even the planes have a huge number of foreign parts, as do processors, pharma...

    What is left are some building and agro machines (based on parts from China) and weapons...But hide in your fake 'numbers' if it makes you feel better. No serious person outside US sees US as a manufacturing powerhouse. Unless you count issuing 'virtual' currency as manufacturing.

    Replies: @QCIC, @AP

    Companies in the USA still build higher tech equipment and quite a bit of it. Almost all production is multinational, but nonetheless a lot is still made here. Examples include gas turbines (GE), chip manufacturing (Applied Materials), machine tools (Haas), lasers (IPG) and medical equipment. I think much of the equipment used worldwide in the oil and petrochemical industries is still made in the USA (components, not offshore rigs anymore).

    Partnership agreements are used in many industries so the USA IP gradually ends up in the partner company/country. First they become suppliers and later competitors. As the US education system continues to enstupidate STEM graduates it will become more difficult to create new IP. AI may offset some of this trend, on the other hand the increasing loss of smart Asians back to their home countries is another problem.

    I would like to see production of consumer goods return to the USA because people need to do something. In other words, the left hand side of the bell curve should not all work in service jobs. Having said that, a lot of production jobs are pretty soul crushing unless a person has a high level of self-responsibility.

    On the other hand, AI and automation (including robots) will continue to increase productivity per person. A not so distant future is now clearly visible when 50% of jobs can be replaced by machines. I don’t think this is good idea, but no one asked me.

    The influence of AI is tough to predict, but it is likely to be world changing. Without that crucial factor I think the USA is in a death spiral where the middle class will be destroyed, leaving oligarchs and a few prosperous people. The majority of citizens will be peons entirely supported by the government. Barring some tipping point, possibly AI, I think this new hierarchy in the USA will be substantially complete in about 20 years.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @QCIC

    https://timemachine.fandom.com/wiki/Eloi

    20 years?

    You have read too much Yudkowski. It sure looks inevitable but I think we are going to be gone.

    https://empslocal.ex.ac.uk/people/staff/mrwatkin/PKDick.htm

    Replies: @QCIC

  403. AP says:
    @Beckow
    @AP

    ...and AP against demonstrates he is an idiot.

    Stalemate? Really? Preventing 'regime change' in Kiev? You have a wild imagination, the governments come and go, countries remain. Ukraine is a lot less of a country than it was in 2014 or 1991, or what it could have been. All else is noise that nobody will remember.

    Do you know anyone outside US who buys American-made cars? Tell us. Or clothes, electronics, appliances...US has lost its manufacturing dominance and its mfg shrunk. Even the planes have a huge number of foreign parts, as do processors, pharma...

    What is left are some building and agro machines (based on parts from China) and weapons...But hide in your fake 'numbers' if it makes you feel better. No serious person outside US sees US as a manufacturing powerhouse. Unless you count issuing 'virtual' currency as manufacturing.

    Replies: @QCIC, @AP

    Stalemate? Really?

    When the lines don’t change more than a few villages in months it is a stalemate.

    When Ukraine lost far fewer men in trying to take the Crimean corridor before ending their advance due it being too costly, you called it a defeat.

    But when Russia is stopped outside Kharkiv with far greater losses, or continues to grind and capture a few villages while continuing to lose many men and much equipment, you call it “winning.”

    Were you lying then, or lying now?

    Ukraine is a lot less of a country than it was in 2014 or 1991

    Ukraine was better in 2020 than it was in 2014.

    Do you know anyone outside US who buys American-made cars?

    So you don’t know anyone who drives a Tesla?

    Otherwise – Canadians. I only know a handful of people in Europe and haven’t surveyed them about what cars they drive. I remember one of the people I know owns a Ford, but it may have been made in Europe.

    Did you know that a lot of German SUVs sold in Europe are made in the USA? BMW has a plant in South Carolina that exports to Europe.

    https://www.statista.com/statistics/260918/us-passenger-vehicle-exports/#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20U.S.%20light%20vehicle,exports%20based%20on%20export%20value.

    In 2021, U.S. light vehicle exports increased by around 12 percent year-on-year. About 1.6 million passenger cars and light vehicles were exported from the United States in 2021. Canada was the leading target country for U.S. passenger vehicle exports based on export value.

    No serious person outside US sees US as a manufacturing powerhouse

    Do you “think” you are a serious person?

    USA is the world’s second largest manufacturer. Please name a single country other than China that manufactures more overall than does the USA. Russia doesn’t come close.

    • LOL: Mikhail
    • Replies: @Beckow
    @AP

    You are way off about the situation on the front line - as if you needed to obsessively lie to yourself.

    Let's look at the casualties: both side lie about it, the only reliable estimates are indirect. One of the best ways in all wars is to compare POWs: Russia holds 6 times as many Ukie POWs as vice versa. Kiev for some weird reason also includes ethnic Russian Ukies they arrested for being pro-Russian among the POWs and wants to include them in POW exchanges.

    Six to one in POWs implies about the same ratio in casualties. Unless this war is very different from other wars and Ukies surrender in larger numbers. That is close to Russian claims of 5 to 1, 7 to 1, and at one point during the failed Ukie offensive in 2023 they said it was 10 to 1.

    Given the general lying nature of all wars I would still take it with a grain of salt. But the odds are that after it is over if it will turn out the Ukies suffered substantially worse casualties.

    The goal in a war is to defeat the enemy - taking territory happens as a by-product of destroying the enemy. Russia fights the way they do to maximize the destruction of the Ukie army. It doesn't benefit them to chase thousands of soldiers in large cities among hundreds of thousands of civilians (often Russian-friendly). Destroying the Ukies who still want to fight in protracted battles in rural areas achieves the goal better than storming the crowded cities.

    Bottom line is that Russia is prevailing in all battles - Ukies are withdrawing after suffering massive casualties. The myths about Russian "human waves" are nonsense - there is not a single video showing it. The sad reality is that Russians bombed the sh.t out of entrenched Ukie positions and eventually the surviving Ukies pull back. This can go on for a long time - Ukraine is a very large country - but the eventual outcome will be a destroyed Ukie army. Then the territory will fall on its own.

    Or a million Poles invades and wins the war by marching all the way to Moscow!!! (Just kidding, I wanted to cheer you up. This must be really hard on you.)

    Replies: @AP

  404. @QCIC
    @Beckow

    Companies in the USA still build higher tech equipment and quite a bit of it. Almost all production is multinational, but nonetheless a lot is still made here. Examples include gas turbines (GE), chip manufacturing (Applied Materials), machine tools (Haas), lasers (IPG) and medical equipment. I think much of the equipment used worldwide in the oil and petrochemical industries is still made in the USA (components, not offshore rigs anymore).

    Partnership agreements are used in many industries so the USA IP gradually ends up in the partner company/country. First they become suppliers and later competitors. As the US education system continues to enstupidate STEM graduates it will become more difficult to create new IP. AI may offset some of this trend, on the other hand the increasing loss of smart Asians back to their home countries is another problem.

    I would like to see production of consumer goods return to the USA because people need to do something. In other words, the left hand side of the bell curve should not all work in service jobs. Having said that, a lot of production jobs are pretty soul crushing unless a person has a high level of self-responsibility.

    On the other hand, AI and automation (including robots) will continue to increase productivity per person. A not so distant future is now clearly visible when 50% of jobs can be replaced by machines. I don't think this is good idea, but no one asked me.

    The influence of AI is tough to predict, but it is likely to be world changing. Without that crucial factor I think the USA is in a death spiral where the middle class will be destroyed, leaving oligarchs and a few prosperous people. The majority of citizens will be peons entirely supported by the government. Barring some tipping point, possibly AI, I think this new hierarchy in the USA will be substantially complete in about 20 years.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    https://timemachine.fandom.com/wiki/Eloi

    20 years?

    You have read too much Yudkowski. It sure looks inevitable but I think we are going to be gone.

    https://empslocal.ex.ac.uk/people/staff/mrwatkin/PKDick.htm

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    I was suggesting sort of a best case robot expansion to cheer myself up. 2% growth per year is about 50% in 20 years. Realistically we already have a lot of robots and automation so 75% is possible. It could be a good thing (the two day work week), but I see little evidence for it so far. I am not thinking of android type robots, just more and more sophisticated multipurpose robotic machines at decreasing prices.

    I have not read Yudkowsky.

    I agree there is some doom music playing in the background and getting louder, something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkpnuyaP6CQ

  405. Why did JBP adopt this postmodern wardrobe?

    [MORE]


    My theory:
    narcissism+a gay picked it out for him.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    We figured this out several weeks ago. A Romanian witch pitched a curse at Andrew Tate. Jordan Peterson's daughter was on the Tate compound at the time. Poor Jordan Peterson got sprayed by magic shrapnel.

    Where were you that day?

    Replies: @songbird, @ShortOnTime

  406. @songbird
    Why did JBP adopt this postmodern wardrobe?
    https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1816164015447679004
    My theory:
    narcissism+a gay picked it out for him.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    We figured this out several weeks ago. A Romanian witch pitched a curse at Andrew Tate. Jordan Peterson’s daughter was on the Tate compound at the time. Poor Jordan Peterson got sprayed by magic shrapnel.

    Where were you that day?

    • LOL: Bashibuzuk
    • Replies: @songbird
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Feel like the most powerful Gypsy witches went west, after Romania joined the EU, in 2007.

    Though it may be that it doesn't take much to hex a crazy guy.

    , @ShortOnTime
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Jordan Peterson example shows what a total clown show the "alternative" social media sphere is and most of the international reactions to Israel-Palestine/Gaza and so on.

    "Clean your room" and "work on yourself" in a literal and banal sense is good advice, but what good is something like "14 rules for life" that comes from a man who can't control the sexuality of his own daughter?

    Even before Jordan came out to support Israel full on and had mental breakdowns over criticism of his hardcore support for Israel, the first thing that was off (among many) about Jordan was his daughter Mikhaila. There were multiple signs she was a whore even way before she gave birth to Andrew Tate's baby despite being in a relationship with another man.

    Perhaps Jordan would do better to confront his daughter instead of whining about "anonymous internet Nazis" or whatever ...

    There's also the bizarre performative wearing of a suit with Orthodox Christian icons looking like a mental asylum of mirrors on it as a performative marketing stunt (also before recommending Aleksander Solzhenitsyn's books he would've done well to have some forethought about if someone might get around to reading "200 Years Together" and publicly confronting him about it lol).

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @QCIC

  407. AP says:
    @Dmitry
    @AP


    New Russians”
     

    Others got medical degrees, or work in pharma,
     
    I wouldn't say they are related to gangsters in the real sense, but if you mean in a wider sense, yes, a lot of wider areas of second world society behave like thieves, including the government.

    "New Russians" was euphemism for people who get money in the new capitalism. But in this case, if you call all the local elite "thieves", it is in a wider sense, they are not part of the criminal society from the legal point of view.

    The "brothers" in those years are killing thousands of people. But mostly they killing within their own criminal society, although sometimes there are stories of killing ordinary people for a box of sneakers.

    Normal business people from the legitimate society could usually avoid problems with the mafia, as long as they have some kind of popularity or friendships.

    There are still often cases when businessmen were being killed by the mafia, or hiring the mafia to kill their rivals. Some journalists say oligarchs were hiring the mafia to kill rivals and control the heavy industries, although it's maybe not a proven hypothesis exactly there were definitely unsolved deaths of many of the industrial workers. Russia just has a very large number of missing people.

    The most famous case of the killing of an industrial manager in Russia is Oleg Belonenko in 2000 which is actually still a mystery.

    There were also cases even of billlionaries/oligarchs' family being killed, like Vasily Anisimov's daughter was killed in 2000 which is probably the most famous case in Russia.

    Still, the vast majority of violence is related to the killing of other criminals.


    New Russian kids would do stuff like buy cars in cash, drive with no license or insurance, then just leave the car with keys

     

    That's normal behavior for many wealthy people in Russia, it's not related to gangster, but of the general impunity for wealthy people in second world countries. For wealthy people it's expected they can pay the police and escape from penalties. including traffic accidents. It's one of the areas which seems to getting worse and there are constant cases every year when they are killing people in traffic accidents without penalty.

    -

    Still, I wouldn't like to confuse too much the general upper middle class in the second world society and the children of the leaders of OPS "Uralmash".

    Replies: @AP

    I wouldn’t say they are related to gangsters in the real sense…“New Russians” was euphemism for people who get money in the new capitalism. But in this case, if you call all the local elite “thieves”, it is in a wider sense, they are not part of the criminal society from the legal point of view

    [MORE]

    The backgrounds that I know, of the parents of the kids whose parents were considered “New Russians” were: a casino owner from a provincial city; a mafia guy from Moscow (from one of the Christian Caucasian republics – and this kid’s uncle was a minister in that country’s government); a new pro-Western “liberal” member of parliament; and the mp’s best friend, head of the local mafia from the same town (these friends sent their kids to America together).

    The parents may not have literally been killers but I don’t think anyone who became newly wealthy (versus middle class) in the late 80s/early 90s had clean hands.

    The kids told stories about being kidnapped occasionally, and held for ransom (it wasn’t too bad). Or not always being able to reach the parents from the USA because the parents would change their phone number every few weeks.

    Still, I wouldn’t like to confuse too much the general upper middle class in the second world society and the children of the leaders of OPS “Uralmash”.

    People could be clean and be middle class, but not rich. For example Soviet-era elite families might have rented out their large central apartments and lived comfortably off the rent in a more modest neighborhood or smaller rented flat, or leveraged their high education or good Russian CV to get scholarships/grants to good Western universities and then work for Western companies in management positions, or generally use those Western degrees to do well in Russia (this was a huge advantage in the 90s). A smart kid from a modest background could likewise get hired by a Western company and work in Moscow. But this wasn’t the level of “New Russian” wealth.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @AP

    It's very unlikely, mafia are sending their children to study in America or working in pharma. Mafia in Russia are a specific people.

    You're talking about typical "new money" in the postsoviet society, who can act in less sophisticated way or more redneck way, compared to people from the intellectual class. Those are not gangsters, in the literal sense.

    I don't feel like postsoviet "new money" are really worse than from most developing countries though.

    Maybe, some Russian golden youth are behaving worse, but it's more badly behaving in Russia because of the higher impunity. In the West, they don't have impunity. For example, even the son of Peskov (the presidential spokesperson) was going to prison in the United Kingdom like an ordinary citizen.


    leveraged their high education or good Russian CV to get scholarships/grants

     

    You're talking about the Soviet intellectual class. The USSR prioritized education and intellectualism.

    After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the economy becomes like a middle income country and the money is not connected to intellectualism anymore. Even it goes in the other direction, if you have money, you can often buy a doctorate. But the doctorate, will not make you wealthy.

    Although until around 2000-2010, Russia was still culturally an intellectual society, which has more value for being educated than in a normal middle income country. Education doesn't have much economic value.

    In modern Russia, money is not attached to intellectualism so the hierarchy has changed a lot.


    Western company and work in Moscow. But this wasn’t the level of “New Russian” wealth.
     
    Even in the USA it's similar. There is a middle class, who have nice manners, civilized behavior. But there are also people like Trump, Don King, Kardashians, Hunter Biden.
  408. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @QCIC

    https://timemachine.fandom.com/wiki/Eloi

    20 years?

    You have read too much Yudkowski. It sure looks inevitable but I think we are going to be gone.

    https://empslocal.ex.ac.uk/people/staff/mrwatkin/PKDick.htm

    Replies: @QCIC

    I was suggesting sort of a best case robot expansion to cheer myself up. 2% growth per year is about 50% in 20 years. Realistically we already have a lot of robots and automation so 75% is possible. It could be a good thing (the two day work week), but I see little evidence for it so far. I am not thinking of android type robots, just more and more sophisticated multipurpose robotic machines at decreasing prices.

    I have not read Yudkowsky.

    I agree there is some doom music playing in the background and getting louder, something like this:

    [MORE]

  409. @AP
    @Dmitry


    I wouldn’t say they are related to gangsters in the real sense...“New Russians” was euphemism for people who get money in the new capitalism. But in this case, if you call all the local elite “thieves”, it is in a wider sense, they are not part of the criminal society from the legal point of view
     


    The backgrounds that I know, of the parents of the kids whose parents were considered "New Russians" were: a casino owner from a provincial city; a mafia guy from Moscow (from one of the Christian Caucasian republics - and this kid's uncle was a minister in that country's government); a new pro-Western "liberal" member of parliament; and the mp's best friend, head of the local mafia from the same town (these friends sent their kids to America together).

    The parents may not have literally been killers but I don't think anyone who became newly wealthy (versus middle class) in the late 80s/early 90s had clean hands.

    The kids told stories about being kidnapped occasionally, and held for ransom (it wasn't too bad). Or not always being able to reach the parents from the USA because the parents would change their phone number every few weeks.

    Still, I wouldn’t like to confuse too much the general upper middle class in the second world society and the children of the leaders of OPS “Uralmash”.
     
    People could be clean and be middle class, but not rich. For example Soviet-era elite families might have rented out their large central apartments and lived comfortably off the rent in a more modest neighborhood or smaller rented flat, or leveraged their high education or good Russian CV to get scholarships/grants to good Western universities and then work for Western companies in management positions, or generally use those Western degrees to do well in Russia (this was a huge advantage in the 90s). A smart kid from a modest background could likewise get hired by a Western company and work in Moscow. But this wasn't the level of "New Russian" wealth.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    It’s very unlikely, mafia are sending their children to study in America or working in pharma. Mafia in Russia are a specific people.

    You’re talking about typical “new money” in the postsoviet society, who can act in less sophisticated way or more redneck way, compared to people from the intellectual class. Those are not gangsters, in the literal sense.

    I don’t feel like postsoviet “new money” are really worse than from most developing countries though.

    Maybe, some Russian golden youth are behaving worse, but it’s more badly behaving in Russia because of the higher impunity. In the West, they don’t have impunity. For example, even the son of Peskov (the presidential spokesperson) was going to prison in the United Kingdom like an ordinary citizen.

    leveraged their high education or good Russian CV to get scholarships/grants

    You’re talking about the Soviet intellectual class. The USSR prioritized education and intellectualism.

    After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the economy becomes like a middle income country and the money is not connected to intellectualism anymore. Even it goes in the other direction, if you have money, you can often buy a doctorate. But the doctorate, will not make you wealthy.

    Although until around 2000-2010, Russia was still culturally an intellectual society, which has more value for being educated than in a normal middle income country. Education doesn’t have much economic value.

    In modern Russia, money is not attached to intellectualism so the hierarchy has changed a lot.

    Western company and work in Moscow. But this wasn’t the level of “New Russian” wealth.

    Even in the USA it’s similar. There is a middle class, who have nice manners, civilized behavior. But there are also people like Trump, Don King, Kardashians, Hunter Biden.

  410. @Bashibuzuk
    @AP

    Basically, what Gibson is hinting at is a convergence between the kleptocratic elites in RF and Western wanna be oligarchs. Think about it, the RF Klept managed to transform a very egalitarian society into one of the most unequal on the surface of the planet in more or less a single generation. This is actually an historic achievement (if a negative one).

    Now, if you battled the « entrenched privilege » of the Western Middle Class, and aimed to put it back to work in Chinese-like conditions to become competitive again against the global outreach of the Chinese system, wouldn’t you try to learn from the RF Klept to ensure a successful Westerstroika? Many Globalists believe that the West is no longer competitive because it’s over regulated, its population is spoiled by the « gibs » of different sorts, and its large middle class actually consumes way more than their share of the global GDP. We should remember that Musk, Thiel and others worked in the same environment where the Dark Enlightenment and NRX ideology were promoted a couple of decades back.

    If you’d want to go full Millei on the West, to radically reform it towards the TNC-friendly libertarian mindset, then the shock and awe strategy used by the RF (Noviop) Klept makes total sense. So Gibson in his last couple of books describes a future where a post-cataclysmic world is ruled by the global Klept aristocracy, some of which has New Russian (Noviop, although of course he doesn’t use the term) roots.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    I don’t know enough about William Gibson to add anything interesting for that.

    If you think about a comparison to Trump generally in Russia, his class origin, is similar to some Caucasian postsoviet property development families like especially Emin, who is the son of Agalarov.

    Trump is a prince, of a property development family, like Emin in Russia.

    Just in Russia, the property development is more of a centralized business today, so it’s often controlled from the larger oligarchs who also own real industries. But Emin is an example where they don’t really own any real industry.

    Trump isn’t similar to the government in Russia, though.

    The top of the Russian government, are the former agents from the KGB, who as part of their job are managing an elite who own real industry.

    If you imagine a similar government in the USA, it would like Washington which spills the country’s heavy industry and natural resource extraction to their friends, with the government mainly controlled by former agents from the CIA, FBI and NSA.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Dmitry

    https://s0-rbk-ru.cdn.ampproject.org/i/s/s0.rbk.ru/v6_top_pics/ampresize/media/img/1/84/754715457451841.jpg

    Do you know who this guy is?

    Replies: @Dmitry

  411. Let’s see coward Bibi try to ignore this one

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Greasy William

    I’ve stayed overnight as a tourist in Majdal Shams, in the guesthouse of a family. They were definitely friendly and orientated to tourism.

    But politically, in Majdal Shams they are mostly Syrian citizens who refuse the Israeli citizenship, loyal to Damascus, even sending their youth to Syria for higher education. They not like they are mainly Israeli citizens, or loyal citizens like the Druze population in pre-1967 borders.

    It's not sure, the Israeli government will feel the same political pressure or duty, compared to an attack on a city with mainly Israeli citizens.

    Still, around 17% of the population in Majdal Sham have accepted Israeli citizenship, so it's likely some dual Israeli-Syrian citizens have been killed in the missile attack.

    Replies: @Greasy William

  412. @songbird
    @Dmitry


    If you walk around in the middle of the working day see a lot of Irish youth are half lazy people, waiting on the street smoking cannabis,
     
    this is stuff I never saw in my youth. Somehow, I don't think these ganja people feel like they have good prospects for family formation.

    Most of my relatives have moved away from Dublin. I fear for those who remain.

    It’s a general problem of our time when people are using all this technology, they don’t understand how it works or really think about it.
     
    We can't really know how it works, unless it is open source. We can only speculate based on observations, suspicions, and revelations about other sites, like "shadowbanning" on Twitter, which Musk has confirmed.

    We also know that there was a press campaign in 2018, which specifically brought up the algorithm, obviously lobbying to change it, as one can read in this story:
    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/sep/18/report-youtubes-alternative-influence-network-breeds-rightwing-radicalisation

    Molyneux, who was one of the targets of this campaign, had his channel terminated eventually. But there were many others.

    Some of these terminated accounts were pretty popular, and I find the idea that they were impossible to monetize on an individual basis very unlikely, unless we consider that there was some kind of organized cartel pressure to threaten YouTube over them.

    Many of these people have had their banking services terminated, over political pressure.

    Many will live broadcast on YouTube, like Ed Dutton, but immediately take down their videos afterward. Many have removed their old videos to be cautious.

    Anyway, if you have a suspicious mind (as I do), I think there is enough evidence to speculate that the JBP videos were there as some deradicalization campaign. It is not necessarily true, but it does make a certain kind of sense.

    If people think today the Google engineers are sitting down watching videos and choosing which ones to recommend to people, manually. Especially, Google, is obsessed with automation.
     
    any political filter would be quite easy to automate or outsource to NGOs. The subtitles are automatically generated, so the audio can pretty easily be run through a filter looking for controversial terms, which is exactly what the NSA does with telephone calls.

    Once someone is tagged, that would put their guests under a lot of scrutiny and those guests often have their own channels and guests of their own.

    I think he’s popular because he’s a confident presenter, which is the skill to be successful on YouTube.
     
    It's possible.

    But at a minimum, I think it is related to his guests. People like Musk are looking for positive PR, and are anxious to show they are not racist.

    I just try to make the comparison - maybe, it is not a good one - to Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut. He is probably not the best presenter or best-looking guy, but he is very technically knowledgeable. When he meets with Musk, I feel like it is because he has the background knowledge.

    It is not obvious to me that Brownlee is as knowledgeable. But maybe that is not the best comparison.

    Replies: @Torna atrás, @Dmitry

    think these ganja people

    The “unemployed youth” hooligans in Dublin, generally seem like some very peaceful and gentle “hooligans”. Which could be correlated, with the smell of cannabis, everywhere they are walking.

    But maybe, even the popularity of peaceful narcotics was not enough to save Dublin’s sneaker store this year.

  413. @Greasy William
    Let’s see coward Bibi try to ignore this one

    Replies: @Dmitry

    I’ve stayed overnight as a tourist in Majdal Shams, in the guesthouse of a family. They were definitely friendly and orientated to tourism.

    But politically, in Majdal Shams they are mostly Syrian citizens who refuse the Israeli citizenship, loyal to Damascus, even sending their youth to Syria for higher education. They not like they are mainly Israeli citizens, or loyal citizens like the Druze population in pre-1967 borders.

    It’s not sure, the Israeli government will feel the same political pressure or duty, compared to an attack on a city with mainly Israeli citizens.

    Still, around 17% of the population in Majdal Sham have accepted Israeli citizenship, so it’s likely some dual Israeli-Syrian citizens have been killed in the missile attack.

    • Replies: @Greasy William
    @Dmitry

    I know all that. The Syrian Druze are our enemies but everyone knows it’s only a matter of time before this happens to Jewish children. War now.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Dmitry

  414. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    We figured this out several weeks ago. A Romanian witch pitched a curse at Andrew Tate. Jordan Peterson's daughter was on the Tate compound at the time. Poor Jordan Peterson got sprayed by magic shrapnel.

    Where were you that day?

    Replies: @songbird, @ShortOnTime

    Feel like the most powerful Gypsy witches went west, after Romania joined the EU, in 2007.

    Though it may be that it doesn’t take much to hex a crazy guy.

  415. @AP
    @Beckow


    Stalemate? Really?
     
    When the lines don't change more than a few villages in months it is a stalemate.

    When Ukraine lost far fewer men in trying to take the Crimean corridor before ending their advance due it being too costly, you called it a defeat.

    But when Russia is stopped outside Kharkiv with far greater losses, or continues to grind and capture a few villages while continuing to lose many men and much equipment, you call it "winning."

    Were you lying then, or lying now?

    Ukraine is a lot less of a country than it was in 2014 or 1991
     
    Ukraine was better in 2020 than it was in 2014.

    Do you know anyone outside US who buys American-made cars?
     
    So you don't know anyone who drives a Tesla?

    Otherwise - Canadians. I only know a handful of people in Europe and haven't surveyed them about what cars they drive. I remember one of the people I know owns a Ford, but it may have been made in Europe.

    Did you know that a lot of German SUVs sold in Europe are made in the USA? BMW has a plant in South Carolina that exports to Europe.

    https://www.statista.com/statistics/260918/us-passenger-vehicle-exports/#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20U.S.%20light%20vehicle,exports%20based%20on%20export%20value.

    In 2021, U.S. light vehicle exports increased by around 12 percent year-on-year. About 1.6 million passenger cars and light vehicles were exported from the United States in 2021. Canada was the leading target country for U.S. passenger vehicle exports based on export value.

    No serious person outside US sees US as a manufacturing powerhouse
     
    Do you "think" you are a serious person?

    USA is the world's second largest manufacturer. Please name a single country other than China that manufactures more overall than does the USA. Russia doesn't come close.

    Replies: @Beckow

    You are way off about the situation on the front line – as if you needed to obsessively lie to yourself.

    Let’s look at the casualties: both side lie about it, the only reliable estimates are indirect. One of the best ways in all wars is to compare POWs: Russia holds 6 times as many Ukie POWs as vice versa. Kiev for some weird reason also includes ethnic Russian Ukies they arrested for being pro-Russian among the POWs and wants to include them in POW exchanges.

    Six to one in POWs implies about the same ratio in casualties. Unless this war is very different from other wars and Ukies surrender in larger numbers. That is close to Russian claims of 5 to 1, 7 to 1, and at one point during the failed Ukie offensive in 2023 they said it was 10 to 1.

    Given the general lying nature of all wars I would still take it with a grain of salt. But the odds are that after it is over if it will turn out the Ukies suffered substantially worse casualties.

    The goal in a war is to defeat the enemy – taking territory happens as a by-product of destroying the enemy. Russia fights the way they do to maximize the destruction of the Ukie army. It doesn’t benefit them to chase thousands of soldiers in large cities among hundreds of thousands of civilians (often Russian-friendly). Destroying the Ukies who still want to fight in protracted battles in rural areas achieves the goal better than storming the crowded cities.

    Bottom line is that Russia is prevailing in all battles – Ukies are withdrawing after suffering massive casualties. The myths about Russian “human waves” are nonsense – there is not a single video showing it. The sad reality is that Russians bombed the sh.t out of entrenched Ukie positions and eventually the surviving Ukies pull back. This can go on for a long time – Ukraine is a very large country – but the eventual outcome will be a destroyed Ukie army. Then the territory will fall on its own.

    Or a million Poles invades and wins the war by marching all the way to Moscow!!! (Just kidding, I wanted to cheer you up. This must be really hard on you.)

    • Replies: @AP
    @Beckow


    You are way off about the situation on the front line
     
    The bottom line is that the front line has changed very little.

    https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/ukraine-frontline-hp-03.png

    That is what stalemate looks like.

    Of course, one can zoom in and show large maps of specific villages taken by Russia to make it look like the gains are significant. It would be manipulation, the equivalent of trying to make a protest seem bigger than it is by zooming in on 100 people.

    Let’s look at the casualties: both side lie about it, the only reliable estimates are indirect.
     
    Wow, you made a correct statement. But then you screw up as usual:

    One of the best ways in all wars is to compare POWs: Russia holds 6 times as many Ukie POWs as vice versa.
     
    It is not good way of estimating at all.

    The number of POWs does not necessarily correspond to number of killed in action. On the Eastern Front, there were more German POWs than Soviet ones. But there were far more Soviet KIA than German POWs.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_(World_War_II)

    Germany and allies: 4.5 million POWs, 4.5 million KIA
    USSR and allies: 4.1 million POWs, 6.5 million KIA

    So going by that rule, more POWs = fewer KIA.

    So it's not a rule.

    POWs are achieved when an enemy is surrounded and surrenders. This happened a lot in the beginning of the war with Ukrainians, especially in the South and Mariupol where large units surrendered. It doesn't happen as much or in as large numbers on the current battlefield.

    Moreover, you say you don't trust governments for KIA numbers but you trust them for POW numbers.

    The best indirect measure of course is death notices and obituaries.

    Why do you avoid mentioning those?

    Because for most of the war they were about equal, suggesting that each side had about the same KIA. However in the last 2 months or so there have been about 2 Russian death notices for every Ukrainian one. As would be expected, given that Russia is on the offensive and not achieving much. In terms of territory gained and lives lost, Russia's Kharkiv offensive was much worse for Russia than the southern offensive was for Ukraine last year.

    The sad reality is that Russians bombed the sh.t out of entrenched Ukie positions and eventually the surviving Ukies pull back

     

    Ukrainians deliberately do not concentrate their forces in such ways that they are consistently hit in large numbers by a single bomb. This was a reason why using battlefield nukes would be ineffective.

    The myths about Russian “human waves” are nonsense – there is not a single video showing it.
     
    Uh oh, JJ might show you if you insist.

    The fact the recently Russian death notices have spiked and now outnumber Ukrainian ones tells us that currently Russians are sacrificing a lot of men for very little land. Russians seem to be doing what the Ukrainians stopped doing last year - keep on taking villages here and there, while sacrificing men and equipment.

    AK's KIA estimate from a couple of weeks ago:



    https://twitter.com/powerfultakes/status/1809393375440777347

    Replies: @Greasy William, @Derer, @Beckow

  416. @Dmitry
    @Greasy William

    I’ve stayed overnight as a tourist in Majdal Shams, in the guesthouse of a family. They were definitely friendly and orientated to tourism.

    But politically, in Majdal Shams they are mostly Syrian citizens who refuse the Israeli citizenship, loyal to Damascus, even sending their youth to Syria for higher education. They not like they are mainly Israeli citizens, or loyal citizens like the Druze population in pre-1967 borders.

    It's not sure, the Israeli government will feel the same political pressure or duty, compared to an attack on a city with mainly Israeli citizens.

    Still, around 17% of the population in Majdal Sham have accepted Israeli citizenship, so it's likely some dual Israeli-Syrian citizens have been killed in the missile attack.

    Replies: @Greasy William

    I know all that. The Syrian Druze are our enemies but everyone knows it’s only a matter of time before this happens to Jewish children. War now.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Greasy William

    oops delete too late

    , @Dmitry
    @Greasy William

    You've not even been in Israel, so what is your relation to this "war now" you want?

    You are not going to experience negative consequences of the war. There will be no rockets on your house. It's comments about symbolic images in your mind and the desire for explosions on your television as a kind of entertainment.

    Replies: @Greasy William

  417. @Greasy William
    @Dmitry

    I know all that. The Syrian Druze are our enemies but everyone knows it’s only a matter of time before this happens to Jewish children. War now.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Dmitry

    oops delete too late

  418. @Greasy William
    @Dmitry

    I know all that. The Syrian Druze are our enemies but everyone knows it’s only a matter of time before this happens to Jewish children. War now.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Dmitry

    You’ve not even been in Israel, so what is your relation to this “war now” you want?

    You are not going to experience negative consequences of the war. There will be no rockets on your house. It’s comments about symbolic images in your mind and the desire for explosions on your television as a kind of entertainment.

    • Replies: @Greasy William
    @Dmitry

    It’s a desire for justice and for security for the Jewish people. And this time, most Israeli Jews agree with me. The only people opposed to war are the Palestinians, the Lebanese and their supporters

  419. @Dmitry
    @Greasy William

    You've not even been in Israel, so what is your relation to this "war now" you want?

    You are not going to experience negative consequences of the war. There will be no rockets on your house. It's comments about symbolic images in your mind and the desire for explosions on your television as a kind of entertainment.

    Replies: @Greasy William

    It’s a desire for justice and for security for the Jewish people. And this time, most Israeli Jews agree with me. The only people opposed to war are the Palestinians, the Lebanese and their supporters

  420. @Beckow
    @John Johnson

    Post-Maidan Kiev government killed 3,000 civilians in Donbas. Same as 911. US went to two (or more) wars for 3,000 killed, you would expect Russia to sit back? Would US? And the timing is entirely up to them...they waited until they were ready.

    Your swimming 'analogy' is very stupid and it reflects badly on your reasoning skills. How many people died in US in 2001 in car accidents? It is stupid to compare 911 to it.

    Your usual denial of NATO moving to Ukraine is desperate. For 17 years each year NATO officially declared that Ukraine will join NATO. Germany-France never officially objected, they just leaked wimpy statements like 'not yet'. It was a done deal before 2022, now it is impossible. Russia won that one.

    UN Assembly has no power - people talk and 'vote' to show sympathy. 40 countries representing half of the world's population abstained. That speaks for itself. US, UK, EU have no standing to critizise anyone after what they are doing in Israel...you can try to distance from it, but you are not the government. Everyone judges US based on the official policy. So that's that - a thief screaming 'catch him he is a thief!'...it is pointless and a bit silly.

    Russia has not supported Israel's bloody assault on Palis, not supplied arms, not provided cover in UN, etc...US has done all of those things. If you think that is the same you have basic comprehension problems.

    But I appreciate your position on Gaza-Isreal (see we can agree on some things).

    Replies: @John Johnson

    Post-Maidan Kiev government killed 3,000 civilians in Donbas. Same as 911. US went to two (or more) wars for 3,000 killed, you would expect Russia to sit back?

    That 3000 number that has been rounded up is civilians on both sides and the fighting was mostly by militias and not the government.

    Here is the UN report
    https://ukraine.un.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/Conflict-related%20civilian%20casualties%20as%20of%2031%20December%202021%20%28rev%2027%20January%202022%29%20corr%20EN_0.pdf

    There was clearly a massive drop off in casualties in 2016. Do you deny that?

    So Russia in 2022 decides to invade over civilian casualties from 2014/2015? Is that what you are saying?

    Why did they try to take Kiev if the goal is to protect ethnic Russians in DPR/LPR? Why did they try a decapitation strike where thousands of Slavs died within 48 hours?

    For 17 years each year NATO officially declared that Ukraine will join NATO. Germany-France never officially objected, they just leaked wimpy statements like ‘not yet’.

    No that isn’t the case at all and if you keep trying that bullshit I will post sources like this one:

    NATO Allies Oppose Bush on Georgia and Ukraine
    https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/03/world/europe/03nato.html

    Germany and France were opposed to Ukraine in NATO before Putin’s invasion.

    I can post multiple sources. Just stop already. Your one quote doesn’t represent all the members and the vote has to be unanimous.

    NATO is not a hierarchy. That was proven when half of NATO told GW to go F himself when he asked for their backing on Iraq. The US does not control NATO and they have rejected the will of the US president numerous times.

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @John Johnson


    ...That 3000 number that has been rounded up is civilians on both sides and the fighting was mostly by militias and not the government.
     
    Rounded up? From what? 2,800? Then it's ok? In 911 the actual casualties were also 2,900 and "rounded up". Are you a complete madman?

    Donbas civilians were killed by the Kiev government, the 'militias' were part of the government forces. It was a crime (and a huge mistake) and that Russia waited with a response and tried for Minsk peace is to their credit.

    Given the Ukie fantaticism they probably regret not ending it earlier. Russia started by trying to force the Minsk deal on Kiev with a very minor invasion of 100k troops - then NATO ordered Kiev to fight and now we have a full-scale war that Kiev is losing.


    Germany and France were opposed to Ukraine in NATO before Putin’s invasion.
     
    When did they actually say publicly that Ukraine will not be in NATO? You are lying, they only asked for a delay. They are vassals and always do as they are told. Your bizarre denial that the war is about unwise, failed NATO expansion to Ukraine to be better threaten Russia suggests that you are a paid hack or very stupid. Or you are sorry that it didn't work so you medicate yourself by denying the obvious.
  421. @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk

    I don't know enough about William Gibson to add anything interesting for that.

    -

    If you think about a comparison to Trump generally in Russia, his class origin, is similar to some Caucasian postsoviet property development families like especially Emin, who is the son of Agalarov.

    Trump is a prince, of a property development family, like Emin in Russia.

    Just in Russia, the property development is more of a centralized business today, so it's often controlled from the larger oligarchs who also own real industries. But Emin is an example where they don't really own any real industry.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuZUNjFsgS8

    -


    Trump isn't similar to the government in Russia, though.

    The top of the Russian government, are the former agents from the KGB, who as part of their job are managing an elite who own real industry.

    -

    If you imagine a similar government in the USA, it would like Washington which spills the country's heavy industry and natural resource extraction to their friends, with the government mainly controlled by former agents from the CIA, FBI and NSA.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    Do you know who this guy is?

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk

    I love the city as a touristical visitor and even was a supporter of Zenit, as a teenager. But I don't know really enough about there to add anything interesting. .


    -

    But about the theme about the historical change we have seen in Russia in our life. In the government strategy, there were significant marketing changes in Russia, around Medvedev, or Putin's third term. They are influenced by Fox News and the Republican Party's marketing strategy.

    So, maybe in 2012 or 2010, they begin to do marketing strategies copying Fox News or the Republican Party. This is, the marketing team are using the American Republican theme of "family values" and "conservative values". Internationally, this change of marketing strategy has also confused some people in our forum like Karlin, Johnson Johnson, AP, or in the international media people like Tucker Carlson.

    But in Russia, it's true, also there had some real change of visibility of different parts of society and culture.*

    So today, it looks actually culturally strange, in 2006, watching back, how he was allowed to be very visible in the local city society.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FExAGLTGYk&t=556s

    In some ways, the 2000s epoch was more open and a lot of the Westerners wouldn't be triggered like they are today by the contradictory themes the government is marketing in the 2010s epoch.


    -

    *Although some parts of society became more visible in the later 2010s epoch, so cities were covered with billboards advertising prostitution, which wasn't seen in the 2000s epoch.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  422. @Mr. Hack
    @Mikhail


    Russia defeated the neo-Nazi Kiev regime forces in Mariupol who used civilians/civilian infrastructure as human shields.
     
    You didn't really think that I was going to let this stupid little canned, kremlin stooge, pat answer fly with no rebuttal? It's 100% a lie as is so much of the kremlin stooge propaganda that you try and float here and elsewhere. To get some idea of the numbers of civilians that died in Mariupol and who was responsible, I would suggest that you read the Human Rights Watch report on the devastation. The visuals that accompany the report are excellent, including maps etc:

    https://features.hrw.org/features/features/mariupol/images/report/map_5_hospitals_en.jpg

    Are you serious in insinuating that Russia's military wasn't involved in the vast destruction of Mariupol and its infrastructure that resulted in the deaths of 10,000's of civilians? Read this report, it's not too late Mickey, then go and privately kneel in your room by your bed and ask the Lord for his forgiveness to you for lying and trying to whitewash and coverup Russia's culpability in starting and continuing this horrific war. Wash all of the blood off of your hands Mickey, you'll feel much better. If you don't, your culpability will haunt you till your last day. :-(
    https://www.hrw.org/feature/russia-ukraine-war-mariupol/report

    Replies: @Mikhail, @Derer

    HRW is often enough Sorosian BS propaganda. Its own report gives a Mariupol civilian casualty figure which isn’t in the tens of thousands.

    US killed many German and Japanese civilians during WW II. The point being that a civilian death toll isn’t always used as a good indicator on who is right or more right in a conflict.

    No denying that neo-Nazi allied Kiev regime forces used civilians/civilian infrastructure in Mariupol as cover.

  423. • Replies: @John Johnson
    @Mikhail

    Russians destroyed a US tank? Wow that's shocking. A tank destroyed in a modern war. Who would ever guess that such things could happen. It's almost as if both sides are trying to kill each other.

    This Russian soldier on the frontline doesn't seem so thrilled with the situation:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFnQDY0fnUc

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  424. @Mikhail
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEfbT0-DzFM

    Replies: @John Johnson

    Russians destroyed a US tank? Wow that’s shocking. A tank destroyed in a modern war. Who would ever guess that such things could happen. It’s almost as if both sides are trying to kill each other.

    This Russian soldier on the frontline doesn’t seem so thrilled with the situation:

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @John Johnson

    I watched the video, it was disgusting. Mike Averko will pretend that he didn't watch it and that Russian troops are marching triumphantly towards Kharkiv. One older survivor out of 300 with flies and stench so thick that you have to wear a mask just to breath. It's hard not to feel sorry or this poor guy, but he and the others came to Ukraine lured by the idea of large contract bonuses, lol. Ukrainians don't get paid nearly as much, but they're fighting for honorable reasons, to defend their homes, families and country from unwanted aggressors. Russians go home, you're not wanted nor needed in Ukraine!

    Replies: @John Johnson

  425. Another thing I don’t like about AC: I think the noise of it creates louder, more annoying people.

    I mean, like someone who grew up without their windows ever being open is going to be louder when they are outside in the middle of the night. Not necessarily everyone, but those already born cretinous. It is a risk factor.

    No, I am not coming for Southernor’s AC. Merely noting northern truths.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    We drink too much
    We laugh too loud
    We are too dumb to
    Make it in a northern town
    We are keeping the niggers down

    We're rednecks
    We're rednecks
    We don't know our ass
    From a hole in the ground
    We are keeping the niggers down

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTLHxpUQ_B8

  426. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajan said Rome decided to appoint the ambassador to “turn a spotlight” on Syria, Reuters reported.

    Italy’s special envoy to Syria, Stefano Ravagnan, will serve as ambassador and will arrive in the Syria soon.

    [MORE]

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Torna atrás

    Assad is probably one of the most amazing politicians of the early twenty first century. To survive in the situation his country and family had faced for the last twelve years is already a feat, but to eventually come on top is even more impressive. It’s sad he couldn’t implement the reforms that he aimed at in the early days of his coming to power. Those who wanted Syria destroyed prevented him by unleashing the chaos.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Torna atrás

    , @Torna atrás
    @Torna atrás

    https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/christianity-middle-east-300x250.jpg


    The Syriac Orthodox Church is the largest Oriental Orthodox Christian group in Syria. The Syriac Orthodox or Jacobite Church, whose liturgy is in Syriac, was severed from the favored church of the Byzantine Empire (Eastern Orthodoxy), over the Chalcedonian controversy.

  427. @John Johnson
    @Mikhail

    Russians destroyed a US tank? Wow that's shocking. A tank destroyed in a modern war. Who would ever guess that such things could happen. It's almost as if both sides are trying to kill each other.

    This Russian soldier on the frontline doesn't seem so thrilled with the situation:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFnQDY0fnUc

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    I watched the video, it was disgusting. Mike Averko will pretend that he didn’t watch it and that Russian troops are marching triumphantly towards Kharkiv. One older survivor out of 300 with flies and stench so thick that you have to wear a mask just to breath. It’s hard not to feel sorry or this poor guy, but he and the others came to Ukraine lured by the idea of large contract bonuses, lol. Ukrainians don’t get paid nearly as much, but they’re fighting for honorable reasons, to defend their homes, families and country from unwanted aggressors. Russians go home, you’re not wanted nor needed in Ukraine!

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @Mr. Hack

    One older survivor out of 300 with flies and stench so thick that you have to wear a mask just to breath. It’s hard not to feel sorry or this poor guy, but he and the others came to Ukraine lured by the idea of large contract bonuses, lol.

    I don't feel sorry for them at all. They are agreeing to kill for money.

    In the POW interviews they never feel sorry for the Ukrainians. I've watched dozens of them and only a few take any moral objections. Most either support the war or don't care if it is justified. They want the check and they "don't do politics" as the Russians say.

    Their regrets are centered around being unable to make quick money. They regret going because it wasn't like they assumed or they expected better military support.

    Russia seems filled with half-suicidal men that will risk their lives for a few thousand dollars.

    They all seem to have an underlying disdain for Ukrainians. They clearly don't view them as their Slavic cousins. Cousins don't try to kill each other for cash.

  428. Another fact based rebuttal to the moron trolls who come back with empty calories

  429. @Bashibuzuk
    @Dmitry

    https://s0-rbk-ru.cdn.ampproject.org/i/s/s0.rbk.ru/v6_top_pics/ampresize/media/img/1/84/754715457451841.jpg

    Do you know who this guy is?

    Replies: @Dmitry

    I love the city as a touristical visitor and even was a supporter of Zenit, as a teenager. But I don’t know really enough about there to add anything interesting. .

    But about the theme about the historical change we have seen in Russia in our life. In the government strategy, there were significant marketing changes in Russia, around Medvedev, or Putin’s third term. They are influenced by Fox News and the Republican Party’s marketing strategy.

    So, maybe in 2012 or 2010, they begin to do marketing strategies copying Fox News or the Republican Party. This is, the marketing team are using the American Republican theme of “family values” and “conservative values”. Internationally, this change of marketing strategy has also confused some people in our forum like Karlin, Johnson Johnson, AP, or in the international media people like Tucker Carlson.

    But in Russia, it’s true, also there had some real change of visibility of different parts of society and culture.*

    So today, it looks actually culturally strange, in 2006, watching back, how he was allowed to be very visible in the local city society.

    In some ways, the 2000s epoch was more open and a lot of the Westerners wouldn’t be triggered like they are today by the contradictory themes the government is marketing in the 2010s epoch.

    *Although some parts of society became more visible in the later 2010s epoch, so cities were covered with billboards advertising prostitution, which wasn’t seen in the 2000s epoch.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Dmitry

    Barsukov was basically Putin’s associate in the Russian Mob when Putin was active in Leningrad. There were other Blatnyie associated with Putin, the father of Durov being one of them, but only Putin and Barsukov really understood that the fusion of the secret services and organized crime was basically guaranteed to seize power. It was too strong a force to be opposed by anyone else, be it the Red Browns, the Dem-schizo liberals or the former Nomenklatura and Red Directors of the Soviet industrial complex. By implementing this fusion of the Vors and the Siloviki, the Leningrad team came to rule RF. That’s the Klept: Deep State + Organized Crime fused as one and operating as a global TNC. The problem of Putin is that he did not achieve the transformation towards the global Russian (Noviop) Klept. He was either contained (mainly by the Brits who don’t want concurrent Klept operating on a global scale) or his outlook was too narrow which brought him to the current situation. What is important to understand, is that even if RF Noviops won’t achieve the historical task of the Klept, some other group will.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Derer

  430. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Torna atrás
    Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajan said Rome decided to appoint the ambassador to "turn a spotlight” on Syria, Reuters reported.

    Italy’s special envoy to Syria, Stefano Ravagnan, will serve as ambassador and will arrive in the Syria soon.



    https://twitter.com/KevorkAlmassian/status/1574395150087905280

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Torna atrás

    Assad is probably one of the most amazing politicians of the early twenty first century. To survive in the situation his country and family had faced for the last twelve years is already a feat, but to eventually come on top is even more impressive. It’s sad he couldn’t implement the reforms that he aimed at in the early days of his coming to power. Those who wanted Syria destroyed prevented him by unleashing the chaos.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk

    In per capita income, Syria was the poorest country in the Arab world after Yemen, before 2010. So, I don't think 40 years of Assad government is a good government for median Syrians.

    By 2010, they destroyed their water resources and had hundreds of thousands of their citizens internally immigrating because of the drought.
    https://www.greenprophet.com/2010/11/500000-syrians-flee-drought/

    It only really survived because of the developed countries* were feeding their population.


    2010. "The World Food Program has stepped in to feed nearly 200,000 people, while over 100,000 more are in need of rations.

    Thank goodness for that, but how long will aid agencies be able to pick up the government’s slack?"
     

    70% of their agricultural water was wasted. If you can't manage water, you cannot feed the population.
    https://www.greenprophet.com/2010/10/syrias-dustbowl-wasted-water/


    -

    *Also Russia, including $13 billion in 2005 of debt cancellation.

    , @Torna atrás
    @Bashibuzuk

    Sanhedrin 37a

    https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRg4lB-m_7VZQc8Q6LwGAgCgIVWzMZbVAfa-hEX1GWCtw&s.jpg

    Replies: @Torna atrás

  431. @songbird
    Another thing I don't like about AC: I think the noise of it creates louder, more annoying people.

    I mean, like someone who grew up without their windows ever being open is going to be louder when they are outside in the middle of the night. Not necessarily everyone, but those already born cretinous. It is a risk factor.

    No, I am not coming for Southernor's AC. Merely noting northern truths.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    We drink too much
    We laugh too loud
    We are too dumb to
    Make it in a northern town
    We are keeping the niggers down

    We’re rednecks
    We’re rednecks
    We don’t know our ass
    From a hole in the ground
    We are keeping the niggers down

    • LOL: songbird
  432. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk

    I love the city as a touristical visitor and even was a supporter of Zenit, as a teenager. But I don't know really enough about there to add anything interesting. .


    -

    But about the theme about the historical change we have seen in Russia in our life. In the government strategy, there were significant marketing changes in Russia, around Medvedev, or Putin's third term. They are influenced by Fox News and the Republican Party's marketing strategy.

    So, maybe in 2012 or 2010, they begin to do marketing strategies copying Fox News or the Republican Party. This is, the marketing team are using the American Republican theme of "family values" and "conservative values". Internationally, this change of marketing strategy has also confused some people in our forum like Karlin, Johnson Johnson, AP, or in the international media people like Tucker Carlson.

    But in Russia, it's true, also there had some real change of visibility of different parts of society and culture.*

    So today, it looks actually culturally strange, in 2006, watching back, how he was allowed to be very visible in the local city society.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FExAGLTGYk&t=556s

    In some ways, the 2000s epoch was more open and a lot of the Westerners wouldn't be triggered like they are today by the contradictory themes the government is marketing in the 2010s epoch.


    -

    *Although some parts of society became more visible in the later 2010s epoch, so cities were covered with billboards advertising prostitution, which wasn't seen in the 2000s epoch.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    Barsukov was basically Putin’s associate in the Russian Mob when Putin was active in Leningrad. There were other Blatnyie associated with Putin, the father of Durov being one of them, but only Putin and Barsukov really understood that the fusion of the secret services and organized crime was basically guaranteed to seize power. It was too strong a force to be opposed by anyone else, be it the Red Browns, the Dem-schizo liberals or the former Nomenklatura and Red Directors of the Soviet industrial complex. By implementing this fusion of the Vors and the Siloviki, the Leningrad team came to rule RF. That’s the Klept: Deep State + Organized Crime fused as one and operating as a global TNC. The problem of Putin is that he did not achieve the transformation towards the global Russian (Noviop) Klept. He was either contained (mainly by the Brits who don’t want concurrent Klept operating on a global scale) or his outlook was too narrow which brought him to the current situation. What is important to understand, is that even if RF Noviops won’t achieve the historical task of the Klept, some other group will.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk


    outlook was too narrow
     
    Why say, like it's bad for Putin?

    It's bad for quite a lot of Russians and Ukrainians, but the current situation doesn't seem so bad for Putin. It's relatively calm in Russian this summer, maybe not last summer.

    , @Derer
    @Bashibuzuk

    Can you explain as to how wast the 90's Berezovsky "klept" (Yeltsin oligarchs) defeated and by whom?

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  433. @Bashibuzuk
    @Torna atrás

    Assad is probably one of the most amazing politicians of the early twenty first century. To survive in the situation his country and family had faced for the last twelve years is already a feat, but to eventually come on top is even more impressive. It’s sad he couldn’t implement the reforms that he aimed at in the early days of his coming to power. Those who wanted Syria destroyed prevented him by unleashing the chaos.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Torna atrás

    In per capita income, Syria was the poorest country in the Arab world after Yemen, before 2010. So, I don’t think 40 years of Assad government is a good government for median Syrians.

    By 2010, they destroyed their water resources and had hundreds of thousands of their citizens internally immigrating because of the drought.
    https://www.greenprophet.com/2010/11/500000-syrians-flee-drought/

    It only really survived because of the developed countries* were feeding their population.

    2010. “The World Food Program has stepped in to feed nearly 200,000 people, while over 100,000 more are in need of rations.

    Thank goodness for that, but how long will aid agencies be able to pick up the government’s slack?”

    70% of their agricultural water was wasted. If you can’t manage water, you cannot feed the population.
    https://www.greenprophet.com/2010/10/syrias-dustbowl-wasted-water/

    *Also Russia, including $13 billion in 2005 of debt cancellation.

  434. @Bashibuzuk
    @Dmitry

    Barsukov was basically Putin’s associate in the Russian Mob when Putin was active in Leningrad. There were other Blatnyie associated with Putin, the father of Durov being one of them, but only Putin and Barsukov really understood that the fusion of the secret services and organized crime was basically guaranteed to seize power. It was too strong a force to be opposed by anyone else, be it the Red Browns, the Dem-schizo liberals or the former Nomenklatura and Red Directors of the Soviet industrial complex. By implementing this fusion of the Vors and the Siloviki, the Leningrad team came to rule RF. That’s the Klept: Deep State + Organized Crime fused as one and operating as a global TNC. The problem of Putin is that he did not achieve the transformation towards the global Russian (Noviop) Klept. He was either contained (mainly by the Brits who don’t want concurrent Klept operating on a global scale) or his outlook was too narrow which brought him to the current situation. What is important to understand, is that even if RF Noviops won’t achieve the historical task of the Klept, some other group will.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Derer

    outlook was too narrow

    Why say, like it’s bad for Putin?

    It’s bad for quite a lot of Russians and Ukrainians, but the current situation doesn’t seem so bad for Putin. It’s relatively calm in Russian this summer, maybe not last summer.

  435. Bashibuzuk says:

    Jorjani

    [MORE]

    1:20:00

    I have the impression that it’ll getting closer every passing day.

    BTW, the Nazi plasma bell reactor he mentions in the beginning of the interview, was built under SS management using the workforce of the Red Army prisoners who were used as expandable human resources, many died of the effects of the radiation, others were executed during the evacuation of the project to the West, IIRC only two survived by managing to hide and wait for the Red Army coming to Bohemia. The project plans were supposedly moved to the West while the prototype was destroyed.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Bashibuzuk



    https://youtu.be/nFg1s0QBytg?si=LL7qIf7oTgCavuG4

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Emil Nikola Richard, @Dmitry

  436. Did Trump really say he is “not a Christian.”
    _____
    Estimated global birth IQ, already <80.

    [MORE]

    https://twitter.com/sebjenseb/status/1816287936436133946
    ______
    Japanese commercials can be pretty interesting too. I wonder if they are the antithesis of Mr. Hack’s views on long Indian movies.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @songbird

    It's like comparing nato to chicken tikka masala. :-)

    Replies: @songbird

    , @Mr. Hack
    @songbird

    How dare anybody question Trump's Christian beliefs? kremlinstoogeA123 is convinced of Trump's belief system:

    https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/gytNbaMsefMsFX5saN7mj-1200-80.jpg

    Replies: @songbird

  437. @Emil Nikola Richard
    Battle of the Nations
    Serbia New Zealand

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrvo5ymLKAc
    The Olympics are here and no bombs have exploded (yet (keep your fingers crossed)).
    Miss Romania is in women's 49 kg weightlifting 7 Aug.

    Also: men's 400 m hurdles final (this was the big event at the last olympics) is 9 Aug and the men's decathlon is the 2 and 3 Aug.

    Miss Kazakhstan has withdrawn from the women's tennis. : (
    Miss Poland has not. : )

    Replies: @YetAnotherAnon

    OTOH persons unknown sabotaged 4 out of 5 of the mail French high-speed rail lines on opening day. Someone had the knowledge of where the fibre-optic signalling cables were and set the trackside boxes alight.

    AFAIK there are still delays today.

    What intrigued me, given the Panopticon that is the modern internet, is how they were able to communicate securely. Of course it may be that their comms may yet land them in court.

    https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/26/vandals-target-french-rail-network-olympics-opening-ceremony

    SNCF’s chief executive, Jean-Pierre Farandou, said the attackers had set fires in conduits carrying cables that carry safety information for drivers or control points mechanisms. “There’s a huge number of bundled cables. We have to repair them one by one, it’s a manual operation” requiring hundreds of workers, he said.

    Farandou said five of the TGV network’s “strategic nerve centres” had been targeted on the main high-speed lines connecting Paris to big provincial cities such as Lille in the north, Bordeaux in the south-west, Strasbourg in the east and Marseille in the south-east.

    All the attacks took place between 1am and 5.30am on Friday, French media reported. Four were successful, leaving only the south-eastern line running normally after a night railway maintenance team surprised several saboteurs who fled, France Info radio reported.

    As someone said, “Snoop Dogg on the Seine, Massive Attack on the railways!”.

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

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @YetAnotherAnon


    “Snoop Dogg on the Seine, Massive Attack on the railways!”
     
    We already live in the cyberpunk era. Civilization is eating itself up.
  438. @Bashibuzuk
    Jorjani



    1:20:00

    I have the impression that it’ll getting closer every passing day.

    BTW, the Nazi plasma bell reactor he mentions in the beginning of the interview, was built under SS management using the workforce of the Red Army prisoners who were used as expandable human resources, many died of the effects of the radiation, others were executed during the evacuation of the project to the West, IIRC only two survived by managing to hide and wait for the Red Army coming to Bohemia. The project plans were supposedly moved to the West while the prototype was destroyed.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    [MORE]

    • Thanks: S1
    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Bashibuzuk

    Holly cow! He basically agrees with Gibson about us being on the threshold of what Gibson calls the Jackpot.

    https://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/1288318396249944064

    But it has been four years in making and it’s still unpublished. I think Gibson might have come to the conclusion (or has been warned) that writing about this topic is problematic and is better avoided.

    Good that Jorjani isn’t Gibson.

    And yeah, I wish Danny would have asked Jorjani whether he envisions Kamala as POTUS. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jorjani would have answered in the affirmative. 🙂

    , @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Bashibuzuk

    Did you ever see the part where he claims to be Tesla reborn?

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    , @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk

    Isn't this clickbait for views? What is the source about the Red Army?

    In the 1970s, Feliks Zigel was investigating about these mysteries.

    Zigel has sadly died, before the topics becomes more open around 1989.


    -
    By the way, his talk in 2:37:00 in the video about "underwater civilization" remind about the popular stories about supernatural experiences of Soviet divers in Lake Baikal.

    But we should be skeptical about Baikal stories. Unlike the real Soviet mysteries like the death of the Dyatlov tour group in 1959, the Baikal stories are probably not a real story. It seems like it could be invented postsoviet legends in the 1990s, according to Irkutsk local divers.
    https://volkov.irkutsk.ru/posts/byli-li-v-baikalie-triekhmietrovyie-akvanavty/

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  439. @YetAnotherAnon
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    OTOH persons unknown sabotaged 4 out of 5 of the mail French high-speed rail lines on opening day. Someone had the knowledge of where the fibre-optic signalling cables were and set the trackside boxes alight.

    AFAIK there are still delays today.

    What intrigued me, given the Panopticon that is the modern internet, is how they were able to communicate securely. Of course it may be that their comms may yet land them in court.

    https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/26/vandals-target-french-rail-network-olympics-opening-ceremony


    SNCF’s chief executive, Jean-Pierre Farandou, said the attackers had set fires in conduits carrying cables that carry safety information for drivers or control points mechanisms. “There’s a huge number of bundled cables. We have to repair them one by one, it’s a manual operation” requiring hundreds of workers, he said.

    Farandou said five of the TGV network’s “strategic nerve centres” had been targeted on the main high-speed lines connecting Paris to big provincial cities such as Lille in the north, Bordeaux in the south-west, Strasbourg in the east and Marseille in the south-east.

    All the attacks took place between 1am and 5.30am on Friday, French media reported. Four were successful, leaving only the south-eastern line running normally after a night railway maintenance team surprised several saboteurs who fled, France Info radio reported.
     

    As someone said, "Snoop Dogg on the Seine, Massive Attack on the railways!".

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

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    “Snoop Dogg on the Seine, Massive Attack on the railways!”

    We already live in the cyberpunk era. Civilization is eating itself up.

  440. @songbird
    Did Trump really say he is "not a Christian."
    _____
    Estimated global birth IQ, already <80.
    https://twitter.com/sebjenseb/status/1816287936436133946
    ______
    Japanese commercials can be pretty interesting too. I wonder if they are the antithesis of Mr. Hack's views on long Indian movies.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Mr. Hack

    It’s like comparing nato to chicken tikka masala. 🙂

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Mr. Hack


    It’s like comparing nato to chicken tikka masala. 🙂
     
    now I believe you do go to weird foreign restaurants, for that middle seems like a Punjabi or Persian word!

    But I do enjoy some of these Japanese commercials. It is the one area, where I would praise the YouTube algo, for recognizing my weird tastes.

    Possibly the internet is its own filter, but I am struct by the artistic quality many have. Each is almost like its own tiny foreign or art movie. In fact, I suspect some were never aired on TV, but meant to be like a little artsy film on the internet.

    Many seem to have an appreciation of place. (Just like anime) You feel like the location was scouted, rather than studio shot. And also of line - like their frame is influenced by the culture of drawing and comics.

    And I like their cheerier tone.

    Watching American commercials is like being tortured. I can remember strange ad campaigns, even somewhat beyond race, trying to encourage disharmony between the sexes, like this one with Michael Jordan and Mia Hamm: (yes, some female soccer athlete could go head to head with even an old Jordan 😆
    https://youtu.be/liKnJ-ejztw?si=TA5VCzmRQO5TY3kS

    This is where the tranny stuff came from.

    A lot of directors had their start in commercials. Some went directly into movies.

    I don't like all of them of course. Some of them have too much text (a unique characteristic of Japanese TV), or delve too much into video games. But some have a nice bucolic quality, linking the city to the countryside.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  441. @Bashibuzuk
    @Torna atrás

    Assad is probably one of the most amazing politicians of the early twenty first century. To survive in the situation his country and family had faced for the last twelve years is already a feat, but to eventually come on top is even more impressive. It’s sad he couldn’t implement the reforms that he aimed at in the early days of his coming to power. Those who wanted Syria destroyed prevented him by unleashing the chaos.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Torna atrás

    Sanhedrin 37a

    • Replies: @Torna atrás
    @Torna atrás

    https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR5DJpwrVFr0Q1yhAPpxgpsJI4IPInBMITqzA0iOST3FQ&s.jpg


    The stories of how 'the first Latvian shahid' Māris Bergholds and 21-year-old Mārtiņš become IS fighters.

    Māris Ahmed Bergholds, a sociology student, first came to prominence in 2003 when he was freed from an American prison in Iraq. Later on he penned a book that was published in 2012 under the name of Islam as translated into Latvian. He disappeared shortly after its publication, LTV7's Lichonye Delo had reported previously.

    His mother Regīna Bergholde had turned to the Chas daily in 2003 with a Red Cross letter from her son, who was in an American prison in Iraq. Berholds complained about his mistreatment at the hands of American soldiers. He later wrote that his head had been beaten with the doors of a Humvee, and that he had been hit with plastic bottles and books as those don't leave bruises.

    Bergholds had gone to the Near East as a newly-converted Muslim. According to his book, he wanted to learn the ritual prayer and to learn more about Islam; if he would have had time, he would also have conducted a survey for his graduation paper, related to democracy in Arab states.

    As staying in Turkish Ankara proved too expensive and he couldn't get a Syrian visa, he went to Iraq to visit Erbil. His route went through the city of Mosul where someone stole his camera. Berholds turned to the authorities. The local police, in turn, handed him to American soldiers who considered him to be a foreign mercenary. He spent several months in different prisons.

    Upon his return to Latvia, he started openly blaming the US for escalating conflict in the Near East.

    After his stint in the Near East, Bergholds, who had been actively interested in Islam, became a true convert, according to his mother.

    "In reality he wasn't a Muslim yet [before he went to the Near East]. The time spent in prison, as well as the Quran as the only reading material dragged him in," his mother said.

    He graduated from the university back in Latvia and organized a forum for Latvian Muslims. In 2008 he decided to go to Sudan to study Arabic. It's in Sudan where he wrote his book, which relates the basic tenets of Islam. The book is interspersed with his own experiences but doesn't endorse extremist views.

    Shortly afterwards, Bergholds disappeared.

    A representative of Latvian Center for Islamic Culture, wrote on the parislamu.lv website that "In summer 2012, Ahmed [Māris Bergholds] has gone missing. According to unofficial information, he has chosen the path of God in the Near East, where he has in all likelihood become the first Latvian shahid. God is great."

    After about six months of silence, Bergholds wrote to his mother saying that he had reached Syria, and that she would be informed if he'd be 'granted a ticket to paradise'.

    According to De Facto, in spring 2013 Bergholds had tried freeing convicts from the Alepo prison. It is highly likely that he had joined an extremist group. Bergholds had known that he is considered a terrorist in the West, and US authorities had visited his sister, who is living in the US.

    In one of the clashes Bergholds wounded his arm. He contacted his mother for the last time in October 2013, when he was 33 years old.

    It wasn't a good-bye letter though - Bergholds simply related how his arm is healing and inquired about his sister. His mother Regīna thinks there are two possible outcomes - "either he is no more, he has died in Syria, or he is detained, but I will never believe that he'd become a shahid and blow other people up," she said.

    Mārtiņš - finding and sharing his faith on the internet

    The second Latvian who may have become radicalized was Mārtiņš, a young man from a large farmer family. He had a great command of English and, according to his teacher, he was a loner who spent his free time alone and didn't have any friends. "His world was the internet, the computer, the double life, the night life," his teacher, who wished to remain unnamed, said.

    In grade 12 Mārtiņš became interested in Islam and started frequenting one of the largest online forums dedicated to Islam. His mother knew about this, but his father wasn't in on it.

    Mārtiņš was an active poster on the forum, until the time he left Latvia. According to De Facto, he had written more than 1,500 posts in 9 months. He wrote, for example, that he wanted to move to another country, like Malaysia, where there are more Islam believers.

    The growing radicalization of Mārtiņš' worldview can be traced from his forum posts.

    In spring 2014, he decided against going to the university upon graduation and made up his mind to move to the UK after finishing school, and to go to the Near East from there. At about that time he also went to Helsinki where he met his best friend, whom he had met in online gaming and had turned to Islam. Both Mārtiņš' and his Finnish friend's forum posts ended on the same day in August 2014.

    This February, Finnish YLE revealed Mārtiņš' friend to be a lonely, unsociable young man from eastern Finland.

    While De Facto didn't delve deep into the youth's possible activities, the YLE piece details the possible activities of his Finnish friend, with whom Mārtiņš was very close.

    "[..] he says that everything is going well for him in Syria, but he has not yet joined the fighting--at present he is mainly on guard duty. Based on his Twitter account, it seems he has been in Hama, Homs and Raqqa, the capital of the self-proclaimed Islamic State".

  442. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Bashibuzuk
    @Bashibuzuk



    https://youtu.be/nFg1s0QBytg?si=LL7qIf7oTgCavuG4

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Emil Nikola Richard, @Dmitry

    Holly cow! He basically agrees with Gibson about us being on the threshold of what Gibson calls the Jackpot.

    But it has been four years in making and it’s still unpublished. I think Gibson might have come to the conclusion (or has been warned) that writing about this topic is problematic and is better avoided.

    Good that Jorjani isn’t Gibson.

    And yeah, I wish Danny would have asked Jorjani whether he envisions Kamala as POTUS. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jorjani would have answered in the affirmative. 🙂

  443. @songbird
    Did Trump really say he is "not a Christian."
    _____
    Estimated global birth IQ, already <80.
    https://twitter.com/sebjenseb/status/1816287936436133946
    ______
    Japanese commercials can be pretty interesting too. I wonder if they are the antithesis of Mr. Hack's views on long Indian movies.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Mr. Hack

    How dare anybody question Trump’s Christian beliefs? kremlinstoogeA123 is convinced of Trump’s belief system:

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Mr. Hack

    Not sure when the last major presidential candidate was who was at least semi-plausibly a Christian. I think it has been quite a while.

    I remember the oddness of several candidates (rather godless it seemed to me) being asked things like what their favorite Bible verse was, and parts of the mainstream media (godless themselves) bizarrely backing the truth of their zeal. There was that interviewer who had to tell Obama that he was a Christian.

    But it is honestly kind of worrying to me if even Trump is denying any connection to Christianity. I think we've crossed some temporal demographic threshold. It is like a marker of how globalized America has become.

    Ross Perot seems like such a long time ago. Back then the budget and debt were a big deal. Perhaps, never again until the crash.

    Replies: @A123

  444. Probably the first poll regarding some swing states?

    Not much predictive value considering the given error margin of 3% and not knowing potential Dem VP pick yet, but notable there is not anymore the bigger gap seen. Also knowing unique ability of Vance to be quite repulsive (due different reasoning) both for figurative Anglin crowd and Haley voters too, it might matter in case of close race.

    • LOL: Bashibuzuk
    • Replies: @sudden death
    @sudden death

    Another one, this time Michigan looks quite unrealistic though:

    https://i.postimg.cc/9FD33MP8/ETBn-Ac-E9s4719k5-WPVk-NVw-FIi8i632c-Ut5oq-Ea-Ub-CXHw4-TO4-FQ48j-Svr-Mvwx2-SNzalj0-Hy4q-Gx-GXRt33-Fv-TGn-U7r-ME-h6np-Ypr7.jpg

    Replies: @QCIC, @Gerard1234

  445. @Bashibuzuk
    @Bashibuzuk



    https://youtu.be/nFg1s0QBytg?si=LL7qIf7oTgCavuG4

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Emil Nikola Richard, @Dmitry

    Did you ever see the part where he claims to be Tesla reborn?

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Not yet. But I actually thought about some of the things he discusses on my own and came to similar (rather sad) conclusions. His view of the timeline manipulation is quite similar to Gibson’s Jackpot vision. They basically come to the same unsettling conclusions about the near future (or is it already the present?). I thought about it since COVID on the Strugatsky brothers progressor basis. Stanislaw Lem had also published a short story along these lines in one of his Jon Tichyi novels and Lem also famously wrote Summa technologiae while also opining that humans with advanced technology are more dangerous than nuclear weapons armed gorillas. Jorjani is nuts, but he is that type of nutter that sees further than most smartest normies.

    2:30:00

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

  446. @Bashibuzuk
    @Bashibuzuk



    https://youtu.be/nFg1s0QBytg?si=LL7qIf7oTgCavuG4

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Emil Nikola Richard, @Dmitry

    Isn’t this clickbait for views? What is the source about the Red Army?

    In the 1970s, Feliks Zigel was investigating about these mysteries.

    Zigel has sadly died, before the topics becomes more open around 1989.


    By the way, his talk in 2:37:00 in the video about “underwater civilization” remind about the popular stories about supernatural experiences of Soviet divers in Lake Baikal.

    But we should be skeptical about Baikal stories. Unlike the real Soviet mysteries like the death of the Dyatlov tour group in 1959, the Baikal stories are probably not a real story. It seems like it could be invented postsoviet legends in the 1990s, according to Irkutsk local divers.
    https://volkov.irkutsk.ru/posts/byli-li-v-baikalie-triekhmietrovyie-akvanavty/

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Dmitry

    I frankly don’t remember where I first read about that Anenerbe/SS project. It was more than twenty years ago and it’s not very important anymore, except perhaps if it’s true that Die Glocke has space-time warping properties.

    https://dzen.ru/a/XGEL1i4otACtyHtE

    https://alphapedia.ru/w/Nazi_UFOs

    Supposedly Yaakov Blumkin witnessed something similar in Tibet while searching for Shambhala a decade or so before the Nazis and the Japanese tried doing the same thing (Blumkin was already executed by then for his links to Trotsky).

    But of course, this is all “alternative history” speculations.

    What is more relevant, is what happens if anyone reaches such technological level of development in the current sociopolitical environment. What would they most probably use it for. I think they would most probably steer the development of the mankind into a certain direction. And it’s here that this line of thinking intersects with Strugatsky’s view of human evolution. A vision that had a deep influence on late Soviet “technological intelligentsia” and still impresses people such as Alexey Arestovich.

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

    https://cyclowiki.org/wiki/%D0%9B%D1%8E%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%8B

    https://strugacki.ru/book_24/954.html

    If you have time, read the book, then Gibson’s Jackpot novels and then watch again the Jorjani’s video.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  447. AP says:
    @Beckow
    @AP

    You are way off about the situation on the front line - as if you needed to obsessively lie to yourself.

    Let's look at the casualties: both side lie about it, the only reliable estimates are indirect. One of the best ways in all wars is to compare POWs: Russia holds 6 times as many Ukie POWs as vice versa. Kiev for some weird reason also includes ethnic Russian Ukies they arrested for being pro-Russian among the POWs and wants to include them in POW exchanges.

    Six to one in POWs implies about the same ratio in casualties. Unless this war is very different from other wars and Ukies surrender in larger numbers. That is close to Russian claims of 5 to 1, 7 to 1, and at one point during the failed Ukie offensive in 2023 they said it was 10 to 1.

    Given the general lying nature of all wars I would still take it with a grain of salt. But the odds are that after it is over if it will turn out the Ukies suffered substantially worse casualties.

    The goal in a war is to defeat the enemy - taking territory happens as a by-product of destroying the enemy. Russia fights the way they do to maximize the destruction of the Ukie army. It doesn't benefit them to chase thousands of soldiers in large cities among hundreds of thousands of civilians (often Russian-friendly). Destroying the Ukies who still want to fight in protracted battles in rural areas achieves the goal better than storming the crowded cities.

    Bottom line is that Russia is prevailing in all battles - Ukies are withdrawing after suffering massive casualties. The myths about Russian "human waves" are nonsense - there is not a single video showing it. The sad reality is that Russians bombed the sh.t out of entrenched Ukie positions and eventually the surviving Ukies pull back. This can go on for a long time - Ukraine is a very large country - but the eventual outcome will be a destroyed Ukie army. Then the territory will fall on its own.

    Or a million Poles invades and wins the war by marching all the way to Moscow!!! (Just kidding, I wanted to cheer you up. This must be really hard on you.)

    Replies: @AP

    You are way off about the situation on the front line

    The bottom line is that the front line has changed very little.

    That is what stalemate looks like.

    Of course, one can zoom in and show large maps of specific villages taken by Russia to make it look like the gains are significant. It would be manipulation, the equivalent of trying to make a protest seem bigger than it is by zooming in on 100 people.

    Let’s look at the casualties: both side lie about it, the only reliable estimates are indirect.

    Wow, you made a correct statement. But then you screw up as usual:

    One of the best ways in all wars is to compare POWs: Russia holds 6 times as many Ukie POWs as vice versa.

    It is not good way of estimating at all.

    The number of POWs does not necessarily correspond to number of killed in action. On the Eastern Front, there were more German POWs than Soviet ones. But there were far more Soviet KIA than German POWs.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_(World_War_II)

    Germany and allies: 4.5 million POWs, 4.5 million KIA
    USSR and allies: 4.1 million POWs, 6.5 million KIA

    So going by that rule, more POWs = fewer KIA.

    So it’s not a rule.

    POWs are achieved when an enemy is surrounded and surrenders. This happened a lot in the beginning of the war with Ukrainians, especially in the South and Mariupol where large units surrendered. It doesn’t happen as much or in as large numbers on the current battlefield.

    Moreover, you say you don’t trust governments for KIA numbers but you trust them for POW numbers.

    The best indirect measure of course is death notices and obituaries.

    Why do you avoid mentioning those?

    Because for most of the war they were about equal, suggesting that each side had about the same KIA. However in the last 2 months or so there have been about 2 Russian death notices for every Ukrainian one. As would be expected, given that Russia is on the offensive and not achieving much. In terms of territory gained and lives lost, Russia’s Kharkiv offensive was much worse for Russia than the southern offensive was for Ukraine last year.

    The sad reality is that Russians bombed the sh.t out of entrenched Ukie positions and eventually the surviving Ukies pull back

    Ukrainians deliberately do not concentrate their forces in such ways that they are consistently hit in large numbers by a single bomb. This was a reason why using battlefield nukes would be ineffective.

    The myths about Russian “human waves” are nonsense – there is not a single video showing it.

    Uh oh, JJ might show you if you insist.

    The fact the recently Russian death notices have spiked and now outnumber Ukrainian ones tells us that currently Russians are sacrificing a lot of men for very little land. Russians seem to be doing what the Ukrainians stopped doing last year – keep on taking villages here and there, while sacrificing men and equipment.

    AK’s KIA estimate from a couple of weeks ago:

    [MORE]

    • Replies: @Greasy William
    @AP


    The bottom line is that the front line has changed very little.
     
    But that isn't the bottom line, just like the seemingly frozen Western front wasn't the bottom line in 1918.

    And while I agree that Russia does not have the strength, barring a total Ukrainian collapse, to break through like the Western Allies did in 1918 or like the Soviets did in 1944, they do appear to be getting the better of it. Ukraine doesn't have the manpower to recapture additional territory or to force an end to the fighting.

    Replies: @AP

    , @Derer
    @AP

    In view of the #431, you are peeing against the wind. The problem is you do not accept anything wrong going on in Ukraine, only victory after victory...better in KIA better in POW better in people fleeing, oops I could be wrong.

    Replies: @AP

    , @Beckow
    @AP


    Germany and allies: 4.5 million POWs, 4.5 million KIA
    USSR and allies: 4.1 million POWs, 6.5 million KIA

    So going by that rule, more POWs = fewer KIA. So it’s not a rule.
     

    You have a problem with complex ideas. If there are 6 times as many Ukie POWs it is unlikely that the ratios in the other casualties (killed, wounded, MIA) is the reverse. The variance you are showing in WW2 is much smaller than 6 to 1, so it is not really applicable.

    The number of Nazi allies killed was undercounted. Many countries used 'missing' or 'unknown' instead. There was reluctance by the German allies to acknowledge the losses, many were volunteers or people from occupied territories - e.g. Hungary occupied 50% extra lands (Transylvania, Vojvodina, southern Slovakia). People drafted there who died were often unaccounted for. Romania was a special case because they switched sides in summer 1944 - for political reasons the previous casualties were shifted to the anti-German side. Plus Galicians, Albanians, etc...hundreds of thousands died and were not counted.

    "Death notices" are unreliable. Many deaths are not reported or suppressed. It also depends on the person's situation - Ukies who have no permanent address inside Ukraine will not be captured, there are thousands of them fighting and among the casualties.

    The POW ratios are the best way, but they are also flawed. We may find out after the war.

    Replies: @AP

  448. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Bashibuzuk

    Did you ever see the part where he claims to be Tesla reborn?

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    Not yet. But I actually thought about some of the things he discusses on my own and came to similar (rather sad) conclusions. His view of the timeline manipulation is quite similar to Gibson’s Jackpot vision. They basically come to the same unsettling conclusions about the near future (or is it already the present?). I thought about it since COVID on the Strugatsky brothers progressor basis. Stanislaw Lem had also published a short story along these lines in one of his Jon Tichyi novels and Lem also famously wrote Summa technologiae while also opining that humans with advanced technology are more dangerous than nuclear weapons armed gorillas. Jorjani is nuts, but he is that type of nutter that sees further than most smartest normies.

    2:30:00

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Bashibuzuk


    Jorjani is nuts, but he is that type of nutter that sees further than most smartest normies.
     
    We agree he is nuts. I guess I can leave out the part where the hero of his novel who is his altar ego has steamy sex scenes with his dead mom's identical twin sister.

    We could actually make a list of the various axes along which he zooms off the real earth plane.

  449. @A123
    If you thought PLO Joe was bad, the understudy shows she is worse: (1)

    Kamala Harris wants to keep Hamas in power

     

    Vice President Kamala Harris has made it clear that she wants to protect Hamas in ways that essentially would keep the terrorist organization in power in Gaza and that she will continue President Joe Biden’s policies that embolden and empower terrorists.
    ...
    She then pivoted to shaming Israel. “What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating,” Harris said. “The images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third, or fourth time. We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering. And I will not be silent.”

    It is clear what the implications of Harris’s position are. She says this can end “in a way where Israel is secure” while demanding that Israel allow the genocidal terrorist organization that massacred 1,200 Israeli and American civilians to remain in power. She places the responsibility for the suffering of Gazans on Israel, not Hamas, which is why she is using their suffering to pressure Netanyahu into reaching a deal. Harris’s decision to shame Israel more than Hamas also helps give Hamas more leverage in hostage negotiations — you know, the hostages, including five remaining Americans, that Hamas took while massacring 1,200 civilians.
     
    Getting the Jihadist kidnappers to a fair cease fire was always going to be difficult. Has warmonger Harris's anti-Semitism effectively ended peace negotiations? Signs point to, "Yes".

    Genocidal Hamas leaders in Qatar and Iran see a potential ally in Harris. From the terrorist point of view, waiting for U.S. Presidential outcome is now worthwhile. All it costs is more martyrs among their expendable coreligionists.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/beltway-confidential/3100863/harris-wants-hamas-in-power/

    Replies: @Derer

    Has warmonger Harris’s anti-Semitism effectively ended peace negotiations?

    If Harris is viewed by the American public as being anti-Semitic…she will beat Trump in November.

    • LOL: A123
    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Derer

    Do the Israel Jews let women world leaders leave prayer scraps in their holy wall ruin?

  450. @Derer
    @A123


    Has warmonger Harris’s anti-Semitism effectively ended peace negotiations?
     
    If Harris is viewed by the American public as being anti-Semitic...she will beat Trump in November.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    Do the Israel Jews let women world leaders leave prayer scraps in their holy wall ruin?

  451. @Bashibuzuk
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Not yet. But I actually thought about some of the things he discusses on my own and came to similar (rather sad) conclusions. His view of the timeline manipulation is quite similar to Gibson’s Jackpot vision. They basically come to the same unsettling conclusions about the near future (or is it already the present?). I thought about it since COVID on the Strugatsky brothers progressor basis. Stanislaw Lem had also published a short story along these lines in one of his Jon Tichyi novels and Lem also famously wrote Summa technologiae while also opining that humans with advanced technology are more dangerous than nuclear weapons armed gorillas. Jorjani is nuts, but he is that type of nutter that sees further than most smartest normies.

    2:30:00

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    Jorjani is nuts, but he is that type of nutter that sees further than most smartest normies.

    We agree he is nuts. I guess I can leave out the part where the hero of his novel who is his altar ego has steamy sex scenes with his dead mom’s identical twin sister.

    We could actually make a list of the various axes along which he zooms off the real earth plane.

    • LOL: Bashibuzuk
  452. @John Johnson
    @Beckow

    Post-Maidan Kiev government killed 3,000 civilians in Donbas. Same as 911. US went to two (or more) wars for 3,000 killed, you would expect Russia to sit back?

    That 3000 number that has been rounded up is civilians on both sides and the fighting was mostly by militias and not the government.

    Here is the UN report
    https://ukraine.un.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/Conflict-related%20civilian%20casualties%20as%20of%2031%20December%202021%20%28rev%2027%20January%202022%29%20corr%20EN_0.pdf

    There was clearly a massive drop off in casualties in 2016. Do you deny that?

    So Russia in 2022 decides to invade over civilian casualties from 2014/2015? Is that what you are saying?

    Why did they try to take Kiev if the goal is to protect ethnic Russians in DPR/LPR? Why did they try a decapitation strike where thousands of Slavs died within 48 hours?

    For 17 years each year NATO officially declared that Ukraine will join NATO. Germany-France never officially objected, they just leaked wimpy statements like ‘not yet’.

    No that isn't the case at all and if you keep trying that bullshit I will post sources like this one:

    NATO Allies Oppose Bush on Georgia and Ukraine
    https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/03/world/europe/03nato.html

    Germany and France were opposed to Ukraine in NATO before Putin's invasion.

    I can post multiple sources. Just stop already. Your one quote doesn't represent all the members and the vote has to be unanimous.

    NATO is not a hierarchy. That was proven when half of NATO told GW to go F himself when he asked for their backing on Iraq. The US does not control NATO and they have rejected the will of the US president numerous times.

    Replies: @Beckow

    …That 3000 number that has been rounded up is civilians on both sides and the fighting was mostly by militias and not the government.

    Rounded up? From what? 2,800? Then it’s ok? In 911 the actual casualties were also 2,900 and “rounded up”. Are you a complete madman?

    Donbas civilians were killed by the Kiev government, the ‘militias’ were part of the government forces. It was a crime (and a huge mistake) and that Russia waited with a response and tried for Minsk peace is to their credit.

    Given the Ukie fantaticism they probably regret not ending it earlier. Russia started by trying to force the Minsk deal on Kiev with a very minor invasion of 100k troops – then NATO ordered Kiev to fight and now we have a full-scale war that Kiev is losing.

    Germany and France were opposed to Ukraine in NATO before Putin’s invasion.

    When did they actually say publicly that Ukraine will not be in NATO? You are lying, they only asked for a delay. They are vassals and always do as they are told. Your bizarre denial that the war is about unwise, failed NATO expansion to Ukraine to be better threaten Russia suggests that you are a paid hack or very stupid. Or you are sorry that it didn’t work so you medicate yourself by denying the obvious.

  453. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk

    Isn't this clickbait for views? What is the source about the Red Army?

    In the 1970s, Feliks Zigel was investigating about these mysteries.

    Zigel has sadly died, before the topics becomes more open around 1989.


    -
    By the way, his talk in 2:37:00 in the video about "underwater civilization" remind about the popular stories about supernatural experiences of Soviet divers in Lake Baikal.

    But we should be skeptical about Baikal stories. Unlike the real Soviet mysteries like the death of the Dyatlov tour group in 1959, the Baikal stories are probably not a real story. It seems like it could be invented postsoviet legends in the 1990s, according to Irkutsk local divers.
    https://volkov.irkutsk.ru/posts/byli-li-v-baikalie-triekhmietrovyie-akvanavty/

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    I frankly don’t remember where I first read about that Anenerbe/SS project. It was more than twenty years ago and it’s not very important anymore, except perhaps if it’s true that Die Glocke has space-time warping properties.

    https://dzen.ru/a/XGEL1i4otACtyHtE

    https://alphapedia.ru/w/Nazi_UFOs

    Supposedly Yaakov Blumkin witnessed something similar in Tibet while searching for Shambhala a decade or so before the Nazis and the Japanese tried doing the same thing (Blumkin was already executed by then for his links to Trotsky).

    But of course, this is all “alternative history” speculations.

    What is more relevant, is what happens if anyone reaches such technological level of development in the current sociopolitical environment. What would they most probably use it for. I think they would most probably steer the development of the mankind into a certain direction. And it’s here that this line of thinking intersects with Strugatsky’s view of human evolution. A vision that had a deep influence on late Soviet “technological intelligentsia” and still impresses people such as Alexey Arestovich.

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

    https://cyclowiki.org/wiki/%D0%9B%D1%8E%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%8B

    https://strugacki.ru/book_24/954.html

    If you have time, read the book, then Gibson’s Jackpot novels and then watch again the Jorjani’s video.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk

    What are your views about Joe Rogan's theories.

    He begins repeating some of his theories around 1:36:30

    https://youtu.be/kWo6QNgr-zA?si=MxxF8D9jA2i0cm57&t=5801.

    He repeats his theories regularly, but this was one of the better discussions.

    His point of view is generally Marxist. He is probably one of the most Marxist consistent people in the mainstream American culture.

    But what the more recent influences on his theory of history?

    I would say, his view is influenced a lot by the films "2001 Space Odyssey" and "AI" (2001).


    mankind into a certain direction. And it’s here that this line of thinking intersects with Strugatsky’s view of human evolution. A vision that had a deep influence on late Soviet “technological intelligentsia” and still impresses people such as Alexey Arestovich.
     
    I don't know the old Soviet science-fiction much, unfortunately, but I think we get similar views listening to Rogan?

    Rogan is talking to a lot of people, watches a lot of films and he absorbs a lot of the science fiction culture from the atmosphere.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  454. @Mr. Hack
    @Mikhail


    Russia defeated the neo-Nazi Kiev regime forces in Mariupol who used civilians/civilian infrastructure as human shields.
     
    You didn't really think that I was going to let this stupid little canned, kremlin stooge, pat answer fly with no rebuttal? It's 100% a lie as is so much of the kremlin stooge propaganda that you try and float here and elsewhere. To get some idea of the numbers of civilians that died in Mariupol and who was responsible, I would suggest that you read the Human Rights Watch report on the devastation. The visuals that accompany the report are excellent, including maps etc:

    https://features.hrw.org/features/features/mariupol/images/report/map_5_hospitals_en.jpg

    Are you serious in insinuating that Russia's military wasn't involved in the vast destruction of Mariupol and its infrastructure that resulted in the deaths of 10,000's of civilians? Read this report, it's not too late Mickey, then go and privately kneel in your room by your bed and ask the Lord for his forgiveness to you for lying and trying to whitewash and coverup Russia's culpability in starting and continuing this horrific war. Wash all of the blood off of your hands Mickey, you'll feel much better. If you don't, your culpability will haunt you till your last day. :-(
    https://www.hrw.org/feature/russia-ukraine-war-mariupol/report

    Replies: @Mikhail, @Derer

    You are giving the HRW too much credence…the foot soldiers are basically honest but the elite massages their work to the liking of particular donors – nothing new. Compare reports on Serbia molestation vs Afghanistan or Iraq killings. The difficulty of revealing the dirty work is evidenced by the Assange’s nightmare.

  455. @AP
    @Beckow


    You are way off about the situation on the front line
     
    The bottom line is that the front line has changed very little.

    https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/ukraine-frontline-hp-03.png

    That is what stalemate looks like.

    Of course, one can zoom in and show large maps of specific villages taken by Russia to make it look like the gains are significant. It would be manipulation, the equivalent of trying to make a protest seem bigger than it is by zooming in on 100 people.

    Let’s look at the casualties: both side lie about it, the only reliable estimates are indirect.
     
    Wow, you made a correct statement. But then you screw up as usual:

    One of the best ways in all wars is to compare POWs: Russia holds 6 times as many Ukie POWs as vice versa.
     
    It is not good way of estimating at all.

    The number of POWs does not necessarily correspond to number of killed in action. On the Eastern Front, there were more German POWs than Soviet ones. But there were far more Soviet KIA than German POWs.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_(World_War_II)

    Germany and allies: 4.5 million POWs, 4.5 million KIA
    USSR and allies: 4.1 million POWs, 6.5 million KIA

    So going by that rule, more POWs = fewer KIA.

    So it's not a rule.

    POWs are achieved when an enemy is surrounded and surrenders. This happened a lot in the beginning of the war with Ukrainians, especially in the South and Mariupol where large units surrendered. It doesn't happen as much or in as large numbers on the current battlefield.

    Moreover, you say you don't trust governments for KIA numbers but you trust them for POW numbers.

    The best indirect measure of course is death notices and obituaries.

    Why do you avoid mentioning those?

    Because for most of the war they were about equal, suggesting that each side had about the same KIA. However in the last 2 months or so there have been about 2 Russian death notices for every Ukrainian one. As would be expected, given that Russia is on the offensive and not achieving much. In terms of territory gained and lives lost, Russia's Kharkiv offensive was much worse for Russia than the southern offensive was for Ukraine last year.

    The sad reality is that Russians bombed the sh.t out of entrenched Ukie positions and eventually the surviving Ukies pull back

     

    Ukrainians deliberately do not concentrate their forces in such ways that they are consistently hit in large numbers by a single bomb. This was a reason why using battlefield nukes would be ineffective.

    The myths about Russian “human waves” are nonsense – there is not a single video showing it.
     
    Uh oh, JJ might show you if you insist.

    The fact the recently Russian death notices have spiked and now outnumber Ukrainian ones tells us that currently Russians are sacrificing a lot of men for very little land. Russians seem to be doing what the Ukrainians stopped doing last year - keep on taking villages here and there, while sacrificing men and equipment.

    AK's KIA estimate from a couple of weeks ago:



    https://twitter.com/powerfultakes/status/1809393375440777347

    Replies: @Greasy William, @Derer, @Beckow

    The bottom line is that the front line has changed very little.

    But that isn’t the bottom line, just like the seemingly frozen Western front wasn’t the bottom line in 1918.

    And while I agree that Russia does not have the strength, barring a total Ukrainian collapse, to break through like the Western Allies did in 1918 or like the Soviets did in 1944, they do appear to be getting the better of it. Ukraine doesn’t have the manpower to recapture additional territory or to force an end to the fighting.

    • Agree: ShortOnTime
    • Replies: @AP
    @Greasy William


    But that isn’t the bottom line, just like the seemingly frozen Western front wasn’t the bottom line in 1918.
     
    It’s the bottom line for now and the immediate future.

    And while I agree that Russia does not have the strength, barring a total Ukrainian collapse, to break through like the Western Allies did in 1918 or like the Soviets did in 1944, they do appear to be getting the better of it
     
    Russians are stopped around Kharkiv but slowly and steadily gaining a village here and there on other fronts, while losing 2 men for each Ukrainian. Their commanders may think it is worth it. Ukrainians didn’t think such ratios were worth it last summer, so they switched to defense. Russians seem to desperately want to capture as much as they can at any cost, before the new soldiers Ukraine mobilized come into play and/or before real negotiations (previous attempts were not sincere from the Russian side) after the US election results are clear.

    Replies: @Greasy William

  456. @Bashibuzuk
    @Dmitry

    I frankly don’t remember where I first read about that Anenerbe/SS project. It was more than twenty years ago and it’s not very important anymore, except perhaps if it’s true that Die Glocke has space-time warping properties.

    https://dzen.ru/a/XGEL1i4otACtyHtE

    https://alphapedia.ru/w/Nazi_UFOs

    Supposedly Yaakov Blumkin witnessed something similar in Tibet while searching for Shambhala a decade or so before the Nazis and the Japanese tried doing the same thing (Blumkin was already executed by then for his links to Trotsky).

    But of course, this is all “alternative history” speculations.

    What is more relevant, is what happens if anyone reaches such technological level of development in the current sociopolitical environment. What would they most probably use it for. I think they would most probably steer the development of the mankind into a certain direction. And it’s here that this line of thinking intersects with Strugatsky’s view of human evolution. A vision that had a deep influence on late Soviet “technological intelligentsia” and still impresses people such as Alexey Arestovich.

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

    https://cyclowiki.org/wiki/%D0%9B%D1%8E%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%8B

    https://strugacki.ru/book_24/954.html

    If you have time, read the book, then Gibson’s Jackpot novels and then watch again the Jorjani’s video.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    What are your views about Joe Rogan’s theories.

    He begins repeating some of his theories around 1:36:30

    https://youtu.be/kWo6QNgr-zA?si=MxxF8D9jA2i0cm57&t=5801.

    He repeats his theories regularly, but this was one of the better discussions.

    His point of view is generally Marxist. He is probably one of the most Marxist consistent people in the mainstream American culture.

    But what the more recent influences on his theory of history?

    I would say, his view is influenced a lot by the films “2001 Space Odyssey” and “AI” (2001).

    mankind into a certain direction. And it’s here that this line of thinking intersects with Strugatsky’s view of human evolution. A vision that had a deep influence on late Soviet “technological intelligentsia” and still impresses people such as Alexey Arestovich.

    I don’t know the old Soviet science-fiction much, unfortunately, but I think we get similar views listening to Rogan?

    Rogan is talking to a lot of people, watches a lot of films and he absorbs a lot of the science fiction culture from the atmosphere.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Dmitry


    I don’t know the Soviet science-fiction
     
    Дима, ты меня извини, но я тебе по-дружески замечу что с моей точки зрения это непростительное упущение. Мы с тобой понимаем что СССР не «только калоши производил», как об этом не так давно заявил ВВП. И нигде высокий (и не реализованный) потенциал советского проекта не проявлялся в такой полноте, в какой он проявился в советской фантастике. Именно поэтому, такие люди как Арестович со товарищи, торчат от Стругатских не смотря на то что они антисоветчики и руссофобы. Они понимают интеллектуальный уровень этого явления.

    https://youtu.be/Z1cgXZ40bcs?si=ICyC9JV0UJfyflAt

    Now, about Rogan. I think Rogan is a typical American guy with a nice attitude towards his guests and the society in general. I don’t think he would accept anyone describing him as a Marxist. He’s just a broad minded and quite talented podcast host.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  457. @Bashibuzuk
    @Dmitry

    Barsukov was basically Putin’s associate in the Russian Mob when Putin was active in Leningrad. There were other Blatnyie associated with Putin, the father of Durov being one of them, but only Putin and Barsukov really understood that the fusion of the secret services and organized crime was basically guaranteed to seize power. It was too strong a force to be opposed by anyone else, be it the Red Browns, the Dem-schizo liberals or the former Nomenklatura and Red Directors of the Soviet industrial complex. By implementing this fusion of the Vors and the Siloviki, the Leningrad team came to rule RF. That’s the Klept: Deep State + Organized Crime fused as one and operating as a global TNC. The problem of Putin is that he did not achieve the transformation towards the global Russian (Noviop) Klept. He was either contained (mainly by the Brits who don’t want concurrent Klept operating on a global scale) or his outlook was too narrow which brought him to the current situation. What is important to understand, is that even if RF Noviops won’t achieve the historical task of the Klept, some other group will.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Derer

    Can you explain as to how wast the 90’s Berezovsky “klept” (Yeltsin oligarchs) defeated and by whom?

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Derer

    They were not the real Klept yet, and no - Putin was not some “oligarch-slayer” he is sometimes purported to be. He just left some oligarchs destroy other oligarchs and he meandered his way through their infighting while structuring the real Klept around his own clan and those who were loyal to him. The only time he acted outright aggressively against an oligarch was against Khodorkovsky, while still keeping Surkov - a man who was a close associate of Khodorkovsky - close to the top of the RF political pyramid. Putin has also underscored that he was loyal to Yeltsin heritage. And finally, Putin has very much weakened the RF, which is being currently visible for everyone to see in Ukraine. Putin is not a genius statesman or geopolitical thinker that some want to believe he is. He is just a great решала balancing the interests of the Noviop Klept. Although perhaps in the last decade or so he has become megalomaniac enough to believe the hype of his own propaganda. Which might explain why we are witnessing what we currently witness in Ukraine.

    Replies: @Derer, @QCIC

  458. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk

    What are your views about Joe Rogan's theories.

    He begins repeating some of his theories around 1:36:30

    https://youtu.be/kWo6QNgr-zA?si=MxxF8D9jA2i0cm57&t=5801.

    He repeats his theories regularly, but this was one of the better discussions.

    His point of view is generally Marxist. He is probably one of the most Marxist consistent people in the mainstream American culture.

    But what the more recent influences on his theory of history?

    I would say, his view is influenced a lot by the films "2001 Space Odyssey" and "AI" (2001).


    mankind into a certain direction. And it’s here that this line of thinking intersects with Strugatsky’s view of human evolution. A vision that had a deep influence on late Soviet “technological intelligentsia” and still impresses people such as Alexey Arestovich.
     
    I don't know the old Soviet science-fiction much, unfortunately, but I think we get similar views listening to Rogan?

    Rogan is talking to a lot of people, watches a lot of films and he absorbs a lot of the science fiction culture from the atmosphere.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    I don’t know the Soviet science-fiction

    Дима, ты меня извини, но я тебе по-дружески замечу что с моей точки зрения это непростительное упущение. Мы с тобой понимаем что СССР не «только калоши производил», как об этом не так давно заявил ВВП. И нигде высокий (и не реализованный) потенциал советского проекта не проявлялся в такой полноте, в какой он проявился в советской фантастике. Именно поэтому, такие люди как Арестович со товарищи, торчат от Стругатских не смотря на то что они антисоветчики и руссофобы. Они понимают интеллектуальный уровень этого явления.

    Now, about Rogan. I think Rogan is a typical American guy with a nice attitude towards his guests and the society in general. I don’t think he would accept anyone describing him as a Marxist. He’s just a broad minded and quite talented podcast host.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk

    I'd like to read somethings. I remember AnonfromTN is also a fan of these writers. Maybe we could begin a reading circle. The last time I tried to start a reading circle here with Coconuts it was wasn't very successful, although we were supposed to read sociological writers.

    About Rogan. He's pretending to be stupid, the stereotypical "jock", then when his guest open up, he often tries to make them promote his personal views, which are generally having a historical materialist perspective. He's talented at slowly redirecting his guests until they developed his own views like a kind of outsourcing.

    See him trying to explain his theories and he even wants him to repeat his guest to repeat his solution of re-engineering humans to remove negative instincts, which could have been a solution in communism.
    1:51:00 - 2:05:00 https://youtu.be/5EOpplSyxN0?si=FOAErCTw7tkcDL_x&t=6644.

    Replies: @Coconuts

  459. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Derer
    @Bashibuzuk

    Can you explain as to how wast the 90's Berezovsky "klept" (Yeltsin oligarchs) defeated and by whom?

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    They were not the real Klept yet, and no – Putin was not some “oligarch-slayer” he is sometimes purported to be. He just left some oligarchs destroy other oligarchs and he meandered his way through their infighting while structuring the real Klept around his own clan and those who were loyal to him. The only time he acted outright aggressively against an oligarch was against Khodorkovsky, while still keeping Surkov – a man who was a close associate of Khodorkovsky – close to the top of the RF political pyramid. Putin has also underscored that he was loyal to Yeltsin heritage. And finally, Putin has very much weakened the RF, which is being currently visible for everyone to see in Ukraine. Putin is not a genius statesman or geopolitical thinker that some want to believe he is. He is just a great решала balancing the interests of the Noviop Klept. Although perhaps in the last decade or so he has become megalomaniac enough to believe the hype of his own propaganda. Which might explain why we are witnessing what we currently witness in Ukraine.

    • Replies: @Derer
    @Bashibuzuk

    My opinion is not important, but some high echelon people around the world credit Putin in restoring the resource Russian ownership from the hand of American financiers. Whereby their penniless proxies (now babysit in UK or Israel) became billionaires in few months.

    Why is Putin pathologically hated by the West, to the point they wishing him "bullet to the back of his head". He is not hated for his looks but for standing up against the West freewheeling pillaging in every corner of this planet, still looking for lost colonies.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @S1

    , @QCIC
    @Bashibuzuk

    What do you think Russia should have done in Ukraine, given the geopolitical landscape?

    Do you have an explanation or theory for why Russia moved into Ukraine in 2022, as opposed to moving in either sooner or never?

    Replies: @A123, @Bashibuzuk

  460. @AP
    @Beckow


    You are way off about the situation on the front line
     
    The bottom line is that the front line has changed very little.

    https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/ukraine-frontline-hp-03.png

    That is what stalemate looks like.

    Of course, one can zoom in and show large maps of specific villages taken by Russia to make it look like the gains are significant. It would be manipulation, the equivalent of trying to make a protest seem bigger than it is by zooming in on 100 people.

    Let’s look at the casualties: both side lie about it, the only reliable estimates are indirect.
     
    Wow, you made a correct statement. But then you screw up as usual:

    One of the best ways in all wars is to compare POWs: Russia holds 6 times as many Ukie POWs as vice versa.
     
    It is not good way of estimating at all.

    The number of POWs does not necessarily correspond to number of killed in action. On the Eastern Front, there were more German POWs than Soviet ones. But there were far more Soviet KIA than German POWs.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_(World_War_II)

    Germany and allies: 4.5 million POWs, 4.5 million KIA
    USSR and allies: 4.1 million POWs, 6.5 million KIA

    So going by that rule, more POWs = fewer KIA.

    So it's not a rule.

    POWs are achieved when an enemy is surrounded and surrenders. This happened a lot in the beginning of the war with Ukrainians, especially in the South and Mariupol where large units surrendered. It doesn't happen as much or in as large numbers on the current battlefield.

    Moreover, you say you don't trust governments for KIA numbers but you trust them for POW numbers.

    The best indirect measure of course is death notices and obituaries.

    Why do you avoid mentioning those?

    Because for most of the war they were about equal, suggesting that each side had about the same KIA. However in the last 2 months or so there have been about 2 Russian death notices for every Ukrainian one. As would be expected, given that Russia is on the offensive and not achieving much. In terms of territory gained and lives lost, Russia's Kharkiv offensive was much worse for Russia than the southern offensive was for Ukraine last year.

    The sad reality is that Russians bombed the sh.t out of entrenched Ukie positions and eventually the surviving Ukies pull back

     

    Ukrainians deliberately do not concentrate their forces in such ways that they are consistently hit in large numbers by a single bomb. This was a reason why using battlefield nukes would be ineffective.

    The myths about Russian “human waves” are nonsense – there is not a single video showing it.
     
    Uh oh, JJ might show you if you insist.

    The fact the recently Russian death notices have spiked and now outnumber Ukrainian ones tells us that currently Russians are sacrificing a lot of men for very little land. Russians seem to be doing what the Ukrainians stopped doing last year - keep on taking villages here and there, while sacrificing men and equipment.

    AK's KIA estimate from a couple of weeks ago:



    https://twitter.com/powerfultakes/status/1809393375440777347

    Replies: @Greasy William, @Derer, @Beckow

    In view of the #431, you are peeing against the wind. The problem is you do not accept anything wrong going on in Ukraine, only victory after victory…better in KIA better in POW better in people fleeing, oops I could be wrong.

    • Agree: Mikhail
    • Replies: @AP
    @Derer

    Are you too dumb to read that I described a stalemate and not “victory after victory?”

    Replies: @Derer

  461. @Torna atrás
    @Bashibuzuk

    Sanhedrin 37a

    https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRg4lB-m_7VZQc8Q6LwGAgCgIVWzMZbVAfa-hEX1GWCtw&s.jpg

    Replies: @Torna atrás

    [MORE]

    The stories of how ‘the first Latvian shahid’ Māris Bergholds and 21-year-old Mārtiņš become IS fighters.

    Māris Ahmed Bergholds, a sociology student, first came to prominence in 2003 when he was freed from an American prison in Iraq. Later on he penned a book that was published in 2012 under the name of Islam as translated into Latvian. He disappeared shortly after its publication, LTV7’s Lichonye Delo had reported previously.

    His mother Regīna Bergholde had turned to the Chas daily in 2003 with a Red Cross letter from her son, who was in an American prison in Iraq. Berholds complained about his mistreatment at the hands of American soldiers. He later wrote that his head had been beaten with the doors of a Humvee, and that he had been hit with plastic bottles and books as those don’t leave bruises.

    Bergholds had gone to the Near East as a newly-converted Muslim. According to his book, he wanted to learn the ritual prayer and to learn more about Islam; if he would have had time, he would also have conducted a survey for his graduation paper, related to democracy in Arab states.

    As staying in Turkish Ankara proved too expensive and he couldn’t get a Syrian visa, he went to Iraq to visit Erbil. His route went through the city of Mosul where someone stole his camera. Berholds turned to the authorities. The local police, in turn, handed him to American soldiers who considered him to be a foreign mercenary. He spent several months in different prisons.

    Upon his return to Latvia, he started openly blaming the US for escalating conflict in the Near East.

    After his stint in the Near East, Bergholds, who had been actively interested in Islam, became a true convert, according to his mother.

    “In reality he wasn’t a Muslim yet [before he went to the Near East]. The time spent in prison, as well as the Quran as the only reading material dragged him in,” his mother said.

    He graduated from the university back in Latvia and organized a forum for Latvian Muslims. In 2008 he decided to go to Sudan to study Arabic. It’s in Sudan where he wrote his book, which relates the basic tenets of Islam. The book is interspersed with his own experiences but doesn’t endorse extremist views.

    Shortly afterwards, Bergholds disappeared.

    A representative of Latvian Center for Islamic Culture, wrote on the parislamu.lv website that “In summer 2012, Ahmed [Māris Bergholds] has gone missing. According to unofficial information, he has chosen the path of God in the Near East, where he has in all likelihood become the first Latvian shahid. God is great.”

    After about six months of silence, Bergholds wrote to his mother saying that he had reached Syria, and that she would be informed if he’d be ‘granted a ticket to paradise’.

    According to De Facto, in spring 2013 Bergholds had tried freeing convicts from the Alepo prison. It is highly likely that he had joined an extremist group. Bergholds had known that he is considered a terrorist in the West, and US authorities had visited his sister, who is living in the US.

    In one of the clashes Bergholds wounded his arm. He contacted his mother for the last time in October 2013, when he was 33 years old.

    It wasn’t a good-bye letter though – Bergholds simply related how his arm is healing and inquired about his sister. His mother Regīna thinks there are two possible outcomes – “either he is no more, he has died in Syria, or he is detained, but I will never believe that he’d become a shahid and blow other people up,” she said.

    Mārtiņš – finding and sharing his faith on the internet

    The second Latvian who may have become radicalized was Mārtiņš, a young man from a large farmer family. He had a great command of English and, according to his teacher, he was a loner who spent his free time alone and didn’t have any friends. “His world was the internet, the computer, the double life, the night life,” his teacher, who wished to remain unnamed, said.

    In grade 12 Mārtiņš became interested in Islam and started frequenting one of the largest online forums dedicated to Islam. His mother knew about this, but his father wasn’t in on it.

    Mārtiņš was an active poster on the forum, until the time he left Latvia. According to De Facto, he had written more than 1,500 posts in 9 months. He wrote, for example, that he wanted to move to another country, like Malaysia, where there are more Islam believers.

    The growing radicalization of Mārtiņš’ worldview can be traced from his forum posts.

    In spring 2014, he decided against going to the university upon graduation and made up his mind to move to the UK after finishing school, and to go to the Near East from there. At about that time he also went to Helsinki where he met his best friend, whom he had met in online gaming and had turned to Islam. Both Mārtiņš’ and his Finnish friend’s forum posts ended on the same day in August 2014.

    This February, Finnish YLE revealed Mārtiņš’ friend to be a lonely, unsociable young man from eastern Finland.

    While De Facto didn’t delve deep into the youth’s possible activities, the YLE piece details the possible activities of his Finnish friend, with whom Mārtiņš was very close.

    “[..] he says that everything is going well for him in Syria, but he has not yet joined the fighting–at present he is mainly on guard duty. Based on his Twitter account, it seems he has been in Hama, Homs and Raqqa, the capital of the self-proclaimed Islamic State”.

    • Thanks: Bashibuzuk
  462. @Bashibuzuk
    @Derer

    They were not the real Klept yet, and no - Putin was not some “oligarch-slayer” he is sometimes purported to be. He just left some oligarchs destroy other oligarchs and he meandered his way through their infighting while structuring the real Klept around his own clan and those who were loyal to him. The only time he acted outright aggressively against an oligarch was against Khodorkovsky, while still keeping Surkov - a man who was a close associate of Khodorkovsky - close to the top of the RF political pyramid. Putin has also underscored that he was loyal to Yeltsin heritage. And finally, Putin has very much weakened the RF, which is being currently visible for everyone to see in Ukraine. Putin is not a genius statesman or geopolitical thinker that some want to believe he is. He is just a great решала balancing the interests of the Noviop Klept. Although perhaps in the last decade or so he has become megalomaniac enough to believe the hype of his own propaganda. Which might explain why we are witnessing what we currently witness in Ukraine.

    Replies: @Derer, @QCIC

    My opinion is not important, but some high echelon people around the world credit Putin in restoring the resource Russian ownership from the hand of American financiers. Whereby their penniless proxies (now babysit in UK or Israel) became billionaires in few months.

    Why is Putin pathologically hated by the West, to the point they wishing him “bullet to the back of his head”. He is not hated for his looks but for standing up against the West freewheeling pillaging in every corner of this planet, still looking for lost colonies.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Derer

    Putin is hated because he acted as a manager of a company who would have enriched himself and his friends at the expense of the owners. The owners being the Globalized Western elites. From their perspective, he has proven unreliable. He and his circle have prioritized their own interests, it doesn’t mean that he was a champion of the downtrodden and a white knight fighting for justice and human rights. Basically, from a mafia capo he graduated into a mafia don and then started a turf war with other mafia dons. The war between RF and the globalized West is just that: a mafia turf war.

    , @S1
    @Derer


    Why is Putin pathologically hated by the West, to the point they wishing him “bullet to the back of his head”.
     
    Putin is hated because, like Trump, he symbolizes peoplehood, which is anathema to the Anglosphere based progressive cult of Multi-Culturalism and it's global war against identity.

    It makes no matter to the cult's adherents if Putin, like Trump imo, is ultimately controlled go nowhere opposition, and the 'peoplehood' that each espouses consists largely of empty symbolism of empty symbolism, having no real substance to it, as being that the Multiculturalists are part of a gigantic cult, you are not dealing with independent thought, but rather with programming.

    Being that they are programmed members of a cult, the same as the Manson Family and Jonestown people were, you aren't going to be getting any rational discourse from them anytime soon. [See link below in regards to cults.]

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

    Only when the elites and hangers on directing this cult's programming decide to lighten up in regards to Putin, ie they change the cult's programming, will the multiculturalist's adherents personal hostility to Putin abate. [This would be similar to how recently the cult's programming was changed from one of support for Joe Biden's presidential run, to one of hostility towards it, like a light switch being turned from 'on' to 'off', with barely a whimper of shock or surprise in response from the cult's compliant membership.]

    One thing though, most cult's will have an individual, ie a leader figure, who guides the cult's membership to whereever it is they might be going, and the Anglosphere's global cult of progressive Multi-Culturalism doesn't have such a person...yet! [See below 'More' in regards to just who this person might be.]

    https://www.jtrue.com/blog/the-second-coming

    https://www.jtrue.com/wp-content/uploads/kushnerth-e1572369290815-768x591.jpg

    A Messiah for Globalism


    The Second Coming

    From the time he was born they told him he was perfect. And so he was. No one’s spine towered taller than Jared Kushner. He had been trained for the best by the worst. Charles Kushner, the father of Jared, is a lifelong friend of Benjamin Netanyahu and a convicted felon. The two of them would turn Jared the child into a messiah for globalism. Such is the life of a thoroughbred human. They’re carved from marble for a purpose. His chemistry was being tuned as early as age four. Netanyahu tells the press about the night he slept in Jared’s bedroom. His tender story is a ritual anointment before the world. Jared will win every room now with his essence. Everyone agrees he’ll be the chosen of the chosen. Behind a slender skull, Jared discovered his aura was more valuable than he was. He’s a raccoon curled up in the cold fireplace of an abandoned mansion.
     

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

  463. @Mr. Hack
    @John Johnson

    I watched the video, it was disgusting. Mike Averko will pretend that he didn't watch it and that Russian troops are marching triumphantly towards Kharkiv. One older survivor out of 300 with flies and stench so thick that you have to wear a mask just to breath. It's hard not to feel sorry or this poor guy, but he and the others came to Ukraine lured by the idea of large contract bonuses, lol. Ukrainians don't get paid nearly as much, but they're fighting for honorable reasons, to defend their homes, families and country from unwanted aggressors. Russians go home, you're not wanted nor needed in Ukraine!

    Replies: @John Johnson

    One older survivor out of 300 with flies and stench so thick that you have to wear a mask just to breath. It’s hard not to feel sorry or this poor guy, but he and the others came to Ukraine lured by the idea of large contract bonuses, lol.

    I don’t feel sorry for them at all. They are agreeing to kill for money.

    In the POW interviews they never feel sorry for the Ukrainians. I’ve watched dozens of them and only a few take any moral objections. Most either support the war or don’t care if it is justified. They want the check and they “don’t do politics” as the Russians say.

    Their regrets are centered around being unable to make quick money. They regret going because it wasn’t like they assumed or they expected better military support.

    Russia seems filled with half-suicidal men that will risk their lives for a few thousand dollars.

    They all seem to have an underlying disdain for Ukrainians. They clearly don’t view them as their Slavic cousins. Cousins don’t try to kill each other for cash.

  464. A123 says: • Website

    How problematic are battery fires? Glad you asked: (1)

    Lithium Battery Fire Sparks Traffic
    Mayhem Across California Desert

    “A crisis situation is unfolding in the California desert. Thousands of people headed to Las Vegas have been stuck on the I-40 for many hours, running out of gas and water. This is all due to the lithium battery truck fire that closed down I-15 yesterday,” X user Las Vegas Locally wrote on X late Saturday afternoon.

    “A different sort of energy crisis, also caused by alternative energy (a lithium battery fire),” X user Josh Young wrote.

    The dangers of the ‘green’ energy transition are not being disclosed to the American people by radical leftists in the White House. There is limited transparency and unaccountability.

    Let’s not forget that lithium-ion batteries contain a lot of energy and can spontaneously enter into a ‘thermal runaway,’

    The highway was closed for just under two days. Some reports indicate that the lithium batteries are still burning. The road was reopened only because emergency response teams pushed the fire far enough into the desert to let people pass.

    Is there an official lung disease for inhaled, burnt, lithium battery residue?
    If not, when will it be announced?

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/lithium-battery-fire-sparks-traffic-mayhem-across-california-desert

  465. @AP
    @Beckow


    You are way off about the situation on the front line
     
    The bottom line is that the front line has changed very little.

    https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/ukraine-frontline-hp-03.png

    That is what stalemate looks like.

    Of course, one can zoom in and show large maps of specific villages taken by Russia to make it look like the gains are significant. It would be manipulation, the equivalent of trying to make a protest seem bigger than it is by zooming in on 100 people.

    Let’s look at the casualties: both side lie about it, the only reliable estimates are indirect.
     
    Wow, you made a correct statement. But then you screw up as usual:

    One of the best ways in all wars is to compare POWs: Russia holds 6 times as many Ukie POWs as vice versa.
     
    It is not good way of estimating at all.

    The number of POWs does not necessarily correspond to number of killed in action. On the Eastern Front, there were more German POWs than Soviet ones. But there were far more Soviet KIA than German POWs.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_(World_War_II)

    Germany and allies: 4.5 million POWs, 4.5 million KIA
    USSR and allies: 4.1 million POWs, 6.5 million KIA

    So going by that rule, more POWs = fewer KIA.

    So it's not a rule.

    POWs are achieved when an enemy is surrounded and surrenders. This happened a lot in the beginning of the war with Ukrainians, especially in the South and Mariupol where large units surrendered. It doesn't happen as much or in as large numbers on the current battlefield.

    Moreover, you say you don't trust governments for KIA numbers but you trust them for POW numbers.

    The best indirect measure of course is death notices and obituaries.

    Why do you avoid mentioning those?

    Because for most of the war they were about equal, suggesting that each side had about the same KIA. However in the last 2 months or so there have been about 2 Russian death notices for every Ukrainian one. As would be expected, given that Russia is on the offensive and not achieving much. In terms of territory gained and lives lost, Russia's Kharkiv offensive was much worse for Russia than the southern offensive was for Ukraine last year.

    The sad reality is that Russians bombed the sh.t out of entrenched Ukie positions and eventually the surviving Ukies pull back

     

    Ukrainians deliberately do not concentrate their forces in such ways that they are consistently hit in large numbers by a single bomb. This was a reason why using battlefield nukes would be ineffective.

    The myths about Russian “human waves” are nonsense – there is not a single video showing it.
     
    Uh oh, JJ might show you if you insist.

    The fact the recently Russian death notices have spiked and now outnumber Ukrainian ones tells us that currently Russians are sacrificing a lot of men for very little land. Russians seem to be doing what the Ukrainians stopped doing last year - keep on taking villages here and there, while sacrificing men and equipment.

    AK's KIA estimate from a couple of weeks ago:



    https://twitter.com/powerfultakes/status/1809393375440777347

    Replies: @Greasy William, @Derer, @Beckow

    Germany and allies: 4.5 million POWs, 4.5 million KIA
    USSR and allies: 4.1 million POWs, 6.5 million KIA

    So going by that rule, more POWs = fewer KIA. So it’s not a rule.

    You have a problem with complex ideas. If there are 6 times as many Ukie POWs it is unlikely that the ratios in the other casualties (killed, wounded, MIA) is the reverse. The variance you are showing in WW2 is much smaller than 6 to 1, so it is not really applicable.

    The number of Nazi allies killed was undercounted. Many countries used ‘missing’ or ‘unknown’ instead. There was reluctance by the German allies to acknowledge the losses, many were volunteers or people from occupied territories – e.g. Hungary occupied 50% extra lands (Transylvania, Vojvodina, southern Slovakia). People drafted there who died were often unaccounted for. Romania was a special case because they switched sides in summer 1944 – for political reasons the previous casualties were shifted to the anti-German side. Plus Galicians, Albanians, etc…hundreds of thousands died and were not counted.

    “Death notices” are unreliable. Many deaths are not reported or suppressed. It also depends on the person’s situation – Ukies who have no permanent address inside Ukraine will not be captured, there are thousands of them fighting and among the casualties.

    The POW ratios are the best way, but they are also flawed. We may find out after the war.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Beckow


    You have a problem with complex ideas
     
    As always, your accusation is a confession.

    If there are 6 times as many Ukie POWs it is unlikely that the ratios in the other casualties (killed, wounded, MIA) is the reverse
     
    Here is where complexity of situations eludes you.

    Mariupol, for example. The Russians took it, and in the process captured almost four thousand POWs. The Ukrainians did not capture a single Russian there, because they lost that city.

    So there the ratio of Ukrainian to Russian POWs was perhaps 3,900:0.

    Do you think the kill ratio was similar to the POW ratio there?

    Do you think that 3,900 Ukrainians were killed for zero Russians?

    This is why it is stupid to estimate casualties based on POW numbers. And indeed why nobody had thought of doing so until Beckow, the midwit. Or did you you hear about it from someone else with such “bright” discoveries?

    Death notices” are unreliable. Many deaths are not reported or suppressed
     
    Of course. For both Russians and Ukrainians, it is assumed that death notices capture about 50% of actual deaths.

    It also depends on the person’s situation – Ukies who have no permanent address inside Ukraine will not be captured
     
    Yoy mean ones from occupied territories, taken after 2022? That would be around 5% of the population. Not enough to affect the numbers. And Russians from some distant Siberian villages might be less likely to be captured in death notices than are Ukrainians. Russians tend to just let their corpses rot rather than recover them, they may be more likely to be MIA than reported dead.
  466. @Bashibuzuk
    @Derer

    They were not the real Klept yet, and no - Putin was not some “oligarch-slayer” he is sometimes purported to be. He just left some oligarchs destroy other oligarchs and he meandered his way through their infighting while structuring the real Klept around his own clan and those who were loyal to him. The only time he acted outright aggressively against an oligarch was against Khodorkovsky, while still keeping Surkov - a man who was a close associate of Khodorkovsky - close to the top of the RF political pyramid. Putin has also underscored that he was loyal to Yeltsin heritage. And finally, Putin has very much weakened the RF, which is being currently visible for everyone to see in Ukraine. Putin is not a genius statesman or geopolitical thinker that some want to believe he is. He is just a great решала balancing the interests of the Noviop Klept. Although perhaps in the last decade or so he has become megalomaniac enough to believe the hype of his own propaganda. Which might explain why we are witnessing what we currently witness in Ukraine.

    Replies: @Derer, @QCIC

    What do you think Russia should have done in Ukraine, given the geopolitical landscape?

    Do you have an explanation or theory for why Russia moved into Ukraine in 2022, as opposed to moving in either sooner or never?

    • Replies: @A123
    @QCIC


    Do you have an explanation or theory for why Russia moved into Ukraine in 2022, as opposed to moving in either sooner or never?
     
    Absorbing and integrating territory is expensive. If they became successful nations, Lugansk and Donetsk (like Belarus) would have provided security gains without creating economic issues. Russia was not going to move until this played out.

    The events of 2014-2022 more than amply proved to the Kremlin that this strategy would not work. Führer Zelensky made is clear that the only option to prevent Kiev aggression against Russian ethnics was the Defensive SMO.

    It is all about the German led European Empire being unreasonable. It is hard to burn e-books. Thus, the Merkel/Scholz Reich is going for book banning: (1)


    German Publisher Stops All Printing Of
    JD Vance's Book Hillbilly Elegy

     

    JD Vance is a marked man. After accepting the nomination for vice president, Vance has been the subject of endless media attacks. Recently, Vice President Kamala Harris even questioned his “loyalty” to the country despite his serving as a Marine in the Iraq War. Yet, one of the most chilling attacks came from Germany where the publishing house Ullstein Buchverlage has stopped printing the sold-out German translation of Hillbilly Elegy, his 2016 autobiography.

     
    https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/440px-Institut_fur_Sexualwissens.jpg

     

    Germany silences America. The Merkel inspired Reich has no tolerance those who speak out against the European Empire's master plan in Ukraine.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.zerohedge.com/political/german-publisher-stops-all-printing-jd-vances-book-hillbilly-elegy

    Replies: @Derer

    , @Bashibuzuk
    @QCIC

    It should have acted preemptively and used its soft power and its immense wealth that poured in during the high oil prices period. It should have invested into Russian speaking Ukrainians and offered them an automatic double citizenship upon a simple request. It should have been more attractive for the younger Ukrainians than the West has become. But with Putin’s clique it was nearly impossible because they did not prioritize the Russian Realm until it became too late to act in a peaceful manner. They had other priorities before that, buying real estate in the West and all these endless super yachts. They actually despised ethnic Russians in RF itself, how much so Russian speakers in Ukraine.

  467. @Mr. Hack
    @songbird

    How dare anybody question Trump's Christian beliefs? kremlinstoogeA123 is convinced of Trump's belief system:

    https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/gytNbaMsefMsFX5saN7mj-1200-80.jpg

    Replies: @songbird

    Not sure when the last major presidential candidate was who was at least semi-plausibly a Christian. I think it has been quite a while.

    [MORE]

    I remember the oddness of several candidates (rather godless it seemed to me) being asked things like what their favorite Bible verse was, and parts of the mainstream media (godless themselves) bizarrely backing the truth of their zeal. There was that interviewer who had to tell Obama that he was a Christian.

    But it is honestly kind of worrying to me if even Trump is denying any connection to Christianity. I think we’ve crossed some temporal demographic threshold. It is like a marker of how globalized America has become.

    Ross Perot seems like such a long time ago. Back then the budget and debt were a big deal. Perhaps, never again until the crash.

    • Replies: @A123
    @songbird


    Not sure when the last major presidential candidate was who was at least semi-plausibly a Christian. I think it has been quite a while.
     
    It happened in 2016, 2020, and 2024 where Trump was and is a Christian candidate.

    if even Trump is denying any connection to Christianity.
     
    You really have to stop trusting MSNBC.

    This fake story is so beyond 100% bogus, it makes no sense.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @songbird

  468. A123 says: • Website
    @QCIC
    @Bashibuzuk

    What do you think Russia should have done in Ukraine, given the geopolitical landscape?

    Do you have an explanation or theory for why Russia moved into Ukraine in 2022, as opposed to moving in either sooner or never?

    Replies: @A123, @Bashibuzuk

    Do you have an explanation or theory for why Russia moved into Ukraine in 2022, as opposed to moving in either sooner or never?

    Absorbing and integrating territory is expensive. If they became successful nations, Lugansk and Donetsk (like Belarus) would have provided security gains without creating economic issues. Russia was not going to move until this played out.

    The events of 2014-2022 more than amply proved to the Kremlin that this strategy would not work. Führer Zelensky made is clear that the only option to prevent Kiev aggression against Russian ethnics was the Defensive SMO.

    It is all about the German led European Empire being unreasonable. It is hard to burn e-books. Thus, the Merkel/Scholz Reich is going for book banning: (1)

    German Publisher Stops All Printing Of
    JD Vance’s Book Hillbilly Elegy

    JD Vance is a marked man. After accepting the nomination for vice president, Vance has been the subject of endless media attacks. Recently, Vice President Kamala Harris even questioned his “loyalty” to the country despite his serving as a Marine in the Iraq War. Yet, one of the most chilling attacks came from Germany where the publishing house Ullstein Buchverlage has stopped printing the sold-out German translation of Hillbilly Elegy, his 2016 autobiography.

     

    Germany silences America. The Merkel inspired Reich has no tolerance those who speak out against the European Empire’s master plan in Ukraine.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.zerohedge.com/political/german-publisher-stops-all-printing-jd-vances-book-hillbilly-elegy

    • Replies: @Derer
    @A123

    Agreed! It appears the ignoramuses in Berlin even applauded the US destruction of their own pipeline and wasted billions. How dare, the clown looking Chancellor, seek being elected after plunging Germany's economy into the ditch - f revanchist.

    Replies: @A123

  469. A123 says: • Website
    @songbird
    @Mr. Hack

    Not sure when the last major presidential candidate was who was at least semi-plausibly a Christian. I think it has been quite a while.

    I remember the oddness of several candidates (rather godless it seemed to me) being asked things like what their favorite Bible verse was, and parts of the mainstream media (godless themselves) bizarrely backing the truth of their zeal. There was that interviewer who had to tell Obama that he was a Christian.

    But it is honestly kind of worrying to me if even Trump is denying any connection to Christianity. I think we've crossed some temporal demographic threshold. It is like a marker of how globalized America has become.

    Ross Perot seems like such a long time ago. Back then the budget and debt were a big deal. Perhaps, never again until the crash.

    Replies: @A123

    Not sure when the last major presidential candidate was who was at least semi-plausibly a Christian. I think it has been quite a while.

    It happened in 2016, 2020, and 2024 where Trump was and is a Christian candidate.

    if even Trump is denying any connection to Christianity.

    You really have to stop trusting MSNBC.

    This fake story is so beyond 100% bogus, it makes no sense.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @A123

    Except possibly for a few photo opts right now (during the election cycle) when did Trump ever regularly attend any Christian church? He's as phoney as are you. :-(

    , @songbird
    @A123


    This fake story is so beyond 100% bogus, it makes no sense.
     
    I saw it originally on Twitter, and the mainstream media seems to not be running with it but rather the silly idea he is telling Christians that he will create a dictatorship for them.

    I believe you are correct. This explanation fits best:
    https://twitter.com/PaTrumpGirl/status/1817293097283330213

    Replies: @A123

  470. @Mr. Hack
    @songbird

    It's like comparing nato to chicken tikka masala. :-)

    Replies: @songbird

    It’s like comparing nato to chicken tikka masala. 🙂

    now I believe you do go to weird foreign restaurants, for that middle seems like a Punjabi or Persian word!

    [MORE]

    But I do enjoy some of these Japanese commercials. It is the one area, where I would praise the YouTube algo, for recognizing my weird tastes.

    Possibly the internet is its own filter, but I am struct by the artistic quality many have. Each is almost like its own tiny foreign or art movie. In fact, I suspect some were never aired on TV, but meant to be like a little artsy film on the internet.

    Many seem to have an appreciation of place. (Just like anime) You feel like the location was scouted, rather than studio shot. And also of line – like their frame is influenced by the culture of drawing and comics.

    And I like their cheerier tone.

    Watching American commercials is like being tortured. I can remember strange ad campaigns, even somewhat beyond race, trying to encourage disharmony between the sexes, like this one with Michael Jordan and Mia Hamm: (yes, some female soccer athlete could go head to head with even an old Jordan 😆

    This is where the tranny stuff came from.

    A lot of directors had their start in commercials. Some went directly into movies.

    I don’t like all of them of course. Some of them have too much text (a unique characteristic of Japanese TV), or delve too much into video games. But some have a nice bucolic quality, linking the city to the countryside.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @songbird

    Nothing really "weird" about the two dishes that I mention.

    Natto: is a fermented soy product exalted for its health properties and eaten in Japan quite a bit. It contains the most vitamin k2 m7 of all foods, so its excellent for ones heart health. On its own, it doesn't really have a pleasant taste, but there are several ways to doctor it up to make it quite palatable.

    chicken tikka masala - probably the most famous Indian dish this side of Delhi. The sauce surrounding the chicken cubicles is a delicious somewhat spicy (but not overly) one, that millions of people eat all of the time, You can even find quite good versions of it at Costco and Trader Joes in the frozen foods department.

    You really need to get around a bit more songbird and try to expand your culinary vocabulary, at some point even peanut butter sandwiches downed with milk must get to be boring? :-)

    Replies: @songbird

  471. @A123
    @songbird


    Not sure when the last major presidential candidate was who was at least semi-plausibly a Christian. I think it has been quite a while.
     
    It happened in 2016, 2020, and 2024 where Trump was and is a Christian candidate.

    if even Trump is denying any connection to Christianity.
     
    You really have to stop trusting MSNBC.

    This fake story is so beyond 100% bogus, it makes no sense.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @songbird

    Except possibly for a few photo opts right now (during the election cycle) when did Trump ever regularly attend any Christian church? He’s as phoney as are you. 🙁

  472. @A123
    @songbird


    Not sure when the last major presidential candidate was who was at least semi-plausibly a Christian. I think it has been quite a while.
     
    It happened in 2016, 2020, and 2024 where Trump was and is a Christian candidate.

    if even Trump is denying any connection to Christianity.
     
    You really have to stop trusting MSNBC.

    This fake story is so beyond 100% bogus, it makes no sense.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @songbird

    This fake story is so beyond 100% bogus, it makes no sense.

    I saw it originally on Twitter, and the mainstream media seems to not be running with it but rather the silly idea he is telling Christians that he will create a dictatorship for them.

    I believe you are correct. This explanation fits best:

    [MORE]

    • Agree: A123
    • Replies: @A123
    @songbird

    Trump is saying that he will achieve Christian wins and lock them in.

    True. But this, a bit optimistic. He will generate Christian wins. However, it will take multiple MAGA administrations to lock them in.

    PEACE 😇

  473. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Derer
    @Bashibuzuk

    My opinion is not important, but some high echelon people around the world credit Putin in restoring the resource Russian ownership from the hand of American financiers. Whereby their penniless proxies (now babysit in UK or Israel) became billionaires in few months.

    Why is Putin pathologically hated by the West, to the point they wishing him "bullet to the back of his head". He is not hated for his looks but for standing up against the West freewheeling pillaging in every corner of this planet, still looking for lost colonies.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @S1

    Putin is hated because he acted as a manager of a company who would have enriched himself and his friends at the expense of the owners. The owners being the Globalized Western elites. From their perspective, he has proven unreliable. He and his circle have prioritized their own interests, it doesn’t mean that he was a champion of the downtrodden and a white knight fighting for justice and human rights. Basically, from a mafia capo he graduated into a mafia don and then started a turf war with other mafia dons. The war between RF and the globalized West is just that: a mafia turf war.

  474. AP says:
    @Beckow
    @AP


    Germany and allies: 4.5 million POWs, 4.5 million KIA
    USSR and allies: 4.1 million POWs, 6.5 million KIA

    So going by that rule, more POWs = fewer KIA. So it’s not a rule.
     

    You have a problem with complex ideas. If there are 6 times as many Ukie POWs it is unlikely that the ratios in the other casualties (killed, wounded, MIA) is the reverse. The variance you are showing in WW2 is much smaller than 6 to 1, so it is not really applicable.

    The number of Nazi allies killed was undercounted. Many countries used 'missing' or 'unknown' instead. There was reluctance by the German allies to acknowledge the losses, many were volunteers or people from occupied territories - e.g. Hungary occupied 50% extra lands (Transylvania, Vojvodina, southern Slovakia). People drafted there who died were often unaccounted for. Romania was a special case because they switched sides in summer 1944 - for political reasons the previous casualties were shifted to the anti-German side. Plus Galicians, Albanians, etc...hundreds of thousands died and were not counted.

    "Death notices" are unreliable. Many deaths are not reported or suppressed. It also depends on the person's situation - Ukies who have no permanent address inside Ukraine will not be captured, there are thousands of them fighting and among the casualties.

    The POW ratios are the best way, but they are also flawed. We may find out after the war.

    Replies: @AP

    You have a problem with complex ideas

    As always, your accusation is a confession.

    If there are 6 times as many Ukie POWs it is unlikely that the ratios in the other casualties (killed, wounded, MIA) is the reverse

    Here is where complexity of situations eludes you.

    Mariupol, for example. The Russians took it, and in the process captured almost four thousand POWs. The Ukrainians did not capture a single Russian there, because they lost that city.

    So there the ratio of Ukrainian to Russian POWs was perhaps 3,900:0.

    Do you think the kill ratio was similar to the POW ratio there?

    Do you think that 3,900 Ukrainians were killed for zero Russians?

    This is why it is stupid to estimate casualties based on POW numbers. And indeed why nobody had thought of doing so until Beckow, the midwit. Or did you you hear about it from someone else with such “bright” discoveries?

    Death notices” are unreliable. Many deaths are not reported or suppressed

    Of course. For both Russians and Ukrainians, it is assumed that death notices capture about 50% of actual deaths.

    It also depends on the person’s situation – Ukies who have no permanent address inside Ukraine will not be captured

    Yoy mean ones from occupied territories, taken after 2022? That would be around 5% of the population. Not enough to affect the numbers. And Russians from some distant Siberian villages might be less likely to be captured in death notices than are Ukrainians. Russians tend to just let their corpses rot rather than recover them, they may be more likely to be MIA than reported dead.

  475. Bashibuzuk says:
    @QCIC
    @Bashibuzuk

    What do you think Russia should have done in Ukraine, given the geopolitical landscape?

    Do you have an explanation or theory for why Russia moved into Ukraine in 2022, as opposed to moving in either sooner or never?

    Replies: @A123, @Bashibuzuk

    It should have acted preemptively and used its soft power and its immense wealth that poured in during the high oil prices period. It should have invested into Russian speaking Ukrainians and offered them an automatic double citizenship upon a simple request. It should have been more attractive for the younger Ukrainians than the West has become. But with Putin’s clique it was nearly impossible because they did not prioritize the Russian Realm until it became too late to act in a peaceful manner. They had other priorities before that, buying real estate in the West and all these endless super yachts. They actually despised ethnic Russians in RF itself, how much so Russian speakers in Ukraine.

    • Thanks: QCIC
  476. @Derer
    @AP

    In view of the #431, you are peeing against the wind. The problem is you do not accept anything wrong going on in Ukraine, only victory after victory...better in KIA better in POW better in people fleeing, oops I could be wrong.

    Replies: @AP

    Are you too dumb to read that I described a stalemate and not “victory after victory?”

    • Replies: @Derer
    @AP

    Do not pollute this site with stupid excuses, it is annoying.

  477. @QCIC
    @Greasy William

    Is the purpose of Chabad's outreach to counteract the secularization of Jews?

    Replies: @Greasy William

    Er… sorta. It’s more that Chabad theology holds that every time a Jew performs a mitzvah, it hastens the redemption. Chabad does want to counteract secularization but even if they didn’t bring a single Jew back to observance, they would consider their mission a success as long as they were getting Jews to put on tefillin or whatever.

    They have also started some small scale outreach to gentiles to get them to follow the Noahide laws.

    • Thanks: QCIC
  478. AP says:
    @Greasy William
    @AP


    The bottom line is that the front line has changed very little.
     
    But that isn't the bottom line, just like the seemingly frozen Western front wasn't the bottom line in 1918.

    And while I agree that Russia does not have the strength, barring a total Ukrainian collapse, to break through like the Western Allies did in 1918 or like the Soviets did in 1944, they do appear to be getting the better of it. Ukraine doesn't have the manpower to recapture additional territory or to force an end to the fighting.

    Replies: @AP

    But that isn’t the bottom line, just like the seemingly frozen Western front wasn’t the bottom line in 1918.

    It’s the bottom line for now and the immediate future.

    And while I agree that Russia does not have the strength, barring a total Ukrainian collapse, to break through like the Western Allies did in 1918 or like the Soviets did in 1944, they do appear to be getting the better of it

    Russians are stopped around Kharkiv but slowly and steadily gaining a village here and there on other fronts, while losing 2 men for each Ukrainian. Their commanders may think it is worth it. Ukrainians didn’t think such ratios were worth it last summer, so they switched to defense. Russians seem to desperately want to capture as much as they can at any cost, before the new soldiers Ukraine mobilized come into play and/or before real negotiations (previous attempts were not sincere from the Russian side) after the US election results are clear.

    • Replies: @Greasy William
    @AP


    Russians seem to desperately want to capture as much as they can at any cost, before the new soldiers Ukraine mobilized come into play and/or before real negotiations (previous attempts were not sincere from the Russian side) after the US election results are clear.
     
    I agree that this is the most probable read of the current situation at the front but I find events much murkier than you do.

    I do agree that Trump is going to seek to end the war ASAP, but is there really anything he can do to force Russia out of the fight? The US cannot deploy troops for internal political reasons and there are no new wunderwaffen that the US can provide to the Ukrainians that would be decisive. What prevents Putin from just keeping the front active indefinitely?

    Replies: @A123, @AP

  479. @A123
    @QCIC


    Do you have an explanation or theory for why Russia moved into Ukraine in 2022, as opposed to moving in either sooner or never?
     
    Absorbing and integrating territory is expensive. If they became successful nations, Lugansk and Donetsk (like Belarus) would have provided security gains without creating economic issues. Russia was not going to move until this played out.

    The events of 2014-2022 more than amply proved to the Kremlin that this strategy would not work. Führer Zelensky made is clear that the only option to prevent Kiev aggression against Russian ethnics was the Defensive SMO.

    It is all about the German led European Empire being unreasonable. It is hard to burn e-books. Thus, the Merkel/Scholz Reich is going for book banning: (1)


    German Publisher Stops All Printing Of
    JD Vance's Book Hillbilly Elegy

     

    JD Vance is a marked man. After accepting the nomination for vice president, Vance has been the subject of endless media attacks. Recently, Vice President Kamala Harris even questioned his “loyalty” to the country despite his serving as a Marine in the Iraq War. Yet, one of the most chilling attacks came from Germany where the publishing house Ullstein Buchverlage has stopped printing the sold-out German translation of Hillbilly Elegy, his 2016 autobiography.

     
    https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/440px-Institut_fur_Sexualwissens.jpg

     

    Germany silences America. The Merkel inspired Reich has no tolerance those who speak out against the European Empire's master plan in Ukraine.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.zerohedge.com/political/german-publisher-stops-all-printing-jd-vances-book-hillbilly-elegy

    Replies: @Derer

    Agreed! It appears the ignoramuses in Berlin even applauded the US destruction of their own pipeline and wasted billions. How dare, the clown looking Chancellor, seek being elected after plunging Germany’s economy into the ditch – f revanchist.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Derer

    I agree.

    German Greens, possibly with assistance of Ukraine, destroyed their own pipeline. How dare Islamophile Chancellors, like Merkel and Scholz, plunge Germany’s economy into the ditch.

    The answer is Judeo-Christian values and de-Islamification.

     
    https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeIqDNrmDAdMqH63BcN0GA1JxLHevedDkjYZ1d44XnfCI7x-6PUgiDjxvrh_B_btBEGbD246V8rMMOi4TbF3Lat3wB4XKMEZN1WgmZ7qGzkZinp9bKxyZVXBd1k6ImSBlv2fJYupQrJn3B_u-zgSHFQqH0onCREMrPqcNpTIZ81N8ktHgrBeHIRkBiClQ/s500/90miles65701de66c7522f2bc4da87866abe060_eb4cda54_500.jpg
     

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  480. @songbird
    @A123


    This fake story is so beyond 100% bogus, it makes no sense.
     
    I saw it originally on Twitter, and the mainstream media seems to not be running with it but rather the silly idea he is telling Christians that he will create a dictatorship for them.

    I believe you are correct. This explanation fits best:
    https://twitter.com/PaTrumpGirl/status/1817293097283330213

    Replies: @A123

    Trump is saying that he will achieve Christian wins and lock them in.

    True. But this, a bit optimistic. He will generate Christian wins. However, it will take multiple MAGA administrations to lock them in.

    PEACE 😇

  481. @AP
    @Derer

    Are you too dumb to read that I described a stalemate and not “victory after victory?”

    Replies: @Derer

    Do not pollute this site with stupid excuses, it is annoying.

  482. A123 says: • Website
    @Derer
    @A123

    Agreed! It appears the ignoramuses in Berlin even applauded the US destruction of their own pipeline and wasted billions. How dare, the clown looking Chancellor, seek being elected after plunging Germany's economy into the ditch - f revanchist.

    Replies: @A123

    I agree.

    German Greens, possibly with assistance of Ukraine, destroyed their own pipeline. How dare Islamophile Chancellors, like Merkel and Scholz, plunge Germany’s economy into the ditch.

    The answer is Judeo-Christian values and de-Islamification.

     

     

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @A123

    If you read some european history once in a while before making such flippant remarks, you'd realize that Vlad Tepes (the Impaler) also impaled Christians too, including Catholics and Protestants. Once such madness is unleashed, it usually doesn't end in a proscribed manner:

    https://youtu.be/m1Zxv46eHpM

    Replies: @ShortOnTime

  483. @AP
    @Greasy William


    But that isn’t the bottom line, just like the seemingly frozen Western front wasn’t the bottom line in 1918.
     
    It’s the bottom line for now and the immediate future.

    And while I agree that Russia does not have the strength, barring a total Ukrainian collapse, to break through like the Western Allies did in 1918 or like the Soviets did in 1944, they do appear to be getting the better of it
     
    Russians are stopped around Kharkiv but slowly and steadily gaining a village here and there on other fronts, while losing 2 men for each Ukrainian. Their commanders may think it is worth it. Ukrainians didn’t think such ratios were worth it last summer, so they switched to defense. Russians seem to desperately want to capture as much as they can at any cost, before the new soldiers Ukraine mobilized come into play and/or before real negotiations (previous attempts were not sincere from the Russian side) after the US election results are clear.

    Replies: @Greasy William

    Russians seem to desperately want to capture as much as they can at any cost, before the new soldiers Ukraine mobilized come into play and/or before real negotiations (previous attempts were not sincere from the Russian side) after the US election results are clear.

    I agree that this is the most probable read of the current situation at the front but I find events much murkier than you do.

    I do agree that Trump is going to seek to end the war ASAP, but is there really anything he can do to force Russia out of the fight? The US cannot deploy troops for internal political reasons and there are no new wunderwaffen that the US can provide to the Ukrainians that would be decisive. What prevents Putin from just keeping the front active indefinitely?

    • Replies: @A123
    @Greasy William


    Trump is going to seek to end the war ASAP, but is there really anything he can do to force Russia out of the fight?
     
    Huh? Let me fix that for you:

    Trump is going to seek to end the war ASAP, but is there really anything he can do to force Kiev out of the fight?

    Trump's 2nd term will reduce (or eliminate) U.S. funding for Kiev aggression. However, Führer Zelensky receives orders and support from Berlin, Paris, and other power centers of the European Empire. There is little doubt that Scholz will push his puppet Zelensky to continue Europe's folly after America walks away. Will Kiev:

    • Continue to fight with less support and no chance of victory?
    • Or, will they engage in serious negotiations?

    PEACE 😇
    , @AP
    @Greasy William


    I do agree that Trump is going to seek to end the war ASAP, but is there really anything he can do to force Russia out of the fight? The US cannot deploy troops for internal political reasons and there are no new wunderwaffen that the US can provide to the Ukrainians that would be decisive
     
    The first thing, which would be easy, is to remove the ridiculous restriction, demanded by the soft-on-Russia Biden administration, against using ATACMs to strike Russian bases for planes bombing Ukraine that happen to be on Russian soil. USA could also find the means to train more than 6 pilots on the F-16 (which was slow-walked by the Biden administration).

    More extreme examples might include provision of Tomahawk missiles, green light for volunteer pilots, etc.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Derer, @Sean

  484. A123 says: • Website
    @Greasy William
    @AP


    Russians seem to desperately want to capture as much as they can at any cost, before the new soldiers Ukraine mobilized come into play and/or before real negotiations (previous attempts were not sincere from the Russian side) after the US election results are clear.
     
    I agree that this is the most probable read of the current situation at the front but I find events much murkier than you do.

    I do agree that Trump is going to seek to end the war ASAP, but is there really anything he can do to force Russia out of the fight? The US cannot deploy troops for internal political reasons and there are no new wunderwaffen that the US can provide to the Ukrainians that would be decisive. What prevents Putin from just keeping the front active indefinitely?

    Replies: @A123, @AP

    Trump is going to seek to end the war ASAP, but is there really anything he can do to force Russia out of the fight?

    Huh? Let me fix that for you:

    Trump is going to seek to end the war ASAP, but is there really anything he can do to force Kiev out of the fight?

    Trump’s 2nd term will reduce (or eliminate) U.S. funding for Kiev aggression. However, Führer Zelensky receives orders and support from Berlin, Paris, and other power centers of the European Empire. There is little doubt that Scholz will push his puppet Zelensky to continue Europe’s folly after America walks away. Will Kiev:

    • Continue to fight with less support and no chance of victory?
    • Or, will they engage in serious negotiations?

    PEACE 😇

  485. Some more samples of dumbassed svido “logic” at this thread.

  486. S1 says:
    @Derer
    @Bashibuzuk

    My opinion is not important, but some high echelon people around the world credit Putin in restoring the resource Russian ownership from the hand of American financiers. Whereby their penniless proxies (now babysit in UK or Israel) became billionaires in few months.

    Why is Putin pathologically hated by the West, to the point they wishing him "bullet to the back of his head". He is not hated for his looks but for standing up against the West freewheeling pillaging in every corner of this planet, still looking for lost colonies.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @S1

    Why is Putin pathologically hated by the West, to the point they wishing him “bullet to the back of his head”.

    Putin is hated because, like Trump, he symbolizes peoplehood, which is anathema to the Anglosphere based progressive cult of Multi-Culturalism and it’s global war against identity.

    It makes no matter to the cult’s adherents if Putin, like Trump imo, is ultimately controlled go nowhere opposition, and the ‘peoplehood’ that each espouses consists largely of empty symbolism of empty symbolism, having no real substance to it, as being that the Multiculturalists are part of a gigantic cult, you are not dealing with independent thought, but rather with programming.

    Being that they are programmed members of a cult, the same as the Manson Family and Jonestown people were, you aren’t going to be getting any rational discourse from them anytime soon. [See link below in regards to cults.]

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

    Only when the elites and hangers on directing this cult’s programming decide to lighten up in regards to Putin, ie they change the cult’s programming, will the multiculturalist’s adherents personal hostility to Putin abate. [This would be similar to how recently the cult’s programming was changed from one of support for Joe Biden’s presidential run, to one of hostility towards it, like a light switch being turned from ‘on’ to ‘off’, with barely a whimper of shock or surprise in response from the cult’s compliant membership.]

    One thing though, most cult’s will have an individual, ie a leader figure, who guides the cult’s membership to whereever it is they might be going, and the Anglosphere’s global cult of progressive Multi-Culturalism doesn’t have such a person…yet! [See below ‘More’ in regards to just who this person might be.]

    [MORE]

    https://www.jtrue.com/blog/the-second-coming

    A Messiah for Globalism

    The Second Coming

    From the time he was born they told him he was perfect. And so he was. No one’s spine towered taller than Jared Kushner. He had been trained for the best by the worst. Charles Kushner, the father of Jared, is a lifelong friend of Benjamin Netanyahu and a convicted felon. The two of them would turn Jared the child into a messiah for globalism. Such is the life of a thoroughbred human. They’re carved from marble for a purpose. His chemistry was being tuned as early as age four. Netanyahu tells the press about the night he slept in Jared’s bedroom. His tender story is a ritual anointment before the world. Jared will win every room now with his essence. Everyone agrees he’ll be the chosen of the chosen. Behind a slender skull, Jared discovered his aura was more valuable than he was. He’s a raccoon curled up in the cold fireplace of an abandoned mansion.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @S1

    Have you ever seen a Jared Kushner interview?

    I tried once and couldn't make it to the 60 second mark of him speaking. He is retarded. It was like the dumbest 60 seconds of the Joe Rogan show that has ever been. Sort of. I don't think Joe ever talks with anybody that stupid on his show. And Joe talks with some very stupid people.

    Jared must have some clever money people working for him. Maybe one day we get to point and laugh at him when it gets reported in the press they have stolen tens of millions of dollars from him. Perhaps Jared is merely autistic?

    Replies: @QCIC, @S1

  487. @Beckow
    @AnonfromTN


    ...There is 100% chance that the freak show will go on...

    The US reputation is damaged beyond repair.
     

    I don't disagree, but the meltdown has been quite sudden and seemingly unnecessary. None of the key decisions were inevitable. Simply staying normal, as they were largely before, was all they had to do.

    - Why go full 'financial' and disembowel the real economy?
    - Why open borders to swamp the West with people not needed and piss off the natives?
    - Why attack Russia openly and stupidly in its home region with no hope of winning? (Even Obama said: 'Russia will always have escalation dominance in Ukraine'.)
    - Why feed irrational hate propaganda against Russia that inevitably backfires?
    - And stay out of 'gender' issues, how did 'trans' triviality become so important?

    As if something broke psychologically and they lost any sense of balance or normalcy. Maybe it did, or the system is so f..ed up financially that distractions and marches-to-nowhere are needed to buy time.

    With Trump it would stabilize for a while. Not because he would do much - he can't and doesn't really want - but because the clean-up and new start would be a relief after this freak-show. His own freaky instincts and inactivity would take some time to bring it down again.

    Replies: @AnonfromTN, @Goddard

    As if something broke psychologically and they lost any sense of balance or normalcy.

    Be nearly 60, as I am. Go to a place with crowds. Look around. See the fats ’n’ tats. Note the lack of young, beautiful, thin white women. Note the lack of young married couples with children.

    Remember the Seventies and Eighties. No tats, many fewer fats, many more head turners, many more young married couples.

    Yes, something has broken psychologically.

    White Americans on the one hand look like partiers the day after the bacchanal; on the other hand, like a people defeated in a war.

    White Americans are jacking off with the one hand, waving the white flag with the other.

  488. @songbird
    @John Johnson


    Did you see Stalingrad 1993?
     
    Saw this one a long time ago. The tank scene was memorable, if probably somewhat surreal. Guessing along with Das Boot one of the more expensive German movies ever made.

    Dunkirk was a huge disappointment.
     
    still haven't seen it.

    I also really like Tora Tora Tora!
     
    One of the few balanced films.

    I complain about Hollywood but the action movies from abroad are pretty bad.
     
    I think they are all linked to a degree.

    There were a lot of quick cuts in both places for a while. Then I think John Wick (not a fan) had some influence. In some films, I think the death totals got too high.

    I would rather watch My Friend Totoro over most Hollywood movies.
     
    Can be hard to find reliable budgets, but I think Japan seems able to accomplish more with less. Some kind of media PPP.

    But Japan's population is declining so their growth is in exports and there seems to be growing and negative influence from America.

    Apart from their last, it has been quite a number of years since Ghibli put out a traditional film. Some believe it may be their last hurrah.

    Replies: @Torna atrás

    The code from the Matrix is actually a sushi recipe the production designer, Simon Whiteley, scanned from one of his wife’s Japanese cookbooks.

    • Thanks: songbird
  489. @Torna atrás
    Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajan said Rome decided to appoint the ambassador to "turn a spotlight” on Syria, Reuters reported.

    Italy’s special envoy to Syria, Stefano Ravagnan, will serve as ambassador and will arrive in the Syria soon.



    https://twitter.com/KevorkAlmassian/status/1574395150087905280

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Torna atrás

    The Syriac Orthodox Church is the largest Oriental Orthodox Christian group in Syria. The Syriac Orthodox or Jacobite Church, whose liturgy is in Syriac, was severed from the favored church of the Byzantine Empire (Eastern Orthodoxy), over the Chalcedonian controversy.

  490. @S1
    @Derer


    Why is Putin pathologically hated by the West, to the point they wishing him “bullet to the back of his head”.
     
    Putin is hated because, like Trump, he symbolizes peoplehood, which is anathema to the Anglosphere based progressive cult of Multi-Culturalism and it's global war against identity.

    It makes no matter to the cult's adherents if Putin, like Trump imo, is ultimately controlled go nowhere opposition, and the 'peoplehood' that each espouses consists largely of empty symbolism of empty symbolism, having no real substance to it, as being that the Multiculturalists are part of a gigantic cult, you are not dealing with independent thought, but rather with programming.

    Being that they are programmed members of a cult, the same as the Manson Family and Jonestown people were, you aren't going to be getting any rational discourse from them anytime soon. [See link below in regards to cults.]

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

    Only when the elites and hangers on directing this cult's programming decide to lighten up in regards to Putin, ie they change the cult's programming, will the multiculturalist's adherents personal hostility to Putin abate. [This would be similar to how recently the cult's programming was changed from one of support for Joe Biden's presidential run, to one of hostility towards it, like a light switch being turned from 'on' to 'off', with barely a whimper of shock or surprise in response from the cult's compliant membership.]

    One thing though, most cult's will have an individual, ie a leader figure, who guides the cult's membership to whereever it is they might be going, and the Anglosphere's global cult of progressive Multi-Culturalism doesn't have such a person...yet! [See below 'More' in regards to just who this person might be.]

    https://www.jtrue.com/blog/the-second-coming

    https://www.jtrue.com/wp-content/uploads/kushnerth-e1572369290815-768x591.jpg

    A Messiah for Globalism


    The Second Coming

    From the time he was born they told him he was perfect. And so he was. No one’s spine towered taller than Jared Kushner. He had been trained for the best by the worst. Charles Kushner, the father of Jared, is a lifelong friend of Benjamin Netanyahu and a convicted felon. The two of them would turn Jared the child into a messiah for globalism. Such is the life of a thoroughbred human. They’re carved from marble for a purpose. His chemistry was being tuned as early as age four. Netanyahu tells the press about the night he slept in Jared’s bedroom. His tender story is a ritual anointment before the world. Jared will win every room now with his essence. Everyone agrees he’ll be the chosen of the chosen. Behind a slender skull, Jared discovered his aura was more valuable than he was. He’s a raccoon curled up in the cold fireplace of an abandoned mansion.
     

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    Have you ever seen a Jared Kushner interview?

    I tried once and couldn’t make it to the 60 second mark of him speaking. He is retarded. It was like the dumbest 60 seconds of the Joe Rogan show that has ever been. Sort of. I don’t think Joe ever talks with anybody that stupid on his show. And Joe talks with some very stupid people.

    Jared must have some clever money people working for him. Maybe one day we get to point and laugh at him when it gets reported in the press they have stolen tens of millions of dollars from him. Perhaps Jared is merely autistic?

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    I agree, Kushner is pretty dim. I hope he is not in the White House this time around. Is there any information on his role for Trump 2?

    Replies: @A123

    , @S1
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    Have you ever seen a Jared Kushner interview?
     
    Yes, I have.

    I tried once and couldn’t make it to the 60 second mark of him speaking. He is retarded.
     
    That could very well be. But we also know that the corporate mass media has the power to make (or break) a person, irregardless of what the actual reality is about the individual.

    I just know there is a hell of a lot of smoke surrounding the guy and he is someone certainly to keep an eye on.
  491. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @S1

    Have you ever seen a Jared Kushner interview?

    I tried once and couldn't make it to the 60 second mark of him speaking. He is retarded. It was like the dumbest 60 seconds of the Joe Rogan show that has ever been. Sort of. I don't think Joe ever talks with anybody that stupid on his show. And Joe talks with some very stupid people.

    Jared must have some clever money people working for him. Maybe one day we get to point and laugh at him when it gets reported in the press they have stolen tens of millions of dollars from him. Perhaps Jared is merely autistic?

    Replies: @QCIC, @S1

    I agree, Kushner is pretty dim. I hope he is not in the White House this time around. Is there any information on his role for Trump 2?

    • Replies: @A123
    @QCIC


    I agree, Kushner is pretty dim. I hope he is not in the White House this time around. Is there any information on his role for Trump 2?
     
    He is bad on camera. However, someone stupid would not be able to perform as he has done. There is nothing to suggest he is short on IQ. Yes, Harvard and NYU are not what they once were, but one does need some intellect to survive.

    Trump's 1st term was heavily blighted by establishment Senate selections in key roles. Using family was a good way to bypass obstacles, like Bolton, while avoiding an open fight with Mitch McConnell.

    There is no official word about Kushner, however better Senate composition will reduce the number of establishment obstructionists. There should be much less need for family involvement. One would expect significantly less Kushner in Trump's 2nd term.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Derer

  492. @songbird
    @Mr. Hack


    It’s like comparing nato to chicken tikka masala. 🙂
     
    now I believe you do go to weird foreign restaurants, for that middle seems like a Punjabi or Persian word!

    But I do enjoy some of these Japanese commercials. It is the one area, where I would praise the YouTube algo, for recognizing my weird tastes.

    Possibly the internet is its own filter, but I am struct by the artistic quality many have. Each is almost like its own tiny foreign or art movie. In fact, I suspect some were never aired on TV, but meant to be like a little artsy film on the internet.

    Many seem to have an appreciation of place. (Just like anime) You feel like the location was scouted, rather than studio shot. And also of line - like their frame is influenced by the culture of drawing and comics.

    And I like their cheerier tone.

    Watching American commercials is like being tortured. I can remember strange ad campaigns, even somewhat beyond race, trying to encourage disharmony between the sexes, like this one with Michael Jordan and Mia Hamm: (yes, some female soccer athlete could go head to head with even an old Jordan 😆
    https://youtu.be/liKnJ-ejztw?si=TA5VCzmRQO5TY3kS

    This is where the tranny stuff came from.

    A lot of directors had their start in commercials. Some went directly into movies.

    I don't like all of them of course. Some of them have too much text (a unique characteristic of Japanese TV), or delve too much into video games. But some have a nice bucolic quality, linking the city to the countryside.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    Nothing really “weird” about the two dishes that I mention.

    Natto: is a fermented soy product exalted for its health properties and eaten in Japan quite a bit. It contains the most vitamin k2 m7 of all foods, so its excellent for ones heart health. On its own, it doesn’t really have a pleasant taste, but there are several ways to doctor it up to make it quite palatable.

    chicken tikka masala – probably the most famous Indian dish this side of Delhi. The sauce surrounding the chicken cubicles is a delicious somewhat spicy (but not overly) one, that millions of people eat all of the time, You can even find quite good versions of it at Costco and Trader Joes in the frozen foods department.

    You really need to get around a bit more songbird and try to expand your culinary vocabulary, at some point even peanut butter sandwiches downed with milk must get to be boring? 🙂

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Mr. Hack


    at some point even peanut butter sandwiches downed with milk must get to be boring? 🙂
     
    Peanuts are poison to me. They once brought me to within an inch of death. I am still waiting for them to create a peanut lacking the two problematic proteins, so I can finally enjoy the thing which horribly jades you.
    (Kidding) but your snide attitude towards milk really makes me believe you, like many Ukrainians, are lactose intolerant.

    https://mapsontheweb.zoom-maps.com/post/93961099393/percentage-of-lactose-intolerance-in-europe

    BTW, I saw an interesting tweet the other day that contrasted the religiosity of some female Indian Olympic athlete to a woke Bollywood actress. The actress was unfortunately speaking mostly in Hindustani, so I couldn't understand it. I was going to ask you to translate, but I forgot to bookmark it, and can't find it again.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Emil Nikola Richard

  493. @Mr. Hack
    @songbird

    Nothing really "weird" about the two dishes that I mention.

    Natto: is a fermented soy product exalted for its health properties and eaten in Japan quite a bit. It contains the most vitamin k2 m7 of all foods, so its excellent for ones heart health. On its own, it doesn't really have a pleasant taste, but there are several ways to doctor it up to make it quite palatable.

    chicken tikka masala - probably the most famous Indian dish this side of Delhi. The sauce surrounding the chicken cubicles is a delicious somewhat spicy (but not overly) one, that millions of people eat all of the time, You can even find quite good versions of it at Costco and Trader Joes in the frozen foods department.

    You really need to get around a bit more songbird and try to expand your culinary vocabulary, at some point even peanut butter sandwiches downed with milk must get to be boring? :-)

    Replies: @songbird

    at some point even peanut butter sandwiches downed with milk must get to be boring? 🙂

    Peanuts are poison to me. They once brought me to within an inch of death. I am still waiting for them to create a peanut lacking the two problematic proteins, so I can finally enjoy the thing which horribly jades you.

    [MORE]

    (Kidding) but your snide attitude towards milk really makes me believe you, like many Ukrainians, are lactose intolerant.

    https://mapsontheweb.zoom-maps.com/post/93961099393/percentage-of-lactose-intolerance-in-europe

    BTW, I saw an interesting tweet the other day that contrasted the religiosity of some female Indian Olympic athlete to a woke Bollywood actress. The actress was unfortunately speaking mostly in Hindustani, so I couldn’t understand it. I was going to ask you to translate, but I forgot to bookmark it, and can’t find it again.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @songbird

    I've always enjoyed peanut butter sandwiches, drinking milk, and I don't speak any of the local Indian languages. Unless you think that eating chicken tikki masala somehow magically confers upon me the powers of language discernment, I don't think that I could possibly help you with any translation projects? :-)

    , @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    It is incredible how bad the peanut chemicals are. I love them. When I was in an office 3 doors down from one of the cursed, I would open the peanut canister and grab a handful and 15 seconds later the poor lady would inevitably sneeze. Cause effect blammo.

    Do you carry one of those two hundred dollar epi pens?

    Replies: @songbird

  494. @A123
    @Derer

    I agree.

    German Greens, possibly with assistance of Ukraine, destroyed their own pipeline. How dare Islamophile Chancellors, like Merkel and Scholz, plunge Germany’s economy into the ditch.

    The answer is Judeo-Christian values and de-Islamification.

     
    https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeIqDNrmDAdMqH63BcN0GA1JxLHevedDkjYZ1d44XnfCI7x-6PUgiDjxvrh_B_btBEGbD246V8rMMOi4TbF3Lat3wB4XKMEZN1WgmZ7qGzkZinp9bKxyZVXBd1k6ImSBlv2fJYupQrJn3B_u-zgSHFQqH0onCREMrPqcNpTIZ81N8ktHgrBeHIRkBiClQ/s500/90miles65701de66c7522f2bc4da87866abe060_eb4cda54_500.jpg
     

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    If you read some european history once in a while before making such flippant remarks, you’d realize that Vlad Tepes (the Impaler) also impaled Christians too, including Catholics and Protestants. Once such madness is unleashed, it usually doesn’t end in a proscribed manner:

    • Replies: @ShortOnTime
    @Mr. Hack


    If you read some european history once in a while before making such flippant remarks, you’d realize that Vlad Tepes (the Impaler) also impaled Christians too, including Catholics and Protestants.

     

    So how many Protestants were there in the 15th century (before 1500) during the reign of Vlad III in Wallachia?

    This goes a long way to explain the level of knowledge the likes of you and AP have about "Ukraine history", let alone any other ...

    The vast majority of the impaled were Muslims (aside from some Wallachian boyars and possibly a few Transylvanian Saxon-German Catholics) and with very good reason. It was the Turks of the Ottoman Empire that brought such practices to the Balkans and Europe so Vlad III merely copied their practices against them in reaction when they invaded again and again. This is necessary to state since there are so many pro-Muslim and liberal lies about how the Ottoman Empire was a multicultural utopia, etc.

    Anyway, since you pursued this topic and it's more relevant than ever for many reasons, do you have anything to state about Erdogan's recent threat to intervene against Israel like Turkey did with Libya and Karabakh?

    Replies: @Derer, @AP

  495. @songbird
    @Mr. Hack


    at some point even peanut butter sandwiches downed with milk must get to be boring? 🙂
     
    Peanuts are poison to me. They once brought me to within an inch of death. I am still waiting for them to create a peanut lacking the two problematic proteins, so I can finally enjoy the thing which horribly jades you.
    (Kidding) but your snide attitude towards milk really makes me believe you, like many Ukrainians, are lactose intolerant.

    https://mapsontheweb.zoom-maps.com/post/93961099393/percentage-of-lactose-intolerance-in-europe

    BTW, I saw an interesting tweet the other day that contrasted the religiosity of some female Indian Olympic athlete to a woke Bollywood actress. The actress was unfortunately speaking mostly in Hindustani, so I couldn't understand it. I was going to ask you to translate, but I forgot to bookmark it, and can't find it again.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Emil Nikola Richard

    I’ve always enjoyed peanut butter sandwiches, drinking milk, and I don’t speak any of the local Indian languages. Unless you think that eating chicken tikki masala somehow magically confers upon me the powers of language discernment, I don’t think that I could possibly help you with any translation projects? 🙂

  496. @songbird
    @Mr. Hack


    at some point even peanut butter sandwiches downed with milk must get to be boring? 🙂
     
    Peanuts are poison to me. They once brought me to within an inch of death. I am still waiting for them to create a peanut lacking the two problematic proteins, so I can finally enjoy the thing which horribly jades you.
    (Kidding) but your snide attitude towards milk really makes me believe you, like many Ukrainians, are lactose intolerant.

    https://mapsontheweb.zoom-maps.com/post/93961099393/percentage-of-lactose-intolerance-in-europe

    BTW, I saw an interesting tweet the other day that contrasted the religiosity of some female Indian Olympic athlete to a woke Bollywood actress. The actress was unfortunately speaking mostly in Hindustani, so I couldn't understand it. I was going to ask you to translate, but I forgot to bookmark it, and can't find it again.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Emil Nikola Richard

    It is incredible how bad the peanut chemicals are. I love them. When I was in an office 3 doors down from one of the cursed, I would open the peanut canister and grab a handful and 15 seconds later the poor lady would inevitably sneeze. Cause effect blammo.

    Do you carry one of those two hundred dollar epi pens?

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Lol.


    Do you carry one of those two hundred dollar epi pens?
     
    No, I was just trying to yank Mr. Hack's chain, attempting to get as close as I could to a "My mother's dead" reply for peanut butter sandwiches.
    (Briefly considered claiming peanuts killed my mother, when she was making my school lunch, but thought it too implausible.)

    I used to really enjoy those peanuts they put on ice cream. And those vending machines that roast them, though I only came across one once or twice.

    There is a Flashman story where he goes to NYC and everyone is eating them and tossing the shells, so they crunch underfoot.

    BTW, I regret not linking to this in my original replay to Hack:
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way
    (If he is as fond of milk as he know claims, he will remember that the word galaxy is also derived from milk. And so this nutritious beverage he recently put down basely and spitefully, as a postmodernist, the ancients, our revered, heroic ancestors once elevated to the distant stars.)

    Much as the lowly peanut, which he also derides, vastly boosted the population of his homeland, the subcontinent, after Europeans introduced it.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

  497. Even better footage of the Russian column being taken out by drones:

    https://funker530.com/video/russian-armored-column-crushed-by-drones/

    Wow.

    Good luck getting to Odessa.

  498. Battle of the Nations
    Serbia Spain

    [MORE]

    If you are looking for video of Medvedev Hijikata it might not exist.

  499. @Mr. Hack
    @A123

    If you read some european history once in a while before making such flippant remarks, you'd realize that Vlad Tepes (the Impaler) also impaled Christians too, including Catholics and Protestants. Once such madness is unleashed, it usually doesn't end in a proscribed manner:

    https://youtu.be/m1Zxv46eHpM

    Replies: @ShortOnTime

    If you read some european history once in a while before making such flippant remarks, you’d realize that Vlad Tepes (the Impaler) also impaled Christians too, including Catholics and Protestants.

    So how many Protestants were there in the 15th century (before 1500) during the reign of Vlad III in Wallachia?

    This goes a long way to explain the level of knowledge the likes of you and AP have about “Ukraine history”, let alone any other …

    The vast majority of the impaled were Muslims (aside from some Wallachian boyars and possibly a few Transylvanian Saxon-German Catholics) and with very good reason. It was the Turks of the Ottoman Empire that brought such practices to the Balkans and Europe so Vlad III merely copied their practices against them in reaction when they invaded again and again. This is necessary to state since there are so many pro-Muslim and liberal lies about how the Ottoman Empire was a multicultural utopia, etc.

    Anyway, since you pursued this topic and it’s more relevant than ever for many reasons, do you have anything to state about Erdogan’s recent threat to intervene against Israel like Turkey did with Libya and Karabakh?

    • Thanks: A123
    • Replies: @Derer
    @ShortOnTime

    Ottoman's Istanbul is a thorn in the eye of European Christianity. Former Byzantium or Constantinople a Christian city was left to pillaging Ottoman in Europe - a historical shame.

    , @AP
    @ShortOnTime


    So how many Protestants were there in the 15th century (before 1500) during the reign of Vlad III in Wallachia?
     
    Huss whom you probably never heard of unless the Russians wrote something about him (you are ignorant that way) was a proto-Protestant but his followers could easily count as them.

    Some Hussites found their way to the Balkans (Moldova) but I haven't read about Vlad impaling any of them. He did, however, pledge to fight against them.

    The vast majority of the impaled were Muslims (aside from some Wallachian boyars and possibly a few Transylvanian Saxon-German Catholics)
     
    He mostly burned German-Saxon Catholics when he razed their towns, rather than impaled them. Though he also had Saxon captives impaled.

    Did you dishonestly imply something else, like that he didn't kill large numbers of Christians?

    Replies: @Beckow, @ShortOnTime

  500. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    We figured this out several weeks ago. A Romanian witch pitched a curse at Andrew Tate. Jordan Peterson's daughter was on the Tate compound at the time. Poor Jordan Peterson got sprayed by magic shrapnel.

    Where were you that day?

    Replies: @songbird, @ShortOnTime

    Jordan Peterson example shows what a total clown show the “alternative” social media sphere is and most of the international reactions to Israel-Palestine/Gaza and so on.

    “Clean your room” and “work on yourself” in a literal and banal sense is good advice, but what good is something like “14 rules for life” that comes from a man who can’t control the sexuality of his own daughter?

    Even before Jordan came out to support Israel full on and had mental breakdowns over criticism of his hardcore support for Israel, the first thing that was off (among many) about Jordan was his daughter Mikhaila. There were multiple signs she was a whore even way before she gave birth to Andrew Tate’s baby despite being in a relationship with another man.

    Perhaps Jordan would do better to confront his daughter instead of whining about “anonymous internet Nazis” or whatever …

    There’s also the bizarre performative wearing of a suit with Orthodox Christian icons looking like a mental asylum of mirrors on it as a performative marketing stunt (also before recommending Aleksander Solzhenitsyn’s books he would’ve done well to have some forethought about if someone might get around to reading “200 Years Together” and publicly confronting him about it lol).

    • Agree: Torna atrás
    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @ShortOnTime

    Tate is the father of Jordan Peterson's grandchild?

    Hmmmmm.

    Your chatter robot may be hallucinating upon you.

    , @QCIC
    @ShortOnTime

    I thought Tate was gay. Was it in vitro? ;)

  501. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    It is incredible how bad the peanut chemicals are. I love them. When I was in an office 3 doors down from one of the cursed, I would open the peanut canister and grab a handful and 15 seconds later the poor lady would inevitably sneeze. Cause effect blammo.

    Do you carry one of those two hundred dollar epi pens?

    Replies: @songbird

    Lol.

    Do you carry one of those two hundred dollar epi pens?

    No, I was just trying to yank Mr. Hack’s chain, attempting to get as close as I could to a “My mother’s dead” reply for peanut butter sandwiches.

    [MORE]

    (Briefly considered claiming peanuts killed my mother, when she was making my school lunch, but thought it too implausible.)

    I used to really enjoy those peanuts they put on ice cream. And those vending machines that roast them, though I only came across one once or twice.

    There is a Flashman story where he goes to NYC and everyone is eating them and tossing the shells, so they crunch underfoot.

    BTW, I regret not linking to this in my original replay to Hack:
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way
    (If he is as fond of milk as he know claims, he will remember that the word galaxy is also derived from milk. And so this nutritious beverage he recently put down basely and spitefully, as a postmodernist, the ancients, our revered, heroic ancestors once elevated to the distant stars.)

    Much as the lowly peanut, which he also derides, vastly boosted the population of his homeland, the subcontinent, after Europeans introduced it.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    https://www.biography.com/scientists/george-washington-carver-peanut-butter

    Did George Washington Carver Invent Peanut Butter?

    Replies: @songbird

  502. AP says:
    @Greasy William
    @AP


    Russians seem to desperately want to capture as much as they can at any cost, before the new soldiers Ukraine mobilized come into play and/or before real negotiations (previous attempts were not sincere from the Russian side) after the US election results are clear.
     
    I agree that this is the most probable read of the current situation at the front but I find events much murkier than you do.

    I do agree that Trump is going to seek to end the war ASAP, but is there really anything he can do to force Russia out of the fight? The US cannot deploy troops for internal political reasons and there are no new wunderwaffen that the US can provide to the Ukrainians that would be decisive. What prevents Putin from just keeping the front active indefinitely?

    Replies: @A123, @AP

    I do agree that Trump is going to seek to end the war ASAP, but is there really anything he can do to force Russia out of the fight? The US cannot deploy troops for internal political reasons and there are no new wunderwaffen that the US can provide to the Ukrainians that would be decisive

    The first thing, which would be easy, is to remove the ridiculous restriction, demanded by the soft-on-Russia Biden administration, against using ATACMs to strike Russian bases for planes bombing Ukraine that happen to be on Russian soil. USA could also find the means to train more than 6 pilots on the F-16 (which was slow-walked by the Biden administration).

    More extreme examples might include provision of Tomahawk missiles, green light for volunteer pilots, etc.

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @AP

    Why do you think the Biden administration is less than fully enthusiastic about the West's Ukraine project, assuming this characterization is even accurate? Some key people in the administration including Blinken, Nuland, Sullivan and Austin seem very committed to the project. Could it be a personal grudge? Perhaps the Biden family got burned in some crooked Ukraine dealings?

    Replies: @AP

    , @Derer
    @AP

    AP: "The first thing, which would be easy, is to remove the ridiculous restriction, demanded by the soft-on-Russia Biden administration, against using ATACMs to strike Russian bases for planes bombing Ukraine that happen to be on Russian soil."


    That will not happen...it become not Ukraine attack but the USA. Although, you are allowed to dream. Trump seeks friendship with Putin and this time he will not listen to pinhead people like Bolton or Pompeo. He envision economic threat from China and oil blackmail from Islam.
     
    , @Sean
    @AP

    Supply Ukraine with the weapons permission and intel for devastating strikes on the Russian army, and you will see Putin just sit there at take repeated decimation of his forces, because he is too scared of the US.

    Or, maybe he would think dramatic escalation was an existential necessity. The people in Washington, who know far more than anyone on here, are not looking to find out what Putin would do if he believed he was losing.

    At one point US weapons and intel were being used to kill a Russian general every other week. The US stopped doing that, prolly because they had indications the Russians were at the end of their tether, and might hit back against US satellite surveillance or flights. No, the restrictions are not ridiculous at all.

    Replies: @AP, @QCIC

  503. @ShortOnTime
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Jordan Peterson example shows what a total clown show the "alternative" social media sphere is and most of the international reactions to Israel-Palestine/Gaza and so on.

    "Clean your room" and "work on yourself" in a literal and banal sense is good advice, but what good is something like "14 rules for life" that comes from a man who can't control the sexuality of his own daughter?

    Even before Jordan came out to support Israel full on and had mental breakdowns over criticism of his hardcore support for Israel, the first thing that was off (among many) about Jordan was his daughter Mikhaila. There were multiple signs she was a whore even way before she gave birth to Andrew Tate's baby despite being in a relationship with another man.

    Perhaps Jordan would do better to confront his daughter instead of whining about "anonymous internet Nazis" or whatever ...

    There's also the bizarre performative wearing of a suit with Orthodox Christian icons looking like a mental asylum of mirrors on it as a performative marketing stunt (also before recommending Aleksander Solzhenitsyn's books he would've done well to have some forethought about if someone might get around to reading "200 Years Together" and publicly confronting him about it lol).

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @QCIC

    Tate is the father of Jordan Peterson’s grandchild?

    Hmmmmm.

    Your chatter robot may be hallucinating upon you.

    • LOL: ShortOnTime
  504. @songbird
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Lol.


    Do you carry one of those two hundred dollar epi pens?
     
    No, I was just trying to yank Mr. Hack's chain, attempting to get as close as I could to a "My mother's dead" reply for peanut butter sandwiches.
    (Briefly considered claiming peanuts killed my mother, when she was making my school lunch, but thought it too implausible.)

    I used to really enjoy those peanuts they put on ice cream. And those vending machines that roast them, though I only came across one once or twice.

    There is a Flashman story where he goes to NYC and everyone is eating them and tossing the shells, so they crunch underfoot.

    BTW, I regret not linking to this in my original replay to Hack:
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way
    (If he is as fond of milk as he know claims, he will remember that the word galaxy is also derived from milk. And so this nutritious beverage he recently put down basely and spitefully, as a postmodernist, the ancients, our revered, heroic ancestors once elevated to the distant stars.)

    Much as the lowly peanut, which he also derides, vastly boosted the population of his homeland, the subcontinent, after Europeans introduced it.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    https://www.biography.com/scientists/george-washington-carver-peanut-butter

    Did George Washington Carver Invent Peanut Butter?

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Only legitimate black invention I am aware of is this one:
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Soaker

  505. @ShortOnTime
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Jordan Peterson example shows what a total clown show the "alternative" social media sphere is and most of the international reactions to Israel-Palestine/Gaza and so on.

    "Clean your room" and "work on yourself" in a literal and banal sense is good advice, but what good is something like "14 rules for life" that comes from a man who can't control the sexuality of his own daughter?

    Even before Jordan came out to support Israel full on and had mental breakdowns over criticism of his hardcore support for Israel, the first thing that was off (among many) about Jordan was his daughter Mikhaila. There were multiple signs she was a whore even way before she gave birth to Andrew Tate's baby despite being in a relationship with another man.

    Perhaps Jordan would do better to confront his daughter instead of whining about "anonymous internet Nazis" or whatever ...

    There's also the bizarre performative wearing of a suit with Orthodox Christian icons looking like a mental asylum of mirrors on it as a performative marketing stunt (also before recommending Aleksander Solzhenitsyn's books he would've done well to have some forethought about if someone might get around to reading "200 Years Together" and publicly confronting him about it lol).

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @QCIC

    I thought Tate was gay. Was it in vitro? 😉

  506. @AP
    @Greasy William


    I do agree that Trump is going to seek to end the war ASAP, but is there really anything he can do to force Russia out of the fight? The US cannot deploy troops for internal political reasons and there are no new wunderwaffen that the US can provide to the Ukrainians that would be decisive
     
    The first thing, which would be easy, is to remove the ridiculous restriction, demanded by the soft-on-Russia Biden administration, against using ATACMs to strike Russian bases for planes bombing Ukraine that happen to be on Russian soil. USA could also find the means to train more than 6 pilots on the F-16 (which was slow-walked by the Biden administration).

    More extreme examples might include provision of Tomahawk missiles, green light for volunteer pilots, etc.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Derer, @Sean

    Why do you think the Biden administration is less than fully enthusiastic about the West’s Ukraine project, assuming this characterization is even accurate? Some key people in the administration including Blinken, Nuland, Sullivan and Austin seem very committed to the project. Could it be a personal grudge? Perhaps the Biden family got burned in some crooked Ukraine dealings?

    • Replies: @AP
    @QCIC

    Biden, Sullivan, Obama had always been soft on Russia. Although they are not pro-Russian as you would like, but they have always been weak and soft on Russia, fond of half-measures. Cancelling Nordstream sanctions that Trump’s administration had put in place, dragging their feet on providing weapons, making war threats mostly limited to economic sanctions before Putin invaded (such weak threats were an invitation for him to invade), slow-walking provision of weapons such as ATACMS and jets, telling Ukrainians to limit their use of those weapons, etc.

    They were weak in Afghanistan also, so this may not reflect a specific approach towards Ukraine.

    Replies: @QCIC

  507. AP says:
    @QCIC
    @AP

    Why do you think the Biden administration is less than fully enthusiastic about the West's Ukraine project, assuming this characterization is even accurate? Some key people in the administration including Blinken, Nuland, Sullivan and Austin seem very committed to the project. Could it be a personal grudge? Perhaps the Biden family got burned in some crooked Ukraine dealings?

    Replies: @AP

    Biden, Sullivan, Obama had always been soft on Russia. Although they are not pro-Russian as you would like, but they have always been weak and soft on Russia, fond of half-measures. Cancelling Nordstream sanctions that Trump’s administration had put in place, dragging their feet on providing weapons, making war threats mostly limited to economic sanctions before Putin invaded (such weak threats were an invitation for him to invade), slow-walking provision of weapons such as ATACMS and jets, telling Ukrainians to limit their use of those weapons, etc.

    They were weak in Afghanistan also, so this may not reflect a specific approach towards Ukraine.

    • LOL: Mikhail
    • Replies: @QCIC
    @AP

    I think these political creeps would be as happy to crush Russia and Putin as you are. They simply understand the plan is extremely dangerous or at least their puppet masters recognize this. In other words, they are already pushing closer to the red line in the sand than people realize.

    The dominant power brokers (Jewish?) from Kiev and Dnipro are playing a long game as is Russia. These oligarchs will still be trying to manipulate and subvert opinion in Russia to their advantage. Like you they hope more strikes on Russian soil will swing some influential power blocks against the SMO. The combat may not end until these people give up on the project or are muzzled. Assuming they don't care about Slavic deaths and also that they have no other more promising intrigues to fill their time this could go on for a long time. They may not have anything better to do.

  508. @AP
    @QCIC

    Biden, Sullivan, Obama had always been soft on Russia. Although they are not pro-Russian as you would like, but they have always been weak and soft on Russia, fond of half-measures. Cancelling Nordstream sanctions that Trump’s administration had put in place, dragging their feet on providing weapons, making war threats mostly limited to economic sanctions before Putin invaded (such weak threats were an invitation for him to invade), slow-walking provision of weapons such as ATACMS and jets, telling Ukrainians to limit their use of those weapons, etc.

    They were weak in Afghanistan also, so this may not reflect a specific approach towards Ukraine.

    Replies: @QCIC

    I think these political creeps would be as happy to crush Russia and Putin as you are. They simply understand the plan is extremely dangerous or at least their puppet masters recognize this. In other words, they are already pushing closer to the red line in the sand than people realize.

    The dominant power brokers (Jewish?) from Kiev and Dnipro are playing a long game as is Russia. These oligarchs will still be trying to manipulate and subvert opinion in Russia to their advantage. Like you they hope more strikes on Russian soil will swing some influential power blocks against the SMO. The combat may not end until these people give up on the project or are muzzled. Assuming they don’t care about Slavic deaths and also that they have no other more promising intrigues to fill their time this could go on for a long time. They may not have anything better to do.

    • Agree: Derer
  509. I think I owe two things to the commenters on these threads:
    1. I want to thanks the people (trolls excluded) for an interesting ride during my fairly long sociological experiment.
    2. I want to tell everyone that the experiment is over, the results are in, and I am out.

    I guess brief explanation is in order. I’ve first heard about the Unz review on the website of the Saker (now defunct). I checked Unz site out and found more or less what I expected: a) high concentration of Nazi apologists inevitable when there is freedom of speech; b) the average intelligence of commenters is way above that in the population (of course, there are some outliers, naming no names). You’d expect the latter on any alt-media site: unintelligent people just swallow the lies of Western MSM line, hook, and sinker, and do not seek other sources of info. So, I decided to join to check out more intelligent Western crowd. I must confess that at the beginning I shared certain respect for the West, pretty common in my generation. This turned out to be the main reason for our gullibility in 1991. I share that guilt.

    Some things turned out to be 100% predictable. One, you cannot expect reasonable views from Ukies and Balts regardless of their place of residence, their severe inferiority complex makes that impossible. Two, quite a few real Westerners demonstrated open-mindedness, intelligence, knowledge of history, and curiosity, the existence of which you would never suspect looking at Western MSM. However, I also found that quite a few Westerners who consider themselves intelligent and knowledgeable are in the grip of same delusions as Western elites, as well as bought and paid for Western politicians and MSM. Judging by the views of the majority of fellow faculty members at my university and by voting patterns in most of Europe and the US, this is a pretty widespread disorder. I don’t think it’s curable. Anyway, I got a fairly comprehensive picture of the part of the Western population that either thinks, or at least believes itself to think.

    The West is going down the drain: if you need proof, just watch the opening ceremony of Paris Olympics. Even the US, which remains in better shape than Europe and will likely last longer, is rapidly deteriorating. The evidence is everywhere: potholed roads are not repaired, inflation rages, federal government is becoming woefully dysfunctional in every way (e.g., the Southern border became a sieve, grant money from VA and NIH is disbursed many months later than it should have, etc.), political system is a mess, judicial system is subverted by the ruling cabal, freedoms are suppressed, etc.

    While I started with the idea that the West still can be saved, I realized that first, I don’t have the power to help it save itself, and second, it is not worth saving. My condolences to everyone reasonable who happens to be caught in this wreck, but the only way or saving yourself and your family is getting out of it. Don’t be fooled by the orchestra playing on the Titanic: the ship is doomed.

    With this, adios!

    • Disagree: James of Africa
    • Thanks: QCIC, Bashibuzuk, Mikhail, ShortOnTime, Derer
    • Replies: @AP
    @AnonfromTN

    Moving to China?

    Replies: @Torna atrás

    , @Beckow
    @AnonfromTN


    ...quite a few Westerners who consider themselves intelligent and knowledgeable are in the grip of same delusions as Western elites
     
    We have all discovered too late that the widespread propaganda views in the West are shared even by the critical and smart people (some exceptions). I first thought they only pretended or were afraid to speak about a few taboo subjects. It turned out that almost all share in the delusions. It is too much a part of them: the propaganda has worked in the West but failed miserably in the East.

    I wish you would stay around as the dramatic stories come closer to their endings. It was nice to read your contributions. We didn't always agree, but understanding comes from people having different views. And yes, this ship is doomed, but we don't know when. Then there will be other ships.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Derer, @Mikel

    , @QCIC
    @AnonfromTN

    AnonfromTN, thank you for your comments here. It was valuable to read the perspective of someone with direct Ukrainian ties to help understand the complex issues there.

    Wishing you success in your other adventures.

    , @German_reader
    @AnonfromTN

    There's too much self-righteousness and bitterness in your comments. You've got a point about the West's trajectory (something is indeed fundamtentally broken), also about Western delusions, hypocrisy, even brutality. But like many devotees of the "multipolar world order" (which in principle might possibly be a good thing, or at least something that it would be foolish to try to prevent with military means, sanctions etc.) you never acknowledge even the tiniest bit of darkness on the side you favour. You write about freedoms being suppressed in the West (quite correctly), but iirc a few weeks ago you were enthused about Russia's increasingly close ties with North Korea, a totalitarian dystopia if ever there was one. And of course even in Russia herself repression is still a lot more blatant and brutal than anything seen in the West. So despite all your intelligence (being an accomplished scientist you're probably the commenter here with the highest IQ) and cosmopolitan experiences, maybe you're not that different from the fanatical Westerners you deride, you just believe different propaganda narratives and block out any inconvenient facts.
    And this


    My condolences to everyone reasonable who happens to be caught in this wreck, but the only way or saving yourself and your family is getting out of it.
     
    is just horrible advice.

    Still, I wish you all the best. I have profited from your perspective as someone with ties to the Donbass, that's something one doesn't encounter in Western MSM, and it was indeed a useful counter-weight to some other commenters here.

    Replies: @Torna atrás, @AP, @A123, @Dmitry, @Derer

    , @songbird
    @AnonfromTN


    The West is going down the drain: if you need proof, just watch the opening ceremony of Paris Olympics.
     
    unironically, these horrible freaks have filled me with hope, as I believe that nothing so ugly can last forever. Actuarially, I would not even expect these people to have a long lifespan, due to their BMI, mental illness and lifestyle.

    Imagine al-Andalus, if the Moors had not built the Alhambra, but only fat trannies and bull dykes that changed their name to "Butch.". Would say the Reconquista would have happened more quickly.

    Don’t be fooled by the orchestra playing on the Titanic: the ship is doomed.
     
    solid ground will not sink and the geography is worth keeping.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Coconuts

    , @Gerard1234
    @AnonfromTN

    I will refuse to accept your retirement from this blog. No point committing yourself to stopping your participation on this site.

    Instead of engaging with some of the vermin on here, or some of the good commentators - why not at least write a post ,but just don't reply to anything?

  510. @AnonfromTN
    I think I owe two things to the commenters on these threads:
    1. I want to thanks the people (trolls excluded) for an interesting ride during my fairly long sociological experiment.
    2. I want to tell everyone that the experiment is over, the results are in, and I am out.

    I guess brief explanation is in order. I’ve first heard about the Unz review on the website of the Saker (now defunct). I checked Unz site out and found more or less what I expected: a) high concentration of Nazi apologists inevitable when there is freedom of speech; b) the average intelligence of commenters is way above that in the population (of course, there are some outliers, naming no names). You’d expect the latter on any alt-media site: unintelligent people just swallow the lies of Western MSM line, hook, and sinker, and do not seek other sources of info. So, I decided to join to check out more intelligent Western crowd. I must confess that at the beginning I shared certain respect for the West, pretty common in my generation. This turned out to be the main reason for our gullibility in 1991. I share that guilt.

    Some things turned out to be 100% predictable. One, you cannot expect reasonable views from Ukies and Balts regardless of their place of residence, their severe inferiority complex makes that impossible. Two, quite a few real Westerners demonstrated open-mindedness, intelligence, knowledge of history, and curiosity, the existence of which you would never suspect looking at Western MSM. However, I also found that quite a few Westerners who consider themselves intelligent and knowledgeable are in the grip of same delusions as Western elites, as well as bought and paid for Western politicians and MSM. Judging by the views of the majority of fellow faculty members at my university and by voting patterns in most of Europe and the US, this is a pretty widespread disorder. I don’t think it’s curable. Anyway, I got a fairly comprehensive picture of the part of the Western population that either thinks, or at least believes itself to think.

    The West is going down the drain: if you need proof, just watch the opening ceremony of Paris Olympics. Even the US, which remains in better shape than Europe and will likely last longer, is rapidly deteriorating. The evidence is everywhere: potholed roads are not repaired, inflation rages, federal government is becoming woefully dysfunctional in every way (e.g., the Southern border became a sieve, grant money from VA and NIH is disbursed many months later than it should have, etc.), political system is a mess, judicial system is subverted by the ruling cabal, freedoms are suppressed, etc.

    While I started with the idea that the West still can be saved, I realized that first, I don’t have the power to help it save itself, and second, it is not worth saving. My condolences to everyone reasonable who happens to be caught in this wreck, but the only way or saving yourself and your family is getting out of it. Don’t be fooled by the orchestra playing on the Titanic: the ship is doomed.

    With this, adios!

    Replies: @AP, @Beckow, @QCIC, @German_reader, @songbird, @Gerard1234

    Moving to China?

    • Agree: Torna atrás
    • Replies: @Torna atrás
    @AP

    Thanks Biden!

    Since Russian scientist Alexey Guryev came to China in 2013, he has witnessed the country's rapid social and economic development — and particularly its achievements in scientific and technological innovation.

    Guryev, a leading expert in metallic materials and processing and an academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, won Hubei province's Chime Bell Award in 2016 and the Chinese government's Friendship Award in 2022.

    In 2013, he began working at Wuhan Textile University, where he established an international research team focused on advanced manufacturing technology — high-end textile equipment — in cooperation with other experts.

    Over the past decade, he has promoted the academic exchanges and cooperation between Hubei and Russia's overseas high-level research and development teams in the fields of high-end textile equipment and advanced manufacturing of metal materials, and made outstanding contributions to the in-depth implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative, creating first-class disciplines and fostering cultural exchanges.

    "In recent years, Hubei has made great efforts to achieve innovation-driven development, exploit superior scientific and educational resources to drive development and enhance innovative systems and capacity, achieving great and impressive progress in science and technology," he said.

    "As to the textile industry with which I'm familiar, large textile enterprises have seen significantly improved production capacity and efficiency, more intelligent automation, China-made textile machinery, better workplace environments and more convenient network-based remote controls."

    In September, Guryev won the Friendship Award of the Chinese government, the highest honor for a foreign expert in China. In the same year, he was invited to attend a reception celebrating the 73th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

    "I will continue my efforts in scientific and technological cooperation, talent training and cultural exchanges," he said. "I will carry out collaborative research on key components of high-end textile machinery and advanced manufacturing technology related to high-end bearings and strengthen cooperation with enterprises in an effort to provide theoretical and technical support for solving the bottlenecks of industrial development and contribute to Hubei's scientific and technological development and friendship between China and Russia."

  511. A123 says: • Website
    @QCIC
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    I agree, Kushner is pretty dim. I hope he is not in the White House this time around. Is there any information on his role for Trump 2?

    Replies: @A123

    I agree, Kushner is pretty dim. I hope he is not in the White House this time around. Is there any information on his role for Trump 2?

    He is bad on camera. However, someone stupid would not be able to perform as he has done. There is nothing to suggest he is short on IQ. Yes, Harvard and NYU are not what they once were, but one does need some intellect to survive.

    Trump’s 1st term was heavily blighted by establishment Senate selections in key roles. Using family was a good way to bypass obstacles, like Bolton, while avoiding an open fight with Mitch McConnell.

    There is no official word about Kushner, however better Senate composition will reduce the number of establishment obstructionists. There should be much less need for family involvement. One would expect significantly less Kushner in Trump’s 2nd term.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @A123


    If you have encountered the Australian/New Zealand word "fuckwit", this is the closest to долбоеб.
     
    https://www.reddit.com/r/russian/comments/1bctono/bro_tf_is_a_dolboeb/
    , @Derer
    @A123


    Yes, Harvard and NYU are not what they once were,
     
    Agree, they are not a litmus test for a high IQ anymore, but a lib nepotism nest.
  512. @AP
    @AnonfromTN

    Moving to China?

    Replies: @Torna atrás

    Thanks Biden!

    Since Russian scientist Alexey Guryev came to China in 2013, he has witnessed the country’s rapid social and economic development — and particularly its achievements in scientific and technological innovation.

    Guryev, a leading expert in metallic materials and processing and an academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, won Hubei province’s Chime Bell Award in 2016 and the Chinese government’s Friendship Award in 2022.

    [MORE]

    In 2013, he began working at Wuhan Textile University, where he established an international research team focused on advanced manufacturing technology — high-end textile equipment — in cooperation with other experts.

    Over the past decade, he has promoted the academic exchanges and cooperation between Hubei and Russia’s overseas high-level research and development teams in the fields of high-end textile equipment and advanced manufacturing of metal materials, and made outstanding contributions to the in-depth implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative, creating first-class disciplines and fostering cultural exchanges.

    “In recent years, Hubei has made great efforts to achieve innovation-driven development, exploit superior scientific and educational resources to drive development and enhance innovative systems and capacity, achieving great and impressive progress in science and technology,” he said.

    “As to the textile industry with which I’m familiar, large textile enterprises have seen significantly improved production capacity and efficiency, more intelligent automation, China-made textile machinery, better workplace environments and more convenient network-based remote controls.”

    In September, Guryev won the Friendship Award of the Chinese government, the highest honor for a foreign expert in China. In the same year, he was invited to attend a reception celebrating the 73th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

    “I will continue my efforts in scientific and technological cooperation, talent training and cultural exchanges,” he said. “I will carry out collaborative research on key components of high-end textile machinery and advanced manufacturing technology related to high-end bearings and strengthen cooperation with enterprises in an effort to provide theoretical and technical support for solving the bottlenecks of industrial development and contribute to Hubei’s scientific and technological development and friendship between China and Russia.”

    • Thanks: Bashibuzuk
  513. @A123
    @QCIC


    I agree, Kushner is pretty dim. I hope he is not in the White House this time around. Is there any information on his role for Trump 2?
     
    He is bad on camera. However, someone stupid would not be able to perform as he has done. There is nothing to suggest he is short on IQ. Yes, Harvard and NYU are not what they once were, but one does need some intellect to survive.

    Trump's 1st term was heavily blighted by establishment Senate selections in key roles. Using family was a good way to bypass obstacles, like Bolton, while avoiding an open fight with Mitch McConnell.

    There is no official word about Kushner, however better Senate composition will reduce the number of establishment obstructionists. There should be much less need for family involvement. One would expect significantly less Kushner in Trump's 2nd term.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Derer

    If you have encountered the Australian/New Zealand word “fuckwit”, this is the closest to долбоеб.

    Bro tf is a dolboeb
    byu/GuessMyMainacconts inrussian

    • Agree: Bashibuzuk
  514. @AnonfromTN
    I think I owe two things to the commenters on these threads:
    1. I want to thanks the people (trolls excluded) for an interesting ride during my fairly long sociological experiment.
    2. I want to tell everyone that the experiment is over, the results are in, and I am out.

    I guess brief explanation is in order. I’ve first heard about the Unz review on the website of the Saker (now defunct). I checked Unz site out and found more or less what I expected: a) high concentration of Nazi apologists inevitable when there is freedom of speech; b) the average intelligence of commenters is way above that in the population (of course, there are some outliers, naming no names). You’d expect the latter on any alt-media site: unintelligent people just swallow the lies of Western MSM line, hook, and sinker, and do not seek other sources of info. So, I decided to join to check out more intelligent Western crowd. I must confess that at the beginning I shared certain respect for the West, pretty common in my generation. This turned out to be the main reason for our gullibility in 1991. I share that guilt.

    Some things turned out to be 100% predictable. One, you cannot expect reasonable views from Ukies and Balts regardless of their place of residence, their severe inferiority complex makes that impossible. Two, quite a few real Westerners demonstrated open-mindedness, intelligence, knowledge of history, and curiosity, the existence of which you would never suspect looking at Western MSM. However, I also found that quite a few Westerners who consider themselves intelligent and knowledgeable are in the grip of same delusions as Western elites, as well as bought and paid for Western politicians and MSM. Judging by the views of the majority of fellow faculty members at my university and by voting patterns in most of Europe and the US, this is a pretty widespread disorder. I don’t think it’s curable. Anyway, I got a fairly comprehensive picture of the part of the Western population that either thinks, or at least believes itself to think.

    The West is going down the drain: if you need proof, just watch the opening ceremony of Paris Olympics. Even the US, which remains in better shape than Europe and will likely last longer, is rapidly deteriorating. The evidence is everywhere: potholed roads are not repaired, inflation rages, federal government is becoming woefully dysfunctional in every way (e.g., the Southern border became a sieve, grant money from VA and NIH is disbursed many months later than it should have, etc.), political system is a mess, judicial system is subverted by the ruling cabal, freedoms are suppressed, etc.

    While I started with the idea that the West still can be saved, I realized that first, I don’t have the power to help it save itself, and second, it is not worth saving. My condolences to everyone reasonable who happens to be caught in this wreck, but the only way or saving yourself and your family is getting out of it. Don’t be fooled by the orchestra playing on the Titanic: the ship is doomed.

    With this, adios!

    Replies: @AP, @Beckow, @QCIC, @German_reader, @songbird, @Gerard1234

    …quite a few Westerners who consider themselves intelligent and knowledgeable are in the grip of same delusions as Western elites

    We have all discovered too late that the widespread propaganda views in the West are shared even by the critical and smart people (some exceptions). I first thought they only pretended or were afraid to speak about a few taboo subjects. It turned out that almost all share in the delusions. It is too much a part of them: the propaganda has worked in the West but failed miserably in the East.

    I wish you would stay around as the dramatic stories come closer to their endings. It was nice to read your contributions. We didn’t always agree, but understanding comes from people having different views. And yes, this ship is doomed, but we don’t know when. Then there will be other ships.

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Beckow

    He is probably more eager to leave as "the dramatic stories come closer to their endings!"

    I will miss the Russian jokes.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    , @Derer
    @Beckow

    I agree with your view of the US/West propaganda. It is very powerful brain washing instrument.

    Joe Biden as a Chairman of the Senate foreign relation committee (assuming he is being much better informed than the public) during a live press release snapped at Swedish reporter "don't you people watch the television?". He obviously meant the American TV. Whereby the Swedish reporter replied "yes we watch many different reports in Europe"

    The issue was during the American bombing of Serbia the Kosovo Albanians flee to neighbouring countries Macedonia or Montenegro, according to Biden lie he insisted from the "nasty" Serbian army, while the real reason was the American bombing.

    It is interesting to note that the Kosovars did not flee to their brothers in Albania but Macedonia whereby they created the dangerous imbalance.

    Replies: @Beckow

    , @Mikel
    @Beckow


    the widespread propaganda views in the West are shared even by the critical and smart people (some exceptions).
     
    Be careful there. That's also what the North Koreans, the Cubans or even the Islamists could say to defend the superiority of their systems. In fact, that's what for decades many people on both sides of the Iron Curtain expected to happen: that the capitalist and "bourgeois democracies" would eventually crumble under the weight of their "internal contradictions". But look who ended up crumbling down.

    The internal contradictions in the West do exist, as do the MSM brainwashing, now aided by Big Tech. I would actually say that one defining aspect of the Western countries is that they have always been in some sort of crisis or another. As long as freedom of opinion and speech exist, it's probably inevitable that parts of the population will think that society must change and try to embark on social experiments to "improve things". Sometimes you find yourself on one side of the barricade and sometimes on the other. But this doesn't necessarily make the alternatives to the Western system better.

    AnonfromTN and you are legitimately criticizing the half-truths, propaganda and censorship that have become so prevalent in the West in the last decade and a half or so. But what good is that if then you go on to try to convince people to believe whatever the Kremlin lie was once the Petrov and Borisov idiocy was exposed, that the Russians didn't really want to take Kiev or that the MH17 was not downed by the Russians/rebels? By siding always, invariably with a regime ruled by a strongman who had to change the constitution to stay in power for 25 years you're not showing a lot of skepticism and critical thinking yourselves, to put it mildly.

    And, as I argued above, it's even worse when you side with the defeatist and conspiranoic forces among us. "Don't bother voting because 'they' will steal the election", all based on very questionable evidence, or "leave your countries with your family" is totally unhelpful advice. Le Pen and Farage did get poor results (which is why they didn't contest them, the globalist forces don't need to "steal" any election unfortunately) and where should we relocate to? To Russia, where Putin could one day draft my son for another carnage of his? No thanks.

    Replies: @Derer, @Beckow

  515. Dzungaria is mesmerizing, it has produced strong intelligent people for generations. I hope many of them will return one day and see the land of their ancestors.

    • Thanks: Mikel, Bashibuzuk
  516. @AnonfromTN
    I think I owe two things to the commenters on these threads:
    1. I want to thanks the people (trolls excluded) for an interesting ride during my fairly long sociological experiment.
    2. I want to tell everyone that the experiment is over, the results are in, and I am out.

    I guess brief explanation is in order. I’ve first heard about the Unz review on the website of the Saker (now defunct). I checked Unz site out and found more or less what I expected: a) high concentration of Nazi apologists inevitable when there is freedom of speech; b) the average intelligence of commenters is way above that in the population (of course, there are some outliers, naming no names). You’d expect the latter on any alt-media site: unintelligent people just swallow the lies of Western MSM line, hook, and sinker, and do not seek other sources of info. So, I decided to join to check out more intelligent Western crowd. I must confess that at the beginning I shared certain respect for the West, pretty common in my generation. This turned out to be the main reason for our gullibility in 1991. I share that guilt.

    Some things turned out to be 100% predictable. One, you cannot expect reasonable views from Ukies and Balts regardless of their place of residence, their severe inferiority complex makes that impossible. Two, quite a few real Westerners demonstrated open-mindedness, intelligence, knowledge of history, and curiosity, the existence of which you would never suspect looking at Western MSM. However, I also found that quite a few Westerners who consider themselves intelligent and knowledgeable are in the grip of same delusions as Western elites, as well as bought and paid for Western politicians and MSM. Judging by the views of the majority of fellow faculty members at my university and by voting patterns in most of Europe and the US, this is a pretty widespread disorder. I don’t think it’s curable. Anyway, I got a fairly comprehensive picture of the part of the Western population that either thinks, or at least believes itself to think.

    The West is going down the drain: if you need proof, just watch the opening ceremony of Paris Olympics. Even the US, which remains in better shape than Europe and will likely last longer, is rapidly deteriorating. The evidence is everywhere: potholed roads are not repaired, inflation rages, federal government is becoming woefully dysfunctional in every way (e.g., the Southern border became a sieve, grant money from VA and NIH is disbursed many months later than it should have, etc.), political system is a mess, judicial system is subverted by the ruling cabal, freedoms are suppressed, etc.

    While I started with the idea that the West still can be saved, I realized that first, I don’t have the power to help it save itself, and second, it is not worth saving. My condolences to everyone reasonable who happens to be caught in this wreck, but the only way or saving yourself and your family is getting out of it. Don’t be fooled by the orchestra playing on the Titanic: the ship is doomed.

    With this, adios!

    Replies: @AP, @Beckow, @QCIC, @German_reader, @songbird, @Gerard1234

    AnonfromTN, thank you for your comments here. It was valuable to read the perspective of someone with direct Ukrainian ties to help understand the complex issues there.

    Wishing you success in your other adventures.

  517. @ShortOnTime
    @Mr. Hack


    If you read some european history once in a while before making such flippant remarks, you’d realize that Vlad Tepes (the Impaler) also impaled Christians too, including Catholics and Protestants.

     

    So how many Protestants were there in the 15th century (before 1500) during the reign of Vlad III in Wallachia?

    This goes a long way to explain the level of knowledge the likes of you and AP have about "Ukraine history", let alone any other ...

    The vast majority of the impaled were Muslims (aside from some Wallachian boyars and possibly a few Transylvanian Saxon-German Catholics) and with very good reason. It was the Turks of the Ottoman Empire that brought such practices to the Balkans and Europe so Vlad III merely copied their practices against them in reaction when they invaded again and again. This is necessary to state since there are so many pro-Muslim and liberal lies about how the Ottoman Empire was a multicultural utopia, etc.

    Anyway, since you pursued this topic and it's more relevant than ever for many reasons, do you have anything to state about Erdogan's recent threat to intervene against Israel like Turkey did with Libya and Karabakh?

    Replies: @Derer, @AP

    Ottoman’s Istanbul is a thorn in the eye of European Christianity. Former Byzantium or Constantinople a Christian city was left to pillaging Ottoman in Europe – a historical shame.

    • Agree: ShortOnTime
  518. @Beckow
    @AnonfromTN


    ...quite a few Westerners who consider themselves intelligent and knowledgeable are in the grip of same delusions as Western elites
     
    We have all discovered too late that the widespread propaganda views in the West are shared even by the critical and smart people (some exceptions). I first thought they only pretended or were afraid to speak about a few taboo subjects. It turned out that almost all share in the delusions. It is too much a part of them: the propaganda has worked in the West but failed miserably in the East.

    I wish you would stay around as the dramatic stories come closer to their endings. It was nice to read your contributions. We didn't always agree, but understanding comes from people having different views. And yes, this ship is doomed, but we don't know when. Then there will be other ships.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Derer, @Mikel

    He is probably more eager to leave as “the dramatic stories come closer to their endings!”

    I will miss the Russian jokes.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @QCIC

    I will miss Joe Biden who really is about to vanish from the universe. You will not believe how rapid he will become a completely invisible man.

    What would really be amazing is if 15% of the Muslims in the Midwest showed up in Chicago and none of the Democrats had the stomach to show up in person at their own convention. I don't think Biden is going. I think Obama and Clinton and Harris and Pelosi may only be there on zoom.

    What if all the other Democrat senators and representatives do that?

    They could just have Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift on stage performing the entertainment part and a bunch of warm bodies filling up the seats while the Chicago PD and the Chicago National Guard try and preserve order on the streets outside. And failing to do so.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/russian/comments/dck43r/what_is_your_favorite_russian_joke_that_can_be/

  519. @Beckow
    @AnonfromTN


    ...quite a few Westerners who consider themselves intelligent and knowledgeable are in the grip of same delusions as Western elites
     
    We have all discovered too late that the widespread propaganda views in the West are shared even by the critical and smart people (some exceptions). I first thought they only pretended or were afraid to speak about a few taboo subjects. It turned out that almost all share in the delusions. It is too much a part of them: the propaganda has worked in the West but failed miserably in the East.

    I wish you would stay around as the dramatic stories come closer to their endings. It was nice to read your contributions. We didn't always agree, but understanding comes from people having different views. And yes, this ship is doomed, but we don't know when. Then there will be other ships.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Derer, @Mikel

    I agree with your view of the US/West propaganda. It is very powerful brain washing instrument.

    Joe Biden as a Chairman of the Senate foreign relation committee (assuming he is being much better informed than the public) during a live press release snapped at Swedish reporter “don’t you people watch the television?”. He obviously meant the American TV. Whereby the Swedish reporter replied “yes we watch many different reports in Europe”

    The issue was during the American bombing of Serbia the Kosovo Albanians flee to neighbouring countries Macedonia or Montenegro, according to Biden lie he insisted from the “nasty” Serbian army, while the real reason was the American bombing.

    It is interesting to note that the Kosovars did not flee to their brothers in Albania but Macedonia whereby they created the dangerous imbalance.

    • Thanks: ShortOnTime
    • Replies: @Beckow
    @Derer


    ...don’t you people watch the television?
     
    That is exactly the problem in the West, that most people lack skepticism. Even when showed that their 'media' alternates between being scripted from the government releases to pushing some petty lobbying idea that the owners happen to like, they still absorb it and seldom think about whether it makes sense.

    There is enough variety and marginal open outlets to make the official line seem credible, but it is always an official line. The skeptical view that most pre-1990 easterners had toward their media was often over-done but it inoculated people against being sheep. But by now most of them are...

  520. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    https://www.biography.com/scientists/george-washington-carver-peanut-butter

    Did George Washington Carver Invent Peanut Butter?

    Replies: @songbird

    Only legitimate black invention I am aware of is this one:
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Soaker

  521. German_reader says:
    @AnonfromTN
    I think I owe two things to the commenters on these threads:
    1. I want to thanks the people (trolls excluded) for an interesting ride during my fairly long sociological experiment.
    2. I want to tell everyone that the experiment is over, the results are in, and I am out.

    I guess brief explanation is in order. I’ve first heard about the Unz review on the website of the Saker (now defunct). I checked Unz site out and found more or less what I expected: a) high concentration of Nazi apologists inevitable when there is freedom of speech; b) the average intelligence of commenters is way above that in the population (of course, there are some outliers, naming no names). You’d expect the latter on any alt-media site: unintelligent people just swallow the lies of Western MSM line, hook, and sinker, and do not seek other sources of info. So, I decided to join to check out more intelligent Western crowd. I must confess that at the beginning I shared certain respect for the West, pretty common in my generation. This turned out to be the main reason for our gullibility in 1991. I share that guilt.

    Some things turned out to be 100% predictable. One, you cannot expect reasonable views from Ukies and Balts regardless of their place of residence, their severe inferiority complex makes that impossible. Two, quite a few real Westerners demonstrated open-mindedness, intelligence, knowledge of history, and curiosity, the existence of which you would never suspect looking at Western MSM. However, I also found that quite a few Westerners who consider themselves intelligent and knowledgeable are in the grip of same delusions as Western elites, as well as bought and paid for Western politicians and MSM. Judging by the views of the majority of fellow faculty members at my university and by voting patterns in most of Europe and the US, this is a pretty widespread disorder. I don’t think it’s curable. Anyway, I got a fairly comprehensive picture of the part of the Western population that either thinks, or at least believes itself to think.

    The West is going down the drain: if you need proof, just watch the opening ceremony of Paris Olympics. Even the US, which remains in better shape than Europe and will likely last longer, is rapidly deteriorating. The evidence is everywhere: potholed roads are not repaired, inflation rages, federal government is becoming woefully dysfunctional in every way (e.g., the Southern border became a sieve, grant money from VA and NIH is disbursed many months later than it should have, etc.), political system is a mess, judicial system is subverted by the ruling cabal, freedoms are suppressed, etc.

    While I started with the idea that the West still can be saved, I realized that first, I don’t have the power to help it save itself, and second, it is not worth saving. My condolences to everyone reasonable who happens to be caught in this wreck, but the only way or saving yourself and your family is getting out of it. Don’t be fooled by the orchestra playing on the Titanic: the ship is doomed.

    With this, adios!

    Replies: @AP, @Beckow, @QCIC, @German_reader, @songbird, @Gerard1234

    There’s too much self-righteousness and bitterness in your comments. You’ve got a point about the West’s trajectory (something is indeed fundamtentally broken), also about Western delusions, hypocrisy, even brutality. But like many devotees of the “multipolar world order” (which in principle might possibly be a good thing, or at least something that it would be foolish to try to prevent with military means, sanctions etc.) you never acknowledge even the tiniest bit of darkness on the side you favour. You write about freedoms being suppressed in the West (quite correctly), but iirc a few weeks ago you were enthused about Russia’s increasingly close ties with North Korea, a totalitarian dystopia if ever there was one. And of course even in Russia herself repression is still a lot more blatant and brutal than anything seen in the West. So despite all your intelligence (being an accomplished scientist you’re probably the commenter here with the highest IQ) and cosmopolitan experiences, maybe you’re not that different from the fanatical Westerners you deride, you just believe different propaganda narratives and block out any inconvenient facts.
    And this

    My condolences to everyone reasonable who happens to be caught in this wreck, but the only way or saving yourself and your family is getting out of it.

    is just horrible advice.

    Still, I wish you all the best. I have profited from your perspective as someone with ties to the Donbass, that’s something one doesn’t encounter in Western MSM, and it was indeed a useful counter-weight to some other commenters here.

    • Thanks: Torna atrás
    • Replies: @Torna atrás
    @German_reader


    being an accomplished scientist you’re probably the commenter here with the highest IQ
     
    Polish Perspective or Ivashka IMHO.

    Slavs do ok after all.

    Replies: @German_reader

    , @AP
    @German_reader


    (being an accomplished scientist you’re probably the commenter here with the highest IQ)
     
    Highly doubtful - he's too gullible about stupid things. I think Dmitry, Bashi, and the Yevardian guy are probably smarter. As was uti. But he is not stupid, and certainly more intelligent than several others on his "side." Probably even the smartest of them all.

    Replies: @Negronicus, @German_reader

    , @A123
    @German_reader

    There is a definite difference between IQ and common sense. Also, certain commenters have gigantic blind spots where they let emotion void their grasp on the real world.

    For example, it is no secret that Trump's 1nd term was dogged by the Russia, Russia, Russia myth and associated impeachment investigation. It is exceedingly clear that domestic politics drove specific pieces of foreign policy. Even these with modest IQ should see this and understand the direct implications.

    An obvious way to diminish the CCP is encouraging Russia to develop economic activity that does not include them. Therefore, Trump's 2nd term will take steps to begin improving relations with Russia. How can anyone think that there will be escalation against Russia? Especially as the Dems will fail in the House, Senate, or hopefully both.

    One can understand why several low-IQ yahoo posters here get this wrong. However, there are some who should be able to follow the inexorable logic, but lack the objectivity to accept reality.

    Move on to other topics, outside the cult dogma... the IQ resurfaces. Compartmentalization is an interesting, though often strange, aspect of human behaviour.

    PEACE 😇

    , @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    AnonfromTN doesn't seem exactly bitter. Notice he's probably posting in a good mood most days, as he is usually writing in a polite way. The theory of the "decaying West" is the most mainstream prophecy for his generation, it was part of being "well adjusted" for the society of his generation.

    Also, I don't think he will abandon us too many weeks. We probably just need to talk more about Stanisław Lem or something relevant for his interests.

    Replies: @German_reader

    , @Derer
    @German_reader


    (saving yourself and your family is getting out of it.) is just horrible advice.
     
    I guess you agree with your "Micky mouse" fuhrer. Being delighted by the Ami yoke. Read between the lines...that yoke is against you, you would do much better free.
  522. @QCIC
    @Beckow

    He is probably more eager to leave as "the dramatic stories come closer to their endings!"

    I will miss the Russian jokes.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    I will miss Joe Biden who really is about to vanish from the universe. You will not believe how rapid he will become a completely invisible man.

    What would really be amazing is if 15% of the Muslims in the Midwest showed up in Chicago and none of the Democrats had the stomach to show up in person at their own convention. I don’t think Biden is going. I think Obama and Clinton and Harris and Pelosi may only be there on zoom.

    What if all the other Democrat senators and representatives do that?

    They could just have Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift on stage performing the entertainment part and a bunch of warm bodies filling up the seats while the Chicago PD and the Chicago National Guard try and preserve order on the streets outside. And failing to do so.

    What is your favorite Russian joke that can be translated into English? Dirty or clean, I'll take either one. I'll share mine.
    byu/NotMyDogPaul inrussian

  523. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/28/world/europe/ukraine-russia-battle-gains.html

    Russian forces have made rapid gains in the eastern Donetsk region over the past week or so, capturing a few villages and closing in on the city of Pokrovsk, one of the main Ukrainian defensive strongholds in the area. Russian forces are now only a dozen miles from Pokrovsk after Moscow’s troops pushed along a railway line and advanced about three miles toward the city, according to open-source maps of the battlefield based on combat footage and satellite imagery. The Russian progress contrasts sharply with the slow but steady gains that Moscow had made so far this year in the Donetsk region, sometimes measured in only a few hundred yards a week.

    Military analysts say the swift gains reflect Moscow’s improved ability to exploit cracks in Ukrainian defensive lines, which have been thinned by manpower shortages and strained by relentless Russian attacks along a more than 600-mile front. In recent months, the experts say, Russian forces have increasingly focused on identifying weakened and poorly organized Ukrainian units before breaking through by throwing scores of troops and armored vehicles onto the battlefield. “Russians probe the lines to see if a battalion holds or retreats,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a military analyst at the government-run National Institute for Strategic Studies in Ukraine. Once they “find weakened battalions and brigades,” he added, “they press them no matter the losses.”

    • Replies: @S1
    @YetAnotherAnon


    The Russian progress contrasts sharply with the slow but steady gains that Moscow had made so far this year in the Donetsk region, sometimes measured in only a few hundred yards a week...Once they [the Russians] “find weakened battalions and brigades,” he added, “they press them no matter the losses.”
     
    Reading this I can't help but be reminded of the morbid humor of Black Adder.

    https://youtu.be/rblfKREj50o?si=7l5-a-CZ79nqUwof
    , @LondonBob
    @YetAnotherAnon

    Interested to see where the offensive stops, at the borders of the Donbass?

    Replies: @YetAnotherAnon

  524. @German_reader
    @AnonfromTN

    There's too much self-righteousness and bitterness in your comments. You've got a point about the West's trajectory (something is indeed fundamtentally broken), also about Western delusions, hypocrisy, even brutality. But like many devotees of the "multipolar world order" (which in principle might possibly be a good thing, or at least something that it would be foolish to try to prevent with military means, sanctions etc.) you never acknowledge even the tiniest bit of darkness on the side you favour. You write about freedoms being suppressed in the West (quite correctly), but iirc a few weeks ago you were enthused about Russia's increasingly close ties with North Korea, a totalitarian dystopia if ever there was one. And of course even in Russia herself repression is still a lot more blatant and brutal than anything seen in the West. So despite all your intelligence (being an accomplished scientist you're probably the commenter here with the highest IQ) and cosmopolitan experiences, maybe you're not that different from the fanatical Westerners you deride, you just believe different propaganda narratives and block out any inconvenient facts.
    And this


    My condolences to everyone reasonable who happens to be caught in this wreck, but the only way or saving yourself and your family is getting out of it.
     
    is just horrible advice.

    Still, I wish you all the best. I have profited from your perspective as someone with ties to the Donbass, that's something one doesn't encounter in Western MSM, and it was indeed a useful counter-weight to some other commenters here.

    Replies: @Torna atrás, @AP, @A123, @Dmitry, @Derer

    being an accomplished scientist you’re probably the commenter here with the highest IQ

    Polish Perspective or Ivashka IMHO.

    Slavs do ok after all.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Torna atrás


    Polish Perspective
     
    He claimed to be an economist (who knows, Dmitry made a not unconvincing case it was an alt of ThuleanFriend, very weird), so hard disagree.
    AnonfromTN is a real scientist researching the workings of the natural world. He also isn't a fucking weirdo like many (most?) people commenting here, always got the impression he's probably a fairly pleasant fellow to interact with. It's just unfortunate that he's turned into a bit of a fanatic over the war, but at least he's got better, personal reasons than many other people.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms, @songbird, @Torna atrás

  525. German_reader says:
    @Torna atrás
    @German_reader


    being an accomplished scientist you’re probably the commenter here with the highest IQ
     
    Polish Perspective or Ivashka IMHO.

    Slavs do ok after all.

    Replies: @German_reader

    Polish Perspective

    He claimed to be an economist (who knows, Dmitry made a not unconvincing case it was an alt of ThuleanFriend, very weird), so hard disagree.
    AnonfromTN is a real scientist researching the workings of the natural world. He also isn’t a fucking weirdo like many (most?) people commenting here, always got the impression he’s probably a fairly pleasant fellow to interact with. It’s just unfortunate that he’s turned into a bit of a fanatic over the war, but at least he’s got better, personal reasons than many other people.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @German_reader

    Nobody cares who has the highest IQ.

    Who was the hottest actress in Valley of the Dolls?

    https://i5.walmartimages.com/seo/Valley-of-the-Dolls-Sharon-Tate-Patty-Duke-Barbara-Parkins-studio-pose-24x36-Poster_bac262d8-1443-4b90-b60c-8591614ed94c.c9db989acb1759eeec8ddf2c0bee21fa.jpeg

    Replies: @Greasy William, @LondonBob

    , @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @German_reader

    Polish said he is a historian. Not all scientists necessarily have outstanding IQs. ProfTN whom I wish all the best, not withstanding.

    Biologist in general don't have the highest IQ amongst scientists, not higher than economists, a heavily quantitative field, much less astrophysics.

    https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/schematic.jpg

    https://www.unz.com/gnxp/classicists-are-smart/

    Agree with most of your other points about ProfTN's partisan view on the conflict. And especially in light of that, not an opportune time to flex about Slavic intelligence.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    , @songbird
    @German_reader


    He also isn’t a fucking weirdo like many (most?) people commenting here,
     
    Did not post this but when LatW mentioned that anarchist sign in the park, I thought that it would be very easy for her to infiltrate that group, by modeling her character on any of the various ideosyncracies found here, sort of like in Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday.
    , @Torna atrás
    @German_reader


    He claimed to be an economist (who knows, Dmitry made a not unconvincing case it was an alt of ThuleanFriend, very weird),
     
    I've read everyone of Polish Perspective comments, he and ThuleanFriend have vastly different world views.

    I'll give you one example, their respective views of Russia, China and India.

    Both their depth of knowledge and opinion on these nations cultures, politics and economics were extremely different. Their understanding of India was night and day.

    Polish Perspective had a very friendly relationship with AK, while ThuleanFriend was always taking veiled swipes at AK.

    I wish Polish Perspective would return, learned a great deal from his comments.

    AnonfromTN has a great sense of humour.


    One of my cousins lived and worked in Uhta, the capital of Komi autonomous republic. She said that nobody spoke Komi in Uhta, except radio.
     
  526. @German_reader
    @Torna atrás


    Polish Perspective
     
    He claimed to be an economist (who knows, Dmitry made a not unconvincing case it was an alt of ThuleanFriend, very weird), so hard disagree.
    AnonfromTN is a real scientist researching the workings of the natural world. He also isn't a fucking weirdo like many (most?) people commenting here, always got the impression he's probably a fairly pleasant fellow to interact with. It's just unfortunate that he's turned into a bit of a fanatic over the war, but at least he's got better, personal reasons than many other people.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms, @songbird, @Torna atrás

    Nobody cares who has the highest IQ.

    Who was the hottest actress in Valley of the Dolls?

    • LOL: S1
    • Replies: @Greasy William
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Tate. It's not even debatable. You are gay if that question wasn't rhetorical

    , @LondonBob
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Middle one.

  527. S1 says:
    @YetAnotherAnon
    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/28/world/europe/ukraine-russia-battle-gains.html

    Russian forces have made rapid gains in the eastern Donetsk region over the past week or so, capturing a few villages and closing in on the city of Pokrovsk, one of the main Ukrainian defensive strongholds in the area. Russian forces are now only a dozen miles from Pokrovsk after Moscow’s troops pushed along a railway line and advanced about three miles toward the city, according to open-source maps of the battlefield based on combat footage and satellite imagery. The Russian progress contrasts sharply with the slow but steady gains that Moscow had made so far this year in the Donetsk region, sometimes measured in only a few hundred yards a week.

    Military analysts say the swift gains reflect Moscow’s improved ability to exploit cracks in Ukrainian defensive lines, which have been thinned by manpower shortages and strained by relentless Russian attacks along a more than 600-mile front. In recent months, the experts say, Russian forces have increasingly focused on identifying weakened and poorly organized Ukrainian units before breaking through by throwing scores of troops and armored vehicles onto the battlefield. “Russians probe the lines to see if a battalion holds or retreats,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a military analyst at the government-run National Institute for Strategic Studies in Ukraine. Once they “find weakened battalions and brigades,” he added, “they press them no matter the losses.”
     

    Replies: @S1, @LondonBob

    The Russian progress contrasts sharply with the slow but steady gains that Moscow had made so far this year in the Donetsk region, sometimes measured in only a few hundred yards a week…Once they [the Russians] “find weakened battalions and brigades,” he added, “they press them no matter the losses.”

    Reading this I can’t help but be reminded of the morbid humor of Black Adder.

  528. Bashibuzuk says:

    Iran’s Foreign Ministry summoned the French ambassador for the insulting representation of Jesus Christ during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, Iranian media reported.

    Iran’s Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance stressed that “Muslims revere Jesus as a prophet of God. The insulting representation of Jesus Christ in Paris yesterday was completely offensive and crossed all red lines.”

    https://alphanews.am/en/iran-summons-french-ambassador-for-insulting-representation-of-jesus-christ-during-olympic-opening-ceremony/

  529. AP says:
    @ShortOnTime
    @Mr. Hack


    If you read some european history once in a while before making such flippant remarks, you’d realize that Vlad Tepes (the Impaler) also impaled Christians too, including Catholics and Protestants.

     

    So how many Protestants were there in the 15th century (before 1500) during the reign of Vlad III in Wallachia?

    This goes a long way to explain the level of knowledge the likes of you and AP have about "Ukraine history", let alone any other ...

    The vast majority of the impaled were Muslims (aside from some Wallachian boyars and possibly a few Transylvanian Saxon-German Catholics) and with very good reason. It was the Turks of the Ottoman Empire that brought such practices to the Balkans and Europe so Vlad III merely copied their practices against them in reaction when they invaded again and again. This is necessary to state since there are so many pro-Muslim and liberal lies about how the Ottoman Empire was a multicultural utopia, etc.

    Anyway, since you pursued this topic and it's more relevant than ever for many reasons, do you have anything to state about Erdogan's recent threat to intervene against Israel like Turkey did with Libya and Karabakh?

    Replies: @Derer, @AP

    So how many Protestants were there in the 15th century (before 1500) during the reign of Vlad III in Wallachia?

    Huss whom you probably never heard of unless the Russians wrote something about him (you are ignorant that way) was a proto-Protestant but his followers could easily count as them.

    Some Hussites found their way to the Balkans (Moldova) but I haven’t read about Vlad impaling any of them. He did, however, pledge to fight against them.

    The vast majority of the impaled were Muslims (aside from some Wallachian boyars and possibly a few Transylvanian Saxon-German Catholics)

    He mostly burned German-Saxon Catholics when he razed their towns, rather than impaled them. Though he also had Saxon captives impaled.

    Did you dishonestly imply something else, like that he didn’t kill large numbers of Christians?

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @AP

    Jan Hus (spelled with a single 's' means 'goose') was not yet a Protestant. He only wanted to cleanse the Catholic Church but never left it. But the Church burnt him as a heretic. His followers went in many different directions, from committed pietism to an early version of communitarian hedonism (nudists, free love...), and eventually to become the ruling nobility party. By then it was all about the monastery lands.

    100 years later it led to Reformation: piety, literacy, removing Church's property and business. Hussites raided surrounding countries, but I am not sure they made it as far as Moldova, possibly. They had a pre-occupation with using people's language in church, books, schools, and standardized the Czech language.

    Replies: @AP

    , @ShortOnTime
    @AP


    Huss whom you probably never heard of unless the Russians wrote something about him (you are ignorant that way) was a proto-Protestant but his followers could easily count as them.

    Some Hussites found their way to the Balkans (Moldova) but I haven’t read about Vlad impaling any of them. He did, however, pledge to fight against them.

    He mostly burned German-Saxon Catholics when he razed their towns, rather than impaled them. Though he also had Saxon captives impaled.

    Did you dishonestly imply something else, like that he didn’t kill large numbers of Christians?
     

    Again, this is exactly why there's no point in having any discussions with you.

    It always leads to dumbing things down to banalities like (in this case) whether 15th century Czech/Bohemian Hussites count as Protestants or whether a few dozen, few hundred or few thousand nobles and merchants (and some peasants and beggars) is "a large number" of impaled or not.

    To be clear, Hussites usually aren't considered as Protestants and only the followers of Martin Luther from 1521 AD onwards (and all the since fragmented sects) are considered as such. Compared to tens of thousands of Muslims, no more than a few thousand Wallachians at most (many of the boyars/nobles were collaborators with the Ottoman Empire) and a few dozens of Saxon merchants over many years doesn't really count as "large numbers" (it's also not an issue of denying whether Vlad III impaled some Christians here and there since nobody denies that).

    Unsympathetic accounts:

    https://www.nbcnews.com/sciencemain/vlad-impaler-real-dracula-was-absolutely-vicious-8c11505315

    https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/502283/when-vlad-impaler-repelled-invasion-forest-corpses

    Some accounts where it becomes more understandable why Vlad III would resort to impalements and scorched earth tactics:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_attack_at_T%C3%A2rgovi%C8%99te

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impalement#Ottoman_Empire

    Replies: @A123, @AP

  530. @German_reader
    @Torna atrás


    Polish Perspective
     
    He claimed to be an economist (who knows, Dmitry made a not unconvincing case it was an alt of ThuleanFriend, very weird), so hard disagree.
    AnonfromTN is a real scientist researching the workings of the natural world. He also isn't a fucking weirdo like many (most?) people commenting here, always got the impression he's probably a fairly pleasant fellow to interact with. It's just unfortunate that he's turned into a bit of a fanatic over the war, but at least he's got better, personal reasons than many other people.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms, @songbird, @Torna atrás

    Polish said he is a historian. Not all scientists necessarily have outstanding IQs. ProfTN whom I wish all the best, not withstanding.

    Biologist in general don’t have the highest IQ amongst scientists, not higher than economists, a heavily quantitative field, much less astrophysics.

    https://www.unz.com/gnxp/classicists-are-smart/

    Agree with most of your other points about ProfTN’s partisan view on the conflict. And especially in light of that, not an opportune time to flex about Slavic intelligence.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Nobody cares about anybody's IQ.

    Where I went to college economics and biology guys had a shorter watered down version of calculus. Biology guys had a shorter watered down version of physics.

    My biology and economics pals gave me drugs to show them how to do problems on their calculus and physics homeworks.

    Perhaps your school was a different animal?

    The smoking hottest actress in the Valley of the Dolls, Barbara Parkins, also played Ryan O'Neal's smoking hot girlfriend in Peyton Place. She is still alive and for some reason she is dying her hair black in all the internet photos although she is 80 years old.

    Ryan O'Neal, is of course, the father of John McEnroe's first junkie wife who is mom to his kids that he took full custody of before they were out of grade school.

    1st episode Peyton Place:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTQqqhZ9qd8

    John McEnroe's first junkie wife also is still alive by a miracle.

    https://people.com/thmb/VLr3qfqzaePpjYgmUfyIpX8ZJ20=/4000x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(749x0:751x2):format(webp)/tatum-oneal-070423-6-a00a3a16bba1452881c95b4bb93be611.jpg

    Replies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

  531. Bashibuzuk says:

    Omar Harfouch’s musical plea for world peace

    Lebanese politician, businessman and prodigy composer’s ‘Concerto for Peace’ is winning applause in ongoing European tour.

    […]

    An orchestral work for peace composed and performed by a prominent businessman and politician, though, is something unusual. The Lebanese prime minister candidate and businessman Omar Harfouch debuted his “Concerto for Peace” in a concert for the European Commission late in 2023.

    […]

    Known to the French public as a television personality, Harfouch studied piano at Ukraine’s Glinka Conservatory and won a Moscow piano competition in the 1980s.

    […]

    In a recent interview, Harfouch said: “My Concerto for Peace was built over the course of an inner journey of several years. I thought of this music as a path to peace, which takes the form of a dialogue between little Omar, who lives in the middle of a civil war without understanding it, and adult Omar, who lives in peace but sees the world sinking into war. And this little boy asks the adult not to let men accept this madness.

    https://asiatimes.com/2024/07/omar-harfouchs-musical-plea-for-world-peace/

    [MORE]

  532. AP says:
    @German_reader
    @AnonfromTN

    There's too much self-righteousness and bitterness in your comments. You've got a point about the West's trajectory (something is indeed fundamtentally broken), also about Western delusions, hypocrisy, even brutality. But like many devotees of the "multipolar world order" (which in principle might possibly be a good thing, or at least something that it would be foolish to try to prevent with military means, sanctions etc.) you never acknowledge even the tiniest bit of darkness on the side you favour. You write about freedoms being suppressed in the West (quite correctly), but iirc a few weeks ago you were enthused about Russia's increasingly close ties with North Korea, a totalitarian dystopia if ever there was one. And of course even in Russia herself repression is still a lot more blatant and brutal than anything seen in the West. So despite all your intelligence (being an accomplished scientist you're probably the commenter here with the highest IQ) and cosmopolitan experiences, maybe you're not that different from the fanatical Westerners you deride, you just believe different propaganda narratives and block out any inconvenient facts.
    And this


    My condolences to everyone reasonable who happens to be caught in this wreck, but the only way or saving yourself and your family is getting out of it.
     
    is just horrible advice.

    Still, I wish you all the best. I have profited from your perspective as someone with ties to the Donbass, that's something one doesn't encounter in Western MSM, and it was indeed a useful counter-weight to some other commenters here.

    Replies: @Torna atrás, @AP, @A123, @Dmitry, @Derer

    (being an accomplished scientist you’re probably the commenter here with the highest IQ)

    Highly doubtful – he’s too gullible about stupid things. I think Dmitry, Bashi, and the Yevardian guy are probably smarter. As was uti. But he is not stupid, and certainly more intelligent than several others on his “side.” Probably even the smartest of them all.

    • Replies: @Negronicus
    @AP

    Negronicus is damn smart too.

    , @German_reader
    @AP

    I agree about utu's intelligence, he seemed to be some sort of mathematician. Unfortunately he was also highly disagreeable (maybe there's a connection, in the sense of not being willing to suffer fools gladly).
    Yevardian's doing book threads on Twitter btw. Almost makes me tempted to join that horrible platform.

  533. @AnonfromTN
    I think I owe two things to the commenters on these threads:
    1. I want to thanks the people (trolls excluded) for an interesting ride during my fairly long sociological experiment.
    2. I want to tell everyone that the experiment is over, the results are in, and I am out.

    I guess brief explanation is in order. I’ve first heard about the Unz review on the website of the Saker (now defunct). I checked Unz site out and found more or less what I expected: a) high concentration of Nazi apologists inevitable when there is freedom of speech; b) the average intelligence of commenters is way above that in the population (of course, there are some outliers, naming no names). You’d expect the latter on any alt-media site: unintelligent people just swallow the lies of Western MSM line, hook, and sinker, and do not seek other sources of info. So, I decided to join to check out more intelligent Western crowd. I must confess that at the beginning I shared certain respect for the West, pretty common in my generation. This turned out to be the main reason for our gullibility in 1991. I share that guilt.

    Some things turned out to be 100% predictable. One, you cannot expect reasonable views from Ukies and Balts regardless of their place of residence, their severe inferiority complex makes that impossible. Two, quite a few real Westerners demonstrated open-mindedness, intelligence, knowledge of history, and curiosity, the existence of which you would never suspect looking at Western MSM. However, I also found that quite a few Westerners who consider themselves intelligent and knowledgeable are in the grip of same delusions as Western elites, as well as bought and paid for Western politicians and MSM. Judging by the views of the majority of fellow faculty members at my university and by voting patterns in most of Europe and the US, this is a pretty widespread disorder. I don’t think it’s curable. Anyway, I got a fairly comprehensive picture of the part of the Western population that either thinks, or at least believes itself to think.

    The West is going down the drain: if you need proof, just watch the opening ceremony of Paris Olympics. Even the US, which remains in better shape than Europe and will likely last longer, is rapidly deteriorating. The evidence is everywhere: potholed roads are not repaired, inflation rages, federal government is becoming woefully dysfunctional in every way (e.g., the Southern border became a sieve, grant money from VA and NIH is disbursed many months later than it should have, etc.), political system is a mess, judicial system is subverted by the ruling cabal, freedoms are suppressed, etc.

    While I started with the idea that the West still can be saved, I realized that first, I don’t have the power to help it save itself, and second, it is not worth saving. My condolences to everyone reasonable who happens to be caught in this wreck, but the only way or saving yourself and your family is getting out of it. Don’t be fooled by the orchestra playing on the Titanic: the ship is doomed.

    With this, adios!

    Replies: @AP, @Beckow, @QCIC, @German_reader, @songbird, @Gerard1234

    The West is going down the drain: if you need proof, just watch the opening ceremony of Paris Olympics.

    unironically, these horrible freaks have filled me with hope, as I believe that nothing so ugly can last forever. Actuarially, I would not even expect these people to have a long lifespan, due to their BMI, mental illness and lifestyle.

    Imagine al-Andalus, if the Moors had not built the Alhambra, but only fat trannies and bull dykes that changed their name to “Butch.”. Would say the Reconquista would have happened more quickly.

    Don’t be fooled by the orchestra playing on the Titanic: the ship is doomed.

    solid ground will not sink and the geography is worth keeping.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @songbird


    Imagine al-Andalus, if the Moors had not built the Alhambra
     
    The Alhambra was actually the final and fading glimpse of the greatness of al-Andalus. At its peak, the Islamic Spain produced much more impressive cultural landmarks.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosque%E2%80%93Cathedral_of_C%C3%B3rdoba

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madinat_al-Zahra

    And many others…

    Replies: @songbird

    , @Coconuts
    @songbird


    unironically, these horrible freaks have filled me with hope, as I believe that nothing so ugly can last forever. Actuarially, I would not even expect these people to have a long lifespan, due to their BMI, mental illness and lifestyle.
     
    I think they are angry about the support for Le Pen and the RN and it is triggering them into making ostentatious culture wars demonstrations like this.

    It seems like it was too overtly dysgenic to have much real appeal though. Over time it's possible that the LGBT progressives will end up squashed between the RN voting block and the Muslim heritage cultural block.

    Replies: @songbird

  534. @AP
    @ShortOnTime


    So how many Protestants were there in the 15th century (before 1500) during the reign of Vlad III in Wallachia?
     
    Huss whom you probably never heard of unless the Russians wrote something about him (you are ignorant that way) was a proto-Protestant but his followers could easily count as them.

    Some Hussites found their way to the Balkans (Moldova) but I haven't read about Vlad impaling any of them. He did, however, pledge to fight against them.

    The vast majority of the impaled were Muslims (aside from some Wallachian boyars and possibly a few Transylvanian Saxon-German Catholics)
     
    He mostly burned German-Saxon Catholics when he razed their towns, rather than impaled them. Though he also had Saxon captives impaled.

    Did you dishonestly imply something else, like that he didn't kill large numbers of Christians?

    Replies: @Beckow, @ShortOnTime

    Jan Hus (spelled with a single ‘s’ means ‘goose’) was not yet a Protestant. He only wanted to cleanse the Catholic Church but never left it. But the Church burnt him as a heretic. His followers went in many different directions, from committed pietism to an early version of communitarian hedonism (nudists, free love…), and eventually to become the ruling nobility party. By then it was all about the monastery lands.

    100 years later it led to Reformation: piety, literacy, removing Church’s property and business. Hussites raided surrounding countries, but I am not sure they made it as far as Moldova, possibly. They had a pre-occupation with using people’s language in church, books, schools, and standardized the Czech language.

    • Agree: ShortOnTime
    • Replies: @AP
    @Beckow


    Jan Hus (spelled with a single ‘s’ means ‘goose’).
     
    His name is often Anglicized as Huss. The Ukrainian word for goose is a female version of the Czech- Huska.

    [Hus] was not yet a Protestant. He only wanted to cleanse the Catholic Church but never left it. But the Church burnt him as a heretic. His followers went in many different directions, from committed pietism to an early version of communitarian hedonism (nudists, free love…)
     
    Yes, I wrote that he "was a proto-Protestant but his followers could easily count as them [Protestants]."

    Hussites raided surrounding countries, but I am not sure they made it as far as Moldova, possibly
     
    Many of his followers ended up in Moldova, and a small number in Transylvania.

    https://rais.education/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/6.pdf

    So it would not be surprising if Vlad killed some of them. Short on Time wouldn't hear about it, he is rather ignorant.

    Replies: @Beckow

  535. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @German_reader

    Nobody cares who has the highest IQ.

    Who was the hottest actress in Valley of the Dolls?

    https://i5.walmartimages.com/seo/Valley-of-the-Dolls-Sharon-Tate-Patty-Duke-Barbara-Parkins-studio-pose-24x36-Poster_bac262d8-1443-4b90-b60c-8591614ed94c.c9db989acb1759eeec8ddf2c0bee21fa.jpeg

    Replies: @Greasy William, @LondonBob

    Tate. It’s not even debatable. You are gay if that question wasn’t rhetorical

  536. @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @German_reader

    Polish said he is a historian. Not all scientists necessarily have outstanding IQs. ProfTN whom I wish all the best, not withstanding.

    Biologist in general don't have the highest IQ amongst scientists, not higher than economists, a heavily quantitative field, much less astrophysics.

    https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/schematic.jpg

    https://www.unz.com/gnxp/classicists-are-smart/

    Agree with most of your other points about ProfTN's partisan view on the conflict. And especially in light of that, not an opportune time to flex about Slavic intelligence.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    Nobody cares about anybody’s IQ.

    Where I went to college economics and biology guys had a shorter watered down version of calculus. Biology guys had a shorter watered down version of physics.

    My biology and economics pals gave me drugs to show them how to do problems on their calculus and physics homeworks.

    Perhaps your school was a different animal?

    The smoking hottest actress in the Valley of the Dolls, Barbara Parkins, also played Ryan O’Neal’s smoking hot girlfriend in Peyton Place. She is still alive and for some reason she is dying her hair black in all the internet photos although she is 80 years old.

    Ryan O’Neal, is of course, the father of John McEnroe’s first junkie wife who is mom to his kids that he took full custody of before they were out of grade school.

    1st episode Peyton Place:

    John McEnroe’s first junkie wife also is still alive by a miracle.

    • Replies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    An economist doesn't take a "water-down version of calculus".

    https://economics.sas.upenn.edu/system/files/2024-07/Math_Camp_2024_Syllabus-.pdf

    They need at minimum this level. Have you taken it?

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/da/Principles_of_Mathematical_Analysis.jpg

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

    IQ matters otherwise what would wignats have to feel superior to negros?

    It's definitely not the end-all. East Asians have high IQs than Slavs, but Slavs have far more outstanding mathematicians. Never mind Western Euros.

    https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/644628faa538ab7a92d71823/66256ed2aa109bf7c507c6c7_full.png

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Bashibuzuk, @Derer, @QCIC, @LondonBob

  537. @Derer
    @Beckow

    I agree with your view of the US/West propaganda. It is very powerful brain washing instrument.

    Joe Biden as a Chairman of the Senate foreign relation committee (assuming he is being much better informed than the public) during a live press release snapped at Swedish reporter "don't you people watch the television?". He obviously meant the American TV. Whereby the Swedish reporter replied "yes we watch many different reports in Europe"

    The issue was during the American bombing of Serbia the Kosovo Albanians flee to neighbouring countries Macedonia or Montenegro, according to Biden lie he insisted from the "nasty" Serbian army, while the real reason was the American bombing.

    It is interesting to note that the Kosovars did not flee to their brothers in Albania but Macedonia whereby they created the dangerous imbalance.

    Replies: @Beckow

    …don’t you people watch the television?

    That is exactly the problem in the West, that most people lack skepticism. Even when showed that their ‘media’ alternates between being scripted from the government releases to pushing some petty lobbying idea that the owners happen to like, they still absorb it and seldom think about whether it makes sense.

    There is enough variety and marginal open outlets to make the official line seem credible, but it is always an official line. The skeptical view that most pre-1990 easterners had toward their media was often over-done but it inoculated people against being sheep. But by now most of them are…

  538. A123 says: • Website
    @German_reader
    @AnonfromTN

    There's too much self-righteousness and bitterness in your comments. You've got a point about the West's trajectory (something is indeed fundamtentally broken), also about Western delusions, hypocrisy, even brutality. But like many devotees of the "multipolar world order" (which in principle might possibly be a good thing, or at least something that it would be foolish to try to prevent with military means, sanctions etc.) you never acknowledge even the tiniest bit of darkness on the side you favour. You write about freedoms being suppressed in the West (quite correctly), but iirc a few weeks ago you were enthused about Russia's increasingly close ties with North Korea, a totalitarian dystopia if ever there was one. And of course even in Russia herself repression is still a lot more blatant and brutal than anything seen in the West. So despite all your intelligence (being an accomplished scientist you're probably the commenter here with the highest IQ) and cosmopolitan experiences, maybe you're not that different from the fanatical Westerners you deride, you just believe different propaganda narratives and block out any inconvenient facts.
    And this


    My condolences to everyone reasonable who happens to be caught in this wreck, but the only way or saving yourself and your family is getting out of it.
     
    is just horrible advice.

    Still, I wish you all the best. I have profited from your perspective as someone with ties to the Donbass, that's something one doesn't encounter in Western MSM, and it was indeed a useful counter-weight to some other commenters here.

    Replies: @Torna atrás, @AP, @A123, @Dmitry, @Derer

    There is a definite difference between IQ and common sense. Also, certain commenters have gigantic blind spots where they let emotion void their grasp on the real world.

    For example, it is no secret that Trump’s 1nd term was dogged by the Russia, Russia, Russia myth and associated impeachment investigation. It is exceedingly clear that domestic politics drove specific pieces of foreign policy. Even these with modest IQ should see this and understand the direct implications.

    An obvious way to diminish the CCP is encouraging Russia to develop economic activity that does not include them. Therefore, Trump’s 2nd term will take steps to begin improving relations with Russia. How can anyone think that there will be escalation against Russia? Especially as the Dems will fail in the House, Senate, or hopefully both.

    One can understand why several low-IQ yahoo posters here get this wrong. However, there are some who should be able to follow the inexorable logic, but lack the objectivity to accept reality.

    Move on to other topics, outside the cult dogma… the IQ resurfaces. Compartmentalization is an interesting, though often strange, aspect of human behaviour.

    PEACE 😇

  539. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Nobody cares about anybody's IQ.

    Where I went to college economics and biology guys had a shorter watered down version of calculus. Biology guys had a shorter watered down version of physics.

    My biology and economics pals gave me drugs to show them how to do problems on their calculus and physics homeworks.

    Perhaps your school was a different animal?

    The smoking hottest actress in the Valley of the Dolls, Barbara Parkins, also played Ryan O'Neal's smoking hot girlfriend in Peyton Place. She is still alive and for some reason she is dying her hair black in all the internet photos although she is 80 years old.

    Ryan O'Neal, is of course, the father of John McEnroe's first junkie wife who is mom to his kids that he took full custody of before they were out of grade school.

    1st episode Peyton Place:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTQqqhZ9qd8

    John McEnroe's first junkie wife also is still alive by a miracle.

    https://people.com/thmb/VLr3qfqzaePpjYgmUfyIpX8ZJ20=/4000x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(749x0:751x2):format(webp)/tatum-oneal-070423-6-a00a3a16bba1452881c95b4bb93be611.jpg

    Replies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    An economist doesn’t take a “water-down version of calculus”.

    https://economics.sas.upenn.edu/system/files/2024-07/Math_Camp_2024_Syllabus-.pdf

    They need at minimum this level. Have you taken it?

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

    IQ matters otherwise what would wignats have to feel superior to negros?

    It’s definitely not the end-all. East Asians have high IQs than Slavs, but Slavs have far more outstanding mathematicians. Never mind Western Euros.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Apparently you think I might be making up my own experience.

    I actually don't care about anybody's beliefs. Like Greasy William believes Sharon Tate was hotter than Barbara Parkins. That is fine that he possesses this reality. Everybody ought to have a concept of reality.

    , @Bashibuzuk
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Does higher IQ help with demographics?

    Or does it the opposite…

    If it doesn’t help the populations that on average enjoy a higher IQ ensure their ethnic and cultural survival, what are the tangible long term benefits of these populations enjoying a higher IQ ?

    They will die out. And their higher IQ will be buried with them.

    Besides, as AK has recently abundantly advertised, the supposed elite human capital (of the high IQ type) are often LGBTQ+. Which begs the question, if these people are unable to figure out how biological copulation works and what should be its natural function, then why should we give a flying fuck about their supposedly higher IQ ?

    Replies: @Coconuts, @Mr. Hack, @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    , @Derer
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Canada 99.5 ?? they cheered an old UkiNazi in parliament from lack of IQ. They easily fell for Zelinsky trick.

    , @QCIC
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    52.5! Is this where the cannibals live?

    +++

    Some mathematical and theoretical economists are quite bright. However, I think most people in the West with degrees in economics are below average intelligence for college grads. Considering the economics PhD's, this is one of the fields were common sense and technical fluency may be uncorrelated or even anti-correlated.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    , @LondonBob
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    The difference between Russian and Ukrainian IQ is striking.

  540. AP says:
    @Beckow
    @AP

    Jan Hus (spelled with a single 's' means 'goose') was not yet a Protestant. He only wanted to cleanse the Catholic Church but never left it. But the Church burnt him as a heretic. His followers went in many different directions, from committed pietism to an early version of communitarian hedonism (nudists, free love...), and eventually to become the ruling nobility party. By then it was all about the monastery lands.

    100 years later it led to Reformation: piety, literacy, removing Church's property and business. Hussites raided surrounding countries, but I am not sure they made it as far as Moldova, possibly. They had a pre-occupation with using people's language in church, books, schools, and standardized the Czech language.

    Replies: @AP

    Jan Hus (spelled with a single ‘s’ means ‘goose’).

    His name is often Anglicized as Huss. The Ukrainian word for goose is a female version of the Czech- Huska.

    [Hus] was not yet a Protestant. He only wanted to cleanse the Catholic Church but never left it. But the Church burnt him as a heretic. His followers went in many different directions, from committed pietism to an early version of communitarian hedonism (nudists, free love…)

    Yes, I wrote that he “was a proto-Protestant but his followers could easily count as them [Protestants].”

    Hussites raided surrounding countries, but I am not sure they made it as far as Moldova, possibly

    Many of his followers ended up in Moldova, and a small number in Transylvania.

    https://rais.education/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/6.pdf

    So it would not be surprising if Vlad killed some of them. Short on Time wouldn’t hear about it, he is rather ignorant.

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @AP


    His name is often Anglicized as Huss.
     
    Why Anglicize? It is redundant, we don't rewrite English names, but it came through Latin. Colloquially husa is a young, not very smart girl, who is out to be hunted...:)

    Jan Hus had a safe conduct to present his views in Konstanz at the high Church Council. Predictably he was instead burnt to death. What is it about the West to lack honor, break promises, treaties, then walk away and claim that the 'other side did it'?

    It is a huge problem and it only works as long as the West is totally dominant. That's no longer the case, what now? How do you live without honor?

  541. Bashibuzuk says:
    @songbird
    @AnonfromTN


    The West is going down the drain: if you need proof, just watch the opening ceremony of Paris Olympics.
     
    unironically, these horrible freaks have filled me with hope, as I believe that nothing so ugly can last forever. Actuarially, I would not even expect these people to have a long lifespan, due to their BMI, mental illness and lifestyle.

    Imagine al-Andalus, if the Moors had not built the Alhambra, but only fat trannies and bull dykes that changed their name to "Butch.". Would say the Reconquista would have happened more quickly.

    Don’t be fooled by the orchestra playing on the Titanic: the ship is doomed.
     
    solid ground will not sink and the geography is worth keeping.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Coconuts

    Imagine al-Andalus, if the Moors had not built the Alhambra

    The Alhambra was actually the final and fading glimpse of the greatness of al-Andalus. At its peak, the Islamic Spain produced much more impressive cultural landmarks.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosque%E2%80%93Cathedral_of_C%C3%B3rdoba

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madinat_al-Zahra

    And many others…

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Bashibuzuk

    Know the mosque of Cordoba well for it was on the cover of my Spanish textbook one year. But I don't favor it. A lot of the masonry came from a pre-existing church which they dismantled, anyway.

    Realize the chronology for the Alhambra isn't the best fit, but was a compromise to go for what is generally thought of as having the best aesthetics. (To compare with the worst of trannies.). I recommend the relevant chapter in The Royal Road to Romance, if you have not read it. (Even though it was written by a homo )

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  542. @A123
    @QCIC


    I agree, Kushner is pretty dim. I hope he is not in the White House this time around. Is there any information on his role for Trump 2?
     
    He is bad on camera. However, someone stupid would not be able to perform as he has done. There is nothing to suggest he is short on IQ. Yes, Harvard and NYU are not what they once were, but one does need some intellect to survive.

    Trump's 1st term was heavily blighted by establishment Senate selections in key roles. Using family was a good way to bypass obstacles, like Bolton, while avoiding an open fight with Mitch McConnell.

    There is no official word about Kushner, however better Senate composition will reduce the number of establishment obstructionists. There should be much less need for family involvement. One would expect significantly less Kushner in Trump's 2nd term.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Derer

    Yes, Harvard and NYU are not what they once were,

    Agree, they are not a litmus test for a high IQ anymore, but a lib nepotism nest.

  543. @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    An economist doesn't take a "water-down version of calculus".

    https://economics.sas.upenn.edu/system/files/2024-07/Math_Camp_2024_Syllabus-.pdf

    They need at minimum this level. Have you taken it?

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/da/Principles_of_Mathematical_Analysis.jpg

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

    IQ matters otherwise what would wignats have to feel superior to negros?

    It's definitely not the end-all. East Asians have high IQs than Slavs, but Slavs have far more outstanding mathematicians. Never mind Western Euros.

    https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/644628faa538ab7a92d71823/66256ed2aa109bf7c507c6c7_full.png

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Bashibuzuk, @Derer, @QCIC, @LondonBob

    Apparently you think I might be making up my own experience.

    I actually don’t care about anybody’s beliefs. Like Greasy William believes Sharon Tate was hotter than Barbara Parkins. That is fine that he possesses this reality. Everybody ought to have a concept of reality.

  544. Bashibuzuk says:
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    An economist doesn't take a "water-down version of calculus".

    https://economics.sas.upenn.edu/system/files/2024-07/Math_Camp_2024_Syllabus-.pdf

    They need at minimum this level. Have you taken it?

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/da/Principles_of_Mathematical_Analysis.jpg

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

    IQ matters otherwise what would wignats have to feel superior to negros?

    It's definitely not the end-all. East Asians have high IQs than Slavs, but Slavs have far more outstanding mathematicians. Never mind Western Euros.

    https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/644628faa538ab7a92d71823/66256ed2aa109bf7c507c6c7_full.png

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Bashibuzuk, @Derer, @QCIC, @LondonBob

    Does higher IQ help with demographics?

    Or does it the opposite…

    If it doesn’t help the populations that on average enjoy a higher IQ ensure their ethnic and cultural survival, what are the tangible long term benefits of these populations enjoying a higher IQ ?

    They will die out. And their higher IQ will be buried with them.

    Besides, as AK has recently abundantly advertised, the supposed elite human capital (of the high IQ type) are often LGBTQ+. Which begs the question, if these people are unable to figure out how biological copulation works and what should be its natural function, then why should we give a flying fuck about their supposedly higher IQ ?

    • Agree: Mr. Hack
    • Replies: @Coconuts
    @Bashibuzuk

    There might be a cycle behind it.

    In pre-industrial times people with higher IQs did tend to have more surviving children, as industry and urbanisation advances the opposite situation develops. But it's possible that as the number of high IQ people diminishes, maintaining an industrial civilisation will become more of a challenge and living conditions will become more difficult. Then the higher IQ people should regain an advantage or at least reach parity.

    People were aware of this in the past, I saw that Foucault was writing against these older versions of eugenic ideas:


    The middle class also feared that this underclass sooner or later would "take over" because the population growth was greater in these slums than it was in the middle class. This fear gave rise to the scientific study of eugenics, whose founder Francis Galton had been inspired by Charles Darwin and his theory of natural selection.
     
    You can already see some counter-reaction to the influence of ideas like Foucault's among the more unconventional feminists. A commentator like Mary Harrington could be a good example of this, she absorbed a lot of Queer theory at university and tried to live as non-binary in a lesbian commune before becoming mentally ill. She managed to recover and become a mother and now promotes a version of feminism which is against contraceptive use and is pro-medieval.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    , @Mr. Hack
    @Bashibuzuk

    Yet, AP has dubbed you as one of the higher IQ individuals that frequents this website. And you've managed to sire four offspring? I always knew that you were special, or at least extremely horny! :-)

    https://as2.ftcdn.net/v2/jpg/03/13/36/65/1000_F_313366515_PYjzNLuInshBoJEkNPgAf4wZHw2IzUtF.jpg
    Bashibuzuk: the most virile, high IQ individual of the Karlin Community blogite!

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    , @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @Bashibuzuk

    Props on your four children.

    Confucian ethos promoted eugenic breeding by polygamy. It's indifferent to homosexual activities so long as the family line is continued.

    Birth rates are an issue in East Asia, but underpopulation is not. The enormous upheavals that took place in Chinese history are related to overpopulation.

    What is the problem if South Korea only had the population of Switzerland?

  545. @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    An economist doesn't take a "water-down version of calculus".

    https://economics.sas.upenn.edu/system/files/2024-07/Math_Camp_2024_Syllabus-.pdf

    They need at minimum this level. Have you taken it?

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/da/Principles_of_Mathematical_Analysis.jpg

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

    IQ matters otherwise what would wignats have to feel superior to negros?

    It's definitely not the end-all. East Asians have high IQs than Slavs, but Slavs have far more outstanding mathematicians. Never mind Western Euros.

    https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/644628faa538ab7a92d71823/66256ed2aa109bf7c507c6c7_full.png

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Bashibuzuk, @Derer, @QCIC, @LondonBob

    Canada 99.5 ?? they cheered an old UkiNazi in parliament from lack of IQ. They easily fell for Zelinsky trick.

  546. @Bashibuzuk
    @songbird


    Imagine al-Andalus, if the Moors had not built the Alhambra
     
    The Alhambra was actually the final and fading glimpse of the greatness of al-Andalus. At its peak, the Islamic Spain produced much more impressive cultural landmarks.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosque%E2%80%93Cathedral_of_C%C3%B3rdoba

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madinat_al-Zahra

    And many others…

    Replies: @songbird

    Know the mosque of Cordoba well for it was on the cover of my Spanish textbook one year. But I don’t favor it. A lot of the masonry came from a pre-existing church which they dismantled, anyway.

    Realize the chronology for the Alhambra isn’t the best fit, but was a compromise to go for what is generally thought of as having the best aesthetics. (To compare with the worst of trannies.). I recommend the relevant chapter in The Royal Road to Romance, if you have not read it. (Even though it was written by a homo )

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @songbird

    I read about the cathedral being transformed into the Cordoba great mosque, they didn’t dismantle it but incorporated it and added upon it.

    The most outstanding architectural achievement of Al Andalus was Madinat Al Zahra.

    https://youtu.be/iPICS2pQ720?si=zSReBw0EDq3fS6mP

    It was destroyed and abandoned due to the civil war that upended the Cordoban Caliphate.

    Replies: @songbird

  547. @AP
    @Greasy William


    I do agree that Trump is going to seek to end the war ASAP, but is there really anything he can do to force Russia out of the fight? The US cannot deploy troops for internal political reasons and there are no new wunderwaffen that the US can provide to the Ukrainians that would be decisive
     
    The first thing, which would be easy, is to remove the ridiculous restriction, demanded by the soft-on-Russia Biden administration, against using ATACMs to strike Russian bases for planes bombing Ukraine that happen to be on Russian soil. USA could also find the means to train more than 6 pilots on the F-16 (which was slow-walked by the Biden administration).

    More extreme examples might include provision of Tomahawk missiles, green light for volunteer pilots, etc.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Derer, @Sean

    AP: “The first thing, which would be easy, is to remove the ridiculous restriction, demanded by the soft-on-Russia Biden administration, against using ATACMs to strike Russian bases for planes bombing Ukraine that happen to be on Russian soil.”

    That will not happen…it become not Ukraine attack but the USA. Although, you are allowed to dream. Trump seeks friendship with Putin and this time he will not listen to pinhead people like Bolton or Pompeo. He envision economic threat from China and oil blackmail from Islam.

  548. Bashibuzuk says:
    @songbird
    @Bashibuzuk

    Know the mosque of Cordoba well for it was on the cover of my Spanish textbook one year. But I don't favor it. A lot of the masonry came from a pre-existing church which they dismantled, anyway.

    Realize the chronology for the Alhambra isn't the best fit, but was a compromise to go for what is generally thought of as having the best aesthetics. (To compare with the worst of trannies.). I recommend the relevant chapter in The Royal Road to Romance, if you have not read it. (Even though it was written by a homo )

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    I read about the cathedral being transformed into the Cordoba great mosque, they didn’t dismantle it but incorporated it and added upon it.

    The most outstanding architectural achievement of Al Andalus was Madinat Al Zahra.

    It was destroyed and abandoned due to the civil war that upended the Cordoban Caliphate.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Bashibuzuk


    The most outstanding architectural achievement of Al Andalus was Madinat Al Zahra.
     
    Probably the best contemporary example of Moorish power manifestation.

    Though, on a personal level, Moorish architecture has never really sung to me. Somehow, it feels "drier" to me, and I prefer things from damp climates. I can't even look at that video without thinking I would get a sunburn.

    I think I prefer the aesthetics of something like Neuschwanstein, which admittedly came much later, but the Kingdom ot Bavaria did not fit into the analogy very well.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Bashibuzuk

  549. @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    An economist doesn't take a "water-down version of calculus".

    https://economics.sas.upenn.edu/system/files/2024-07/Math_Camp_2024_Syllabus-.pdf

    They need at minimum this level. Have you taken it?

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/da/Principles_of_Mathematical_Analysis.jpg

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

    IQ matters otherwise what would wignats have to feel superior to negros?

    It's definitely not the end-all. East Asians have high IQs than Slavs, but Slavs have far more outstanding mathematicians. Never mind Western Euros.

    https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/644628faa538ab7a92d71823/66256ed2aa109bf7c507c6c7_full.png

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Bashibuzuk, @Derer, @QCIC, @LondonBob

    52.5! Is this where the cannibals live?

    +++

    Some mathematical and theoretical economists are quite bright. However, I think most people in the West with degrees in economics are below average intelligence for college grads. Considering the economics PhD’s, this is one of the fields were common sense and technical fluency may be uncorrelated or even anti-correlated.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @QCIC

    The cannibals live in every IQ label location south of the Sahara Desert and north of Capetown. Have you read Harrisson's book? It is very short. Two hours absolute maximum.

    https://books.google.com/books/about/Living_Among_Cannibals.html?id=He0VAAAAIAAJ

    , @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @QCIC

    The original assertions was about someone's IQ based on the fact that he's a scientist.

    Mathematicians and economists have higher IQs on average than biologists, that's simply empirical data.

    Mathematicians often don't have high verbal intelligence and EQs, i.e. common sense. Agree on that.

    Economists often do have high verbal intelligence and EQs, such as Raj Chetty, Daron Acemoglu

    But econ is a social science masquerading as a hard science, so has to uphold obvious falsehoods like "race is a social construct", regardless of empirical data.

    Replies: @QCIC

  550. S1 says:
    @Emil Nikola Richard
    @S1

    Have you ever seen a Jared Kushner interview?

    I tried once and couldn't make it to the 60 second mark of him speaking. He is retarded. It was like the dumbest 60 seconds of the Joe Rogan show that has ever been. Sort of. I don't think Joe ever talks with anybody that stupid on his show. And Joe talks with some very stupid people.

    Jared must have some clever money people working for him. Maybe one day we get to point and laugh at him when it gets reported in the press they have stolen tens of millions of dollars from him. Perhaps Jared is merely autistic?

    Replies: @QCIC, @S1

    Have you ever seen a Jared Kushner interview?

    Yes, I have.

    I tried once and couldn’t make it to the 60 second mark of him speaking. He is retarded.

    That could very well be. But we also know that the corporate mass media has the power to make (or break) a person, irregardless of what the actual reality is about the individual.

    I just know there is a hell of a lot of smoke surrounding the guy and he is someone certainly to keep an eye on.

  551. @QCIC
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    52.5! Is this where the cannibals live?

    +++

    Some mathematical and theoretical economists are quite bright. However, I think most people in the West with degrees in economics are below average intelligence for college grads. Considering the economics PhD's, this is one of the fields were common sense and technical fluency may be uncorrelated or even anti-correlated.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    The cannibals live in every IQ label location south of the Sahara Desert and north of Capetown. Have you read Harrisson’s book? It is very short. Two hours absolute maximum.

    https://books.google.com/books/about/Living_Among_Cannibals.html?id=He0VAAAAIAAJ

    • Thanks: QCIC
  552. @German_reader
    @Torna atrás


    Polish Perspective
     
    He claimed to be an economist (who knows, Dmitry made a not unconvincing case it was an alt of ThuleanFriend, very weird), so hard disagree.
    AnonfromTN is a real scientist researching the workings of the natural world. He also isn't a fucking weirdo like many (most?) people commenting here, always got the impression he's probably a fairly pleasant fellow to interact with. It's just unfortunate that he's turned into a bit of a fanatic over the war, but at least he's got better, personal reasons than many other people.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms, @songbird, @Torna atrás

    He also isn’t a fucking weirdo like many (most?) people commenting here,

    Did not post this but when LatW mentioned that anarchist sign in the park, I thought that it would be very easy for her to infiltrate that group, by modeling her character on any of the various ideosyncracies found here, sort of like in Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday.

  553. @Bashibuzuk
    @songbird

    I read about the cathedral being transformed into the Cordoba great mosque, they didn’t dismantle it but incorporated it and added upon it.

    The most outstanding architectural achievement of Al Andalus was Madinat Al Zahra.

    https://youtu.be/iPICS2pQ720?si=zSReBw0EDq3fS6mP

    It was destroyed and abandoned due to the civil war that upended the Cordoban Caliphate.

    Replies: @songbird

    The most outstanding architectural achievement of Al Andalus was Madinat Al Zahra.

    Probably the best contemporary example of Moorish power manifestation.

    Though, on a personal level, Moorish architecture has never really sung to me. Somehow, it feels “drier” to me, and I prefer things from damp climates. I can’t even look at that video without thinking I would get a sunburn.

    I think I prefer the aesthetics of something like Neuschwanstein, which admittedly came much later, but the Kingdom ot Bavaria did not fit into the analogy very well.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    Christopher McIntosh Swan King

    https://www.amazon.com/Swan-King-Ludwig-II-Bavaria/dp/1350143413

    I haven't read this yet but McIntosh digs up the weirdest stuff ever when he writes a book.

    Replies: @songbird

    , @Bashibuzuk
    @songbird


    Somehow, it feels “drier” to me
     
    Agree with that.

    Personally, for all the complexity and achievements of the Moorish architecture, I still prefer these wooden buildings to anything they have ever built from marble and stone:

    https://img.atlasobscura.com/CxIBqUZFKWbh4tYvnjJhdOVxklwuFbtYgn9jedDO3k4/rt:fit/w:600/q:81/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL3BsYWNl/X2ltYWdlcy9lYmE5/OTRhM2YxM2RlMDRk/YTFfMS5qcGc.jpg

    A lot of people enthuse about the desertic or tropical landscapes, but for me nothing is more beautiful than the simplicity and ruggedness of the North.

    https://www.salokyla.ru/pictures/900/pictures2289-2-17-08-2023-19-07-10.jpg

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  554. @AnonfromTN
    I think I owe two things to the commenters on these threads:
    1. I want to thanks the people (trolls excluded) for an interesting ride during my fairly long sociological experiment.
    2. I want to tell everyone that the experiment is over, the results are in, and I am out.

    I guess brief explanation is in order. I’ve first heard about the Unz review on the website of the Saker (now defunct). I checked Unz site out and found more or less what I expected: a) high concentration of Nazi apologists inevitable when there is freedom of speech; b) the average intelligence of commenters is way above that in the population (of course, there are some outliers, naming no names). You’d expect the latter on any alt-media site: unintelligent people just swallow the lies of Western MSM line, hook, and sinker, and do not seek other sources of info. So, I decided to join to check out more intelligent Western crowd. I must confess that at the beginning I shared certain respect for the West, pretty common in my generation. This turned out to be the main reason for our gullibility in 1991. I share that guilt.

    Some things turned out to be 100% predictable. One, you cannot expect reasonable views from Ukies and Balts regardless of their place of residence, their severe inferiority complex makes that impossible. Two, quite a few real Westerners demonstrated open-mindedness, intelligence, knowledge of history, and curiosity, the existence of which you would never suspect looking at Western MSM. However, I also found that quite a few Westerners who consider themselves intelligent and knowledgeable are in the grip of same delusions as Western elites, as well as bought and paid for Western politicians and MSM. Judging by the views of the majority of fellow faculty members at my university and by voting patterns in most of Europe and the US, this is a pretty widespread disorder. I don’t think it’s curable. Anyway, I got a fairly comprehensive picture of the part of the Western population that either thinks, or at least believes itself to think.

    The West is going down the drain: if you need proof, just watch the opening ceremony of Paris Olympics. Even the US, which remains in better shape than Europe and will likely last longer, is rapidly deteriorating. The evidence is everywhere: potholed roads are not repaired, inflation rages, federal government is becoming woefully dysfunctional in every way (e.g., the Southern border became a sieve, grant money from VA and NIH is disbursed many months later than it should have, etc.), political system is a mess, judicial system is subverted by the ruling cabal, freedoms are suppressed, etc.

    While I started with the idea that the West still can be saved, I realized that first, I don’t have the power to help it save itself, and second, it is not worth saving. My condolences to everyone reasonable who happens to be caught in this wreck, but the only way or saving yourself and your family is getting out of it. Don’t be fooled by the orchestra playing on the Titanic: the ship is doomed.

    With this, adios!

    Replies: @AP, @Beckow, @QCIC, @German_reader, @songbird, @Gerard1234

    I will refuse to accept your retirement from this blog. No point committing yourself to stopping your participation on this site.

    Instead of engaging with some of the vermin on here, or some of the good commentators – why not at least write a post ,but just don’t reply to anything?

    • Thanks: QCIC
  555. @songbird
    @Bashibuzuk


    The most outstanding architectural achievement of Al Andalus was Madinat Al Zahra.
     
    Probably the best contemporary example of Moorish power manifestation.

    Though, on a personal level, Moorish architecture has never really sung to me. Somehow, it feels "drier" to me, and I prefer things from damp climates. I can't even look at that video without thinking I would get a sunburn.

    I think I prefer the aesthetics of something like Neuschwanstein, which admittedly came much later, but the Kingdom ot Bavaria did not fit into the analogy very well.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Bashibuzuk

    Christopher McIntosh Swan King

    I haven’t read this yet but McIntosh digs up the weirdest stuff ever when he writes a book.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Have just glanced over a few of the reviews.

    Frankly, I never knew much about Ludwig II, so I have just seen it intimated for the first time that he was a homo, which is interesting both for its connection to madness and for the vague and impressionistic idea that I have that there were a lot of homos in the aristocracy at about that time.

    Speaking of German monarchs, I find it curious how they didn't force Edward VIII to marry Wilhelm II's daughter. She was only very slightly older and married someone comparatively unimportant. It would have been a diplomatic coup. Maybe, even helped to avoid WWI. Perhaps, they felt it would have made the monarchy in the UK too German and threatened its existence.

  556. Bashibuzuk says:
    @songbird
    @Bashibuzuk


    The most outstanding architectural achievement of Al Andalus was Madinat Al Zahra.
     
    Probably the best contemporary example of Moorish power manifestation.

    Though, on a personal level, Moorish architecture has never really sung to me. Somehow, it feels "drier" to me, and I prefer things from damp climates. I can't even look at that video without thinking I would get a sunburn.

    I think I prefer the aesthetics of something like Neuschwanstein, which admittedly came much later, but the Kingdom ot Bavaria did not fit into the analogy very well.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Bashibuzuk

    Somehow, it feels “drier” to me

    Agree with that.

    Personally, for all the complexity and achievements of the Moorish architecture, I still prefer these wooden buildings to anything they have ever built from marble and stone:

    A lot of people enthuse about the desertic or tropical landscapes, but for me nothing is more beautiful than the simplicity and ruggedness of the North.

    • Thanks: songbird, Beckow
    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Bashibuzuk


    for me nothing is more beautiful than the simplicity and ruggedness of the North.
     
    Being born in the north country, I tend to agree with you, although I've learned to appreciate the beauty of both the desert and tropical climes too:

    https://ejphoto.com/images_MN/MN_GooseberryFalls11.jpg
    Gooseberry Falls, North Shore MN.
  557. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    Christopher McIntosh Swan King

    https://www.amazon.com/Swan-King-Ludwig-II-Bavaria/dp/1350143413

    I haven't read this yet but McIntosh digs up the weirdest stuff ever when he writes a book.

    Replies: @songbird

    Have just glanced over a few of the reviews.

    Frankly, I never knew much about Ludwig II, so I have just seen it intimated for the first time that he was a homo, which is interesting both for its connection to madness and for the vague and impressionistic idea that I have that there were a lot of homos in the aristocracy at about that time.

    Speaking of German monarchs, I find it curious how they didn’t force Edward VIII to marry Wilhelm II’s daughter. She was only very slightly older and married someone comparatively unimportant. It would have been a diplomatic coup. Maybe, even helped to avoid WWI. Perhaps, they felt it would have made the monarchy in the UK too German and threatened its existence.

  558. @AP
    @German_reader


    (being an accomplished scientist you’re probably the commenter here with the highest IQ)
     
    Highly doubtful - he's too gullible about stupid things. I think Dmitry, Bashi, and the Yevardian guy are probably smarter. As was uti. But he is not stupid, and certainly more intelligent than several others on his "side." Probably even the smartest of them all.

    Replies: @Negronicus, @German_reader

    Negronicus is damn smart too.

    • LOL: QCIC
  559. @German_reader
    @Torna atrás


    Polish Perspective
     
    He claimed to be an economist (who knows, Dmitry made a not unconvincing case it was an alt of ThuleanFriend, very weird), so hard disagree.
    AnonfromTN is a real scientist researching the workings of the natural world. He also isn't a fucking weirdo like many (most?) people commenting here, always got the impression he's probably a fairly pleasant fellow to interact with. It's just unfortunate that he's turned into a bit of a fanatic over the war, but at least he's got better, personal reasons than many other people.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms, @songbird, @Torna atrás

    He claimed to be an economist (who knows, Dmitry made a not unconvincing case it was an alt of ThuleanFriend, very weird),

    I’ve read everyone of Polish Perspective comments, he and ThuleanFriend have vastly different world views.

    I’ll give you one example, their respective views of Russia, China and India.

    Both their depth of knowledge and opinion on these nations cultures, politics and economics were extremely different. Their understanding of India was night and day.

    Polish Perspective had a very friendly relationship with AK, while ThuleanFriend was always taking veiled swipes at AK.

    I wish Polish Perspective would return, learned a great deal from his comments.

    AnonfromTN has a great sense of humour.

    One of my cousins lived and worked in Uhta, the capital of Komi autonomous republic. She said that nobody spoke Komi in Uhta, except radio.

  560. German_reader says:
    @AP
    @German_reader


    (being an accomplished scientist you’re probably the commenter here with the highest IQ)
     
    Highly doubtful - he's too gullible about stupid things. I think Dmitry, Bashi, and the Yevardian guy are probably smarter. As was uti. But he is not stupid, and certainly more intelligent than several others on his "side." Probably even the smartest of them all.

    Replies: @Negronicus, @German_reader

    I agree about utu’s intelligence, he seemed to be some sort of mathematician. Unfortunately he was also highly disagreeable (maybe there’s a connection, in the sense of not being willing to suffer fools gladly).
    Yevardian’s doing book threads on Twitter btw. Almost makes me tempted to join that horrible platform.

  561. @AP
    @Greasy William


    I do agree that Trump is going to seek to end the war ASAP, but is there really anything he can do to force Russia out of the fight? The US cannot deploy troops for internal political reasons and there are no new wunderwaffen that the US can provide to the Ukrainians that would be decisive
     
    The first thing, which would be easy, is to remove the ridiculous restriction, demanded by the soft-on-Russia Biden administration, against using ATACMs to strike Russian bases for planes bombing Ukraine that happen to be on Russian soil. USA could also find the means to train more than 6 pilots on the F-16 (which was slow-walked by the Biden administration).

    More extreme examples might include provision of Tomahawk missiles, green light for volunteer pilots, etc.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Derer, @Sean

    Supply Ukraine with the weapons permission and intel for devastating strikes on the Russian army, and you will see Putin just sit there at take repeated decimation of his forces, because he is too scared of the US.

    Or, maybe he would think dramatic escalation was an existential necessity. The people in Washington, who know far more than anyone on here, are not looking to find out what Putin would do if he believed he was losing.

    At one point US weapons and intel were being used to kill a Russian general every other week. The US stopped doing that, prolly because they had indications the Russians were at the end of their tether, and might hit back against US satellite surveillance or flights. No, the restrictions are not ridiculous at all.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Sean


    Supply Ukraine with the weapons permission and intel for devastating strikes on the Russian army, and you will see Putin just sit there at take repeated decimation of his forces, because he is too scared of the US.

    Or, maybe he would think dramatic escalation was an existential necessity. The people in Washington, who know far more than anyone on here, are not looking to find out what Putin would do if he believed he was losing.
     

    Three problems with your reasoning:

    1. Most others, from both within the USA and from allied countries, with access to the same information as the Biden administration, want a stronger policy against Russia and oppose the ridiculous limitations on weapons usage demanded by the weak-on-Russia Biden administration.

    2. The Biden Administration is and has been weak across the board, towards entities such as Iran, Taliban, etc. that do not have nuclear capabilities. It is soft towards all of America’s rivals.

    3. Various supposed red lines have repeatedly been crossed (eventually) without the escalation feared by the Biden administration.

    :::::::::

    These suggest that the real issue is the Biden administration’s global policy of weakness and not a realistic threat of nuke use by Russia.

    But given the Biden administration’s weakness, we can expect Russia to continue to make threats either overtly or through diplomatic channels. They work on the Biden administration, so why not?

    Replies: @QCIC, @A123, @Greasy William, @Sean

    , @QCIC
    @Sean

    As the SMO drags on, gradually more leaders in Russia will accept a dramatic escalation, so the West should be progressively more cautious.

    The support for this view is that over time, Western statements and actions show this is not merely an anti-Putin project or simply a misguided pro-Ukraine project. It becomes clear to all that it is fundamentally an anti-Russia project being waged for no reasons other than hate, power lust and greed. This recognition weakens pro-Western factions still lurking inside Russian circles of power and who may resist escalation. This could cause the kind of political soul-searching that Bashibuzuk dreams of.

  562. @YetAnotherAnon
    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/28/world/europe/ukraine-russia-battle-gains.html

    Russian forces have made rapid gains in the eastern Donetsk region over the past week or so, capturing a few villages and closing in on the city of Pokrovsk, one of the main Ukrainian defensive strongholds in the area. Russian forces are now only a dozen miles from Pokrovsk after Moscow’s troops pushed along a railway line and advanced about three miles toward the city, according to open-source maps of the battlefield based on combat footage and satellite imagery. The Russian progress contrasts sharply with the slow but steady gains that Moscow had made so far this year in the Donetsk region, sometimes measured in only a few hundred yards a week.

    Military analysts say the swift gains reflect Moscow’s improved ability to exploit cracks in Ukrainian defensive lines, which have been thinned by manpower shortages and strained by relentless Russian attacks along a more than 600-mile front. In recent months, the experts say, Russian forces have increasingly focused on identifying weakened and poorly organized Ukrainian units before breaking through by throwing scores of troops and armored vehicles onto the battlefield. “Russians probe the lines to see if a battalion holds or retreats,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a military analyst at the government-run National Institute for Strategic Studies in Ukraine. Once they “find weakened battalions and brigades,” he added, “they press them no matter the losses.”
     

    Replies: @S1, @LondonBob

    Interested to see where the offensive stops, at the borders of the Donbass?

    • Replies: @YetAnotherAnon
    @LondonBob

    I think the whole Black Sea coast will be a potential target. But if there was a prospect of real demilitarisation (unlikely IMHO) they might stop at Donbass, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia Oblast and one other they've already claimed.

  563. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @German_reader

    Nobody cares who has the highest IQ.

    Who was the hottest actress in Valley of the Dolls?

    https://i5.walmartimages.com/seo/Valley-of-the-Dolls-Sharon-Tate-Patty-Duke-Barbara-Parkins-studio-pose-24x36-Poster_bac262d8-1443-4b90-b60c-8591614ed94c.c9db989acb1759eeec8ddf2c0bee21fa.jpeg

    Replies: @Greasy William, @LondonBob

    Middle one.

  564. @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    An economist doesn't take a "water-down version of calculus".

    https://economics.sas.upenn.edu/system/files/2024-07/Math_Camp_2024_Syllabus-.pdf

    They need at minimum this level. Have you taken it?

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/da/Principles_of_Mathematical_Analysis.jpg

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

    IQ matters otherwise what would wignats have to feel superior to negros?

    It's definitely not the end-all. East Asians have high IQs than Slavs, but Slavs have far more outstanding mathematicians. Never mind Western Euros.

    https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/644628faa538ab7a92d71823/66256ed2aa109bf7c507c6c7_full.png

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Bashibuzuk, @Derer, @QCIC, @LondonBob

    The difference between Russian and Ukrainian IQ is striking.

  565. @songbird
    @AnonfromTN


    The West is going down the drain: if you need proof, just watch the opening ceremony of Paris Olympics.
     
    unironically, these horrible freaks have filled me with hope, as I believe that nothing so ugly can last forever. Actuarially, I would not even expect these people to have a long lifespan, due to their BMI, mental illness and lifestyle.

    Imagine al-Andalus, if the Moors had not built the Alhambra, but only fat trannies and bull dykes that changed their name to "Butch.". Would say the Reconquista would have happened more quickly.

    Don’t be fooled by the orchestra playing on the Titanic: the ship is doomed.
     
    solid ground will not sink and the geography is worth keeping.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Coconuts

    unironically, these horrible freaks have filled me with hope, as I believe that nothing so ugly can last forever. Actuarially, I would not even expect these people to have a long lifespan, due to their BMI, mental illness and lifestyle.

    I think they are angry about the support for Le Pen and the RN and it is triggering them into making ostentatious culture wars demonstrations like this.

    It seems like it was too overtly dysgenic to have much real appeal though. Over time it’s possible that the LGBT progressives will end up squashed between the RN voting block and the Muslim heritage cultural block.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Coconuts

    Thought this article was interesting:
    https://www.bvoltaire.fr/linverse-du-puy-du-fou-revelations-sur-la-ceremonie-douverture-des-jo/

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Coconuts

  566. @Bashibuzuk
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Does higher IQ help with demographics?

    Or does it the opposite…

    If it doesn’t help the populations that on average enjoy a higher IQ ensure their ethnic and cultural survival, what are the tangible long term benefits of these populations enjoying a higher IQ ?

    They will die out. And their higher IQ will be buried with them.

    Besides, as AK has recently abundantly advertised, the supposed elite human capital (of the high IQ type) are often LGBTQ+. Which begs the question, if these people are unable to figure out how biological copulation works and what should be its natural function, then why should we give a flying fuck about their supposedly higher IQ ?

    Replies: @Coconuts, @Mr. Hack, @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    There might be a cycle behind it.

    In pre-industrial times people with higher IQs did tend to have more surviving children, as industry and urbanisation advances the opposite situation develops. But it’s possible that as the number of high IQ people diminishes, maintaining an industrial civilisation will become more of a challenge and living conditions will become more difficult. Then the higher IQ people should regain an advantage or at least reach parity.

    People were aware of this in the past, I saw that Foucault was writing against these older versions of eugenic ideas:

    The middle class also feared that this underclass sooner or later would “take over” because the population growth was greater in these slums than it was in the middle class. This fear gave rise to the scientific study of eugenics, whose founder Francis Galton had been inspired by Charles Darwin and his theory of natural selection.

    You can already see some counter-reaction to the influence of ideas like Foucault’s among the more unconventional feminists. A commentator like Mary Harrington could be a good example of this, she absorbed a lot of Queer theory at university and tried to live as non-binary in a lesbian commune before becoming mentally ill. She managed to recover and become a mother and now promotes a version of feminism which is against contraceptive use and is pro-medieval.

    • Agree: Bashibuzuk
    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Coconuts


    higher IQs
     
    "IQ" test results relate to word games or some basic number games. They are from 19th or early 20th century French and English puzzle books, which were designed for entertainment in one of the tragic epochs before the invention of Playstation.

    If you want to use them as a sociological measure, they would correlate with literacy levels in the society. After industrialization, a lot of the service industries in the economy need literate employees, so it could be useful in this way to check for literacy levels and peoples' skill with words or vocabulary.

    However, in the earlier epochs, the more important kind of thinking for most professions would have been things like "street smarts", "good relationship with plants and animals", "intuition about the seasons" (for farmers), "skill in using hands", while literacy skills required for doing word puzzles might be useful for less common professions like rhetoricians in Ancient Athens or the writers of plays in Elizabethan England.


    did tend to have more surviving children,

     

    A physical selection for peoples' general talent or interest in word puzzles, although some historical epochs could plausibly contain this, would be quite slow.

    The recent cultural changes we notice, mainly caused by technology and change it causes for cultural ideals, through the changing mode of production, but also sometimes highlighted political changes,* are often very fast.

    This is why people who like the film "Idiocracy", are saying in 2016 with the election of Trump, comments like "Idiocracy happened much faster than we predicted".

    -

    *AP is relating last thread about the redneck kind of behavior of the children in the West of postsoviet "New money", compared to more "civilized behavior" of the Soviet intellectual class. His story is quite good symbol of the changing of economic power from the Soviet intellectual class to the business class in the 1990s.

    In the Soviet Union, there was a strong emphasis on intellectual culture, both literary and technical, which is in some way mismatching with typical culture of a middle income country.

    But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the culture is doing something like a "reversion to the mean" relative to the economy, in the sense the intellectual and literary culture is becoming deprioritized. By the 2010s, Russian general culture is more like you expect in a middle income country.

    So, from the perspective of the intellectually elevated Soviet culture, it could seem like the culture became a relative "Idiocracy" within around 20-30 years.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Coconuts

  567. @Bashibuzuk
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Does higher IQ help with demographics?

    Or does it the opposite…

    If it doesn’t help the populations that on average enjoy a higher IQ ensure their ethnic and cultural survival, what are the tangible long term benefits of these populations enjoying a higher IQ ?

    They will die out. And their higher IQ will be buried with them.

    Besides, as AK has recently abundantly advertised, the supposed elite human capital (of the high IQ type) are often LGBTQ+. Which begs the question, if these people are unable to figure out how biological copulation works and what should be its natural function, then why should we give a flying fuck about their supposedly higher IQ ?

    Replies: @Coconuts, @Mr. Hack, @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Yet, AP has dubbed you as one of the higher IQ individuals that frequents this website. And you’ve managed to sire four offspring? I always knew that you were special, or at least extremely horny! 🙂


    Bashibuzuk: the most virile, high IQ individual of the Karlin Community blogite!

    • LOL: Bashibuzuk
    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Mr. Hack

    https://youtu.be/KHbzSif78qQ?si=60CoHh2nD31EnSfY

    🙂

    Also:


    The subject of this series of lectures belongs to the most important questions which a man can face in this life. It is interrelated with our ideas about the ascent of man, and the meaning of his existence in the stupendous universe which outwardly appears to be so indifferent, not to say hostile to our grade of life. The subject assumes a particular significance in our turbulent epoch of tragedy and disappointment.

    The character of the recent turn of events has been well defined by Prof. Sorokin in the powerful lines! “At the present time neither the innocence of children nor the white locks of venerable old age nor the tenderness of girls and women is spared. If anything, they are the main victims of war, revolution, crime, and other forms of violence. The civilization that before 1914 boasted of its humanitarianism and sympathy, in contradistinction to the alleged cruelty and inhumanity of the Dark Ages, has degenerated into something so base and brutal that it exceeds the alleged cruelty of the barbarians. Reemerging during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in a spirit of humanitarianism, compassion, earthly wisdom, and noble aspiration, the sensate culture of the West has terminated this phase of its existence in a riot of sub-animalistic brutality and violence. No more complete and tragic bankruptcy could be imagined.”

    The French scientist, Descartes once stated, “In order to reach the truth it is necessary once in one’s life to put everything to doubt so far as possible. This rule seems to be very applicable to the discussion of the evolution of the soul in our tragic time.

    To begin with, nearly one half of mankind is not controlled by a materialistic ideology which de facto denies the very existence of a “human soul”. On the other hand, religiously minded observers who believe firmly in the existence of a potentially immortal human soul, may, in our time, question the reality of its moral progress. For a long time the ascent of man, which can be interpreted as the constructive evolution of his mind and soul was associated with the increase of wisdom, honesty, tolerance, kindliness, sympathy, compassion, altruism, good will, respect for truth, and the like. However, the current century witnessed the greatest rejection of these tendencies and consequently became the bloodiest of the twenty-five centuries of recorded history. Taking these facts into consideration, it becomes difficult to state with assurance whether, in general, there has been any progressive evolution of the human soul during the five thousand years of recorded history.

    The present attempt to discuss this subject and to recognize some orderly and progressive general trends, in spite of the discouraging and chaotic contemporary evidence, must be preceded by certain explanatory remarks.

    The term “soul” will be used in this discussion to designate the highest, potentially immortal component of human personality. It is this part of our conscious being which reacts to such factors as respect for truth, compassion, good will, forgiveness tolerance, love, and the like. So long as this is the case, the term ran not be identified with the term intellect.

    In both literature and life we can easily find examples of simple, uneducated human beings with, nevertheless, highly refined and developed souls, who feel clearly and react unmistakably to the above mentioned higher factors of life. As a rule, this is connected with active religious faith. On the other hand, in life as well as in the works of great authors, we find cases where high intellect and extensive learning are combined with a crude soul which may be below that of a caveman, and may, in some cases, descend to the level of a beast. In fact, the Russian expression “soulless” may be significantly closer to reality than what is usually assumed and yet such characteristics may well be combined with a strong intellect and great learning.
     
    https://sikorskyarchives.com/home/igor-sikorsky/his-philosophy/evolution-of-the-soul/

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  568. @Bashibuzuk
    @songbird


    Somehow, it feels “drier” to me
     
    Agree with that.

    Personally, for all the complexity and achievements of the Moorish architecture, I still prefer these wooden buildings to anything they have ever built from marble and stone:

    https://img.atlasobscura.com/CxIBqUZFKWbh4tYvnjJhdOVxklwuFbtYgn9jedDO3k4/rt:fit/w:600/q:81/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL3BsYWNl/X2ltYWdlcy9lYmE5/OTRhM2YxM2RlMDRk/YTFfMS5qcGc.jpg

    A lot of people enthuse about the desertic or tropical landscapes, but for me nothing is more beautiful than the simplicity and ruggedness of the North.

    https://www.salokyla.ru/pictures/900/pictures2289-2-17-08-2023-19-07-10.jpg

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    for me nothing is more beautiful than the simplicity and ruggedness of the North.

    Being born in the north country, I tend to agree with you, although I’ve learned to appreciate the beauty of both the desert and tropical climes too:


    Gooseberry Falls, North Shore MN.

    • Thanks: Bashibuzuk
  569. Whatever happened to that sort of Obama-looking fellow the state department was trying to promote in Venezuela? Or am I thinking of the wrong country?

  570. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Mr. Hack
    @Bashibuzuk

    Yet, AP has dubbed you as one of the higher IQ individuals that frequents this website. And you've managed to sire four offspring? I always knew that you were special, or at least extremely horny! :-)

    https://as2.ftcdn.net/v2/jpg/03/13/36/65/1000_F_313366515_PYjzNLuInshBoJEkNPgAf4wZHw2IzUtF.jpg
    Bashibuzuk: the most virile, high IQ individual of the Karlin Community blogite!

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    🙂

    Also:

    The subject of this series of lectures belongs to the most important questions which a man can face in this life. It is interrelated with our ideas about the ascent of man, and the meaning of his existence in the stupendous universe which outwardly appears to be so indifferent, not to say hostile to our grade of life. The subject assumes a particular significance in our turbulent epoch of tragedy and disappointment.

    The character of the recent turn of events has been well defined by Prof. Sorokin in the powerful lines! “At the present time neither the innocence of children nor the white locks of venerable old age nor the tenderness of girls and women is spared. If anything, they are the main victims of war, revolution, crime, and other forms of violence. The civilization that before 1914 boasted of its humanitarianism and sympathy, in contradistinction to the alleged cruelty and inhumanity of the Dark Ages, has degenerated into something so base and brutal that it exceeds the alleged cruelty of the barbarians. Reemerging during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in a spirit of humanitarianism, compassion, earthly wisdom, and noble aspiration, the sensate culture of the West has terminated this phase of its existence in a riot of sub-animalistic brutality and violence. No more complete and tragic bankruptcy could be imagined.”

    The French scientist, Descartes once stated, “In order to reach the truth it is necessary once in one’s life to put everything to doubt so far as possible. This rule seems to be very applicable to the discussion of the evolution of the soul in our tragic time.

    To begin with, nearly one half of mankind is not controlled by a materialistic ideology which de facto denies the very existence of a “human soul”. On the other hand, religiously minded observers who believe firmly in the existence of a potentially immortal human soul, may, in our time, question the reality of its moral progress. For a long time the ascent of man, which can be interpreted as the constructive evolution of his mind and soul was associated with the increase of wisdom, honesty, tolerance, kindliness, sympathy, compassion, altruism, good will, respect for truth, and the like. However, the current century witnessed the greatest rejection of these tendencies and consequently became the bloodiest of the twenty-five centuries of recorded history. Taking these facts into consideration, it becomes difficult to state with assurance whether, in general, there has been any progressive evolution of the human soul during the five thousand years of recorded history.

    The present attempt to discuss this subject and to recognize some orderly and progressive general trends, in spite of the discouraging and chaotic contemporary evidence, must be preceded by certain explanatory remarks.

    The term “soul” will be used in this discussion to designate the highest, potentially immortal component of human personality. It is this part of our conscious being which reacts to such factors as respect for truth, compassion, good will, forgiveness tolerance, love, and the like. So long as this is the case, the term ran not be identified with the term intellect.

    In both literature and life we can easily find examples of simple, uneducated human beings with, nevertheless, highly refined and developed souls, who feel clearly and react unmistakably to the above mentioned higher factors of life. As a rule, this is connected with active religious faith. On the other hand, in life as well as in the works of great authors, we find cases where high intellect and extensive learning are combined with a crude soul which may be below that of a caveman, and may, in some cases, descend to the level of a beast. In fact, the Russian expression “soulless” may be significantly closer to reality than what is usually assumed and yet such characteristics may well be combined with a strong intellect and great learning.

    https://sikorskyarchives.com/home/igor-sikorsky/his-philosophy/evolution-of-the-soul/

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Bashibuzuk


    On the other hand, in life as well as in the works of great authors, we find cases where high intellect and extensive learning are combined with a crude soul which may be below that of a caveman, and may, in some cases, descend to the level of a beast.
     
    or: What good is a high IQ if you don't use it for good purposes? Haven't we all known at least one bumbling stumbling "genius" lost in chaotic thought searching half the day for his reading glasses?

    Replies: @S1

  571. @Coconuts
    @songbird


    unironically, these horrible freaks have filled me with hope, as I believe that nothing so ugly can last forever. Actuarially, I would not even expect these people to have a long lifespan, due to their BMI, mental illness and lifestyle.
     
    I think they are angry about the support for Le Pen and the RN and it is triggering them into making ostentatious culture wars demonstrations like this.

    It seems like it was too overtly dysgenic to have much real appeal though. Over time it's possible that the LGBT progressives will end up squashed between the RN voting block and the Muslim heritage cultural block.

    Replies: @songbird

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    https://www.reddit.com/r/Scholar/comments/1efopvb/article_is_nose_picking_associated_with_the/

    , @Coconuts
    @songbird

    Thanks for that link, the usual suspects. I know Phillippe de Villiers is one of the more prominent French royalists, I had forgotten about his historical theme park though (it seems like it has been successful for some time). The China angle is interesting, that they were interested in counter signaling that at the same time as the more traditional targets.

    Replies: @songbird

  572. @LondonBob
    @YetAnotherAnon

    Interested to see where the offensive stops, at the borders of the Donbass?

    Replies: @YetAnotherAnon

    I think the whole Black Sea coast will be a potential target. But if there was a prospect of real demilitarisation (unlikely IMHO) they might stop at Donbass, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia Oblast and one other they’ve already claimed.

  573. @songbird
    @Coconuts

    Thought this article was interesting:
    https://www.bvoltaire.fr/linverse-du-puy-du-fou-revelations-sur-la-ceremonie-douverture-des-jo/

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Coconuts

    • Thanks: songbird
  574. AP says:
    @Sean
    @AP

    Supply Ukraine with the weapons permission and intel for devastating strikes on the Russian army, and you will see Putin just sit there at take repeated decimation of his forces, because he is too scared of the US.

    Or, maybe he would think dramatic escalation was an existential necessity. The people in Washington, who know far more than anyone on here, are not looking to find out what Putin would do if he believed he was losing.

    At one point US weapons and intel were being used to kill a Russian general every other week. The US stopped doing that, prolly because they had indications the Russians were at the end of their tether, and might hit back against US satellite surveillance or flights. No, the restrictions are not ridiculous at all.

    Replies: @AP, @QCIC

    Supply Ukraine with the weapons permission and intel for devastating strikes on the Russian army, and you will see Putin just sit there at take repeated decimation of his forces, because he is too scared of the US.

    Or, maybe he would think dramatic escalation was an existential necessity. The people in Washington, who know far more than anyone on here, are not looking to find out what Putin would do if he believed he was losing.

    Three problems with your reasoning:

    1. Most others, from both within the USA and from allied countries, with access to the same information as the Biden administration, want a stronger policy against Russia and oppose the ridiculous limitations on weapons usage demanded by the weak-on-Russia Biden administration.

    2. The Biden Administration is and has been weak across the board, towards entities such as Iran, Taliban, etc. that do not have nuclear capabilities. It is soft towards all of America’s rivals.

    3. Various supposed red lines have repeatedly been crossed (eventually) without the escalation feared by the Biden administration.

    :::::::::

    These suggest that the real issue is the Biden administration’s global policy of weakness and not a realistic threat of nuke use by Russia.

    But given the Biden administration’s weakness, we can expect Russia to continue to make threats either overtly or through diplomatic channels. They work on the Biden administration, so why not?

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @AP

    You sure are eager to kill people.

    American foreign policy makes no sense and the entire world knows it. The US border/immigration policy is outrageous by any standard for any reasonable country ever. Therefore the leadership of the US is either insane or co-opted by outside forces.

    Replies: @AP

    , @A123
    @AP


    2. The Biden Administration is and has been weak across the board, towards entities such as Iran, Taliban, etc. that do not have nuclear capabilities. It is soft towards all of America’s rivals.
     
    I concur with this observation.

    The current White House occupant is also soft on the CCP. Look at the "car tariff" that would only impact products that are not imported from China. Venezuela is another good example of softness.

    To grasp "Biden foreign policy", first understand that his family is taking bribes. Figure out how the Big Guy is getting his 10% and one can make guesses. The core reason for unpredictably is, in some cases, he has taken money from those with opposing agendas.


    These suggest that the real issue is the Biden administration’s global policy of weakness and not a realistic threat of nuke use by Russia.
     
    These two things are not mutually exclusive. Replace the Veggie-In-Chief with a strong anti-Russian voice and WW III risk would likely still prevent action as you would like.

    The election does not seem to offer upside for Kiev aggression:
        • Trump does not consider Russia a rival.
        • Harris might continue weak rivalry.

    Remember Harris has not (to public knowledge) received money from Burisma. She might be much weaker than Biden until she gets her 10%.


    PEACE 😇

    , @Greasy William
    @AP

    That's how the Israeli leadership is. Bibi and the IDF certainly aren't pro Palestinian, pro Lebanon or pro Iran but they are just exceptionally weak. People don't believe me when I say that the Israeli leadership did not to want to retaliate for 10/7, only being forced to against their own will do to public opinion, but anyone who actually follows Israeli politics knows that it is true.

    All the Western states have the same affliction: weak, cowardly and faithless leadership.

    Replies: @A123

    , @Sean
    @AP


    Various supposed red lines have repeatedly been crossed (eventually) without the escalation feared by the Biden administration.
     
    I certainly do not think there is any sort of principle or honour behind the Russian reactions or the lack of them so far, it is based on what they consider to be the least risky way to attain their objectives. Apoplectic two tits for one tat way to US help for Ukraine would be counter productive as long as they are winning--or at least think they are.

    And yes so far Putin has been a pussycat; in my opinion that inaction is because the real red line of Russia is losing in Ukraine and Biden is not giving Ukraine remotely enough arms to win. Ceasing to think they are winning would be a watershed in Kremlin thinking because they would have to do something risky. Or just back down like Khrushchev did ... although Cuba Crisis happened when the USSR had no capability to annihilate US cities.

    Brezhnev changed all that and put everything into making the Soviet ICBM forces essentially equivalent to the American ones not necessarily in counterforce but in ability to level cities. And Russia retains that capability today. Khrushchev was deposed largely for backing down and Putin would be too. Anyway, with or without Putin at its head, if Russia was to withdraw from Ukraine no one would ever take it or its enormously expensive thermonuclear weapons seriously again. They might as well scrap them.

    Replies: @AP, @Emil Nikola Richard, @Derer

  575. @Sean
    @AP

    Supply Ukraine with the weapons permission and intel for devastating strikes on the Russian army, and you will see Putin just sit there at take repeated decimation of his forces, because he is too scared of the US.

    Or, maybe he would think dramatic escalation was an existential necessity. The people in Washington, who know far more than anyone on here, are not looking to find out what Putin would do if he believed he was losing.

    At one point US weapons and intel were being used to kill a Russian general every other week. The US stopped doing that, prolly because they had indications the Russians were at the end of their tether, and might hit back against US satellite surveillance or flights. No, the restrictions are not ridiculous at all.

    Replies: @AP, @QCIC

    As the SMO drags on, gradually more leaders in Russia will accept a dramatic escalation, so the West should be progressively more cautious.

    The support for this view is that over time, Western statements and actions show this is not merely an anti-Putin project or simply a misguided pro-Ukraine project. It becomes clear to all that it is fundamentally an anti-Russia project being waged for no reasons other than hate, power lust and greed. This recognition weakens pro-Western factions still lurking inside Russian circles of power and who may resist escalation. This could cause the kind of political soul-searching that Bashibuzuk dreams of.

  576. S1 says:

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-floats-bizarre-assassination-revenge-124016233.html

    “If they do ‘assassinate President Trump,’ which is always a possibility, I hope that America obliterates Iran, wipes it off the face of the Earth,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “If that does not happen, American Leaders will be considered ‘gutless’ cowards!”

    Trump floats bizarre assassination revenge fantasy on Truth Social

    Former President Donald Trump called for swift revenge in a hypothetical Iranian attack on him, years after he enflamed tensions in the region in an assassination that a UN official called extrajudicial.

    Responding to Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that Iran “brazenly threatened to assassinate” him, Trump wished “that America obliterates Iran” if he were assassinated.

    The claim, stemming from Secret Service reports that Iran may have plotted against Trump, was made by the Israeli Prime Minister on Wednesday.

    “Iran’s regime has been fighting America from the moment it came to power,” Netanyahu said in his congressional address. “As we recently learned, they even brazenly threatened to assassinate President Trump,” he added.

    Netanyahu, who falsely claimed that Iran paid to organize pro-Palestinian demonstrations within the United States during the address, garnered cheers for the name-drop, hours before he is set to meet with the former president.

    Trump, who in 2020 ordered the killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, ran with Netanyahu’s claim of the Iranian plot, wishing for revenge were they to assassinate him.

    “If they do ‘assassinate President Trump,’ which is always a possibility, I hope that America obliterates Iran, wipes it off the face of the Earth,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “If that does not happen, American Leaders will be considered ‘gutless’ cowards!”

    Trump’s revenge promise in case of a hypothetical strike on his life comes weeks after a real attempt on his life, one with ties not to Iran but to a 20-year-old Pennsylvania resident who espoused conservative, pro-Trump views in the past.

    Though Secret Service protection on Trump was boosted following reports of an Iranian plot against Trump, that plan had no connection to Thomas Matthew Crooks’s shooting.

  577. @AP
    @Sean


    Supply Ukraine with the weapons permission and intel for devastating strikes on the Russian army, and you will see Putin just sit there at take repeated decimation of his forces, because he is too scared of the US.

    Or, maybe he would think dramatic escalation was an existential necessity. The people in Washington, who know far more than anyone on here, are not looking to find out what Putin would do if he believed he was losing.
     

    Three problems with your reasoning:

    1. Most others, from both within the USA and from allied countries, with access to the same information as the Biden administration, want a stronger policy against Russia and oppose the ridiculous limitations on weapons usage demanded by the weak-on-Russia Biden administration.

    2. The Biden Administration is and has been weak across the board, towards entities such as Iran, Taliban, etc. that do not have nuclear capabilities. It is soft towards all of America’s rivals.

    3. Various supposed red lines have repeatedly been crossed (eventually) without the escalation feared by the Biden administration.

    :::::::::

    These suggest that the real issue is the Biden administration’s global policy of weakness and not a realistic threat of nuke use by Russia.

    But given the Biden administration’s weakness, we can expect Russia to continue to make threats either overtly or through diplomatic channels. They work on the Biden administration, so why not?

    Replies: @QCIC, @A123, @Greasy William, @Sean

    You sure are eager to kill people.

    American foreign policy makes no sense and the entire world knows it. The US border/immigration policy is outrageous by any standard for any reasonable country ever. Therefore the leadership of the US is either insane or co-opted by outside forces.

    • Replies: @AP
    @QCIC

    No, you are the one who lusts for blood. You just express it in a contrarian way, making the victim into the aggressor. It’s a mentality seen in certain criminals. Hopefully you keep it limited to online discussions and are harmless IRL.

    Replies: @QCIC

  578. Where is AaronB?

    Ainu

    [MORE]


    h/t Dmitry

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Torna atrás

    In Joseph Campbell Bill Moyers Power of Myth they have great footage of Ainu bear ceremony.

  579. A123 says: • Website
    @AP
    @Sean


    Supply Ukraine with the weapons permission and intel for devastating strikes on the Russian army, and you will see Putin just sit there at take repeated decimation of his forces, because he is too scared of the US.

    Or, maybe he would think dramatic escalation was an existential necessity. The people in Washington, who know far more than anyone on here, are not looking to find out what Putin would do if he believed he was losing.
     

    Three problems with your reasoning:

    1. Most others, from both within the USA and from allied countries, with access to the same information as the Biden administration, want a stronger policy against Russia and oppose the ridiculous limitations on weapons usage demanded by the weak-on-Russia Biden administration.

    2. The Biden Administration is and has been weak across the board, towards entities such as Iran, Taliban, etc. that do not have nuclear capabilities. It is soft towards all of America’s rivals.

    3. Various supposed red lines have repeatedly been crossed (eventually) without the escalation feared by the Biden administration.

    :::::::::

    These suggest that the real issue is the Biden administration’s global policy of weakness and not a realistic threat of nuke use by Russia.

    But given the Biden administration’s weakness, we can expect Russia to continue to make threats either overtly or through diplomatic channels. They work on the Biden administration, so why not?

    Replies: @QCIC, @A123, @Greasy William, @Sean

    2. The Biden Administration is and has been weak across the board, towards entities such as Iran, Taliban, etc. that do not have nuclear capabilities. It is soft towards all of America’s rivals.

    I concur with this observation.

    The current White House occupant is also soft on the CCP. Look at the “car tariff” that would only impact products that are not imported from China. Venezuela is another good example of softness.

    To grasp “Biden foreign policy”, first understand that his family is taking bribes. Figure out how the Big Guy is getting his 10% and one can make guesses. The core reason for unpredictably is, in some cases, he has taken money from those with opposing agendas.

    These suggest that the real issue is the Biden administration’s global policy of weakness and not a realistic threat of nuke use by Russia.

    These two things are not mutually exclusive. Replace the Veggie-In-Chief with a strong anti-Russian voice and WW III risk would likely still prevent action as you would like.

    The election does not seem to offer upside for Kiev aggression:
        • Trump does not consider Russia a rival.
        • Harris might continue weak rivalry.

    Remember Harris has not (to public knowledge) received money from Burisma. She might be much weaker than Biden until she gets her 10%.

    PEACE 😇

  580. @QCIC
    @AP

    You sure are eager to kill people.

    American foreign policy makes no sense and the entire world knows it. The US border/immigration policy is outrageous by any standard for any reasonable country ever. Therefore the leadership of the US is either insane or co-opted by outside forces.

    Replies: @AP

    No, you are the one who lusts for blood. You just express it in a contrarian way, making the victim into the aggressor. It’s a mentality seen in certain criminals. Hopefully you keep it limited to online discussions and are harmless IRL.

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @AP

    I am against nuclear war and World War 3. I think the factions you align with willfully support both of these possibilities. I understand you believe these are modest risks worth taking. I think the risk is significant and your cause is misguided, so I see you as bloodthirsty. I point out that a lot of people will die to unravel this mess your factions have created, but that doesn't mean I like it.

    Since I am a realist I accept that a crushing amount of deaths may occur on both sides in this process. I hope a better option turns up to save lives and restore peace, but I accept this may not happen voluntarily. The West and Ukraine recognized the dangers and ignored them, though for different reasons. The leaders of the West downplay much of the risk because they don't care if most of the Slavs die since they don't see much difference between Russians or Ukrainians. The Ukies embraced the risks because of power lust and gullibility.

  581. @AP
    @ShortOnTime


    So how many Protestants were there in the 15th century (before 1500) during the reign of Vlad III in Wallachia?
     
    Huss whom you probably never heard of unless the Russians wrote something about him (you are ignorant that way) was a proto-Protestant but his followers could easily count as them.

    Some Hussites found their way to the Balkans (Moldova) but I haven't read about Vlad impaling any of them. He did, however, pledge to fight against them.

    The vast majority of the impaled were Muslims (aside from some Wallachian boyars and possibly a few Transylvanian Saxon-German Catholics)
     
    He mostly burned German-Saxon Catholics when he razed their towns, rather than impaled them. Though he also had Saxon captives impaled.

    Did you dishonestly imply something else, like that he didn't kill large numbers of Christians?

    Replies: @Beckow, @ShortOnTime

    Huss whom you probably never heard of unless the Russians wrote something about him (you are ignorant that way) was a proto-Protestant but his followers could easily count as them.

    Some Hussites found their way to the Balkans (Moldova) but I haven’t read about Vlad impaling any of them. He did, however, pledge to fight against them.

    He mostly burned German-Saxon Catholics when he razed their towns, rather than impaled them. Though he also had Saxon captives impaled.

    Did you dishonestly imply something else, like that he didn’t kill large numbers of Christians?

    Again, this is exactly why there’s no point in having any discussions with you.

    It always leads to dumbing things down to banalities like (in this case) whether 15th century Czech/Bohemian Hussites count as Protestants or whether a few dozen, few hundred or few thousand nobles and merchants (and some peasants and beggars) is “a large number” of impaled or not.

    To be clear, Hussites usually aren’t considered as Protestants and only the followers of Martin Luther from 1521 AD onwards (and all the since fragmented sects) are considered as such. Compared to tens of thousands of Muslims, no more than a few thousand Wallachians at most (many of the boyars/nobles were collaborators with the Ottoman Empire) and a few dozens of Saxon merchants over many years doesn’t really count as “large numbers” (it’s also not an issue of denying whether Vlad III impaled some Christians here and there since nobody denies that).

    Unsympathetic accounts:

    https://www.nbcnews.com/sciencemain/vlad-impaler-real-dracula-was-absolutely-vicious-8c11505315

    https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/502283/when-vlad-impaler-repelled-invasion-forest-corpses

    Some accounts where it becomes more understandable why Vlad III would resort to impalements and scorched earth tactics:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_attack_at_T%C3%A2rgovi%C8%99te

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impalement#Ottoman_Empire

    • Agree: A123
    • Replies: @A123
    @ShortOnTime

    I agree. Trying to argue with Ukie Maximalists is well nigh futile.

    It is quite clear that Kiev/Hamas engaged in provocative aggression. Russians and Palestinian Jews are engaged in limited SMO's as a response. Ukiewood/Pallywood propaganda lacks credibility. And, it really cannot impact the facts on the ground.

    The extremists also lack as sense of hunour.

     
    https://memeguy.com/photos/images/vlad-interior-design-213189.jpg
     

    PEACE 😇

    , @AP
    @ShortOnTime


    It always leads to dumbing things down to banalities like (in this case) whether 15th century Czech/Bohemian Hussites count as Protestants or whether a few dozen, few hundred or few thousand nobles and merchants (and some peasants and beggars) is “a large number” of impaled or not.
     
    With your type, it is always ultimately about you.

    In this case, you "dumb things down to banalities" because the point wasn't about impalings specifically but the fact that Vlad Tepes killed large numbers of Christians. Whether he burned them or impaled them is a triviality. Though in your ignorance you are wrong even when it comes to that:

    and a few dozens of Saxon merchants over many years doesn’t really count as “large numbers
     
    He killed far more Saxon Christians than that.

    https://www.medievalists.net/2023/02/crime-and-punishment-in-the-reign-of-vlad-the-impaler/

    After failing to convince the Saxons to stop aiding these two, Vlad crossed into Transylvania after Easter 1457, set fire to various villages, destroyed any opposition, and took many prisoners – men, women, young and old – and had them impaled in Wallachia.



    The two main Saxon towns, Hermannstadt/Sibiu and Kronstadt/Brașov, in revenge, started to infringe upon the commercial treaties, and they confiscated goods from Wallachian merchants and even executed some by impaling them. Hence, Vlad found himself again at war with the Saxons at the beginning of 1459. He called back his merchants from Transylvania and started punishing and impaling the Saxon merchants in Wallachia and confiscating their goods.

    At the beginning of May, Vlad crossed the border into Transylvania and started destroying villages, crops, and the outskirts of towns, and taking people prisoner. It is said that he had dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people impaled in front of Kronstadt, as a reminder of the wretched help they had given to his enemy. The looting was also great. Other sources mention whole villages massacred – people “cut like cabbage” – and other prisoners beheaded or taken to Wallachia and impaled there.

    To be clear, Hussites usually aren’t considered as Protestants
     
    Which is why I correctly referred to him as a proto-Protestant.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ, @ShortOnTime

  582. @Bashibuzuk
    @Mr. Hack

    https://youtu.be/KHbzSif78qQ?si=60CoHh2nD31EnSfY

    🙂

    Also:


    The subject of this series of lectures belongs to the most important questions which a man can face in this life. It is interrelated with our ideas about the ascent of man, and the meaning of his existence in the stupendous universe which outwardly appears to be so indifferent, not to say hostile to our grade of life. The subject assumes a particular significance in our turbulent epoch of tragedy and disappointment.

    The character of the recent turn of events has been well defined by Prof. Sorokin in the powerful lines! “At the present time neither the innocence of children nor the white locks of venerable old age nor the tenderness of girls and women is spared. If anything, they are the main victims of war, revolution, crime, and other forms of violence. The civilization that before 1914 boasted of its humanitarianism and sympathy, in contradistinction to the alleged cruelty and inhumanity of the Dark Ages, has degenerated into something so base and brutal that it exceeds the alleged cruelty of the barbarians. Reemerging during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in a spirit of humanitarianism, compassion, earthly wisdom, and noble aspiration, the sensate culture of the West has terminated this phase of its existence in a riot of sub-animalistic brutality and violence. No more complete and tragic bankruptcy could be imagined.”

    The French scientist, Descartes once stated, “In order to reach the truth it is necessary once in one’s life to put everything to doubt so far as possible. This rule seems to be very applicable to the discussion of the evolution of the soul in our tragic time.

    To begin with, nearly one half of mankind is not controlled by a materialistic ideology which de facto denies the very existence of a “human soul”. On the other hand, religiously minded observers who believe firmly in the existence of a potentially immortal human soul, may, in our time, question the reality of its moral progress. For a long time the ascent of man, which can be interpreted as the constructive evolution of his mind and soul was associated with the increase of wisdom, honesty, tolerance, kindliness, sympathy, compassion, altruism, good will, respect for truth, and the like. However, the current century witnessed the greatest rejection of these tendencies and consequently became the bloodiest of the twenty-five centuries of recorded history. Taking these facts into consideration, it becomes difficult to state with assurance whether, in general, there has been any progressive evolution of the human soul during the five thousand years of recorded history.

    The present attempt to discuss this subject and to recognize some orderly and progressive general trends, in spite of the discouraging and chaotic contemporary evidence, must be preceded by certain explanatory remarks.

    The term “soul” will be used in this discussion to designate the highest, potentially immortal component of human personality. It is this part of our conscious being which reacts to such factors as respect for truth, compassion, good will, forgiveness tolerance, love, and the like. So long as this is the case, the term ran not be identified with the term intellect.

    In both literature and life we can easily find examples of simple, uneducated human beings with, nevertheless, highly refined and developed souls, who feel clearly and react unmistakably to the above mentioned higher factors of life. As a rule, this is connected with active religious faith. On the other hand, in life as well as in the works of great authors, we find cases where high intellect and extensive learning are combined with a crude soul which may be below that of a caveman, and may, in some cases, descend to the level of a beast. In fact, the Russian expression “soulless” may be significantly closer to reality than what is usually assumed and yet such characteristics may well be combined with a strong intellect and great learning.
     
    https://sikorskyarchives.com/home/igor-sikorsky/his-philosophy/evolution-of-the-soul/

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    On the other hand, in life as well as in the works of great authors, we find cases where high intellect and extensive learning are combined with a crude soul which may be below that of a caveman, and may, in some cases, descend to the level of a beast.

    or: What good is a high IQ if you don’t use it for good purposes? Haven’t we all known at least one bumbling stumbling “genius” lost in chaotic thought searching half the day for his reading glasses?

    • Replies: @S1
    @Mr. Hack


    Haven’t we all known at least one bumbling stumbling “genius” lost in chaotic thought searching half the day for his reading glasses?
     
    Yes, I think we have all met an 'absent minded professor' type.

    As an aside, can't help but be reminded here of this infamous 1963 movie. :-D

    https://youtu.be/bewXLpN8wxc?si=gjQaLGZnk7fDJDhh
  583. @Torna atrás
    Where is AaronB?


    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Historical_expanse_of_Ainu.png


    Ainu



    https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQrbyQexUdloo0B08oViNbNs1QAW-vu05FBrg&usqp.jpg

    h/t Dmitry

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    In Joseph Campbell Bill Moyers Power of Myth they have great footage of Ainu bear ceremony.

    • Thanks: Torna atrás
  584. @German_reader
    @AnonfromTN

    There's too much self-righteousness and bitterness in your comments. You've got a point about the West's trajectory (something is indeed fundamtentally broken), also about Western delusions, hypocrisy, even brutality. But like many devotees of the "multipolar world order" (which in principle might possibly be a good thing, or at least something that it would be foolish to try to prevent with military means, sanctions etc.) you never acknowledge even the tiniest bit of darkness on the side you favour. You write about freedoms being suppressed in the West (quite correctly), but iirc a few weeks ago you were enthused about Russia's increasingly close ties with North Korea, a totalitarian dystopia if ever there was one. And of course even in Russia herself repression is still a lot more blatant and brutal than anything seen in the West. So despite all your intelligence (being an accomplished scientist you're probably the commenter here with the highest IQ) and cosmopolitan experiences, maybe you're not that different from the fanatical Westerners you deride, you just believe different propaganda narratives and block out any inconvenient facts.
    And this


    My condolences to everyone reasonable who happens to be caught in this wreck, but the only way or saving yourself and your family is getting out of it.
     
    is just horrible advice.

    Still, I wish you all the best. I have profited from your perspective as someone with ties to the Donbass, that's something one doesn't encounter in Western MSM, and it was indeed a useful counter-weight to some other commenters here.

    Replies: @Torna atrás, @AP, @A123, @Dmitry, @Derer

    AnonfromTN doesn’t seem exactly bitter. Notice he’s probably posting in a good mood most days, as he is usually writing in a polite way. The theory of the “decaying West” is the most mainstream prophecy for his generation, it was part of being “well adjusted” for the society of his generation.

    Also, I don’t think he will abandon us too many weeks. We probably just need to talk more about Stanisław Lem or something relevant for his interests.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Dmitry


    AnonfromTN doesn’t seem exactly bitter.
     
    Probably depends on one how interprets his confident predictions that Russia will be able to "re-format" (or whatever the euphemism is) Ukraine...seems to me they spring from a profound bitterness, as do his anti-Western jeremiads. Of course the fundamental question not just regarding him, but Western-Russian relations in general is whether that bitterness was inevitable, or if it could have been avoided or mitigated with different policies. But unfortunately that's a pretty hypothetical question by now.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Dmitry

  585. S1 says:

    A few years old but still applicable.

    God, self-fulfilling prophecy, or, something else?

    https://israel365news.com/310810/war-gog-magog-happening-eyes-middle-east-europe-says-rabbi/

    “Leaders will destroy their nations, and nations will destroy their leaders over this situation,” the rabbi predicted…But the end result of all this strife is closer, and more rewarding, than anyone can imagine: Messiah.

    Middle East, Europe Will Be Swallowed in War of Gog and Magog, Warns Mystic Rabbi

    Just a few days prior to the Jewish New Year, Rabbi Nir Ben Artzi, a noted kabbalist with thousands of followers in Israel, has revealed a divine redemptive plan for the world which will see Europe overrun with Muslims, Syria’s chaos spilling into the West, the US elections spelling disaster for American Jews, and Israel’s importance becoming greater than ever.

    But the end result of all this strife is closer, and more rewarding, than anyone can imagine: Messiah.

    “Everyone is ready, waiting for the public revelation of the Messiah!” the rabbi last week began a post on his webpage. “Everyone understands and knows that the Messiah is active right now,” he wrote, noting that all of the world events this year are merely preludes hinting at what will come.

    Rabbi Ben Artzi, an Israeli rabbi who gained followers after rumors began to circulate of his prescient abilities in his youth, warned of the impending messianic war of Gog and Magog, which he said is a part of a spiritual process becoming clearly visible in the Middle East.

    “God is creating Gog and Magog, a situation of tohu vavohu (unformed and void, confusion) in the entire world, in order that the Jews will understand that there is Redemption and Messiah, and that it is God protecting the Holy Land,” the rabbi said.

    [MORE]

    (cont.)

    The chaos of the coming redemptive war is already spreading, he continued, pointing to Syria as evidence and predicting that it is just the beginning.

    “Syria will continue to be wiped out. It is a wasteland, harming countries who try to intervene there,” he said, explaining that America and Russia would end up getting burned by their interference in the quagmire. “They are only engaged in blowing it up entirely, harming themselves in the process.

    “Even Syria is intent on killing itself. In the end it will be a wasteland that grows, affecting everyone who comes near.”

    The rabbi quoted Psalms to describe what is happening now in Syria:

    Their sword shall enter into their own heart, and their bows shall be broken. Psalms 37:15

    “Leaders will destroy their nations, and nations will destroy their leaders over this situation,” the rabbi predicted, noting that the crisis is already threatening to engulf neighboring Turkey.

    Indeed, claiming humanitarian intent, the world’s superpowers have only succeeded in creating more destruction in Syria and bringing their own countries closer to war. The situation has already led to confrontations between Turkey, a NATO member and US ally, and Russia, with a resurrected and aggressive military.

    The war will have massive and terrifying international implications, including refugee crises, Rabbi Ben Artzi continued, warning that the Syrian refugee situation in Europe today is only a small prelude to what will be. He predicted that a revolution in Turkey would send “tens of millions” of refugees from the Muslim country to Europe.

    Then, he said, “Europe will become a Muslim continent and people will flee from there like from a fire.”

    The ongoing Islamification of Europe is already a critical issue faced by European leaders who, after welcoming hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees into their countries last year, saw a shocking spike in radical Islam and terror attacks. Bombings, stabbings and shootings left hundreds dead across the continent.

    Rabbi Ben Artzi also touched on the US presidential elections in his talk, including an unusual warning to American Jews.

    “In the upcoming elections it is important to remember that the next president will be the one that God chooses,” he insisted. “They can say what they want, do what they can, but the one who will be elected is the one who loves the Jews in Israel but hates the Jews in America. That is the big surprise that will happen.”

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @S1

    A few months ago Greasy William said we were all going to be finalized already now.

    Now he is a dummkopf but the guy in your link is also probably so.

    I am overdue to bug Unz again about his red heifer goofs.

    Replies: @Greasy William

  586. Did not realize Maduro was claiming Sephardic ancestry (half?)
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicol%C3%A1s_Maduro

  587. @S1
    A few years old but still applicable.

    God, self-fulfilling prophecy, or, something else?

    https://israel365news.com/310810/war-gog-magog-happening-eyes-middle-east-europe-says-rabbi/

    “Leaders will destroy their nations, and nations will destroy their leaders over this situation,” the rabbi predicted...But the end result of all this strife is closer, and more rewarding, than anyone can imagine: Messiah.

    Middle East, Europe Will Be Swallowed in War of Gog and Magog, Warns Mystic Rabbi

    Just a few days prior to the Jewish New Year, Rabbi Nir Ben Artzi, a noted kabbalist with thousands of followers in Israel, has revealed a divine redemptive plan for the world which will see Europe overrun with Muslims, Syria’s chaos spilling into the West, the US elections spelling disaster for American Jews, and Israel’s importance becoming greater than ever.

    But the end result of all this strife is closer, and more rewarding, than anyone can imagine: Messiah.

    “Everyone is ready, waiting for the public revelation of the Messiah!” the rabbi last week began a post on his webpage. “Everyone understands and knows that the Messiah is active right now,” he wrote, noting that all of the world events this year are merely preludes hinting at what will come.

    Rabbi Ben Artzi, an Israeli rabbi who gained followers after rumors began to circulate of his prescient abilities in his youth, warned of the impending messianic war of Gog and Magog, which he said is a part of a spiritual process becoming clearly visible in the Middle East.

    “God is creating Gog and Magog, a situation of tohu vavohu (unformed and void, confusion) in the entire world, in order that the Jews will understand that there is Redemption and Messiah, and that it is God protecting the Holy Land,” the rabbi said.
     

    (cont.)

    The chaos of the coming redemptive war is already spreading, he continued, pointing to Syria as evidence and predicting that it is just the beginning.

    “Syria will continue to be wiped out. It is a wasteland, harming countries who try to intervene there,” he said, explaining that America and Russia would end up getting burned by their interference in the quagmire. “They are only engaged in blowing it up entirely, harming themselves in the process.

    “Even Syria is intent on killing itself. In the end it will be a wasteland that grows, affecting everyone who comes near.”

    The rabbi quoted Psalms to describe what is happening now in Syria:

    Their sword shall enter into their own heart, and their bows shall be broken. Psalms 37:15

    “Leaders will destroy their nations, and nations will destroy their leaders over this situation,” the rabbi predicted, noting that the crisis is already threatening to engulf neighboring Turkey.

    Indeed, claiming humanitarian intent, the world’s superpowers have only succeeded in creating more destruction in Syria and bringing their own countries closer to war. The situation has already led to confrontations between Turkey, a NATO member and US ally, and Russia, with a resurrected and aggressive military.

    The war will have massive and terrifying international implications, including refugee crises, Rabbi Ben Artzi continued, warning that the Syrian refugee situation in Europe today is only a small prelude to what will be. He predicted that a revolution in Turkey would send “tens of millions” of refugees from the Muslim country to Europe.

    Then, he said, “Europe will become a Muslim continent and people will flee from there like from a fire.”

    The ongoing Islamification of Europe is already a critical issue faced by European leaders who, after welcoming hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees into their countries last year, saw a shocking spike in radical Islam and terror attacks. Bombings, stabbings and shootings left hundreds dead across the continent.

    Rabbi Ben Artzi also touched on the US presidential elections in his talk, including an unusual warning to American Jews.

    “In the upcoming elections it is important to remember that the next president will be the one that God chooses,” he insisted. “They can say what they want, do what they can, but the one who will be elected is the one who loves the Jews in Israel but hates the Jews in America. That is the big surprise that will happen.”
     

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    A few months ago Greasy William said we were all going to be finalized already now.

    Now he is a dummkopf but the guy in your link is also probably so.

    I am overdue to bug Unz again about his red heifer goofs.

    • LOL: S1
    • Replies: @Greasy William
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    wtf are you on about? I have been very clear that Moshiach won't come until October when C/2023 comes. Gog and Mag won't happen for another 3 years after that.

  588. Battle of the Nations
    Croatia United States

    [MORE]

    Scroll to 4:50 if you just want to see Coco Gauff have a cow.
    Am I unpatriotic for rooting for the white lady? : )

    This Olympics has been so dull I went and watched warhammer’s 400m hurdles from Tokyo again for like the 6th time. Medvedev is playing an Austrian guy in the worst possible time slot late. He is tagged an individual neutral athlete since he comes from the Evil Empire. The other evil empire. The evil empire that isn’t allowed to fly their flag or play their fight song in Paris.

  589. S1 says:
    @Mr. Hack
    @Bashibuzuk


    On the other hand, in life as well as in the works of great authors, we find cases where high intellect and extensive learning are combined with a crude soul which may be below that of a caveman, and may, in some cases, descend to the level of a beast.
     
    or: What good is a high IQ if you don't use it for good purposes? Haven't we all known at least one bumbling stumbling "genius" lost in chaotic thought searching half the day for his reading glasses?

    Replies: @S1

    Haven’t we all known at least one bumbling stumbling “genius” lost in chaotic thought searching half the day for his reading glasses?

    Yes, I think we have all met an ‘absent minded professor’ type.

    As an aside, can’t help but be reminded here of this infamous 1963 movie. 😀

  590. @Bashibuzuk
    @Dmitry


    I don’t know the Soviet science-fiction
     
    Дима, ты меня извини, но я тебе по-дружески замечу что с моей точки зрения это непростительное упущение. Мы с тобой понимаем что СССР не «только калоши производил», как об этом не так давно заявил ВВП. И нигде высокий (и не реализованный) потенциал советского проекта не проявлялся в такой полноте, в какой он проявился в советской фантастике. Именно поэтому, такие люди как Арестович со товарищи, торчат от Стругатских не смотря на то что они антисоветчики и руссофобы. Они понимают интеллектуальный уровень этого явления.

    https://youtu.be/Z1cgXZ40bcs?si=ICyC9JV0UJfyflAt

    Now, about Rogan. I think Rogan is a typical American guy with a nice attitude towards his guests and the society in general. I don’t think he would accept anyone describing him as a Marxist. He’s just a broad minded and quite talented podcast host.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    I’d like to read somethings. I remember AnonfromTN is also a fan of these writers. Maybe we could begin a reading circle. The last time I tried to start a reading circle here with Coconuts it was wasn’t very successful, although we were supposed to read sociological writers.

    About Rogan. He’s pretending to be stupid, the stereotypical “jock”, then when his guest open up, he often tries to make them promote his personal views, which are generally having a historical materialist perspective. He’s talented at slowly redirecting his guests until they developed his own views like a kind of outsourcing.

    See him trying to explain his theories and he even wants him to repeat his guest to repeat his solution of re-engineering humans to remove negative instincts, which could have been a solution in communism.
    1:51:00 – 2:05:00 https://youtu.be/5EOpplSyxN0?si=FOAErCTw7tkcDL_x&t=6644.

    • Replies: @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    The last time I tried to start a reading circle here with Coconuts it was wasn’t very successful, although we were supposed to read sociological writers.
     
    Yes, I remember I was trying to read a bad translation of Dialectic of Enlightenment. I think I should have invested in the more recent and readable one with the introduction and explanatory notes:

    There have been two English translations: the first by John Cumming (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972; reissues by Verso from 1979 reverse the order of the authors' names), and another, based on the definitive text from Horkheimer's collected works, by Edmund Jephcott (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002).
     
    The 1972 one is hard to read.
  591. @AP
    @Beckow


    20% chance that Trump would adopt the plan? Wow, you really have a low opinion of Trump’s instinct to read the situation realistically.
     
    You who insisted that Ukraine would fold in a month have no ability to judge what is realistic or not.

    the West is basically de-industrialized
     
    https://www.safeguardglobal.com/resources/top-10-manufacturing-countries-in-the-world-2023/

    Top 10 manufacturing countries in the world

    1. China – 28.4% Global Manufacturing Output
    2. United States – 16.6% Global Manufacturing Output
    3. Japan – 7.5% Global Manufacturing Output
    4. Germany – 5.8% Global Manufacturing Output
    5. India – 3.3% Global Manufacturing Output
    6. South Korea – 3% Global Manufacturing Output
    7. Italy – 2.3% Global Manufacturing Output
    8. France – 1.9% Global Manufacturing Output
    9. United Kingdom – 1.8% Global Manufacturing Output
    10. Indonesia – 1.4% Global Manufacturing Output

    Where is Russia on that list?

    USA has 1/4 of China's population but more than 1/2 of its manufacturing output.

    you can’t defeat Russia (or China) with software apps and high-quality cortados.
     
    USA makes more steel than Russia does. And about 12 times more cars:

    https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/car-production-by-country

    Replies: @Beckow, @Gerard1234

    You only reply to Beckow because you are a weirdo with zero life, access him as a serious threat to your spamtroll activities with his brilliant comments – and so use the pitiful lame trolling “techniques” that your account and your multitude of sockpuppet accounts use on about a million other websites to occupy your “life”.

    LMAO – Replying to this bimbo idiocy that yourself directed at Beckow:

    You who insisted that Ukraine would fold in a month have no ability to judge what is realistic or not.

    LMAO – but they did fold, in much less than a month you dumb, compulsive liar, sack of shit. Beckow was right

    They literally gave away the Crimean corridor, even significant parts of the right bank, the most important power station in 404 ( capture of it worth several cities), large section of north, most important part of Kharkov oblast for liberating Donbass ( which enabled us to have 99% of Lugansk liberated in very quick time), and half of Donetsk that we didn’t have. All while fighting at a hugely significant numerical disadvantage.

    Winter War – Key defensive line broken by Soviets, western powers can’t give additional help in time, rate of Finns getting slaughtered massively increasing……….so they sign a peace ( effectively a major surrender) and end the war.
    When they do get a western partner ( the Nazis) , then in joint military effort they restart war against Soviets

    Nazis vs France – Key defensive line broken, Britain can only give minimal help at the time, Paris and all the major cities safe……..France sign a surrender and end the war/Vichy France collaborate

    Nazis vs Poland – defensive lines broken, masses of Poles slaughtered in embarrassingly quick time, as soon as it becomes obvious that France and Britain were breaking their commitment and weren’t going to lift a finger to help them…….the dickhead Poles surrendered.

    Ukronazis vs Russia – defensive lines broken all across the country, including the key one into Kherson, masses of ukronazis slaughtered, large numbers of surrenders. All the conditions for a surrender with the pitiful , cowardly retard VSU and the billions invested in them exposed comprehensively…………….but then occurs massive amounts of western money, weapons, ongoing training in western countries, integrated,& realtime intelligence network, and millions of the population who can’t fight are allowed to get their dream and be allowed to live for free in Madrid, Rome, Paris, London, Switzerland, Germany, and then full-spectrum western apparatus propaganda brainwashing designed to attract maxiumum support for the least deserving of any country in history.

    Absolutely zero people expected the west to commit /sacrifice easily over 1 trillion dollars, to be this reckless, to blowup own pipeline , to support the war you dumb fuckhead. Its SOLELY because of the west this is continuing. So Beckow wasn’t wrong within the parameters of logic you dumb prick. The other sides in the previous examples at least showed some value for their own people lives.

    The west hoped to destroy Russian economy as method to end the war – FAILED

    The west hoped to have Ukrainians and Russians kill each other in equal amounts as with Nazis and Soviets, as with Syrian Government vs Rebels – FAILED, very one-sided kill ratio of Ukrainians

    The west hoped to test their weapons and tactics in battlefield conditions with negligible loss of their own lives ( except Poles again). They just needed a willing lemming/deathcult/prostitute Nazi state to be cannon fodder – SUCCEEDED

    No “heroism” from the failure deathcult team – they simply banned a large section of the population from leaving, and lied to them that the SMO was about to begin. The aim of the satanists to destroy as much of Donbass as possible , simply coincides with Russia aim of annihilating ukronazis there and liberating the territory. Again there is zero heroism from this from 404 losers – most shockingly shown by the Azov pussies in Mariupol.

    As in the previous examples – breakthrough of major defensive line guarantees large area of territory. Here in 404 , in one of the most intensively industrialised and white-populated urbanised areas on the planet………the Nazis have significant towns and cities AS the defensive line, the defensive circle itself! In a sane world, in history of war the fortifications are in advance of these populated areas…….here the satanism is that bad that the city is the fortification! Then in addition they have further conventional defensive lines between these well populated settlements

    Defensive line breakthroughs by our heroes in Donbass would have been enough to take more than half of Europe already you thick POS. That is the evil we are against – scum lying about wanting these territories and peoples in Donbass

    So why does a lowlife tramp as yourself lie about the 404 military so much?
    1. You have no other way to occupy your POS existence as somebody with no actual connection to Ukraine

    2. Khokhol military history is that embarrassing , for a fake country they have no choice but to invent fake military performance . Things are so embarassing that if the Vlasovites fought for Ukrainian independence………it would be songs, streets, towns, awards named after them in 404! It would be Vlasovites military actions taught in schools. With the masses and masses and masses of ukronazi freshly dug graves across the country it would be the Vlasovite flag ( ironically, the same as the current Russian one now) , placed next to the graves of about 10% of dead ukronazis, in place of the current Red & Black one UPA one.

    The reason? Because at least the Vlasovites fought against the Nazis to help liberate Prague. The military “history” of ukronazi independence is that limpwristed and non-existent the UPA couldn’t even attempt to fight for their “own” city of Lvov……….maybe because for them it was as foreign and unusual a place as Addis Ababa

    • Thanks: Derer
    • Replies: @sudden death
    @Gerard1234


    defensive lines broken all across the country, including the key one into Kherson
     
    Knowing the constant extreme Z-hallucinating regarding first days of war here, should be known that in reality there were zero reinforced defensive lines as land was demined and RF had 18x manpower advantage in Kherson/Crimean direction, so hardly that was some impressive or unexpected outcome:

    The Russian grouping "Z" in Crimea was composed of around 50 000 men from 2 armies, 49th and 58th CAA, without fortgeting 22nd army corp. At least they engaged more than 20 Battle Tactical Groups (BTGs), around 20 to 25 000 men. They had also ~12 landing ships.

    The Ukrainian grouping was composed of only 1 500 men. 175 were part of 137th separate Marine Bataillon from 36th Marine Brigade. They were tasked at 3 points, Chonhar, Chaplinka and Kalanchak border crossing. There was also part of the incomplete 59th Motorized Brigade with around 1 300 men. It was based in Radensk near the Oleshky sands. On february 23rd, the commander of Kherson grouping deployed this unit to their frontline positions.
    .......................
    Was the terrain mined?
    No, for a few reasons, around 2018, they demined everything, including the bridges to avoid people from being hurt. The minefield in the area where know by everybody.
    They tried to destroy bridges, only one was destroyed, near Henichesk.
    ………………..
    What saved ukrainien here is the fast reaction of 35th Marine Brigade, 28th mecanized brigade and 80th air assault which came to defend Mykolaiv, avoiding a direct attack on Odesa.
    17th tabk defended Krivi Rih direction before ukrainian reinforcments arrived.
    This defeat is the most important because in 2 days, they lost all Kherson and part of Zaporijia oblast.
     

    Also can't wait hearing your rightoeus condemnation of Soviet satanists because of inside city ruin fortifications named Stalingrad circa 1942 lol

    In a sane world, in history of war the fortifications are in advance of these populated areas…….here the satanism is that bad that the city is the fortification!
     

    https://twitter.com/clement_molin/status/1809210765120880872
  592. @Bashibuzuk
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Does higher IQ help with demographics?

    Or does it the opposite…

    If it doesn’t help the populations that on average enjoy a higher IQ ensure their ethnic and cultural survival, what are the tangible long term benefits of these populations enjoying a higher IQ ?

    They will die out. And their higher IQ will be buried with them.

    Besides, as AK has recently abundantly advertised, the supposed elite human capital (of the high IQ type) are often LGBTQ+. Which begs the question, if these people are unable to figure out how biological copulation works and what should be its natural function, then why should we give a flying fuck about their supposedly higher IQ ?

    Replies: @Coconuts, @Mr. Hack, @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Props on your four children.

    Confucian ethos promoted eugenic breeding by polygamy. It’s indifferent to homosexual activities so long as the family line is continued.

    Birth rates are an issue in East Asia, but underpopulation is not. The enormous upheavals that took place in Chinese history are related to overpopulation.

    What is the problem if South Korea only had the population of Switzerland?

  593. A123 says: • Website
    @ShortOnTime
    @AP


    Huss whom you probably never heard of unless the Russians wrote something about him (you are ignorant that way) was a proto-Protestant but his followers could easily count as them.

    Some Hussites found their way to the Balkans (Moldova) but I haven’t read about Vlad impaling any of them. He did, however, pledge to fight against them.

    He mostly burned German-Saxon Catholics when he razed their towns, rather than impaled them. Though he also had Saxon captives impaled.

    Did you dishonestly imply something else, like that he didn’t kill large numbers of Christians?
     

    Again, this is exactly why there's no point in having any discussions with you.

    It always leads to dumbing things down to banalities like (in this case) whether 15th century Czech/Bohemian Hussites count as Protestants or whether a few dozen, few hundred or few thousand nobles and merchants (and some peasants and beggars) is "a large number" of impaled or not.

    To be clear, Hussites usually aren't considered as Protestants and only the followers of Martin Luther from 1521 AD onwards (and all the since fragmented sects) are considered as such. Compared to tens of thousands of Muslims, no more than a few thousand Wallachians at most (many of the boyars/nobles were collaborators with the Ottoman Empire) and a few dozens of Saxon merchants over many years doesn't really count as "large numbers" (it's also not an issue of denying whether Vlad III impaled some Christians here and there since nobody denies that).

    Unsympathetic accounts:

    https://www.nbcnews.com/sciencemain/vlad-impaler-real-dracula-was-absolutely-vicious-8c11505315

    https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/502283/when-vlad-impaler-repelled-invasion-forest-corpses

    Some accounts where it becomes more understandable why Vlad III would resort to impalements and scorched earth tactics:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_attack_at_T%C3%A2rgovi%C8%99te

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impalement#Ottoman_Empire

    Replies: @A123, @AP

    I agree. Trying to argue with Ukie Maximalists is well nigh futile.

    It is quite clear that Kiev/Hamas engaged in provocative aggression. Russians and Palestinian Jews are engaged in limited SMO’s as a response. Ukiewood/Pallywood propaganda lacks credibility. And, it really cannot impact the facts on the ground.

    The extremists also lack as sense of hunour.

     

     

    PEACE 😇

    • Thanks: ShortOnTime
  594. @German_reader
    @AnonfromTN

    There's too much self-righteousness and bitterness in your comments. You've got a point about the West's trajectory (something is indeed fundamtentally broken), also about Western delusions, hypocrisy, even brutality. But like many devotees of the "multipolar world order" (which in principle might possibly be a good thing, or at least something that it would be foolish to try to prevent with military means, sanctions etc.) you never acknowledge even the tiniest bit of darkness on the side you favour. You write about freedoms being suppressed in the West (quite correctly), but iirc a few weeks ago you were enthused about Russia's increasingly close ties with North Korea, a totalitarian dystopia if ever there was one. And of course even in Russia herself repression is still a lot more blatant and brutal than anything seen in the West. So despite all your intelligence (being an accomplished scientist you're probably the commenter here with the highest IQ) and cosmopolitan experiences, maybe you're not that different from the fanatical Westerners you deride, you just believe different propaganda narratives and block out any inconvenient facts.
    And this


    My condolences to everyone reasonable who happens to be caught in this wreck, but the only way or saving yourself and your family is getting out of it.
     
    is just horrible advice.

    Still, I wish you all the best. I have profited from your perspective as someone with ties to the Donbass, that's something one doesn't encounter in Western MSM, and it was indeed a useful counter-weight to some other commenters here.

    Replies: @Torna atrás, @AP, @A123, @Dmitry, @Derer

    (saving yourself and your family is getting out of it.) is just horrible advice.

    I guess you agree with your “Micky mouse” fuhrer. Being delighted by the Ami yoke. Read between the lines…that yoke is against you, you would do much better free.

  595. Alas this has been waiting for approval by Steve for many hours. Nearly as bad as the Guardian, where the word Rwanda features not.

    Southport child killer (3 kids dead now, half a dozen others plus 2 teachers very bad) – the Rwanda rumours seem to be correct:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/29/southport-major-incident-stabbing-police/

    “The youth, who cannot be named for legal reasons and is originally from Cardiff, moved to the Southport area with his Rwandan parents when he was aged six.”

    • Replies: @songbird
    @YetAnotherAnon


    “The youth, who cannot be named for legal reasons and is originally from Cardiff, moved to the Southport area with his Rwandan parents when he was aged six.”
     
    Estimates I've seen are 15,000-20,000 Rwandans in the UK. (Possibly that doesn't include births.) One of them is a killer of children. Another has been arbitrarily elevated to the status of cultural icon.

    https://twitter.com/MorgothsReview/status/1817277687481897030
    , @S1
    @YetAnotherAnon

    Am very sorry to hear about the recent knife attack in the UK.

    What makes things even worse about events like this, if such were possible, is that it was quite clearly foreseen and understood long ago by the 'progressive' elites and hangers on pushing the uncontrolled 'mass immigration', that this very specific sort of thing would be the direct result...ie that some of the maladjusted descendants of the 'migrants' which had been imported in by diktat, would on occassion go on murderous 'random' stabbing rampages against their host population.

    They simply didn't care.

    The below excerpt is taken from an 1870 US fact/reference book which went through multiple editions during the 1870's, and was entitled One Hundred Years Progress of the United States. The section of the book this quote appeared in was called 'Marvels that our Grandchildren will See ', or, 'One Hundred Years Progress in the Future' and tells what life (and death as described here due to unexpected 'random' acts of ultraviolence) will be like in the future American cities of 1970.

    The New England publisher of this huge (and most likely quite expensive) book was kind enough to donate copies free of charge to numerous US universities, no doubt in part to influence young minds about what the progressive future outlined would hold for them, and more importantly, their descendants. This particular copy, still with its library card attached and located not surprisingly at that bastion of liberal progressivism, the University of California at Berkeley, was still being checked out by students there as late as 1977!

    For those who might not be aware, a 'kris' is a knife.


    https://archive.org/details/onehundredyearsp00flinrich/page/526/mode/1up

    'A stalwart Malay...is running amok, striking and stabbing with his gleaming kris every one in his way.'


    'A little farther on a crowd are gathered, who suddenly start and fly for their lives. A stalwart Malay, whose face is so malignant with all evil passions that it would make a capital study for Gustave Bor in his next picture of Satan, and who is maddened with vile liquor and opium has rushed out and is running amok, striking and stabbing with his gleaming kris every one in his way.'

    'Yet farther on the Hindoo, sleek, graceful, and eminently handsome in form and feature, but treacherous and deceitful, bows very humbly and obsequiously, but it would not surprise us to know, that in one of his fits of jealousy against Englishmen and Americans, he had assassinated some friend of ours to whom he had been equally obsequious and polite.'
     
    , @LondonBob
    @YetAnotherAnon

    France has suffered many similar attacks, memory holing still works, just about.

  596. @QCIC
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    52.5! Is this where the cannibals live?

    +++

    Some mathematical and theoretical economists are quite bright. However, I think most people in the West with degrees in economics are below average intelligence for college grads. Considering the economics PhD's, this is one of the fields were common sense and technical fluency may be uncorrelated or even anti-correlated.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    The original assertions was about someone’s IQ based on the fact that he’s a scientist.

    Mathematicians and economists have higher IQs on average than biologists, that’s simply empirical data.

    Mathematicians often don’t have high verbal intelligence and EQs, i.e. common sense. Agree on that.

    Economists often do have high verbal intelligence and EQs, such as Raj Chetty, Daron Acemoglu

    But econ is a social science masquerading as a hard science, so has to uphold obvious falsehoods like “race is a social construct”, regardless of empirical data.

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    I generally agree. As expected, the top people in any demanding field tend to be very bright, unless it is a field where high verbal intelligence can be used to scam one's peers!

    I don't know if mathematicians are actually low on common sense. This does seem to be the case for philosophers.

    In the USA, biology and economics undergrad degrees give little indication of the caliber of the student's mind. I think math and physics undergrad degrees can be taken mostly at face value, but I don't know about any other STEM degrees. There is some evidence that everything has been watered down.

    Replies: @A123, @Emil Nikola Richard, @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

  597. @AP
    @QCIC

    No, you are the one who lusts for blood. You just express it in a contrarian way, making the victim into the aggressor. It’s a mentality seen in certain criminals. Hopefully you keep it limited to online discussions and are harmless IRL.

    Replies: @QCIC

    I am against nuclear war and World War 3. I think the factions you align with willfully support both of these possibilities. I understand you believe these are modest risks worth taking. I think the risk is significant and your cause is misguided, so I see you as bloodthirsty. I point out that a lot of people will die to unravel this mess your factions have created, but that doesn’t mean I like it.

    Since I am a realist I accept that a crushing amount of deaths may occur on both sides in this process. I hope a better option turns up to save lives and restore peace, but I accept this may not happen voluntarily. The West and Ukraine recognized the dangers and ignored them, though for different reasons. The leaders of the West downplay much of the risk because they don’t care if most of the Slavs die since they don’t see much difference between Russians or Ukrainians. The Ukies embraced the risks because of power lust and gullibility.

  598. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @S1

    A few months ago Greasy William said we were all going to be finalized already now.

    Now he is a dummkopf but the guy in your link is also probably so.

    I am overdue to bug Unz again about his red heifer goofs.

    Replies: @Greasy William

    wtf are you on about? I have been very clear that Moshiach won’t come until October when C/2023 comes. Gog and Mag won’t happen for another 3 years after that.

  599. German_reader says:
    @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    AnonfromTN doesn't seem exactly bitter. Notice he's probably posting in a good mood most days, as he is usually writing in a polite way. The theory of the "decaying West" is the most mainstream prophecy for his generation, it was part of being "well adjusted" for the society of his generation.

    Also, I don't think he will abandon us too many weeks. We probably just need to talk more about Stanisław Lem or something relevant for his interests.

    Replies: @German_reader

    AnonfromTN doesn’t seem exactly bitter.

    Probably depends on one how interprets his confident predictions that Russia will be able to “re-format” (or whatever the euphemism is) Ukraine…seems to me they spring from a profound bitterness, as do his anti-Western jeremiads. Of course the fundamental question not just regarding him, but Western-Russian relations in general is whether that bitterness was inevitable, or if it could have been avoided or mitigated with different policies. But unfortunately that’s a pretty hypothetical question by now.

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @German_reader

    I think AnonfromTN has written off Ukraine for his lifetime, but probably hopes his kids can reconnect with roots there.

    , @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    AnonfromTN identifies with politically with Moscow, not with Kiev.

    So, when he is supporting Moscow's policy in Ukraine, or talking about the decaying West. He is actually like saying "My team is going to win".

    -

    When people are young, they are typically full of optimism and enthusiasm. When they become old, often political disillusionment.

    If he was originally from TN, USA AnonfromTN's comments about the West, could sound like a stereotypical disillusionment of some American old people.

    But AnonfromTN is from the USSR and he seems today politically more with Moscow. In this context and area of his views, he still has some of the faith of the society of his youth.*

    -

    *There's a popular example of Moscow's early 1980s descriptions on America, which isn't different than today. It begins describing the violent American internal culture, related to Halloween and the horror film genre.

    Then they relate the violent internal culture, to a violent external official policy related to interventionist or "gunboat diplomacy", the use of American soldiers in Lebanon and the loss of Lebanese and Palestinian lives.

    Then they relate to Washington's intervention in Nicaragua, Cuba, El Salvador, Grenada. They show internal protests in Washington against the deployment of nuclear weapons in Europe, viewing them as a threat of a new world war.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZeP9CePcOg

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

  600. @AP
    @Sean


    Supply Ukraine with the weapons permission and intel for devastating strikes on the Russian army, and you will see Putin just sit there at take repeated decimation of his forces, because he is too scared of the US.

    Or, maybe he would think dramatic escalation was an existential necessity. The people in Washington, who know far more than anyone on here, are not looking to find out what Putin would do if he believed he was losing.
     

    Three problems with your reasoning:

    1. Most others, from both within the USA and from allied countries, with access to the same information as the Biden administration, want a stronger policy against Russia and oppose the ridiculous limitations on weapons usage demanded by the weak-on-Russia Biden administration.

    2. The Biden Administration is and has been weak across the board, towards entities such as Iran, Taliban, etc. that do not have nuclear capabilities. It is soft towards all of America’s rivals.

    3. Various supposed red lines have repeatedly been crossed (eventually) without the escalation feared by the Biden administration.

    :::::::::

    These suggest that the real issue is the Biden administration’s global policy of weakness and not a realistic threat of nuke use by Russia.

    But given the Biden administration’s weakness, we can expect Russia to continue to make threats either overtly or through diplomatic channels. They work on the Biden administration, so why not?

    Replies: @QCIC, @A123, @Greasy William, @Sean

    That’s how the Israeli leadership is. Bibi and the IDF certainly aren’t pro Palestinian, pro Lebanon or pro Iran but they are just exceptionally weak. People don’t believe me when I say that the Israeli leadership did not to want to retaliate for 10/7, only being forced to against their own will do to public opinion, but anyone who actually follows Israeli politics knows that it is true.

    All the Western states have the same affliction: weak, cowardly and faithless leadership.

    • LOL: A123
    • Replies: @A123
    @Greasy William

    After the genocidal Hamas 10/7 attack -- The government could have launched a quick but weak, symbolic, and potentially reckless counter. Instead they showed strength by waiting, formulating a solid plan and, taking action in a fairly effective manner.

    The Israeli public concurs. Support for Netanyahu's willingness to do what needs to be done is growing over time. Those who would agree to a feckless cease-fire are sliding in the polls. (1)


    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is starting to regain his popularity after struggling politically for more than a year, out-polling main rival Benny Gantz for the first time since the war against Hamas started in October.

    A Channel 12 survey conducted on Wednesday of 500 voters representing a cross-section of Israeli society asked “Who is better suited to serve as prime minister?” It found 36% chose Netanyahu and 30% Gantz. The margin of error was 4.4%.

    Last month, Gantz was ahead 35% to 29%.

    In the new poll, Netanyahu was also ahead of opposition leader Yair Lapid by 37% to 30% and edged above former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett 34%-32%.
     

    Netanyahu's coalition fairly strong, despite occasional moments. Everyone following Israeli politics knows that this is true.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-30/netanyahu-s-popularity-on-the-rise-in-blow-to-israeli-rivals

    (no paywall) https://archive.is/5CZOK

    Replies: @Greasy William

  601. @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @QCIC

    The original assertions was about someone's IQ based on the fact that he's a scientist.

    Mathematicians and economists have higher IQs on average than biologists, that's simply empirical data.

    Mathematicians often don't have high verbal intelligence and EQs, i.e. common sense. Agree on that.

    Economists often do have high verbal intelligence and EQs, such as Raj Chetty, Daron Acemoglu

    But econ is a social science masquerading as a hard science, so has to uphold obvious falsehoods like "race is a social construct", regardless of empirical data.

    Replies: @QCIC

    I generally agree. As expected, the top people in any demanding field tend to be very bright, unless it is a field where high verbal intelligence can be used to scam one’s peers!

    I don’t know if mathematicians are actually low on common sense. This does seem to be the case for philosophers.

    In the USA, biology and economics undergrad degrees give little indication of the caliber of the student’s mind. I think math and physics undergrad degrees can be taken mostly at face value, but I don’t know about any other STEM degrees. There is some evidence that everything has been watered down.

    • Replies: @A123
    @QCIC

    The major engineering STEM programs are solid at universities that have been doing it for a while. What you design works or fails. There is little wiggle room to water things down.

    Some of the smaller & newer institutions are struggling. They need minimum class sizes for programs to continue. This is forcing them to be less selective. That combined with DEI is not a good mix.

    State laws are beginning to boot DEI from their University systems. This is not an instant fix, but one has to accept that a long journey begins with a single step.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @QCIC

    , @Emil Nikola Richard
    @QCIC

    Have you observed the schtick of Leopold Aschenbrenner yet?

    If not it is worth checking out in print. The video reveals the faggiest goddam thing you ever saw since the Bohemian Grove.

    Tyler Cowen has annointed him wunderkind of the subject of Economics.

    Tyler Cowen is an economist I mostly respect. It isn't his fault he is the ugliest man ever on the internet not named Weinstein. It is his fault that he puts his organism onto the internet.

    Replies: @QCIC

    , @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @QCIC

    Philosophers deal with fundamental questions so there's no reason that they need have common sense. But modern academic philosophy is basically sterile because they can't get around political correctness, post-modernism, Critical Race Theory, etc.

    Math and computing are more skill sets, required for all hard sciences and engineering domain. Whereas biology and medicine is more knowledge sets that's domain-specific.

    But the two are converging because life and social sciences adopted computational approaches

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

    Steve Hsu covers this alot since he pivoted from particle physics to genetics. There's not much more groundbreaking discoveries to be made in the former, but alot in the latter, using quantitative methods from physics.

    You even see this in political science doctoral programs where there's alot more math and programming required.

    https://politicalscience.stanford.edu/graduate-program/doctoral-program/doctoral-program-requirements

    Replies: @QCIC, @Emil Nikola Richard, @Torna atrás

  602. @German_reader
    @Dmitry


    AnonfromTN doesn’t seem exactly bitter.
     
    Probably depends on one how interprets his confident predictions that Russia will be able to "re-format" (or whatever the euphemism is) Ukraine...seems to me they spring from a profound bitterness, as do his anti-Western jeremiads. Of course the fundamental question not just regarding him, but Western-Russian relations in general is whether that bitterness was inevitable, or if it could have been avoided or mitigated with different policies. But unfortunately that's a pretty hypothetical question by now.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Dmitry

    I think AnonfromTN has written off Ukraine for his lifetime, but probably hopes his kids can reconnect with roots there.

  603. Russian Forces Making Rapid Advances + Kiev Has Just SIX Pilots Ready for F-16’s w/ Mark Sleboda

    Reminded of this scene –

  604. @Greasy William
    @QCIC

    Chabad is really their own thing. With the other Hasidic sects, the bulk are descended from the region of their rabbinical dynasties: Ger and Bobov are overwhelmingly descendants of Polish Jews and Satmar are descended from Hungarian Jews (which is why Satmar Jews usually don't have the facial features that commonly associated with Ashkenazic Jews, particularly the nose).

    But Chabad are totally different. Lot's of converts, mixed breeds and Baal Teshuvas. Lot's of Mizrahim as well. So they end up being the most modern in a lot of ways because they have so much outside energy pouring in. Also, whereas most hasidic groups are extremely insular, Chabad cannot be because of the ultra high premium it places on outreach.

    The comment that started this whole conversation also didn't mention anything about the Syrian Jews of NYC, who on the outside look Yeshivish but are actually very separate from the rest of the American Jewish world.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Torna atrás

    The comment that started this whole conversation also didn’t mention anything about the Syrian Jews of NYC, who on the outside look Yeshivish but are actually very separate from the rest of the American Jewish world

    He looked white when he was doing his show but Jerry Seinfeld is looking increasingly Levantine as he gets older.

  605. A123 says: • Website
    @Greasy William
    @AP

    That's how the Israeli leadership is. Bibi and the IDF certainly aren't pro Palestinian, pro Lebanon or pro Iran but they are just exceptionally weak. People don't believe me when I say that the Israeli leadership did not to want to retaliate for 10/7, only being forced to against their own will do to public opinion, but anyone who actually follows Israeli politics knows that it is true.

    All the Western states have the same affliction: weak, cowardly and faithless leadership.

    Replies: @A123

    After the genocidal Hamas 10/7 attack — The government could have launched a quick but weak, symbolic, and potentially reckless counter. Instead they showed strength by waiting, formulating a solid plan and, taking action in a fairly effective manner.

    The Israeli public concurs. Support for Netanyahu’s willingness to do what needs to be done is growing over time. Those who would agree to a feckless cease-fire are sliding in the polls. (1)

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is starting to regain his popularity after struggling politically for more than a year, out-polling main rival Benny Gantz for the first time since the war against Hamas started in October.

    A Channel 12 survey conducted on Wednesday of 500 voters representing a cross-section of Israeli society asked “Who is better suited to serve as prime minister?” It found 36% chose Netanyahu and 30% Gantz. The margin of error was 4.4%.

    Last month, Gantz was ahead 35% to 29%.

    In the new poll, Netanyahu was also ahead of opposition leader Yair Lapid by 37% to 30% and edged above former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett 34%-32%.

    Netanyahu’s coalition fairly strong, despite occasional moments. Everyone following Israeli politics knows that this is true.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-30/netanyahu-s-popularity-on-the-rise-in-blow-to-israeli-rivals

    (no paywall) https://archive.is/5CZOK

    • Replies: @Greasy William
    @A123

    Netanyahu sucks, he's done a horrible job managing the war and his political days are numbered. The people who support Bibi don't actually support Bibi at all, they just know that Gantz, Lapid and the IDF are even worse. At least Bibi's heart is in the right place, which is a lot more than you can say about any other major Israeli leader right now

  606. @AP
    @Beckow


    Jan Hus (spelled with a single ‘s’ means ‘goose’).
     
    His name is often Anglicized as Huss. The Ukrainian word for goose is a female version of the Czech- Huska.

    [Hus] was not yet a Protestant. He only wanted to cleanse the Catholic Church but never left it. But the Church burnt him as a heretic. His followers went in many different directions, from committed pietism to an early version of communitarian hedonism (nudists, free love…)
     
    Yes, I wrote that he "was a proto-Protestant but his followers could easily count as them [Protestants]."

    Hussites raided surrounding countries, but I am not sure they made it as far as Moldova, possibly
     
    Many of his followers ended up in Moldova, and a small number in Transylvania.

    https://rais.education/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/6.pdf

    So it would not be surprising if Vlad killed some of them. Short on Time wouldn't hear about it, he is rather ignorant.

    Replies: @Beckow

    His name is often Anglicized as Huss.

    Why Anglicize? It is redundant, we don’t rewrite English names, but it came through Latin. Colloquially husa is a young, not very smart girl, who is out to be hunted…:)

    Jan Hus had a safe conduct to present his views in Konstanz at the high Church Council. Predictably he was instead burnt to death. What is it about the West to lack honor, break promises, treaties, then walk away and claim that the ‘other side did it’?

    It is a huge problem and it only works as long as the West is totally dominant. That’s no longer the case, what now? How do you live without honor?

  607. A123 says: • Website
    @QCIC
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    I generally agree. As expected, the top people in any demanding field tend to be very bright, unless it is a field where high verbal intelligence can be used to scam one's peers!

    I don't know if mathematicians are actually low on common sense. This does seem to be the case for philosophers.

    In the USA, biology and economics undergrad degrees give little indication of the caliber of the student's mind. I think math and physics undergrad degrees can be taken mostly at face value, but I don't know about any other STEM degrees. There is some evidence that everything has been watered down.

    Replies: @A123, @Emil Nikola Richard, @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    The major engineering STEM programs are solid at universities that have been doing it for a while. What you design works or fails. There is little wiggle room to water things down.

    Some of the smaller & newer institutions are struggling. They need minimum class sizes for programs to continue. This is forcing them to be less selective. That combined with DEI is not a good mix.

    State laws are beginning to boot DEI from their University systems. This is not an instant fix, but one has to accept that a long journey begins with a single step.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @A123

    My experience with young electrical and mechanical engineers from solid schools is that it takes more people to get things done than in the past. There are exceptions and the "trend" could be unique to my situation, but I am not impressed.

    Ron has discussed the issue that some STEM slots in universities are reserved for DIE admits. This entails that qualified non-DIE kids end up in a less competitive program and after four years may be less well trained as a result.

    Replies: @A123

  608. @QCIC
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    I generally agree. As expected, the top people in any demanding field tend to be very bright, unless it is a field where high verbal intelligence can be used to scam one's peers!

    I don't know if mathematicians are actually low on common sense. This does seem to be the case for philosophers.

    In the USA, biology and economics undergrad degrees give little indication of the caliber of the student's mind. I think math and physics undergrad degrees can be taken mostly at face value, but I don't know about any other STEM degrees. There is some evidence that everything has been watered down.

    Replies: @A123, @Emil Nikola Richard, @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Have you observed the schtick of Leopold Aschenbrenner yet?

    If not it is worth checking out in print. The video reveals the faggiest goddam thing you ever saw since the Bohemian Grove.

    Tyler Cowen has annointed him wunderkind of the subject of Economics.

    Tyler Cowen is an economist I mostly respect. It isn’t his fault he is the ugliest man ever on the internet not named Weinstein. It is his fault that he puts his organism onto the internet.

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Leo is like a dumber Karlin.

  609. @A123
    @QCIC

    The major engineering STEM programs are solid at universities that have been doing it for a while. What you design works or fails. There is little wiggle room to water things down.

    Some of the smaller & newer institutions are struggling. They need minimum class sizes for programs to continue. This is forcing them to be less selective. That combined with DEI is not a good mix.

    State laws are beginning to boot DEI from their University systems. This is not an instant fix, but one has to accept that a long journey begins with a single step.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @QCIC

    My experience with young electrical and mechanical engineers from solid schools is that it takes more people to get things done than in the past. There are exceptions and the “trend” could be unique to my situation, but I am not impressed.

    Ron has discussed the issue that some STEM slots in universities are reserved for DIE admits. This entails that qualified non-DIE kids end up in a less competitive program and after four years may be less well trained as a result.

    • Replies: @A123
    @QCIC


    Ron has discussed the issue that some STEM slots in universities are reserved for DIE admits. This entails that qualified non-DIE kids end up in a less competitive program and after four years may be less well trained as a result.
     
    Of course, Ron is seeing California schools. North east schools should also draw suspicion.

    In terms of the South, there is either; No DIE requirement at the Engineering program level, or; They are meeting it with qualified Hispanics and Asians. Like you I do not know if I am seeing the exception or the trend, but IMHO it seems to be the latter. The budget numbers are not showing increases in avoidable errors.

    it takes more people to get things done than in the past
     
    That may not be the quality of the people.

    State and federal paperwork has become more cumbersome. Insurance firms are also much more needy than they used to be, presumably because of their own oversight bodies.

    PEACE 😇
  610. @YetAnotherAnon
    Alas this has been waiting for approval by Steve for many hours. Nearly as bad as the Guardian, where the word Rwanda features not.

    Southport child killer (3 kids dead now, half a dozen others plus 2 teachers very bad) – the Rwanda rumours seem to be correct:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/29/southport-major-incident-stabbing-police/

    “The youth, who cannot be named for legal reasons and is originally from Cardiff, moved to the Southport area with his Rwandan parents when he was aged six.”

    Replies: @songbird, @S1, @LondonBob

    “The youth, who cannot be named for legal reasons and is originally from Cardiff, moved to the Southport area with his Rwandan parents when he was aged six.”

    Estimates I’ve seen are 15,000-20,000 Rwandans in the UK. (Possibly that doesn’t include births.) One of them is a killer of children. Another has been arbitrarily elevated to the status of cultural icon.

    [MORE]

  611. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @QCIC

    Have you observed the schtick of Leopold Aschenbrenner yet?

    If not it is worth checking out in print. The video reveals the faggiest goddam thing you ever saw since the Bohemian Grove.

    Tyler Cowen has annointed him wunderkind of the subject of Economics.

    Tyler Cowen is an economist I mostly respect. It isn't his fault he is the ugliest man ever on the internet not named Weinstein. It is his fault that he puts his organism onto the internet.

    Replies: @QCIC

    Leo is like a dumber Karlin.

  612. A123 says: • Website
    @QCIC
    @A123

    My experience with young electrical and mechanical engineers from solid schools is that it takes more people to get things done than in the past. There are exceptions and the "trend" could be unique to my situation, but I am not impressed.

    Ron has discussed the issue that some STEM slots in universities are reserved for DIE admits. This entails that qualified non-DIE kids end up in a less competitive program and after four years may be less well trained as a result.

    Replies: @A123

    Ron has discussed the issue that some STEM slots in universities are reserved for DIE admits. This entails that qualified non-DIE kids end up in a less competitive program and after four years may be less well trained as a result.

    Of course, Ron is seeing California schools. North east schools should also draw suspicion.

    In terms of the South, there is either; No DIE requirement at the Engineering program level, or; They are meeting it with qualified Hispanics and Asians. Like you I do not know if I am seeing the exception or the trend, but IMHO it seems to be the latter. The budget numbers are not showing increases in avoidable errors.

    it takes more people to get things done than in the past

    That may not be the quality of the people.

    State and federal paperwork has become more cumbersome. Insurance firms are also much more needy than they used to be, presumably because of their own oversight bodies.

    PEACE 😇

  613. Israel finally launched a half assed retaliation against Lebanon.

    Like Dmitry said earlier, since it was only Syrian Druze children who were killed, Israel doesn’t particularly care. The idea here is to put the ball in Hezbollah’s court, assuming that Hezbollah won’t respond.

    Coward Bibi should enjoy the few months he has left.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Greasy William


    Israel finally launched a half assed retaliation against Lebanon.
     
    • Why is it "half assed"?
    • Why do you assume it is 100% over?

    Doing something quick, ill targeted, and inappropriate would have been a sign of weakness. Taking time to gather intel targeting Hezbollah commanders in a focused way is a sign of strength.

    Fighting a two front war is much more difficult than one at a time. Prudence and strength are shown by not lurching unprepared at a time of Hezbollah's choosing. It makes much more sense to maintain focus on finishing off genocidal Hamas in Gaza.

    PEACE 😇

    , @LondonBob
    @Greasy William

    Alastair Crooke says DC gave the go ahead for a wider war.

    Replies: @Greasy William

  614. @Beckow
    @AnonfromTN


    ...quite a few Westerners who consider themselves intelligent and knowledgeable are in the grip of same delusions as Western elites
     
    We have all discovered too late that the widespread propaganda views in the West are shared even by the critical and smart people (some exceptions). I first thought they only pretended or were afraid to speak about a few taboo subjects. It turned out that almost all share in the delusions. It is too much a part of them: the propaganda has worked in the West but failed miserably in the East.

    I wish you would stay around as the dramatic stories come closer to their endings. It was nice to read your contributions. We didn't always agree, but understanding comes from people having different views. And yes, this ship is doomed, but we don't know when. Then there will be other ships.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Derer, @Mikel

    the widespread propaganda views in the West are shared even by the critical and smart people (some exceptions).

    Be careful there. That’s also what the North Koreans, the Cubans or even the Islamists could say to defend the superiority of their systems. In fact, that’s what for decades many people on both sides of the Iron Curtain expected to happen: that the capitalist and “bourgeois democracies” would eventually crumble under the weight of their “internal contradictions”. But look who ended up crumbling down.

    The internal contradictions in the West do exist, as do the MSM brainwashing, now aided by Big Tech. I would actually say that one defining aspect of the Western countries is that they have always been in some sort of crisis or another. As long as freedom of opinion and speech exist, it’s probably inevitable that parts of the population will think that society must change and try to embark on social experiments to “improve things”. Sometimes you find yourself on one side of the barricade and sometimes on the other. But this doesn’t necessarily make the alternatives to the Western system better.

    AnonfromTN and you are legitimately criticizing the half-truths, propaganda and censorship that have become so prevalent in the West in the last decade and a half or so. But what good is that if then you go on to try to convince people to believe whatever the Kremlin lie was once the Petrov and Borisov idiocy was exposed, that the Russians didn’t really want to take Kiev or that the MH17 was not downed by the Russians/rebels? By siding always, invariably with a regime ruled by a strongman who had to change the constitution to stay in power for 25 years you’re not showing a lot of skepticism and critical thinking yourselves, to put it mildly.

    And, as I argued above, it’s even worse when you side with the defeatist and conspiranoic forces among us. “Don’t bother voting because ‘they’ will steal the election”, all based on very questionable evidence, or “leave your countries with your family” is totally unhelpful advice. Le Pen and Farage did get poor results (which is why they didn’t contest them, the globalist forces don’t need to “steal” any election unfortunately) and where should we relocate to? To Russia, where Putin could one day draft my son for another carnage of his? No thanks.

    • Agree: German_reader
    • Replies: @Derer
    @Mikel


    As long as freedom of opinion and speech exist,
     
    Tell that hypocrisy to jan6 protesters who are in jail for their opinion. It was an unarmed political protest of election irregularities in malfunctioning American "democracy". They were jailed by their political opposition in power and not by some unbiased institution.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    , @Beckow
    @Mikel

    You overstate what I say. I see no need to add to the almost infinite material describing shortcomings in Russia or China. It serves no purpose other than to repeat platitudes and selective half-truths to make you feel better.

    Sure, there is a huge amount of wrong with all societies and always has been. But normal people focus on the situation at home and at their own mistakes - whatever Russians do back home has no impact. I have always said I dislike the new market-style Russian economy, its businessmen, the way government acts on their behalf. You can call them 'oligarchs', but then why not call the Western business people in politics 'oligarchs'? Are Zuck, Musk, Soros, Bezos, etc...also oligarchs? I like consistency in language - the first rule in avoiding propaganda.

    Regarding 'Petrov and Borisov', their presence in Salisbury had a perfectly normal other explanation - taking the old-man Skripal home where he asked to be taken (his daughter came too). Is that true? I don't know, but the case is not black-and-white. Neither is MH17. If Russia wanted to take Kiev they would use more than 100k soldiers - more likely it was a pressure strategy. It didn't work, Ukies were told to fight.

    Not being a Latin or Korean I see no need to go over their shortcomings. Is that required? Some sort of a ritual denunciation? Like to start each sentence with 'I am not a racist!' - a test of loyalty?

    Are there better alternatives to the West? Probably not, but variety is always better - it is the reality that the world is multi-lateral. The requirement that the others 'must be perfect' for the West to clean-up its shit is silly and an attempt not to do anything. I would remind you that hundreds of thousands were killed by the West around the world in the last generation - from Serbia to Iraq, Afghanistan,... now in Gaza. Maybe focusing on that is more appropriate than worrying about 'Petrov's' travels and drinking habits...

    Replies: @Mikel

  615. @A123
    @Greasy William

    After the genocidal Hamas 10/7 attack -- The government could have launched a quick but weak, symbolic, and potentially reckless counter. Instead they showed strength by waiting, formulating a solid plan and, taking action in a fairly effective manner.

    The Israeli public concurs. Support for Netanyahu's willingness to do what needs to be done is growing over time. Those who would agree to a feckless cease-fire are sliding in the polls. (1)


    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is starting to regain his popularity after struggling politically for more than a year, out-polling main rival Benny Gantz for the first time since the war against Hamas started in October.

    A Channel 12 survey conducted on Wednesday of 500 voters representing a cross-section of Israeli society asked “Who is better suited to serve as prime minister?” It found 36% chose Netanyahu and 30% Gantz. The margin of error was 4.4%.

    Last month, Gantz was ahead 35% to 29%.

    In the new poll, Netanyahu was also ahead of opposition leader Yair Lapid by 37% to 30% and edged above former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett 34%-32%.
     

    Netanyahu's coalition fairly strong, despite occasional moments. Everyone following Israeli politics knows that this is true.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-30/netanyahu-s-popularity-on-the-rise-in-blow-to-israeli-rivals

    (no paywall) https://archive.is/5CZOK

    Replies: @Greasy William

    Netanyahu sucks, he’s done a horrible job managing the war and his political days are numbered. The people who support Bibi don’t actually support Bibi at all, they just know that Gantz, Lapid and the IDF are even worse. At least Bibi’s heart is in the right place, which is a lot more than you can say about any other major Israeli leader right now

  616. @Mikel
    @Beckow


    the widespread propaganda views in the West are shared even by the critical and smart people (some exceptions).
     
    Be careful there. That's also what the North Koreans, the Cubans or even the Islamists could say to defend the superiority of their systems. In fact, that's what for decades many people on both sides of the Iron Curtain expected to happen: that the capitalist and "bourgeois democracies" would eventually crumble under the weight of their "internal contradictions". But look who ended up crumbling down.

    The internal contradictions in the West do exist, as do the MSM brainwashing, now aided by Big Tech. I would actually say that one defining aspect of the Western countries is that they have always been in some sort of crisis or another. As long as freedom of opinion and speech exist, it's probably inevitable that parts of the population will think that society must change and try to embark on social experiments to "improve things". Sometimes you find yourself on one side of the barricade and sometimes on the other. But this doesn't necessarily make the alternatives to the Western system better.

    AnonfromTN and you are legitimately criticizing the half-truths, propaganda and censorship that have become so prevalent in the West in the last decade and a half or so. But what good is that if then you go on to try to convince people to believe whatever the Kremlin lie was once the Petrov and Borisov idiocy was exposed, that the Russians didn't really want to take Kiev or that the MH17 was not downed by the Russians/rebels? By siding always, invariably with a regime ruled by a strongman who had to change the constitution to stay in power for 25 years you're not showing a lot of skepticism and critical thinking yourselves, to put it mildly.

    And, as I argued above, it's even worse when you side with the defeatist and conspiranoic forces among us. "Don't bother voting because 'they' will steal the election", all based on very questionable evidence, or "leave your countries with your family" is totally unhelpful advice. Le Pen and Farage did get poor results (which is why they didn't contest them, the globalist forces don't need to "steal" any election unfortunately) and where should we relocate to? To Russia, where Putin could one day draft my son for another carnage of his? No thanks.

    Replies: @Derer, @Beckow

    As long as freedom of opinion and speech exist,

    Tell that hypocrisy to jan6 protesters who are in jail for their opinion. It was an unarmed political protest of election irregularities in malfunctioning American “democracy”. They were jailed by their political opposition in power and not by some unbiased institution.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Derer

    They have very broad freedom of speech. They just didn't have freedom of that speech on that day at that loc. They are not in jail for having that opinion which they have always had the right to possess. They are in jail for participating in Donald the Fat's publicity stunt.

    Did you ever see that report that the Secret Service had to evict him from the white house by telling Melania that she and the boy were in gravest danger of being killed if they didn't get the hell out? I also read if he wins the election she plans to reside in Palm Beach.

    These people are nuts. Or maybe DT owes some slimy people a lot of money we don't know about.

    Replies: @A123

  617. A123 says: • Website
    @Greasy William
    Israel finally launched a half assed retaliation against Lebanon.

    Like Dmitry said earlier, since it was only Syrian Druze children who were killed, Israel doesn't particularly care. The idea here is to put the ball in Hezbollah's court, assuming that Hezbollah won't respond.

    Coward Bibi should enjoy the few months he has left.

    Replies: @A123, @LondonBob

    Israel finally launched a half assed retaliation against Lebanon.

    • Why is it “half assed”?
    • Why do you assume it is 100% over?

    Doing something quick, ill targeted, and inappropriate would have been a sign of weakness. Taking time to gather intel targeting Hezbollah commanders in a focused way is a sign of strength.

    Fighting a two front war is much more difficult than one at a time. Prudence and strength are shown by not lurching unprepared at a time of Hezbollah’s choosing. It makes much more sense to maintain focus on finishing off genocidal Hamas in Gaza.

    PEACE 😇

  618. Why is it “half assed”?

    Well apparently it didn’t even work and the cowards used a small bomb in an effort to reduce civilian casualties, a precaution completely forbidden by Jewish law.

    I cannot fucking wait until Bibi and the IDF brass are gone. Never have the Jewish people been afflicted with such useless leaders.

  619. @Gerard1234
    @AP

    You only reply to Beckow because you are a weirdo with zero life, access him as a serious threat to your spamtroll activities with his brilliant comments - and so use the pitiful lame trolling "techniques" that your account and your multitude of sockpuppet accounts use on about a million other websites to occupy your "life".

    LMAO - Replying to this bimbo idiocy that yourself directed at Beckow:


    You who insisted that Ukraine would fold in a month have no ability to judge what is realistic or not.
     
    LMAO - but they did fold, in much less than a month you dumb, compulsive liar, sack of shit. Beckow was right

    They literally gave away the Crimean corridor, even significant parts of the right bank, the most important power station in 404 ( capture of it worth several cities), large section of north, most important part of Kharkov oblast for liberating Donbass ( which enabled us to have 99% of Lugansk liberated in very quick time), and half of Donetsk that we didn't have. All while fighting at a hugely significant numerical disadvantage.


    Winter War - Key defensive line broken by Soviets, western powers can't give additional help in time, rate of Finns getting slaughtered massively increasing..........so they sign a peace ( effectively a major surrender) and end the war.
    When they do get a western partner ( the Nazis) , then in joint military effort they restart war against Soviets

    Nazis vs France - Key defensive line broken, Britain can only give minimal help at the time, Paris and all the major cities safe........France sign a surrender and end the war/Vichy France collaborate

    Nazis vs Poland - defensive lines broken, masses of Poles slaughtered in embarrassingly quick time, as soon as it becomes obvious that France and Britain were breaking their commitment and weren't going to lift a finger to help them.......the dickhead Poles surrendered.

    Ukronazis vs Russia - defensive lines broken all across the country, including the key one into Kherson, masses of ukronazis slaughtered, large numbers of surrenders. All the conditions for a surrender with the pitiful , cowardly retard VSU and the billions invested in them exposed comprehensively................but then occurs massive amounts of western money, weapons, ongoing training in western countries, integrated,& realtime intelligence network, and millions of the population who can't fight are allowed to get their dream and be allowed to live for free in Madrid, Rome, Paris, London, Switzerland, Germany, and then full-spectrum western apparatus propaganda brainwashing designed to attract maxiumum support for the least deserving of any country in history.

    Absolutely zero people expected the west to commit /sacrifice easily over 1 trillion dollars, to be this reckless, to blowup own pipeline , to support the war you dumb fuckhead. Its SOLELY because of the west this is continuing. So Beckow wasn't wrong within the parameters of logic you dumb prick. The other sides in the previous examples at least showed some value for their own people lives.

    The west hoped to destroy Russian economy as method to end the war - FAILED

    The west hoped to have Ukrainians and Russians kill each other in equal amounts as with Nazis and Soviets, as with Syrian Government vs Rebels - FAILED, very one-sided kill ratio of Ukrainians

    The west hoped to test their weapons and tactics in battlefield conditions with negligible loss of their own lives ( except Poles again). They just needed a willing lemming/deathcult/prostitute Nazi state to be cannon fodder - SUCCEEDED

    No "heroism" from the failure deathcult team - they simply banned a large section of the population from leaving, and lied to them that the SMO was about to begin. The aim of the satanists to destroy as much of Donbass as possible , simply coincides with Russia aim of annihilating ukronazis there and liberating the territory. Again there is zero heroism from this from 404 losers - most shockingly shown by the Azov pussies in Mariupol.

    As in the previous examples - breakthrough of major defensive line guarantees large area of territory. Here in 404 , in one of the most intensively industrialised and white-populated urbanised areas on the planet.........the Nazis have significant towns and cities AS the defensive line, the defensive circle itself! In a sane world, in history of war the fortifications are in advance of these populated areas.......here the satanism is that bad that the city is the fortification! Then in addition they have further conventional defensive lines between these well populated settlements

    Defensive line breakthroughs by our heroes in Donbass would have been enough to take more than half of Europe already you thick POS. That is the evil we are against - scum lying about wanting these territories and peoples in Donbass

    So why does a lowlife tramp as yourself lie about the 404 military so much?
    1. You have no other way to occupy your POS existence as somebody with no actual connection to Ukraine

    2. Khokhol military history is that embarrassing , for a fake country they have no choice but to invent fake military performance . Things are so embarassing that if the Vlasovites fought for Ukrainian independence.........it would be songs, streets, towns, awards named after them in 404! It would be Vlasovites military actions taught in schools. With the masses and masses and masses of ukronazi freshly dug graves across the country it would be the Vlasovite flag ( ironically, the same as the current Russian one now) , placed next to the graves of about 10% of dead ukronazis, in place of the current Red & Black one UPA one.

    The reason? Because at least the Vlasovites fought against the Nazis to help liberate Prague. The military "history" of ukronazi independence is that limpwristed and non-existent the UPA couldn't even attempt to fight for their "own" city of Lvov..........maybe because for them it was as foreign and unusual a place as Addis Ababa

    Replies: @sudden death

    defensive lines broken all across the country, including the key one into Kherson

    Knowing the constant extreme Z-hallucinating regarding first days of war here, should be known that in reality there were zero reinforced defensive lines as land was demined and RF had 18x manpower advantage in Kherson/Crimean direction, so hardly that was some impressive or unexpected outcome:

    The Russian grouping “Z” in Crimea was composed of around 50 000 men from 2 armies, 49th and 58th CAA, without fortgeting 22nd army corp. At least they engaged more than 20 Battle Tactical Groups (BTGs), around 20 to 25 000 men. They had also ~12 landing ships.

    The Ukrainian grouping was composed of only 1 500 men. 175 were part of 137th separate Marine Bataillon from 36th Marine Brigade. They were tasked at 3 points, Chonhar, Chaplinka and Kalanchak border crossing. There was also part of the incomplete 59th Motorized Brigade with around 1 300 men. It was based in Radensk near the Oleshky sands. On february 23rd, the commander of Kherson grouping deployed this unit to their frontline positions.
    …………………..
    Was the terrain mined?
    No, for a few reasons, around 2018, they demined everything, including the bridges to avoid people from being hurt. The minefield in the area where know by everybody.
    They tried to destroy bridges, only one was destroyed, near Henichesk.
    ………………..
    What saved ukrainien here is the fast reaction of 35th Marine Brigade, 28th mecanized brigade and 80th air assault which came to defend Mykolaiv, avoiding a direct attack on Odesa.
    17th tabk defended Krivi Rih direction before ukrainian reinforcments arrived.
    This defeat is the most important because in 2 days, they lost all Kherson and part of Zaporijia oblast.

    Also can’t wait hearing your rightoeus condemnation of Soviet satanists because of inside city ruin fortifications named Stalingrad circa 1942 lol

    In a sane world, in history of war the fortifications are in advance of these populated areas…….here the satanism is that bad that the city is the fortification!

    [MORE]

  620. @Mikel
    @Beckow


    the widespread propaganda views in the West are shared even by the critical and smart people (some exceptions).
     
    Be careful there. That's also what the North Koreans, the Cubans or even the Islamists could say to defend the superiority of their systems. In fact, that's what for decades many people on both sides of the Iron Curtain expected to happen: that the capitalist and "bourgeois democracies" would eventually crumble under the weight of their "internal contradictions". But look who ended up crumbling down.

    The internal contradictions in the West do exist, as do the MSM brainwashing, now aided by Big Tech. I would actually say that one defining aspect of the Western countries is that they have always been in some sort of crisis or another. As long as freedom of opinion and speech exist, it's probably inevitable that parts of the population will think that society must change and try to embark on social experiments to "improve things". Sometimes you find yourself on one side of the barricade and sometimes on the other. But this doesn't necessarily make the alternatives to the Western system better.

    AnonfromTN and you are legitimately criticizing the half-truths, propaganda and censorship that have become so prevalent in the West in the last decade and a half or so. But what good is that if then you go on to try to convince people to believe whatever the Kremlin lie was once the Petrov and Borisov idiocy was exposed, that the Russians didn't really want to take Kiev or that the MH17 was not downed by the Russians/rebels? By siding always, invariably with a regime ruled by a strongman who had to change the constitution to stay in power for 25 years you're not showing a lot of skepticism and critical thinking yourselves, to put it mildly.

    And, as I argued above, it's even worse when you side with the defeatist and conspiranoic forces among us. "Don't bother voting because 'they' will steal the election", all based on very questionable evidence, or "leave your countries with your family" is totally unhelpful advice. Le Pen and Farage did get poor results (which is why they didn't contest them, the globalist forces don't need to "steal" any election unfortunately) and where should we relocate to? To Russia, where Putin could one day draft my son for another carnage of his? No thanks.

    Replies: @Derer, @Beckow

    You overstate what I say. I see no need to add to the almost infinite material describing shortcomings in Russia or China. It serves no purpose other than to repeat platitudes and selective half-truths to make you feel better.

    Sure, there is a huge amount of wrong with all societies and always has been. But normal people focus on the situation at home and at their own mistakes – whatever Russians do back home has no impact. I have always said I dislike the new market-style Russian economy, its businessmen, the way government acts on their behalf. You can call them ‘oligarchs’, but then why not call the Western business people in politics ‘oligarchs’? Are Zuck, Musk, Soros, Bezos, etc…also oligarchs? I like consistency in language – the first rule in avoiding propaganda.

    Regarding ‘Petrov and Borisov’, their presence in Salisbury had a perfectly normal other explanation – taking the old-man Skripal home where he asked to be taken (his daughter came too). Is that true? I don’t know, but the case is not black-and-white. Neither is MH17. If Russia wanted to take Kiev they would use more than 100k soldiers – more likely it was a pressure strategy. It didn’t work, Ukies were told to fight.

    Not being a Latin or Korean I see no need to go over their shortcomings. Is that required? Some sort of a ritual denunciation? Like to start each sentence with ‘I am not a racist!’ – a test of loyalty?

    Are there better alternatives to the West? Probably not, but variety is always better – it is the reality that the world is multi-lateral. The requirement that the others ‘must be perfect’ for the West to clean-up its shit is silly and an attempt not to do anything. I would remind you that hundreds of thousands were killed by the West around the world in the last generation – from Serbia to Iraq, Afghanistan,… now in Gaza. Maybe focusing on that is more appropriate than worrying about ‘Petrov’s’ travels and drinking habits…

    • Replies: @Mikel
    @Beckow


    normal people focus on the situation at home and at their own mistakes – whatever Russians do back home has no impact.
     
    You're missing the point completely. I don't personally care if Russians have a dictator or not. Perhaps it's what works best in that society. I know for a fact that democracy does not work in some countries and they're better off with a benevolent dictator so it's none of my business if Russians belong to that group or not. How many dozens of times have we agreed that one of the worst problems in Western countries right now is their stupid interventionism? Do I have to explain again how much it pisses me off that we're risking nuclear war for interfering in conflicts that are none of our business?

    The point I was making is much more simple and narrow. You deride Westerners for believing in the propaganda of their media while at the same time asking them to believe in the even less credible propaganda of an authoritarian regime. That is inconsistency.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Beckow

  621. AP says:
    @ShortOnTime
    @AP


    Huss whom you probably never heard of unless the Russians wrote something about him (you are ignorant that way) was a proto-Protestant but his followers could easily count as them.

    Some Hussites found their way to the Balkans (Moldova) but I haven’t read about Vlad impaling any of them. He did, however, pledge to fight against them.

    He mostly burned German-Saxon Catholics when he razed their towns, rather than impaled them. Though he also had Saxon captives impaled.

    Did you dishonestly imply something else, like that he didn’t kill large numbers of Christians?
     

    Again, this is exactly why there's no point in having any discussions with you.

    It always leads to dumbing things down to banalities like (in this case) whether 15th century Czech/Bohemian Hussites count as Protestants or whether a few dozen, few hundred or few thousand nobles and merchants (and some peasants and beggars) is "a large number" of impaled or not.

    To be clear, Hussites usually aren't considered as Protestants and only the followers of Martin Luther from 1521 AD onwards (and all the since fragmented sects) are considered as such. Compared to tens of thousands of Muslims, no more than a few thousand Wallachians at most (many of the boyars/nobles were collaborators with the Ottoman Empire) and a few dozens of Saxon merchants over many years doesn't really count as "large numbers" (it's also not an issue of denying whether Vlad III impaled some Christians here and there since nobody denies that).

    Unsympathetic accounts:

    https://www.nbcnews.com/sciencemain/vlad-impaler-real-dracula-was-absolutely-vicious-8c11505315

    https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/502283/when-vlad-impaler-repelled-invasion-forest-corpses

    Some accounts where it becomes more understandable why Vlad III would resort to impalements and scorched earth tactics:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_attack_at_T%C3%A2rgovi%C8%99te

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impalement#Ottoman_Empire

    Replies: @A123, @AP

    It always leads to dumbing things down to banalities like (in this case) whether 15th century Czech/Bohemian Hussites count as Protestants or whether a few dozen, few hundred or few thousand nobles and merchants (and some peasants and beggars) is “a large number” of impaled or not.

    With your type, it is always ultimately about you.

    In this case, you “dumb things down to banalities” because the point wasn’t about impalings specifically but the fact that Vlad Tepes killed large numbers of Christians. Whether he burned them or impaled them is a triviality. Though in your ignorance you are wrong even when it comes to that:

    and a few dozens of Saxon merchants over many years doesn’t really count as “large numbers

    He killed far more Saxon Christians than that.

    https://www.medievalists.net/2023/02/crime-and-punishment-in-the-reign-of-vlad-the-impaler/

    After failing to convince the Saxons to stop aiding these two, Vlad crossed into Transylvania after Easter 1457, set fire to various villages, destroyed any opposition, and took many prisoners – men, women, young and old – and had them impaled in Wallachia.

    [MORE]

    The two main Saxon towns, Hermannstadt/Sibiu and Kronstadt/Brașov, in revenge, started to infringe upon the commercial treaties, and they confiscated goods from Wallachian merchants and even executed some by impaling them. Hence, Vlad found himself again at war with the Saxons at the beginning of 1459. He called back his merchants from Transylvania and started punishing and impaling the Saxon merchants in Wallachia and confiscating their goods.

    At the beginning of May, Vlad crossed the border into Transylvania and started destroying villages, crops, and the outskirts of towns, and taking people prisoner. It is said that he had dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people impaled in front of Kronstadt, as a reminder of the wretched help they had given to his enemy. The looting was also great. Other sources mention whole villages massacred – people “cut like cabbage” – and other prisoners beheaded or taken to Wallachia and impaled there.

    To be clear, Hussites usually aren’t considered as Protestants

    Which is why I correctly referred to him as a proto-Protestant.

    • Replies: @Mr. XYZ
    @AP

    AP, I have a question: Would Hussites in Russian be Gussity?

    , @ShortOnTime
    @AP

    Your own link acknowledges that the Transylvania Saxons chose to harbor Vlad III's political enemies and so chose to pick a fight with Vlad III. Also, the commercial monopoly of Saxon merchants from Transylvania was designed to exploit Wallachia's vulnerable lowland geographic position as a border territory with the Ottoman Empire and obviously Saxon merchants skillfully exploited Wallachian peasants. Vlad III checked the cunning schemes of Saxon merchants.

    Vlad III's main focus and lifelong struggle was war against the Ottoman Empire (for what they did to his family at a young age) and Saxon merchants never had any interest in supporting his struggle. Even Hungary (Janos Hunyadi and Matthias Corvinus) barely and only occasionally supported Vlad III in his uneven and epic struggle. Creating a consolidated and centralized autocracy capable of resisting the Ottomans, by any means necessary regardless of cruelty, was the only route that Vlad III as the leader of a small and weak nation had to stand a chance in the fight against the Ottomans.

    Vlad III's reputation has notoriety for the frequent use of impalement that he learnt from the Ottomans with things like burning villages being standard fare and somewhat unremarkable in the Medieval era. Burning and looting villages was standard fare by even the pettiest of feudal lords or lesser leaders of armed bands in the pre-modern world.

    It is Vlad III's existential struggle against the Ottoman Empire and the lack of Christian solidarity with him in that fight which truly stands out in hindsight. Vlad III's resistance and the otherwise relatively peripheral geographic position of Wallachia (compared to the high strategic relevance of Moldova and Serbia, or Bessarabia and Belgrade in particular) explains why Wallachia and Romania were never fully conquered by the Ottomans, but preserved some autonomy as a vassal principality (meaning Vlad III's resistance meant Romanians fared somewhat better for centuries overall compared to all their other Christian neighbors in the Balkans).

    Replies: @Beckow, @AP

  622. @Beckow
    @Mikel

    You overstate what I say. I see no need to add to the almost infinite material describing shortcomings in Russia or China. It serves no purpose other than to repeat platitudes and selective half-truths to make you feel better.

    Sure, there is a huge amount of wrong with all societies and always has been. But normal people focus on the situation at home and at their own mistakes - whatever Russians do back home has no impact. I have always said I dislike the new market-style Russian economy, its businessmen, the way government acts on their behalf. You can call them 'oligarchs', but then why not call the Western business people in politics 'oligarchs'? Are Zuck, Musk, Soros, Bezos, etc...also oligarchs? I like consistency in language - the first rule in avoiding propaganda.

    Regarding 'Petrov and Borisov', their presence in Salisbury had a perfectly normal other explanation - taking the old-man Skripal home where he asked to be taken (his daughter came too). Is that true? I don't know, but the case is not black-and-white. Neither is MH17. If Russia wanted to take Kiev they would use more than 100k soldiers - more likely it was a pressure strategy. It didn't work, Ukies were told to fight.

    Not being a Latin or Korean I see no need to go over their shortcomings. Is that required? Some sort of a ritual denunciation? Like to start each sentence with 'I am not a racist!' - a test of loyalty?

    Are there better alternatives to the West? Probably not, but variety is always better - it is the reality that the world is multi-lateral. The requirement that the others 'must be perfect' for the West to clean-up its shit is silly and an attempt not to do anything. I would remind you that hundreds of thousands were killed by the West around the world in the last generation - from Serbia to Iraq, Afghanistan,... now in Gaza. Maybe focusing on that is more appropriate than worrying about 'Petrov's' travels and drinking habits...

    Replies: @Mikel

    normal people focus on the situation at home and at their own mistakes – whatever Russians do back home has no impact.

    You’re missing the point completely. I don’t personally care if Russians have a dictator or not. Perhaps it’s what works best in that society. I know for a fact that democracy does not work in some countries and they’re better off with a benevolent dictator so it’s none of my business if Russians belong to that group or not. How many dozens of times have we agreed that one of the worst problems in Western countries right now is their stupid interventionism? Do I have to explain again how much it pisses me off that we’re risking nuclear war for interfering in conflicts that are none of our business?

    The point I was making is much more simple and narrow. You deride Westerners for believing in the propaganda of their media while at the same time asking them to believe in the even less credible propaganda of an authoritarian regime. That is inconsistency.

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Mikel

    It is valuable if people who read or speak the language (Russian in this case) can give the rest of us a report on the propaganda. This requires listening to the mainstream propaganda but also more critically evaluating the less widespread propaganda from multiple sides of an issue. One strength of the AK comments section is that some people do this work. Unfortunately, the people most willing to do so are often the most ideologically polarized in the first place and may not be reliable communicators of any version of the story.

    , @Beckow
    @Mikel

    I don't ask anyone to believe the other side. All I am suggesting is to listen to their version of what happens. The West has aggressively shut down what its enemies have to say - stupid and dangerous. It suggests that West fears alternative explanations - that's not exactly a vote of confidence in themselves. You do that when you lie.

    With Russia I have looked in detail at the main demonizing narratives that go unchallenged in the Western media - frankly 90-95% of people believe them automatically. They make no sense as presented. That includes the war in Ukraine and smaller stories like Skripals, Pussy Riot, Sochi Olympics, novichok, and the collection of nonsense about Trump peeing on carpets and that 10k in Facebook ads swayed the 2016 election (how stupid does one have to be to take that seriously?)

    Russian media is probably not better - I don't really know, I seldom follow them - but why would that matter? To watch the Western media and the majority of population succumb to a form of mass hysteria, believing obvious nonsense, closing their eyes to other views - and then preaching to the rest of the world about virtues and liberty is a bit too much. Maybe you have the stomach for it, but it turns mine upside down...neither Russia nor China are telling others how to think and how to live, so why benchmark the Western 'virtues' against them? Don't you get the absurdity?

    Regarding propaganda during Cold War: would say with a high level of probability that the easterners believed it less than people in the West. They were much more skeptical. But in the West it became the way everyone thinks...to this day.

    Replies: @Mikel

  623. @Derer
    @Mikel


    As long as freedom of opinion and speech exist,
     
    Tell that hypocrisy to jan6 protesters who are in jail for their opinion. It was an unarmed political protest of election irregularities in malfunctioning American "democracy". They were jailed by their political opposition in power and not by some unbiased institution.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    They have very broad freedom of speech. They just didn’t have freedom of that speech on that day at that loc. They are not in jail for having that opinion which they have always had the right to possess. They are in jail for participating in Donald the Fat’s publicity stunt.

    Did you ever see that report that the Secret Service had to evict him from the white house by telling Melania that she and the boy were in gravest danger of being killed if they didn’t get the hell out? I also read if he wins the election she plans to reside in Palm Beach.

    These people are nuts. Or maybe DT owes some slimy people a lot of money we don’t know about.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    ROTFLMAO

     
    https://i.gifer.com/origin/e9/e91d628a211b7d705881b28345b82b8f_w200.gif
     


    Donald the Fat
     
    Why do you think this childish insult helps your case?

    • Could Trump stand to lose a few pounds? Yes.
    • Does he have a diagnosed, weight related, medical condition that impairs his ability to be President? No.
    ___

    I have attached terminology to Biden, but those appellations conveyed pertinent information.

    The Veggie-In-Chief is in fact senile.

    Biden lost the 2020 election and was illegitimatly installed in office. Not-The-President Biden is the current White House occupant. He does not represent Americans. Why would foreign nations respect a fake, politically impotent leader?

    if he wins the election she plans to reside in Palm Beach.
     
    Uproot Barron to send him to a DEI school in DC? He will do much better by staying away from Washington.

    Such a choice would be unusual, but quite reasonable.

    Did you ever see that report that the Secret Service had to evict him from the white house
     
    That lie was debunked ages ago.

    So was the lie that Trump "lunged for the steering wheel".


    ___

    Why do you shill fabrications so Leftoid crazy ... even MSNBC gave up on them?

    Are you deliberately trolling?
    Or, are you a low-IQ yahoo incapable of telling fact from fiction?

    If you want us to laugh AT you, please continue.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @A123

  624. A123 says: • Website
    @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Derer

    They have very broad freedom of speech. They just didn't have freedom of that speech on that day at that loc. They are not in jail for having that opinion which they have always had the right to possess. They are in jail for participating in Donald the Fat's publicity stunt.

    Did you ever see that report that the Secret Service had to evict him from the white house by telling Melania that she and the boy were in gravest danger of being killed if they didn't get the hell out? I also read if he wins the election she plans to reside in Palm Beach.

    These people are nuts. Or maybe DT owes some slimy people a lot of money we don't know about.

    Replies: @A123

    ROTFLMAO

     

     

    Donald the Fat

    Why do you think this childish insult helps your case?

    • Could Trump stand to lose a few pounds? Yes.
    • Does he have a diagnosed, weight related, medical condition that impairs his ability to be President? No.
    ___

    I have attached terminology to Biden, but those appellations conveyed pertinent information.

    The Veggie-In-Chief is in fact senile.

    Biden lost the 2020 election and was illegitimatly installed in office. Not-The-President Biden is the current White House occupant. He does not represent Americans. Why would foreign nations respect a fake, politically impotent leader?

    if he wins the election she plans to reside in Palm Beach.

    Uproot Barron to send him to a DEI school in DC? He will do much better by staying away from Washington.

    Such a choice would be unusual, but quite reasonable.

    Did you ever see that report that the Secret Service had to evict him from the white house

    That lie was debunked ages ago.

    So was the lie that Trump “lunged for the steering wheel”.

    ___

    Why do you shill fabrications so Leftoid crazy … even MSNBC gave up on them?

    Are you deliberately trolling?
    Or, are you a low-IQ yahoo incapable of telling fact from fiction?

    If you want us to laugh AT you, please continue.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @A123
    @A123

    CORRECTION

    I originally posted this.


    Uproot Barron to send him to a DEI school in DC? He will do much better by staying away from Washington.

    Such a choice would be unusual, but quite reasonable.
     

    I thought Barron was graduating high school next May. Upon review, he graduated a couple months ago.

    There is no obvious reason to expect Melania to stay in Florida. Emil the Fat must be shilling another bogus rumor.

    PEACE 😇

  625. @Mikel
    @Beckow


    normal people focus on the situation at home and at their own mistakes – whatever Russians do back home has no impact.
     
    You're missing the point completely. I don't personally care if Russians have a dictator or not. Perhaps it's what works best in that society. I know for a fact that democracy does not work in some countries and they're better off with a benevolent dictator so it's none of my business if Russians belong to that group or not. How many dozens of times have we agreed that one of the worst problems in Western countries right now is their stupid interventionism? Do I have to explain again how much it pisses me off that we're risking nuclear war for interfering in conflicts that are none of our business?

    The point I was making is much more simple and narrow. You deride Westerners for believing in the propaganda of their media while at the same time asking them to believe in the even less credible propaganda of an authoritarian regime. That is inconsistency.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Beckow

    It is valuable if people who read or speak the language (Russian in this case) can give the rest of us a report on the propaganda. This requires listening to the mainstream propaganda but also more critically evaluating the less widespread propaganda from multiple sides of an issue. One strength of the AK comments section is that some people do this work. Unfortunately, the people most willing to do so are often the most ideologically polarized in the first place and may not be reliable communicators of any version of the story.

  626. Big upset prediction tonight: +400 underdogs Vancouver Whitecaps to defeat LAFC in MLS (tie no bet; it’s actually +500 if you are betting a 3 way but LAFC does have one good aspect in the chart so I don’t want to risk it)

    • Replies: @Greasy William
    @Greasy William

    Never mind. The faggots delayed the game by 10 minutes and that dramatically changed the chart. Current chart could go either way but I would interpret it as a LAFC victory

  627. This is the park that those trannies really hated:

    [MORE]

    An idea might be to open up several of these medieval theme parks, and have the actors train as a real army, to take back France.

  628. S1 says:
    @YetAnotherAnon
    Alas this has been waiting for approval by Steve for many hours. Nearly as bad as the Guardian, where the word Rwanda features not.

    Southport child killer (3 kids dead now, half a dozen others plus 2 teachers very bad) – the Rwanda rumours seem to be correct:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/29/southport-major-incident-stabbing-police/

    “The youth, who cannot be named for legal reasons and is originally from Cardiff, moved to the Southport area with his Rwandan parents when he was aged six.”

    Replies: @songbird, @S1, @LondonBob

    Am very sorry to hear about the recent knife attack in the UK.

    What makes things even worse about events like this, if such were possible, is that it was quite clearly foreseen and understood long ago by the ‘progressive’ elites and hangers on pushing the uncontrolled ‘mass immigration’, that this very specific sort of thing would be the direct result…ie that some of the maladjusted descendants of the ‘migrants’ which had been imported in by diktat, would on occassion go on murderous ‘random’ stabbing rampages against their host population.

    They simply didn’t care.

    The below excerpt is taken from an 1870 US fact/reference book which went through multiple editions during the 1870’s, and was entitled One Hundred Years Progress of the United States. The section of the book this quote appeared in was called ‘Marvels that our Grandchildren will See ‘, or, ‘One Hundred Years Progress in the Future’ and tells what life (and death as described here due to unexpected ‘random’ acts of ultraviolence) will be like in the future American cities of 1970.

    The New England publisher of this huge (and most likely quite expensive) book was kind enough to donate copies free of charge to numerous US universities, no doubt in part to influence young minds about what the progressive future outlined would hold for them, and more importantly, their descendants. This particular copy, still with its library card attached and located not surprisingly at that bastion of liberal progressivism, the University of California at Berkeley, was still being checked out by students there as late as 1977!

    For those who might not be aware, a ‘kris’ is a knife.

    https://archive.org/details/onehundredyearsp00flinrich/page/526/mode/1up

    ‘A stalwart Malay…is running amok, striking and stabbing with his gleaming kris every one in his way.’

    ‘A little farther on a crowd are gathered, who suddenly start and fly for their lives. A stalwart Malay, whose face is so malignant with all evil passions that it would make a capital study for Gustave Bor in his next picture of Satan, and who is maddened with vile liquor and opium has rushed out and is running amok, striking and stabbing with his gleaming kris every one in his way.’

    ‘Yet farther on the Hindoo, sleek, graceful, and eminently handsome in form and feature, but treacherous and deceitful, bows very humbly and obsequiously, but it would not surprise us to know, that in one of his fits of jealousy against Englishmen and Americans, he had assassinated some friend of ours to whom he had been equally obsequious and polite.’

    • Thanks: Bashibuzuk
  629. @Greasy William
    Big upset prediction tonight: +400 underdogs Vancouver Whitecaps to defeat LAFC in MLS (tie no bet; it's actually +500 if you are betting a 3 way but LAFC does have one good aspect in the chart so I don't want to risk it)

    Replies: @Greasy William

    Never mind. The faggots delayed the game by 10 minutes and that dramatically changed the chart. Current chart could go either way but I would interpret it as a LAFC victory

  630. @AP
    @ShortOnTime


    It always leads to dumbing things down to banalities like (in this case) whether 15th century Czech/Bohemian Hussites count as Protestants or whether a few dozen, few hundred or few thousand nobles and merchants (and some peasants and beggars) is “a large number” of impaled or not.
     
    With your type, it is always ultimately about you.

    In this case, you "dumb things down to banalities" because the point wasn't about impalings specifically but the fact that Vlad Tepes killed large numbers of Christians. Whether he burned them or impaled them is a triviality. Though in your ignorance you are wrong even when it comes to that:

    and a few dozens of Saxon merchants over many years doesn’t really count as “large numbers
     
    He killed far more Saxon Christians than that.

    https://www.medievalists.net/2023/02/crime-and-punishment-in-the-reign-of-vlad-the-impaler/

    After failing to convince the Saxons to stop aiding these two, Vlad crossed into Transylvania after Easter 1457, set fire to various villages, destroyed any opposition, and took many prisoners – men, women, young and old – and had them impaled in Wallachia.



    The two main Saxon towns, Hermannstadt/Sibiu and Kronstadt/Brașov, in revenge, started to infringe upon the commercial treaties, and they confiscated goods from Wallachian merchants and even executed some by impaling them. Hence, Vlad found himself again at war with the Saxons at the beginning of 1459. He called back his merchants from Transylvania and started punishing and impaling the Saxon merchants in Wallachia and confiscating their goods.

    At the beginning of May, Vlad crossed the border into Transylvania and started destroying villages, crops, and the outskirts of towns, and taking people prisoner. It is said that he had dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people impaled in front of Kronstadt, as a reminder of the wretched help they had given to his enemy. The looting was also great. Other sources mention whole villages massacred – people “cut like cabbage” – and other prisoners beheaded or taken to Wallachia and impaled there.

    To be clear, Hussites usually aren’t considered as Protestants
     
    Which is why I correctly referred to him as a proto-Protestant.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ, @ShortOnTime

    AP, I have a question: Would Hussites in Russian be Gussity?

  631. @Mikel
    @Beckow


    normal people focus on the situation at home and at their own mistakes – whatever Russians do back home has no impact.
     
    You're missing the point completely. I don't personally care if Russians have a dictator or not. Perhaps it's what works best in that society. I know for a fact that democracy does not work in some countries and they're better off with a benevolent dictator so it's none of my business if Russians belong to that group or not. How many dozens of times have we agreed that one of the worst problems in Western countries right now is their stupid interventionism? Do I have to explain again how much it pisses me off that we're risking nuclear war for interfering in conflicts that are none of our business?

    The point I was making is much more simple and narrow. You deride Westerners for believing in the propaganda of their media while at the same time asking them to believe in the even less credible propaganda of an authoritarian regime. That is inconsistency.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Beckow

    I don’t ask anyone to believe the other side. All I am suggesting is to listen to their version of what happens. The West has aggressively shut down what its enemies have to say – stupid and dangerous. It suggests that West fears alternative explanations – that’s not exactly a vote of confidence in themselves. You do that when you lie.

    With Russia I have looked in detail at the main demonizing narratives that go unchallenged in the Western media – frankly 90-95% of people believe them automatically. They make no sense as presented. That includes the war in Ukraine and smaller stories like Skripals, Pussy Riot, Sochi Olympics, novichok, and the collection of nonsense about Trump peeing on carpets and that 10k in Facebook ads swayed the 2016 election (how stupid does one have to be to take that seriously?)

    Russian media is probably not better – I don’t really know, I seldom follow them – but why would that matter? To watch the Western media and the majority of population succumb to a form of mass hysteria, believing obvious nonsense, closing their eyes to other views – and then preaching to the rest of the world about virtues and liberty is a bit too much. Maybe you have the stomach for it, but it turns mine upside down…neither Russia nor China are telling others how to think and how to live, so why benchmark the Western ‘virtues’ against them? Don’t you get the absurdity?

    Regarding propaganda during Cold War: would say with a high level of probability that the easterners believed it less than people in the West. They were much more skeptical. But in the West it became the way everyone thinks…to this day.

    • Replies: @Mikel
    @Beckow


    and the collection of nonsense about Trump peeing on carpets and that 10k in Facebook ads swayed the 2016 election (how stupid does one have to be to take that seriously?)
     
    AK had a most interesting post some years ago, when he wasn't afflicted by the SMO PTSD, that showed how unintelligent most people are by posting the actual questions of the PISA tests and the percentages that got them wrong.

    The MSM BS people put up with is indeed staggering. But it's actually worse than that because a good percentage of the people who realize they're being had opt to believe equal or worse nonsense coming from the alternative sources they resort to. What good is it to stop believing what you read in the NYT and the CNN if you're going to believe uncritically what you hear at Alex Jones, Quanon or Breitbart/Zerohedge for that matter? That's what you are promoting: Westerners should stop believing the stupid stuff published by their MSM but should pay attention to idiotic stories coming from equally unreliable sources, like the Skripal fables or the "gestures of good will" to explain military retreats.

    And it's not even necessary to believe the Kremlin nonsense to support Russia. AK was an ardent Putin supporter at the time and so is Israel Shamir. They both admitted when the Kremlin was full of crap (eg Skripal). Same goes for lots of Russian TG commentators.

    Replies: @Beckow, @Gerard1234

  632. The political leader of hamas, Ismail Haniyeh and his bodyguard have been shot and killed in Tehran.

    There is too much incompetence in Iran.

    • Replies: @Greasy William
    @Torna atrás

    was he shot? I thought they said it was a drone

    Replies: @Torna atrás

  633. @Torna atrás
    The political leader of hamas, Ismail Haniyeh and his bodyguard have been shot and killed in Tehran.

    There is too much incompetence in Iran.

    https://i.kinja-img.com/image/upload/c_fit,q_60,w_1315/e41d6bc90362e10c81b4e49e5b020ecc.jpg

    Replies: @Greasy William

    was he shot? I thought they said it was a drone

    • Replies: @Torna atrás
    @Greasy William

    Two conflicting reports both from Iranian sources.

    The assassination of Ismail Haniyeh took place in northern Tehran by a projectile from the air - Fars News

    Ismail Haniyeh and his bodyguard have been shot and killed in Tehran -


    https://twitter.com/3KooH/status/1818479340897935477


    I wouldn't be surprised if they sniped him from a drone.


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


    reported that no gunmen were present, and that only a remote-controlled machine gun mounted on a Nissan was used in the attack.[62] IRGC Deputy Commander-In-Chief Ali Fadavi said that the weapon was equipped with a camera and utilized artificial intelligence and facial recognition to target Fakhrizadeh.[70][71] In this account, Fakhrizadeh, possibly not recognizing gunfire, exited his vehicle after he believed it struck something.[57][61] The automatic gun "controlled by satellite" then struck him thirteen times from a distance of 150 metres (490 ft).
     
    What do you think the wider geopolitical repercussions are going to be?

    Do you think they got Ebrahim Raisi too?

    Replies: @A123, @S1, @Greasy William

  634. Great War Movie

    Finally got to see it:

    • Replies: @Wielgus
    @Mikhail

    It is very good.

  635. @Greasy William
    @Torna atrás

    was he shot? I thought they said it was a drone

    Replies: @Torna atrás

    Two conflicting reports both from Iranian sources.

    The assassination of Ismail Haniyeh took place in northern Tehran by a projectile from the air – Fars News

    Ismail Haniyeh and his bodyguard have been shot and killed in Tehran –

    I wouldn’t be surprised if they sniped him from a drone.

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

    reported that no gunmen were present, and that only a remote-controlled machine gun mounted on a Nissan was used in the attack.[62] IRGC Deputy Commander-In-Chief Ali Fadavi said that the weapon was equipped with a camera and utilized artificial intelligence and facial recognition to target Fakhrizadeh.[70][71] In this account, Fakhrizadeh, possibly not recognizing gunfire, exited his vehicle after he believed it struck something.[57][61] The automatic gun “controlled by satellite” then struck him thirteen times from a distance of 150 metres (490 ft).

    What do you think the wider geopolitical repercussions are going to be?

    Do you think they got Ebrahim Raisi too?

    • Replies: @A123
    @Torna atrás

    When do you think that GW will claim the termination of Ismail Haniyeh is a sign of Netanyahu's "weakness"?

    It seems to be his favourite refrain. Of course, everyone following Israeli politics disagrees with GW.


    What do you think the wider geopolitical repercussions are going to be?

     

    Will this head off further escalation by Iranian Hezbollah? Netanyahu showing strength should encourage caution and restraint among the terror groups. At least in the short-term, things should improve.

    How rational are Iranian and Hezbollah leaders? And, do they take the event as a personal warning? Sociopath Khamenei and his cadre do not risk their own lives, but are willing to expend others.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Torna atrás

    , @S1
    @Torna atrás


    What do you think the wider geopolitical repercussions are going to be?

     

    The Iranians might well redouble their purported efforts to 'get' the controlled opposition candidate Trump, whom as such has recently and forcibly (and quite helpfully for the American progressive establishment it should be added) just called for Iran's 'obliteration' in revenge by the United States should they assassinate him

    With the assistance of a deliberately incompetent secret service 'guarding' Trump, where a 20 year old recently failed, the Iranians with better resources might just succeed.

    'Who will rid us of this troublesome presidential candidate?'

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-floats-bizarre-assassination-revenge-124016233.html

    “If they do ‘assassinate President Trump,’ which is always a possibility, I hope that America obliterates Iran, wipes it off the face of the Earth,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “If that does not happen, American Leaders will be considered ‘gutless’ cowards!”
    , @Greasy William
    @Torna atrás


    What do you think the wider geopolitical repercussions are going to be?
     
    None. The Resistance Axis is currently winning the war. These assassinations are indeed humiliating for the RA but, let's be honest, everyone already knew that they were incompetent, blowhard clowns. Strategically, these attacks have no impact whatsoever.

    Magnier has connections with the top people in Hezbollah and he said last night that there will be no retaliation.

    Look at the broader strategic situation: Hamas still rules Gaza, the hostages haven't been returned and the north is still depopulated. The current Israeli regime, led by that coward rat Bibi Netanyahu, is fundamentally incapable for properly prosecuting this war.

    In October when shitbird Bibi is finally gone, that is when the fun will start.

    Replies: @ShortOnTime

  636. @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk

    I'd like to read somethings. I remember AnonfromTN is also a fan of these writers. Maybe we could begin a reading circle. The last time I tried to start a reading circle here with Coconuts it was wasn't very successful, although we were supposed to read sociological writers.

    About Rogan. He's pretending to be stupid, the stereotypical "jock", then when his guest open up, he often tries to make them promote his personal views, which are generally having a historical materialist perspective. He's talented at slowly redirecting his guests until they developed his own views like a kind of outsourcing.

    See him trying to explain his theories and he even wants him to repeat his guest to repeat his solution of re-engineering humans to remove negative instincts, which could have been a solution in communism.
    1:51:00 - 2:05:00 https://youtu.be/5EOpplSyxN0?si=FOAErCTw7tkcDL_x&t=6644.

    Replies: @Coconuts

    The last time I tried to start a reading circle here with Coconuts it was wasn’t very successful, although we were supposed to read sociological writers.

    Yes, I remember I was trying to read a bad translation of Dialectic of Enlightenment. I think I should have invested in the more recent and readable one with the introduction and explanatory notes:

    There have been two English translations: the first by John Cumming (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972; reissues by Verso from 1979 reverse the order of the authors’ names), and another, based on the definitive text from Horkheimer’s collected works, by Edmund Jephcott (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002).

    The 1972 one is hard to read.

  637. @songbird
    @Coconuts

    Thought this article was interesting:
    https://www.bvoltaire.fr/linverse-du-puy-du-fou-revelations-sur-la-ceremonie-douverture-des-jo/

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Coconuts

    Thanks for that link, the usual suspects. I know Phillippe de Villiers is one of the more prominent French royalists, I had forgotten about his historical theme park though (it seems like it has been successful for some time). The China angle is interesting, that they were interested in counter signaling that at the same time as the more traditional targets.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Coconuts


    The China angle is interesting, that they were interested in counter signaling that at the same time as the more traditional targets.
     
    Yes, I think more traditional-type leftists would have liked the Beijing ceremony. But the trigglypuff, gay race communists apparently did not.

    It will be interesting to see how much the regime reorients to seeing China as fascist, and what the Chinese response might be. For now, I think the focus is on Russia because it is seen as white, and they are still reluctant to step over that line because it could muddy the internal message. And both China's and Russia's messages seem to be third worldist, which kind of makes them allies of gay race communists, if in an indirect way.

    Replies: @Coconuts

  638. @sudden death
    Probably the first poll regarding some swing states?

    https://i.postimg.cc/63HMK3cy/state-by-state-comparison-July.jpg

    Not much predictive value considering the given error margin of 3% and not knowing potential Dem VP pick yet, but notable there is not anymore the bigger gap seen. Also knowing unique ability of Vance to be quite repulsive (due different reasoning) both for figurative Anglin crowd and Haley voters too, it might matter in case of close race.

    Replies: @sudden death

    Another one, this time Michigan looks quite unrealistic though:

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @sudden death

    Is the Harris polling believable? She is extremely unlikable and comes across as completely incompetent. This looks like a pre-installed justification for election vote fraud, something that misguided people might reference in November to avoid acknowledging blatant election tampering.

    Replies: @LondonBob, @AP, @Mikel, @A123

    , @Gerard1234
    @sudden death

    Interesting that your retard self, even for the most basic Pindostan news.. ..is using Russian sources. Strange, even for you.

    But I suppose one connection we both have is that neither of us are interested in what the suicidereikh, Lithuania, has to say .

    And if you are following the world from Russian sites, then why are you writing such stupid sh*t here all the tine?

  639. @Coconuts
    @songbird

    Thanks for that link, the usual suspects. I know Phillippe de Villiers is one of the more prominent French royalists, I had forgotten about his historical theme park though (it seems like it has been successful for some time). The China angle is interesting, that they were interested in counter signaling that at the same time as the more traditional targets.

    Replies: @songbird

    The China angle is interesting, that they were interested in counter signaling that at the same time as the more traditional targets.

    Yes, I think more traditional-type leftists would have liked the Beijing ceremony. But the trigglypuff, gay race communists apparently did not.

    It will be interesting to see how much the regime reorients to seeing China as fascist, and what the Chinese response might be. For now, I think the focus is on Russia because it is seen as white, and they are still reluctant to step over that line because it could muddy the internal message. And both China’s and Russia’s messages seem to be third worldist, which kind of makes them allies of gay race communists, if in an indirect way.

    • Replies: @Coconuts
    @songbird


    Yes, I think more traditional-type leftists would have liked the Beijing ceremony. But the trigglypuff, gay race communists apparently did not.
     
    I think they come from two differing strands of the left. I quoted something from the Wiki entry on Michel Foucault further up the thread but here is what it says about his attitude to the older French Communists :

    "In the early 1950s, while never adopting an orthodox Marxist viewpoint, Foucault had been a member of the French Communist Party, leaving the party after three years as he expressed disgust in the prejudice within its ranks against Jews and homosexuals."


    For now, I think the focus is on Russia because it is seen as white, and they are still reluctant to step over that line because it could muddy the internal message. And both China’s and Russia’s messages seem to be third worldist, which kind of makes them allies of gay race communists, if in an indirect way.
     
    A couple of weeks ago I read a book about the Decolonisation ideology by a British IR professor, there was a chapter where he explained how adopting this ideology would make it very difficult to oppose China that seemed well argued.

    The mainstream approach to Russia's third worldism seems to be to ignore it (since Russia is white coded this is easier). But I think you are right about it being very difficult to plausibly do the same thing in relation to China.

    I noticed BAP has started talking about Putler's third worldism, in one of his recent episodes he was saying that while he has always liked Putin he finds the third worldism too boomer and it is alienating him. He says he suspects Russia may be secretly boosting George Galloway and Sarah Wagenknecht.

    Replies: @songbird

  640. Am not trying to criticize – it may be the wisest decision politically – but I find it surprising that they are using English slogans in Vienna.

    [MORE]

    • Replies: @S1
    @songbird


    Am not trying to criticize – it may be the wisest decision politically – but I find it surprising that they are using English slogans in Vienna.
     
    It's unfortunate. The Austrians shouldn't feel compelled to do that and should be perfectly content to use their own native language.

    As you say, it was probably a political decision made to reach a larger audience.

    https://youtu.be/xJeWySiuq1I?si=pLoffLgHezLHhUPM

    'We walked in the cold air
    Freezing breath on a window pane
    Lying and waiting
    A man in the dark in a picture frame
    So mystic and soulful
    A voice reaching out in a piercing cry
    It stays with you until'

    'The feeling has gone only you and I
    It means nothing to me
    This means nothing to me
    Oh, Vienna'

    'The music is weaving
    Haunting notes, pizzicato strings
    The rhythm is calling
    Alone in the night as the daylight brings
    A cool empty silence
    The warmth of your hand and a cold grey sky
    It fades to the distance'
     
  641. A123 says: • Website
    @Torna atrás
    @Greasy William

    Two conflicting reports both from Iranian sources.

    The assassination of Ismail Haniyeh took place in northern Tehran by a projectile from the air - Fars News

    Ismail Haniyeh and his bodyguard have been shot and killed in Tehran -


    https://twitter.com/3KooH/status/1818479340897935477


    I wouldn't be surprised if they sniped him from a drone.


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


    reported that no gunmen were present, and that only a remote-controlled machine gun mounted on a Nissan was used in the attack.[62] IRGC Deputy Commander-In-Chief Ali Fadavi said that the weapon was equipped with a camera and utilized artificial intelligence and facial recognition to target Fakhrizadeh.[70][71] In this account, Fakhrizadeh, possibly not recognizing gunfire, exited his vehicle after he believed it struck something.[57][61] The automatic gun "controlled by satellite" then struck him thirteen times from a distance of 150 metres (490 ft).
     
    What do you think the wider geopolitical repercussions are going to be?

    Do you think they got Ebrahim Raisi too?

    Replies: @A123, @S1, @Greasy William

    When do you think that GW will claim the termination of Ismail Haniyeh is a sign of Netanyahu’s “weakness”?

    It seems to be his favourite refrain. Of course, everyone following Israeli politics disagrees with GW.

    What do you think the wider geopolitical repercussions are going to be?

    Will this head off further escalation by Iranian Hezbollah? Netanyahu showing strength should encourage caution and restraint among the terror groups. At least in the short-term, things should improve.

    How rational are Iranian and Hezbollah leaders? And, do they take the event as a personal warning? Sociopath Khamenei and his cadre do not risk their own lives, but are willing to expend others.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @Torna atrás
    @A123

    https://youtu.be/lunKpbb46ic?si=jjslCSE70XcK0fm-

    You sure know a lot about Israel/Jews for a good ole boy.

    Replies: @Torna atrás

  642. A123 says: • Website
    @A123
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    ROTFLMAO

     
    https://i.gifer.com/origin/e9/e91d628a211b7d705881b28345b82b8f_w200.gif
     


    Donald the Fat
     
    Why do you think this childish insult helps your case?

    • Could Trump stand to lose a few pounds? Yes.
    • Does he have a diagnosed, weight related, medical condition that impairs his ability to be President? No.
    ___

    I have attached terminology to Biden, but those appellations conveyed pertinent information.

    The Veggie-In-Chief is in fact senile.

    Biden lost the 2020 election and was illegitimatly installed in office. Not-The-President Biden is the current White House occupant. He does not represent Americans. Why would foreign nations respect a fake, politically impotent leader?

    if he wins the election she plans to reside in Palm Beach.
     
    Uproot Barron to send him to a DEI school in DC? He will do much better by staying away from Washington.

    Such a choice would be unusual, but quite reasonable.

    Did you ever see that report that the Secret Service had to evict him from the white house
     
    That lie was debunked ages ago.

    So was the lie that Trump "lunged for the steering wheel".


    ___

    Why do you shill fabrications so Leftoid crazy ... even MSNBC gave up on them?

    Are you deliberately trolling?
    Or, are you a low-IQ yahoo incapable of telling fact from fiction?

    If you want us to laugh AT you, please continue.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @A123

    CORRECTION

    I originally posted this.

    Uproot Barron to send him to a DEI school in DC? He will do much better by staying away from Washington.

    Such a choice would be unusual, but quite reasonable.

    I thought Barron was graduating high school next May. Upon review, he graduated a couple months ago.

    There is no obvious reason to expect Melania to stay in Florida. Emil the Fat must be shilling another bogus rumor.

    PEACE 😇

  643. S1 says:
    @Torna atrás
    @Greasy William

    Two conflicting reports both from Iranian sources.

    The assassination of Ismail Haniyeh took place in northern Tehran by a projectile from the air - Fars News

    Ismail Haniyeh and his bodyguard have been shot and killed in Tehran -


    https://twitter.com/3KooH/status/1818479340897935477


    I wouldn't be surprised if they sniped him from a drone.


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


    reported that no gunmen were present, and that only a remote-controlled machine gun mounted on a Nissan was used in the attack.[62] IRGC Deputy Commander-In-Chief Ali Fadavi said that the weapon was equipped with a camera and utilized artificial intelligence and facial recognition to target Fakhrizadeh.[70][71] In this account, Fakhrizadeh, possibly not recognizing gunfire, exited his vehicle after he believed it struck something.[57][61] The automatic gun "controlled by satellite" then struck him thirteen times from a distance of 150 metres (490 ft).
     
    What do you think the wider geopolitical repercussions are going to be?

    Do you think they got Ebrahim Raisi too?

    Replies: @A123, @S1, @Greasy William

    What do you think the wider geopolitical repercussions are going to be?

    The Iranians might well redouble their purported efforts to ‘get’ the controlled opposition candidate Trump, whom as such has recently and forcibly (and quite helpfully for the American progressive establishment it should be added) just called for Iran’s ‘obliteration’ in revenge by the United States should they assassinate him

    With the assistance of a deliberately incompetent secret service ‘guarding’ Trump, where a 20 year old recently failed, the Iranians with better resources might just succeed.

    ‘Who will rid us of this troublesome presidential candidate?’

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-floats-bizarre-assassination-revenge-124016233.html

    “If they do ‘assassinate President Trump,’ which is always a possibility, I hope that America obliterates Iran, wipes it off the face of the Earth,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “If that does not happen, American Leaders will be considered ‘gutless’ cowards!”

  644. @sudden death
    @sudden death

    Another one, this time Michigan looks quite unrealistic though:

    https://i.postimg.cc/9FD33MP8/ETBn-Ac-E9s4719k5-WPVk-NVw-FIi8i632c-Ut5oq-Ea-Ub-CXHw4-TO4-FQ48j-Svr-Mvwx2-SNzalj0-Hy4q-Gx-GXRt33-Fv-TGn-U7r-ME-h6np-Ypr7.jpg

    Replies: @QCIC, @Gerard1234

    Is the Harris polling believable? She is extremely unlikable and comes across as completely incompetent. This looks like a pre-installed justification for election vote fraud, something that misguided people might reference in November to avoid acknowledging blatant election tampering.

    • Agree: Bashibuzuk, S1, Mikhail
    • Replies: @LondonBob
    @QCIC

    Richard Baris is still one of the best in the business, small improvement on Biden, at the moment, but heading for a big defeat, ignoring fraud.

    , @AP
    @QCIC


    Is the Harris polling believable? She is extremely unlikable and comes across as completely incompetent
     
    Compared to Biden?

    She came across as unlikable and incompetent compared to other politicians in the Democratic primary but now she is being compared to eyeliner wearing extremist Vance, sleazy elderly grandiose criminal blowhard Trump and elderly and senile Biden. For many, her presentation is a breath of fresh air and relative normalcy so one can expect such a bump. Hailey would have seen the same advantage, had she been nominated. If Harris picks a moderate straight, married white guy with kids as her running mate she will further seal the deal.

    Among normal people Harris is more popular now than Biden, which in a divided country means she can certainly be a couple percentage points more popular than Trump.

    And fortunately for her, Harris had a record of cynical opportunistic flip flopping so she can pick and choose how to present herself. To appeal to moderates, she might ignore her record of senate votes and instead push her past as California’s attorney general at a time when California still put criminals in prison. Apparently she was even putting people in prison for marijuana violations. I think she’s a more adept and smooth flip-flopper than the equally cynical opportunist Vance.

    This looks like a pre-installed justification for election vote fraud, something that misguided people might reference in November to avoid acknowledging blatant election tampering.
     
    And of course you are off to the races. Such large scale fraud and tampering isn’t feasible for various reasons. Oversight by both parties, etc.

    The Democratic advantage isn’t in election fraud but in the control over the media, from the news (blackout and censorship of Hunter’s laptop right before the election), to popular culture (beloved stars tell people who is horrible and socially unacceptable). Corporations help too - Pfizer conveniently withheld the good news of the vaccine until right after the election. But tampering with actual votes is for crude brutish amateurs like the goons in Venezuela, Russia or Belarus.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ, @Mr. XYZ

    , @Mikel
    @QCIC


    Is the Harris polling believable?
     
    Yes, it is. No idea where sudden death has found that extreme outlier in Michigan but all poll aggregators at the moment show Kamala tied neck to neck with Trump, both nationally and in most swing states. That's dozens of different poll companies that are very unlikely to be all controlled by lizards, imho. They're the same ones that showed him well ahead of Biden just weeks ago.

    What happens is that people forget that Trump continues to have a big level of rejection, as shown in all elections since 2018. Even some people who liked his 2016 agenda (which he has largely abandoned) have trouble voting for him, myself included. It may be temporary, while people get to know Kamala, and polls are quite unreliable anyway, as we all know, but now that he's not facing a mentally unfit candidate, he's doing worse in the polls. Hardly surprising.



    This looks like a pre-installed justification for election vote fraud, something that misguided people might reference in November to avoid acknowledging blatant election tampering.
     
    If you are like me and can barely comprehend how people can vote for such an unlikable candidate as Kamala, I have an idea: instead of fantasizing that some secret cabal is organizing all this and that hundreds of polling company workers are part of the conspiracy, do this:

    protectthevote.com

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Emil Nikola Richard

    , @A123
    @QCIC


    Is the Harris polling believable?
     
    Several "mainstream" polls have been caught maliciously over sampling registered Democrats. Even this has not helped Harris.

    Once the shenanigans are accounted for, she is several points BEHIND where Biden was.
    ___

    Harris is already making mistakes. Why go on Ru Paul's drag queen show? There is no upside to that in swing states.

    She has to go up against a strong, high quality candidate in Trump. The fact that Vance is "too establishment" for MAGA is actually helpful in terms of moderates & independents. #NeverTrump weirdos trying to mud sling at Vance is already backfiring.

    The Harris campaign is apparently having difficulty finding a VP. Roy Cooper is the fourth(?) big name to bail out of the selection process. This is a strong sign that DNC insiders know she is going to lose.

    It sounds like the DNC will still have a virtual roll call before the convention. Given the Ohio law change to their ballot deadline, this is no longer necessary. A number of progressive factions see this as a cynical power play.

    Democrats are divided and lack enthusiasm.

    PEACE 😇
  645. @A123
    @Torna atrás

    When do you think that GW will claim the termination of Ismail Haniyeh is a sign of Netanyahu's "weakness"?

    It seems to be his favourite refrain. Of course, everyone following Israeli politics disagrees with GW.


    What do you think the wider geopolitical repercussions are going to be?

     

    Will this head off further escalation by Iranian Hezbollah? Netanyahu showing strength should encourage caution and restraint among the terror groups. At least in the short-term, things should improve.

    How rational are Iranian and Hezbollah leaders? And, do they take the event as a personal warning? Sociopath Khamenei and his cadre do not risk their own lives, but are willing to expend others.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Torna atrás

    You sure know a lot about Israel/Jews for a good ole boy.

    • Replies: @Torna atrás
    @Torna atrás

    https://youtu.be/7uyZAj-J4MQ



    I got a job but it ain't nearly enough
    A twenty thousand dollar pickup truck
    Belongs to me and the bank and some funny talkin' man from Iran

    I left the service and got a G.I. loan
    I got married bought myself a home
    Now I hang around this one horse town and do the best I can

    It's gettin' tough
    Just my luck
    I was born in the land of plenty now there ain't enough
    Gettin' cold
    I've been told
    Nowadays it just don't pay to be a good ol' boy

    Been goin' nowhere down a one-way track
    I'd kill to leave it but ain't no turnin' back
    Got the wife and the kids and what would everybody say
    My brother's standin' on a welfare line
    And any minute now I might get mine
    Meanwhile it's the I.R.S. and the devil to pay

    Gettin' tough
    Just my luck
    I was born in the land of plenty now there ain't enough
    Gettin' cold
    I've been told
    Nowadays it just don't pay to be a good ol' boy

    I hit the beer joints every Friday night
    Spend a little money lookin' for a fight
    It don't matter if I lose or win
    'Cause Monday I'm back on the losin' end again

    Gettin' tough
    It's just my luck
    I was born in the land of plenty now there ain't enough
    It's gettin' cold
    I've been told
    Nowadays it just don't pay to be a good ol' boy

  646. @YetAnotherAnon
    Alas this has been waiting for approval by Steve for many hours. Nearly as bad as the Guardian, where the word Rwanda features not.

    Southport child killer (3 kids dead now, half a dozen others plus 2 teachers very bad) – the Rwanda rumours seem to be correct:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/29/southport-major-incident-stabbing-police/

    “The youth, who cannot be named for legal reasons and is originally from Cardiff, moved to the Southport area with his Rwandan parents when he was aged six.”

    Replies: @songbird, @S1, @LondonBob

    France has suffered many similar attacks, memory holing still works, just about.

  647. @Greasy William
    Israel finally launched a half assed retaliation against Lebanon.

    Like Dmitry said earlier, since it was only Syrian Druze children who were killed, Israel doesn't particularly care. The idea here is to put the ball in Hezbollah's court, assuming that Hezbollah won't respond.

    Coward Bibi should enjoy the few months he has left.

    Replies: @A123, @LondonBob

    Alastair Crooke says DC gave the go ahead for a wider war.

    • Replies: @Greasy William
    @LondonBob

    They may have, but so what? This isn't the Israel of 1967. DC could have explicitly ordered Netanyahu to invade Lebanon and he would refuse to do it.

  648. @QCIC
    @sudden death

    Is the Harris polling believable? She is extremely unlikable and comes across as completely incompetent. This looks like a pre-installed justification for election vote fraud, something that misguided people might reference in November to avoid acknowledging blatant election tampering.

    Replies: @LondonBob, @AP, @Mikel, @A123

    Richard Baris is still one of the best in the business, small improvement on Biden, at the moment, but heading for a big defeat, ignoring fraud.

  649. @Torna atrás
    @A123

    https://youtu.be/lunKpbb46ic?si=jjslCSE70XcK0fm-

    You sure know a lot about Israel/Jews for a good ole boy.

    Replies: @Torna atrás

    I got a job but it ain’t nearly enough
    A twenty thousand dollar pickup truck
    Belongs to me and the bank and some funny talkin’ man from Iran

    I left the service and got a G.I. loan
    I got married bought myself a home
    Now I hang around this one horse town and do the best I can

    It’s gettin’ tough
    Just my luck
    I was born in the land of plenty now there ain’t enough
    Gettin’ cold
    I’ve been told
    Nowadays it just don’t pay to be a good ol’ boy

    Been goin’ nowhere down a one-way track
    I’d kill to leave it but ain’t no turnin’ back
    Got the wife and the kids and what would everybody say
    My brother’s standin’ on a welfare line
    And any minute now I might get mine
    Meanwhile it’s the I.R.S. and the devil to pay

    Gettin’ tough
    Just my luck
    I was born in the land of plenty now there ain’t enough
    Gettin’ cold
    I’ve been told
    Nowadays it just don’t pay to be a good ol’ boy

    I hit the beer joints every Friday night
    Spend a little money lookin’ for a fight
    It don’t matter if I lose or win
    ‘Cause Monday I’m back on the losin’ end again

    Gettin’ tough
    It’s just my luck
    I was born in the land of plenty now there ain’t enough
    It’s gettin’ cold
    I’ve been told
    Nowadays it just don’t pay to be a good ol’ boy

  650. S1 says:
    @songbird
    Am not trying to criticize - it may be the wisest decision politically - but I find it surprising that they are using English slogans in Vienna.
    https://twitter.com/BrittPettibone/status/1815080411925455202

    Replies: @S1

    Am not trying to criticize – it may be the wisest decision politically – but I find it surprising that they are using English slogans in Vienna.

    It’s unfortunate. The Austrians shouldn’t feel compelled to do that and should be perfectly content to use their own native language.

    As you say, it was probably a political decision made to reach a larger audience.

    ‘We walked in the cold air
    Freezing breath on a window pane
    Lying and waiting
    A man in the dark in a picture frame
    So mystic and soulful
    A voice reaching out in a piercing cry
    It stays with you until’

    ‘The feeling has gone only you and I
    It means nothing to me
    This means nothing to me
    Oh, Vienna’

    ‘The music is weaving
    Haunting notes, pizzicato strings
    The rhythm is calling
    Alone in the night as the daylight brings
    A cool empty silence
    The warmth of your hand and a cold grey sky
    It fades to the distance’

    • Thanks: songbird
  651. AP says:
    @QCIC
    @sudden death

    Is the Harris polling believable? She is extremely unlikable and comes across as completely incompetent. This looks like a pre-installed justification for election vote fraud, something that misguided people might reference in November to avoid acknowledging blatant election tampering.

    Replies: @LondonBob, @AP, @Mikel, @A123

    Is the Harris polling believable? She is extremely unlikable and comes across as completely incompetent

    Compared to Biden?

    She came across as unlikable and incompetent compared to other politicians in the Democratic primary but now she is being compared to eyeliner wearing extremist Vance, sleazy elderly grandiose criminal blowhard Trump and elderly and senile Biden. For many, her presentation is a breath of fresh air and relative normalcy so one can expect such a bump. Hailey would have seen the same advantage, had she been nominated. If Harris picks a moderate straight, married white guy with kids as her running mate she will further seal the deal.

    Among normal people Harris is more popular now than Biden, which in a divided country means she can certainly be a couple percentage points more popular than Trump.

    And fortunately for her, Harris had a record of cynical opportunistic flip flopping so she can pick and choose how to present herself. To appeal to moderates, she might ignore her record of senate votes and instead push her past as California’s attorney general at a time when California still put criminals in prison. Apparently she was even putting people in prison for marijuana violations. I think she’s a more adept and smooth flip-flopper than the equally cynical opportunist Vance.

    This looks like a pre-installed justification for election vote fraud, something that misguided people might reference in November to avoid acknowledging blatant election tampering.

    And of course you are off to the races. Such large scale fraud and tampering isn’t feasible for various reasons. Oversight by both parties, etc.

    The Democratic advantage isn’t in election fraud but in the control over the media, from the news (blackout and censorship of Hunter’s laptop right before the election), to popular culture (beloved stars tell people who is horrible and socially unacceptable). Corporations help too – Pfizer conveniently withheld the good news of the vaccine until right after the election. But tampering with actual votes is for crude brutish amateurs like the goons in Venezuela, Russia or Belarus.

    • Replies: @Mr. XYZ
    @AP


    The Democratic advantage isn’t in election fraud but in the control over the media, from the news (blackout and censorship of Hunter’s laptop right before the election), to popular culture (beloved stars tell people who is horrible and socially unacceptable). Corporations help too – Pfizer conveniently withheld the good news of the vaccine until right after the election. But tampering with actual votes is for crude brutish amateurs like the goons in Venezuela, Russia or Belarus.
     
    Isn't some of the Democrats' advantage in regards to this simply due to the fact that EHC (elite human capital) leans left?

    https://www.richardhanania.com/p/listen-to-the-science-conservatives
    , @Mr. XYZ
    @AP

    Also, AP, this is off-topic, but in regards to Ukraine, what do you think of this article?

    https://scholarship.law.uwyo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1491&context=wlr

    Specifically this section?

    "B. Equitable Utilization & Bolivia’s Artificial Flows"

    Would this section of this article, talking about a particular South American water dispute involving natural and artificial waterways, support Russia or Ukraine more in the (past) dispute over the North Crimean Canal?

  652. Have never played this old game, but I think it would be pretty cool, if someone rebuilt it into a remigration simulator.

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

    [MORE]

    Like, you can choose to buy A380s to carry more deportees, but then you need to build the airstrips in the Congo, to receive them.

    You can fit 1000 recent arrivals into an A380, but by second generation they get so fat, it is only 500.

    You choose what groups to deport first. But it is actually better to save the Somalis until last, as it makes the others more cooperative, if you make them live among them.

    The more you deport, the more you can increase tourism. You can also encourage foreign big game sportsmen to participate in man-catching as a competitive sport.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird


    it is actually better to save the Somalis until last, as it makes the others more cooperative, if you make them live among them.
     
    OK now this part is funny.

    When they renamed the Washington football team because Redskins is racist, if I was the owner of the team I definitely would have called them the Cannibals. And hired R. Crumb to draw the new logo. A bollywood choreographer for the new Barbie Kali theme cheerleader squad.

    Have you ever asked an Indian computer programmer if they still have cannibals where they come from?

    Immigrants can be a lot of fun.

    Replies: @songbird

  653. S1 says:

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/russian-military-begins-3rd-round-094335750.html

    Russian military begins 3rd round of drills to train troops in tactical nuclear weapons

    MOSCOW (AP) — The Russian military on Wednesday began a third round of drills with tactical nuclear weapons, part of the Kremlin’s messaging intended to force the West to limit its support for Ukraine.

    The Russian Defense Ministry said the drills will feature units of the central and southern military districts armed with Iskander short-range missiles. They will practice receiving nuclear weapons from storage and deploying them to designated launch areas. The maneuvers will also include air force units that will arm their warplanes with nuclear weapons and perform patrol flights.

    The ministry said the drills are intended to maintain troops’ readiness for combat missions.

    Tactical nuclear weapons include bombs, warheads for short-range missiles and artillery munitions and are meant for use on a battlefield. They are typically far less powerful than strategic weapons — massive warheads that arm intercontinental ballistic missiles and are intended to obliterate entire cities.

    The previous two rounds of the maneuvers were held in May and June. The drills in June were conducted jointly with the armed forces of Russia’s ally Belarus.

  654. @German_reader
    @Dmitry


    AnonfromTN doesn’t seem exactly bitter.
     
    Probably depends on one how interprets his confident predictions that Russia will be able to "re-format" (or whatever the euphemism is) Ukraine...seems to me they spring from a profound bitterness, as do his anti-Western jeremiads. Of course the fundamental question not just regarding him, but Western-Russian relations in general is whether that bitterness was inevitable, or if it could have been avoided or mitigated with different policies. But unfortunately that's a pretty hypothetical question by now.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Dmitry

    AnonfromTN identifies with politically with Moscow, not with Kiev.

    So, when he is supporting Moscow’s policy in Ukraine, or talking about the decaying West. He is actually like saying “My team is going to win”.

    When people are young, they are typically full of optimism and enthusiasm. When they become old, often political disillusionment.

    If he was originally from TN, USA AnonfromTN’s comments about the West, could sound like a stereotypical disillusionment of some American old people.

    But AnonfromTN is from the USSR and he seems today politically more with Moscow. In this context and area of his views, he still has some of the faith of the society of his youth.*

    *There’s a popular example of Moscow’s early 1980s descriptions on America, which isn’t different than today. It begins describing the violent American internal culture, related to Halloween and the horror film genre.

    Then they relate the violent internal culture, to a violent external official policy related to interventionist or “gunboat diplomacy”, the use of American soldiers in Lebanon and the loss of Lebanese and Palestinian lives.

    Then they relate to Washington’s intervention in Nicaragua, Cuba, El Salvador, Grenada. They show internal protests in Washington against the deployment of nuclear weapons in Europe, viewing them as a threat of a new world war.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Dmitry

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Soviet_Young_Pioneers_in_1983_in_the_Zeravshan_Mountains_of_Tajik_SSR.jpg/1024px-Soviet_Young_Pioneers_in_1983_in_the_Zeravshan_Mountains_of_Tajik_SSR.jpg

    I believe Tennessee was the young fellow in front on the far left.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  655. @songbird
    Have never played this old game, but I think it would be pretty cool, if someone rebuilt it into a remigration simulator.

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

    Like, you can choose to buy A380s to carry more deportees, but then you need to build the airstrips in the Congo, to receive them.

    You can fit 1000 recent arrivals into an A380, but by second generation they get so fat, it is only 500.

    You choose what groups to deport first. But it is actually better to save the Somalis until last, as it makes the others more cooperative, if you make them live among them.

    The more you deport, the more you can increase tourism. You can also encourage foreign big game sportsmen to participate in man-catching as a competitive sport.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    it is actually better to save the Somalis until last, as it makes the others more cooperative, if you make them live among them.

    OK now this part is funny.

    When they renamed the Washington football team because Redskins is racist, if I was the owner of the team I definitely would have called them the Cannibals. And hired R. Crumb to draw the new logo. A bollywood choreographer for the new Barbie Kali theme cheerleader squad.

    Have you ever asked an Indian computer programmer if they still have cannibals where they come from?

    Immigrants can be a lot of fun.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    When they renamed the Washington football team because Redskins is racist
     
    For the life of me, I can't understand where they got their new mascot, unless from the theories of Eugene McCarty or from reading the Chinese classic Journey to the West.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Tuddy

    if I was the owner of the team I definitely would have called them the Cannibals
     
    I don't think AI is up to the task yet, but one day I wonder if it will be able to turn Tintin in the Congo into a movie.

    A bollywood choreographer for the new Barbie Kali theme cheerleader squad.
     
    Jackie Chan once did a sort of Bollywood crossover that ended with dancing. Wasn't one of his better movies, but I think it's interesting sociologically, as I believe it demonstrates an idea of the other, seemingly rarer in Hollywood and IIRC has an Indian villain.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fu_Yoga

    Have you ever asked an Indian computer programmer if they still have cannibals where they come from?
     
    no, but I once saw a Nigerian very engrossed in a documentary on African cannibals. I think they were also gay, or at least the guy studying them was.

    Immigrants can be a lot of fun.
     
    I was impressed by that woman Torna posted saying "I'll kill you", with a baby in her hand, in a foreign land. I still wonder what they said to her to set her off like that.
  656. @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    AnonfromTN identifies with politically with Moscow, not with Kiev.

    So, when he is supporting Moscow's policy in Ukraine, or talking about the decaying West. He is actually like saying "My team is going to win".

    -

    When people are young, they are typically full of optimism and enthusiasm. When they become old, often political disillusionment.

    If he was originally from TN, USA AnonfromTN's comments about the West, could sound like a stereotypical disillusionment of some American old people.

    But AnonfromTN is from the USSR and he seems today politically more with Moscow. In this context and area of his views, he still has some of the faith of the society of his youth.*

    -

    *There's a popular example of Moscow's early 1980s descriptions on America, which isn't different than today. It begins describing the violent American internal culture, related to Halloween and the horror film genre.

    Then they relate the violent internal culture, to a violent external official policy related to interventionist or "gunboat diplomacy", the use of American soldiers in Lebanon and the loss of Lebanese and Palestinian lives.

    Then they relate to Washington's intervention in Nicaragua, Cuba, El Salvador, Grenada. They show internal protests in Washington against the deployment of nuclear weapons in Europe, viewing them as a threat of a new world war.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZeP9CePcOg

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    I believe Tennessee was the young fellow in front on the far left.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Lol these are more like our forum's young people, LatW and Bashibuzuk.

    AnonfromTN is from a more veteran generation. He can remember life in 1960s Ukraine. Like also Philip Owen, his posts have an extra value as he personally experienced some of these topics we are discussing more abstractly from the history books.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  657. @Torna atrás
    @Greasy William

    Two conflicting reports both from Iranian sources.

    The assassination of Ismail Haniyeh took place in northern Tehran by a projectile from the air - Fars News

    Ismail Haniyeh and his bodyguard have been shot and killed in Tehran -


    https://twitter.com/3KooH/status/1818479340897935477


    I wouldn't be surprised if they sniped him from a drone.


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


    reported that no gunmen were present, and that only a remote-controlled machine gun mounted on a Nissan was used in the attack.[62] IRGC Deputy Commander-In-Chief Ali Fadavi said that the weapon was equipped with a camera and utilized artificial intelligence and facial recognition to target Fakhrizadeh.[70][71] In this account, Fakhrizadeh, possibly not recognizing gunfire, exited his vehicle after he believed it struck something.[57][61] The automatic gun "controlled by satellite" then struck him thirteen times from a distance of 150 metres (490 ft).
     
    What do you think the wider geopolitical repercussions are going to be?

    Do you think they got Ebrahim Raisi too?

    Replies: @A123, @S1, @Greasy William

    What do you think the wider geopolitical repercussions are going to be?

    None. The Resistance Axis is currently winning the war. These assassinations are indeed humiliating for the RA but, let’s be honest, everyone already knew that they were incompetent, blowhard clowns. Strategically, these attacks have no impact whatsoever.

    Magnier has connections with the top people in Hezbollah and he said last night that there will be no retaliation.

    Look at the broader strategic situation: Hamas still rules Gaza, the hostages haven’t been returned and the north is still depopulated. The current Israeli regime, led by that coward rat Bibi Netanyahu, is fundamentally incapable for properly prosecuting this war.

    In October when shitbird Bibi is finally gone, that is when the fun will start.

    • Thanks: Torna atrás
    • Replies: @ShortOnTime
    @Greasy William

    This looks to be a mostly correct assessment of the strategic situation although nobody really knows what's next for certain since the Middle East is likely on the brink of a major war.

    Otherwise, I wanted to clarify to you that the last time I had conversation with you here some time ago I had 0.00% sleep (so sleep deprivation) for several days in a row (meaning some outbursts, embarrassment and lapses were inevitable) since I made the mistake of looking at civilians in Gaza being killed day in and day out. (This is not an apology since apologies are usually a bad life strategy).

    There are still a few Christian souls worth caring about in Gaza and that part of the world. Since a missile by Israel recently failed to explode at the Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza the heavens, providence, and the saints must be on the side of Christians. To be fair, Israel has taken care to spare majority Maronite Christian villages in Lebanon from its airstrikes and bombardment (at least for now).

    Replies: @A123

  658. @LondonBob
    @Greasy William

    Alastair Crooke says DC gave the go ahead for a wider war.

    Replies: @Greasy William

    They may have, but so what? This isn’t the Israel of 1967. DC could have explicitly ordered Netanyahu to invade Lebanon and he would refuse to do it.

  659. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Dmitry

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Soviet_Young_Pioneers_in_1983_in_the_Zeravshan_Mountains_of_Tajik_SSR.jpg/1024px-Soviet_Young_Pioneers_in_1983_in_the_Zeravshan_Mountains_of_Tajik_SSR.jpg

    I believe Tennessee was the young fellow in front on the far left.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    Lol these are more like our forum’s young people, LatW and Bashibuzuk.

    AnonfromTN is from a more veteran generation. He can remember life in 1960s Ukraine. Like also Philip Owen, his posts have an extra value as he personally experienced some of these topics we are discussing more abstractly from the history books.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Dmitry

    https://dzen.ru/a/XUKq0D9UhwCt0PAZ

    https://youtu.be/blN0As2kBPk?si=LgjWd9ICbSUQtgIL

  660. @QCIC
    @sudden death

    Is the Harris polling believable? She is extremely unlikable and comes across as completely incompetent. This looks like a pre-installed justification for election vote fraud, something that misguided people might reference in November to avoid acknowledging blatant election tampering.

    Replies: @LondonBob, @AP, @Mikel, @A123

    Is the Harris polling believable?

    Yes, it is. No idea where sudden death has found that extreme outlier in Michigan but all poll aggregators at the moment show Kamala tied neck to neck with Trump, both nationally and in most swing states. That’s dozens of different poll companies that are very unlikely to be all controlled by lizards, imho. They’re the same ones that showed him well ahead of Biden just weeks ago.

    What happens is that people forget that Trump continues to have a big level of rejection, as shown in all elections since 2018. Even some people who liked his 2016 agenda (which he has largely abandoned) have trouble voting for him, myself included. It may be temporary, while people get to know Kamala, and polls are quite unreliable anyway, as we all know, but now that he’s not facing a mentally unfit candidate, he’s doing worse in the polls. Hardly surprising.

    This looks like a pre-installed justification for election vote fraud, something that misguided people might reference in November to avoid acknowledging blatant election tampering.

    If you are like me and can barely comprehend how people can vote for such an unlikable candidate as Kamala, I have an idea: instead of fantasizing that some secret cabal is organizing all this and that hundreds of polling company workers are part of the conspiracy, do this:

    protectthevote.com

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Mikel


    people can vote for such an unlikable candidate as Kamala,
     
    If you mean unlikeable in a superficial personal sense or in terms of her political policies?

    In the superficial sense, visually she looks like she could be more sympathetic and friendly than average for politicians, which could be part of the explanation for her career rise.

    -

    Imagine Harris, Romney, Trump, Hilary, Obama, are just normal employees in your office, who you don't know. If they are already sitting in a meeting, who would you intuitively sit next to from their personal presentation?

    If your office is going to the restaurant at the end of year, who would sit next to on the table?

    To me, Harris looks more superficially friendly than the other politicians.

    -

    Imagine it is the end of the week, and you ask for people to go drinking? Who do you think would want to stay out later, or who would go home early? Superficially, Obama, Trump, Romney, generally look like people who go to bed early.

    Harris looks like someone who would drink a lot, even if they were your manager.

    -

    But if you asked who would become president from their superficial presentation?

    Harris generally doesn't match our stereotype about a charismatic person or a leader in the way of speaking and you wouldn't predict her to be the candidate if you look at earlier interviews. While Trump is somewhere above average in this area,, with a lot of personal charisma and confidence.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI4XA-kFL_M

    Replies: @Mikel

    , @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Mikel


    If you are like me and can barely comprehend how people can vote for such an unlikable candidate as Kamala
     
    Ha ha same difference.

    In the one case after the election Willie Brown gets to boast to his buddies at the barber shop he banged her before she was president.

    In the other case after the election Roy Cohn's shadow gets to boast to his buddies in hell he banged him before he was president.

    Anybody who gets worked up over this hasn't done any research at all.

    Replies: @QCIC

  661. Yes, it is. No idea where sudden death has found that extreme outlier in Michigan but all poll aggregators at the moment show Kamala tied neck to neck with Trump, both nationally and in most swing states.

    Not neck and neck, Trump is clearly winning and that is with Kamala still in her honeymoon stage. Let’s see where things are in September. The fact that no high profile Dem wants anything to do with the ticket shows that the Dems are anticipating a Trump victory.

    • Replies: @Mikel
    @Greasy William


    Not neck and neck, Trump is clearly winning
     
    He was up just 45-44 yesterday at the poll aggregator I check regularly and I think there were some new swing states polls coming in today. It's looking bad right now.

    Replies: @A123

    , @LondonBob
    @Greasy William

    Kamala is there to save down ticket Democrats, Biden was leading them to oblivion.

    Replies: @Greasy William

  662. @Beckow
    @Mikel

    I don't ask anyone to believe the other side. All I am suggesting is to listen to their version of what happens. The West has aggressively shut down what its enemies have to say - stupid and dangerous. It suggests that West fears alternative explanations - that's not exactly a vote of confidence in themselves. You do that when you lie.

    With Russia I have looked in detail at the main demonizing narratives that go unchallenged in the Western media - frankly 90-95% of people believe them automatically. They make no sense as presented. That includes the war in Ukraine and smaller stories like Skripals, Pussy Riot, Sochi Olympics, novichok, and the collection of nonsense about Trump peeing on carpets and that 10k in Facebook ads swayed the 2016 election (how stupid does one have to be to take that seriously?)

    Russian media is probably not better - I don't really know, I seldom follow them - but why would that matter? To watch the Western media and the majority of population succumb to a form of mass hysteria, believing obvious nonsense, closing their eyes to other views - and then preaching to the rest of the world about virtues and liberty is a bit too much. Maybe you have the stomach for it, but it turns mine upside down...neither Russia nor China are telling others how to think and how to live, so why benchmark the Western 'virtues' against them? Don't you get the absurdity?

    Regarding propaganda during Cold War: would say with a high level of probability that the easterners believed it less than people in the West. They were much more skeptical. But in the West it became the way everyone thinks...to this day.

    Replies: @Mikel

    and the collection of nonsense about Trump peeing on carpets and that 10k in Facebook ads swayed the 2016 election (how stupid does one have to be to take that seriously?)

    AK had a most interesting post some years ago, when he wasn’t afflicted by the SMO PTSD, that showed how unintelligent most people are by posting the actual questions of the PISA tests and the percentages that got them wrong.

    The MSM BS people put up with is indeed staggering. But it’s actually worse than that because a good percentage of the people who realize they’re being had opt to believe equal or worse nonsense coming from the alternative sources they resort to. What good is it to stop believing what you read in the NYT and the CNN if you’re going to believe uncritically what you hear at Alex Jones, Quanon or Breitbart/Zerohedge for that matter? That’s what you are promoting: Westerners should stop believing the stupid stuff published by their MSM but should pay attention to idiotic stories coming from equally unreliable sources, like the Skripal fables or the “gestures of good will” to explain military retreats.

    And it’s not even necessary to believe the Kremlin nonsense to support Russia. AK was an ardent Putin supporter at the time and so is Israel Shamir. They both admitted when the Kremlin was full of crap (eg Skripal). Same goes for lots of Russian TG commentators.

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @Mikel


    ...equally unreliable sources, like the Skripal fables or the “gestures of good will” to explain military retreats.
     
    I make up my own mind. You listing sources that I am not familiar with is an odd way to argue. There is enough between MSM and the alternatives to discern what happens. I also have access to relatively free - or maybe naively old-fashioned - local media in Central Europe that is less scripted. If there is a narrative they were told to publish by the Western allies it is very easy to spot it - they are bumblers, and if the boss sends a memo they publish it without much thought. That by itself is revealing.

    Russia didn't invade with enough soldiers to take Kiev - 100-140k were meant to force the Minsk deal or they hoped the Ukie army would give up. That didn't happen and we got a full-scale war. There was no "good will", it was a change in plans.

    Now they seem have assembled the necessary forces comparable to US-NATO who invaded Iraq with 500k. Ukraine is 10 times stronger than Iraq, do you think Russians were just stupid? Unlikely.

    Skripal story is indeed a fable. If you look at the details it makes no sense - neither the UK version nor Russia's. Something else happened and both sides have an interest in hiding it. Your uncritical embrace of "novitchok on a door knob" betrays your desire to stay loyal no matter what. And loyalty in thought never leads to truth. Or you never looked at the details. A simple question: if the UK story is true why wouldn't they ever show the Skripals?

    , @Gerard1234
    @Mikel


    Skripal fables
     
    You pretend to be skeptical of western propaganda while being the biggest supporter and cocksucker of it. On literally everything.The worst type of antirussian. Stop acting like a butch lesbian ,Mikel. I hate having to repeat myself, while showing Nobel Peace award deserving tolerance.

    1. Anyone with a brain knows that the death of the homeless woman in no logical way could have been done by Russian agents " throwing away perfume bottle". That you could arrogantly stick with your original nonsense is indicative. Clearly the west are lying about the homeless woman- which should then give severe doubt to ALL their comments about the Skripal stuff.

    2. Salisbury must be one of the most spy-attracting places on the planet you dummy. Major UK army base, main chemical weapons facility. Any non thick person would accept the strong possibility of a western intelligence setup , and that Petrov/Chepiga could have been there for reasons not connected to Skripal. Espionage not murder.

    3. Any non- brainwashed idiot would think about what Skripals daughter being there indicates. If she flew direct from Moscow, how likely are they to have decided, of all times, to assassinate Skripal then? Zero in my view. Possibility Skripal with immobile mother in her 90s and daughter engaged, was looking at some deal with Russian authorities to see her. His daughter is the only intermediary for this.... and MI6 child molestors decided taking them out or some scam would be funny response.

    The ability to not think a significant chance this Skripal thing was a western operation, or to be highly untrusting of what west have claimed happened to Skripals, is a disgrace. A dead guy who isn't dead with no sight of him, and you claim "fables"?

    MH17
     
    Its only bias, lazy western BS propaganda made bias making you arrogantly claim " Russia did it". BTW did Boeing ever make claim against Russian government in American or international court? As with that other Malaysian plane that disappeared - governments lie and play dumb about what they know. Western lies about there being no Su-25's in the area is one thing among others, the only other thing is an issue of trust. I trust my country, and you trust western cartel of countries on MH17. OK- but don't be claiming its anything more than that

    " Gestures of goodwill"/non intention to take Kiev
     
    FFS. 1000s of Russian heroes after slaughtering masses of ukronazis and completing clearly significant action at Chernobyl......leave with zero resistance through Belarus/ northern Russia to redeploy to the Donbass. What dimwit thinks this happens with ukronazis in dominant position in Kiev?

    Again, anyone with a brain knows that taking Kiev ( and with it compelling to take northern and much central 404 too) would be too much of a financial pressure to be an initiative then.

    You and my great pal German re-rapist are both of the same 2-headed snake. Poseurs faking "neutrality" or "anti neoconservative" as if to give "credibility" to your antirussian filth.

    As now is German re-rapist bothered about his country allowing in Chechen terrorists ? Of course not!

    Replies: @German_reader, @Mikel

  663. @Coconuts
    @Bashibuzuk

    There might be a cycle behind it.

    In pre-industrial times people with higher IQs did tend to have more surviving children, as industry and urbanisation advances the opposite situation develops. But it's possible that as the number of high IQ people diminishes, maintaining an industrial civilisation will become more of a challenge and living conditions will become more difficult. Then the higher IQ people should regain an advantage or at least reach parity.

    People were aware of this in the past, I saw that Foucault was writing against these older versions of eugenic ideas:


    The middle class also feared that this underclass sooner or later would "take over" because the population growth was greater in these slums than it was in the middle class. This fear gave rise to the scientific study of eugenics, whose founder Francis Galton had been inspired by Charles Darwin and his theory of natural selection.
     
    You can already see some counter-reaction to the influence of ideas like Foucault's among the more unconventional feminists. A commentator like Mary Harrington could be a good example of this, she absorbed a lot of Queer theory at university and tried to live as non-binary in a lesbian commune before becoming mentally ill. She managed to recover and become a mother and now promotes a version of feminism which is against contraceptive use and is pro-medieval.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    higher IQs

    “IQ” test results relate to word games or some basic number games. They are from 19th or early 20th century French and English puzzle books, which were designed for entertainment in one of the tragic epochs before the invention of Playstation.

    If you want to use them as a sociological measure, they would correlate with literacy levels in the society. After industrialization, a lot of the service industries in the economy need literate employees, so it could be useful in this way to check for literacy levels and peoples’ skill with words or vocabulary.

    However, in the earlier epochs, the more important kind of thinking for most professions would have been things like “street smarts”, “good relationship with plants and animals”, “intuition about the seasons” (for farmers), “skill in using hands”, while literacy skills required for doing word puzzles might be useful for less common professions like rhetoricians in Ancient Athens or the writers of plays in Elizabethan England.

    did tend to have more surviving children,

    A physical selection for peoples’ general talent or interest in word puzzles, although some historical epochs could plausibly contain this, would be quite slow.

    The recent cultural changes we notice, mainly caused by technology and change it causes for cultural ideals, through the changing mode of production, but also sometimes highlighted political changes,* are often very fast.

    This is why people who like the film “Idiocracy”, are saying in 2016 with the election of Trump, comments like “Idiocracy happened much faster than we predicted”.

    *AP is relating last thread about the redneck kind of behavior of the children in the West of postsoviet “New money”, compared to more “civilized behavior” of the Soviet intellectual class. His story is quite good symbol of the changing of economic power from the Soviet intellectual class to the business class in the 1990s.

    In the Soviet Union, there was a strong emphasis on intellectual culture, both literary and technical, which is in some way mismatching with typical culture of a middle income country.

    But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the culture is doing something like a “reversion to the mean” relative to the economy, in the sense the intellectual and literary culture is becoming deprioritized. By the 2010s, Russian general culture is more like you expect in a middle income country.

    So, from the perspective of the intellectually elevated Soviet culture, it could seem like the culture became a relative “Idiocracy” within around 20-30 years.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Dmitry


    So, from the perspective of the intellectually elevated Soviet culture, it could seem like the culture became a relative “Idiocracy” within around 20-30 years.
     
    Around 10 years ago, I was in Skolkovo, discussing with young researchers. These folks are supposed to be the top of the crop. I confirm that they were on average less cultured than the similar groups from around 30 years ago.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    , @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    If you want to use them as a sociological measure, they would correlate with literacy levels in the society.
     
    I have heard that they also correlate with a range of other psychological traits, and things like reaction times. Among psychological traits, things like conscientiousness, impulse control, verbal reasoning, agreeableness and so on. It seems sometimes measurement of these other traits can be used to estimate IQ, if those being assessed have no formal education.

    However, in the earlier epochs, the more important kind of thinking for most professions would have been things like “street smarts”...
     
    Many of the psychological traits that correlate with IQ would be useful in helping your children survive in agricultural societies in pre-industrial times. Only the unusually high levels of IQ may be a problem, as a number of the relevant correlations don't seem to hold in those cases.

    The recent cultural changes we notice, mainly caused by technology...
     
    In my post I was writing about the difference between industrial and pre-industrial societies. I quoted Mary Harrington, one of whose favourite subjects is how technology has changed women's lives, family, fertility etc.

    There seems to be a whole debate in intelligence research about how far intelligence is inherited and how far it is environmental, I would guess the same applies to the other psychological traits.
  664. @Greasy William

    Yes, it is. No idea where sudden death has found that extreme outlier in Michigan but all poll aggregators at the moment show Kamala tied neck to neck with Trump, both nationally and in most swing states.
     
    Not neck and neck, Trump is clearly winning and that is with Kamala still in her honeymoon stage. Let's see where things are in September. The fact that no high profile Dem wants anything to do with the ticket shows that the Dems are anticipating a Trump victory.

    Replies: @Mikel, @LondonBob

    Not neck and neck, Trump is clearly winning

    He was up just 45-44 yesterday at the poll aggregator I check regularly and I think there were some new swing states polls coming in today. It’s looking bad right now.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Mikel

    Aggregation is a useful technique once there are enough polls. The difficulty is needing swing state results when the frequency is not that high. As I pointed out earlier, there has been some intentionally deceptive pro-Harris poll rigging going on. It will take a while to pull weight off these outliers.

    It will be weeks before there is enough volume for swing state aggregation to be meaningful.
    ____

    The best places to look at currently are the markets (1). Harris is doing slightly better than pre-debate Biden. However, she is topping out now, either slow rise or flat. Trump 56¢ to Harris 40¢ gives four points of room to RFKjr and others. This is quite believable as Harris has huge built in negatives.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.realclearpolling.com/betting-odds/2024/president

  665. @Dmitry
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Lol these are more like our forum's young people, LatW and Bashibuzuk.

    AnonfromTN is from a more veteran generation. He can remember life in 1960s Ukraine. Like also Philip Owen, his posts have an extra value as he personally experienced some of these topics we are discussing more abstractly from the history books.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    • Thanks: Torna atrás
  666. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Dmitry
    @Coconuts


    higher IQs
     
    "IQ" test results relate to word games or some basic number games. They are from 19th or early 20th century French and English puzzle books, which were designed for entertainment in one of the tragic epochs before the invention of Playstation.

    If you want to use them as a sociological measure, they would correlate with literacy levels in the society. After industrialization, a lot of the service industries in the economy need literate employees, so it could be useful in this way to check for literacy levels and peoples' skill with words or vocabulary.

    However, in the earlier epochs, the more important kind of thinking for most professions would have been things like "street smarts", "good relationship with plants and animals", "intuition about the seasons" (for farmers), "skill in using hands", while literacy skills required for doing word puzzles might be useful for less common professions like rhetoricians in Ancient Athens or the writers of plays in Elizabethan England.


    did tend to have more surviving children,

     

    A physical selection for peoples' general talent or interest in word puzzles, although some historical epochs could plausibly contain this, would be quite slow.

    The recent cultural changes we notice, mainly caused by technology and change it causes for cultural ideals, through the changing mode of production, but also sometimes highlighted political changes,* are often very fast.

    This is why people who like the film "Idiocracy", are saying in 2016 with the election of Trump, comments like "Idiocracy happened much faster than we predicted".

    -

    *AP is relating last thread about the redneck kind of behavior of the children in the West of postsoviet "New money", compared to more "civilized behavior" of the Soviet intellectual class. His story is quite good symbol of the changing of economic power from the Soviet intellectual class to the business class in the 1990s.

    In the Soviet Union, there was a strong emphasis on intellectual culture, both literary and technical, which is in some way mismatching with typical culture of a middle income country.

    But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the culture is doing something like a "reversion to the mean" relative to the economy, in the sense the intellectual and literary culture is becoming deprioritized. By the 2010s, Russian general culture is more like you expect in a middle income country.

    So, from the perspective of the intellectually elevated Soviet culture, it could seem like the culture became a relative "Idiocracy" within around 20-30 years.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Coconuts

    So, from the perspective of the intellectually elevated Soviet culture, it could seem like the culture became a relative “Idiocracy” within around 20-30 years.

    Around 10 years ago, I was in Skolkovo, discussing with young researchers. These folks are supposed to be the top of the crop. I confirm that they were on average less cultured than the similar groups from around 30 years ago.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk

    For late Soviet change was faster with the political breaks than international average change, partly because the Soviet has an "elevated" popular culture in a way which was artificial or at least requires more "top down" control than is typical in democracy.

    Today, the former super-power's popular cultural situation of course is nothing unusual or tragic internationally. 2020s popular culture in Russia is similar to other upper-middle/lower-upper income countries' popular culture like Chile or Argentina. *

    But yes, compared to 1982, the culture atmosphere change has been unusual.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1beWgIJMTA


    -

    *Celebrities nowadays like Niletto are matching a taste which is maybe still more "aristocratic" than in Chile. But you know, it could still probably be in the history textbook with Chile for "aesthetics of the upper-middle/lower-upper income countries' popular culture"


    There is Niletto compared with randomly selected concert in Chile.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Pokeqgyd3s

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9RamqI7p5o

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  667. @Mikel
    @QCIC


    Is the Harris polling believable?
     
    Yes, it is. No idea where sudden death has found that extreme outlier in Michigan but all poll aggregators at the moment show Kamala tied neck to neck with Trump, both nationally and in most swing states. That's dozens of different poll companies that are very unlikely to be all controlled by lizards, imho. They're the same ones that showed him well ahead of Biden just weeks ago.

    What happens is that people forget that Trump continues to have a big level of rejection, as shown in all elections since 2018. Even some people who liked his 2016 agenda (which he has largely abandoned) have trouble voting for him, myself included. It may be temporary, while people get to know Kamala, and polls are quite unreliable anyway, as we all know, but now that he's not facing a mentally unfit candidate, he's doing worse in the polls. Hardly surprising.



    This looks like a pre-installed justification for election vote fraud, something that misguided people might reference in November to avoid acknowledging blatant election tampering.
     
    If you are like me and can barely comprehend how people can vote for such an unlikable candidate as Kamala, I have an idea: instead of fantasizing that some secret cabal is organizing all this and that hundreds of polling company workers are part of the conspiracy, do this:

    protectthevote.com

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Emil Nikola Richard

    people can vote for such an unlikable candidate as Kamala,

    If you mean unlikeable in a superficial personal sense or in terms of her political policies?

    In the superficial sense, visually she looks like she could be more sympathetic and friendly than average for politicians, which could be part of the explanation for her career rise.

    Imagine Harris, Romney, Trump, Hilary, Obama, are just normal employees in your office, who you don’t know. If they are already sitting in a meeting, who would you intuitively sit next to from their personal presentation?

    If your office is going to the restaurant at the end of year, who would sit next to on the table?

    To me, Harris looks more superficially friendly than the other politicians.

    Imagine it is the end of the week, and you ask for people to go drinking? Who do you think would want to stay out later, or who would go home early? Superficially, Obama, Trump, Romney, generally look like people who go to bed early.

    Harris looks like someone who would drink a lot, even if they were your manager.

    But if you asked who would become president from their superficial presentation?

    Harris generally doesn’t match our stereotype about a charismatic person or a leader in the way of speaking and you wouldn’t predict her to be the candidate if you look at earlier interviews. While Trump is somewhere above average in this area,, with a lot of personal charisma and confidence.

    • Replies: @Mikel
    @Dmitry


    If you mean unlikeable in a superficial personal sense or in terms of her political policies?
     
    Both. But the second is much worse.

    If your office is going to the restaurant at the end of year, who would sit next to on the table?
     
    Of course Trump. But perhaps you would find Kamala's conversation more entertaining.

    “IQ” test results relate to word games or some basic number games. They are from 19th or early 20th century French and English puzzle books
     
    LOL. There you go again, erasing whole fields of laborious academic research with the stroke of a pen. Clearly, you just can't help yourself.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  668. Another free upset pick for you guys. Aldosivi +230 over San Telmo. Kickoff in 7 minutes. Let’s do this

    • Replies: @Greasy William
    @Greasy William

    Can someone fucking explain to me how extra time works in soccer? The team I picked is winning after 90 minutes of playing time. Well then why the fuck are they still fucking playing? Right now it says "90+3". The game should be over and I should get my money.

    Replies: @Greasy William

  669. They got another one, Hezbollah officially confirms the assassination of Commander Fouad Shokr, known as al-Hajj Mohsen.

  670. @Mikel
    @Beckow


    and the collection of nonsense about Trump peeing on carpets and that 10k in Facebook ads swayed the 2016 election (how stupid does one have to be to take that seriously?)
     
    AK had a most interesting post some years ago, when he wasn't afflicted by the SMO PTSD, that showed how unintelligent most people are by posting the actual questions of the PISA tests and the percentages that got them wrong.

    The MSM BS people put up with is indeed staggering. But it's actually worse than that because a good percentage of the people who realize they're being had opt to believe equal or worse nonsense coming from the alternative sources they resort to. What good is it to stop believing what you read in the NYT and the CNN if you're going to believe uncritically what you hear at Alex Jones, Quanon or Breitbart/Zerohedge for that matter? That's what you are promoting: Westerners should stop believing the stupid stuff published by their MSM but should pay attention to idiotic stories coming from equally unreliable sources, like the Skripal fables or the "gestures of good will" to explain military retreats.

    And it's not even necessary to believe the Kremlin nonsense to support Russia. AK was an ardent Putin supporter at the time and so is Israel Shamir. They both admitted when the Kremlin was full of crap (eg Skripal). Same goes for lots of Russian TG commentators.

    Replies: @Beckow, @Gerard1234

    …equally unreliable sources, like the Skripal fables or the “gestures of good will” to explain military retreats.

    I make up my own mind. You listing sources that I am not familiar with is an odd way to argue. There is enough between MSM and the alternatives to discern what happens. I also have access to relatively free – or maybe naively old-fashioned – local media in Central Europe that is less scripted. If there is a narrative they were told to publish by the Western allies it is very easy to spot it – they are bumblers, and if the boss sends a memo they publish it without much thought. That by itself is revealing.

    Russia didn’t invade with enough soldiers to take Kiev – 100-140k were meant to force the Minsk deal or they hoped the Ukie army would give up. That didn’t happen and we got a full-scale war. There was no “good will”, it was a change in plans.

    Now they seem have assembled the necessary forces comparable to US-NATO who invaded Iraq with 500k. Ukraine is 10 times stronger than Iraq, do you think Russians were just stupid? Unlikely.

    Skripal story is indeed a fable. If you look at the details it makes no sense – neither the UK version nor Russia’s. Something else happened and both sides have an interest in hiding it. Your uncritical embrace of “novitchok on a door knob” betrays your desire to stay loyal no matter what. And loyalty in thought never leads to truth. Or you never looked at the details. A simple question: if the UK story is true why wouldn’t they ever show the Skripals?

  671. @Bashibuzuk
    @Dmitry


    So, from the perspective of the intellectually elevated Soviet culture, it could seem like the culture became a relative “Idiocracy” within around 20-30 years.
     
    Around 10 years ago, I was in Skolkovo, discussing with young researchers. These folks are supposed to be the top of the crop. I confirm that they were on average less cultured than the similar groups from around 30 years ago.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    For late Soviet change was faster with the political breaks than international average change, partly because the Soviet has an “elevated” popular culture in a way which was artificial or at least requires more “top down” control than is typical in democracy.

    Today, the former super-power’s popular cultural situation of course is nothing unusual or tragic internationally. 2020s popular culture in Russia is similar to other upper-middle/lower-upper income countries’ popular culture like Chile or Argentina. *

    But yes, compared to 1982, the culture atmosphere change has been unusual.

    *Celebrities nowadays like Niletto are matching a taste which is maybe still more “aristocratic” than in Chile. But you know, it could still probably be in the history textbook with Chile for “aesthetics of the upper-middle/lower-upper income countries’ popular culture”

    There is Niletto compared with randomly selected concert in Chile.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Dmitry


    There is Niletto
     
    Sigh…

    Ну и х** с ним…

    https://cs10.pikabu.ru/post_img/2018/09/26/10/153798107511467954.jpg

    It’s an extremely interesting historical period, when you can see the whole World steadily losing its acquired level of knowledge, culture, decency. Basically going to shit. That’s what’s amazing about our times. And you waste time on some tattooed Russian (?) jock…

    https://youtu.be/-6G6AW7oApA?si=Z2U35cGOc9YYFkmy

    How much of your time do you spend on thinking about the fall of the Roman Empire ?

    Because you should think about it…

    https://fortune.com/2023/09/30/men-cant-stop-thinking-about-the-roman-empire-masculinity-polycrisis-culture/

    Listen to this Chinese Canadian dude telling it straight to you and your generation:

    https://youtu.be/VwbE7DHjkHY?si=fCKuSyvNx9T3eprw

    Listen to this high IQ Asian and dump that Niletto pidor to the historical dumpster he rightfully belongs to.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Dmitry

  672. @Mikel
    @QCIC


    Is the Harris polling believable?
     
    Yes, it is. No idea where sudden death has found that extreme outlier in Michigan but all poll aggregators at the moment show Kamala tied neck to neck with Trump, both nationally and in most swing states. That's dozens of different poll companies that are very unlikely to be all controlled by lizards, imho. They're the same ones that showed him well ahead of Biden just weeks ago.

    What happens is that people forget that Trump continues to have a big level of rejection, as shown in all elections since 2018. Even some people who liked his 2016 agenda (which he has largely abandoned) have trouble voting for him, myself included. It may be temporary, while people get to know Kamala, and polls are quite unreliable anyway, as we all know, but now that he's not facing a mentally unfit candidate, he's doing worse in the polls. Hardly surprising.



    This looks like a pre-installed justification for election vote fraud, something that misguided people might reference in November to avoid acknowledging blatant election tampering.
     
    If you are like me and can barely comprehend how people can vote for such an unlikable candidate as Kamala, I have an idea: instead of fantasizing that some secret cabal is organizing all this and that hundreds of polling company workers are part of the conspiracy, do this:

    protectthevote.com

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Emil Nikola Richard

    If you are like me and can barely comprehend how people can vote for such an unlikable candidate as Kamala

    Ha ha same difference.

    In the one case after the election Willie Brown gets to boast to his buddies at the barber shop he banged her before she was president.

    In the other case after the election Roy Cohn’s shadow gets to boast to his buddies in hell he banged him before he was president.

    Anybody who gets worked up over this hasn’t done any research at all.

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Agree, but it is tough to shake off the conditioning.

  673. A123 says: • Website
    @QCIC
    @sudden death

    Is the Harris polling believable? She is extremely unlikable and comes across as completely incompetent. This looks like a pre-installed justification for election vote fraud, something that misguided people might reference in November to avoid acknowledging blatant election tampering.

    Replies: @LondonBob, @AP, @Mikel, @A123

    Is the Harris polling believable?

    Several “mainstream” polls have been caught maliciously over sampling registered Democrats. Even this has not helped Harris.

    Once the shenanigans are accounted for, she is several points BEHIND where Biden was.
    ___

    Harris is already making mistakes. Why go on Ru Paul’s drag queen show? There is no upside to that in swing states.

    She has to go up against a strong, high quality candidate in Trump. The fact that Vance is “too establishment” for MAGA is actually helpful in terms of moderates & independents. #NeverTrump weirdos trying to mud sling at Vance is already backfiring.

    The Harris campaign is apparently having difficulty finding a VP. Roy Cooper is the fourth(?) big name to bail out of the selection process. This is a strong sign that DNC insiders know she is going to lose.

    It sounds like the DNC will still have a virtual roll call before the convention. Given the Ohio law change to their ballot deadline, this is no longer necessary. A number of progressive factions see this as a cynical power play.

    Democrats are divided and lack enthusiasm.

    PEACE 😇

  674. @Dmitry
    @Mikel


    people can vote for such an unlikable candidate as Kamala,
     
    If you mean unlikeable in a superficial personal sense or in terms of her political policies?

    In the superficial sense, visually she looks like she could be more sympathetic and friendly than average for politicians, which could be part of the explanation for her career rise.

    -

    Imagine Harris, Romney, Trump, Hilary, Obama, are just normal employees in your office, who you don't know. If they are already sitting in a meeting, who would you intuitively sit next to from their personal presentation?

    If your office is going to the restaurant at the end of year, who would sit next to on the table?

    To me, Harris looks more superficially friendly than the other politicians.

    -

    Imagine it is the end of the week, and you ask for people to go drinking? Who do you think would want to stay out later, or who would go home early? Superficially, Obama, Trump, Romney, generally look like people who go to bed early.

    Harris looks like someone who would drink a lot, even if they were your manager.

    -

    But if you asked who would become president from their superficial presentation?

    Harris generally doesn't match our stereotype about a charismatic person or a leader in the way of speaking and you wouldn't predict her to be the candidate if you look at earlier interviews. While Trump is somewhere above average in this area,, with a lot of personal charisma and confidence.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI4XA-kFL_M

    Replies: @Mikel

    If you mean unlikeable in a superficial personal sense or in terms of her political policies?

    Both. But the second is much worse.

    If your office is going to the restaurant at the end of year, who would sit next to on the table?

    Of course Trump. But perhaps you would find Kamala’s conversation more entertaining.

    “IQ” test results relate to word games or some basic number games. They are from 19th or early 20th century French and English puzzle books

    LOL. There you go again, erasing whole fields of laborious academic research with the stroke of a pen. Clearly, you just can’t help yourself.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Mikel


    perhaps you would find Kamala’s conversation more entertaining.
     
    Yes, it seems usually Trump talks about himself or compliments people to get things.

    He's of course entertaining to watch on television, but these kind of people are unlikely to feel so entertaining in ordinary life, in the office.


    LOL. There you go again, erasing whole fields of laborious academic research with the stroke of a pen. Clearly, you just can’t help yourself.

     

    It's not some kind of secret the tests are based on 19th century games and puzzle books.

    If you read Binet's books, he was also sometimes quantifying the "intelligence" of patients by how quickly they can order playing cards and a lot of similar concepts.


    https://i.imgur.com/LLxRDoH.jpeg

    The way Binet is categorizing was related to a late 19th century middle class culture and he was generally focusing a lot on the patients' vocabulary and literacy level, which is still a lot of the focus in popular tests today.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Mikel

  675. Wondering if this forum’s health enthusiasts (Mikel, Emil, Dmitry etc.) have heard of Ray Peat and his writings on nutrition, and what they make of it?

    https://raypeat2.com/articles/

    I came across his works about two months ago, and was intrigued by the erudition and intellect displayed in above-mentioned articles, although I also think Peat is a habitual contrarian and mentally unhinged.

    He’s managed to form a cult of Peatards who hang onto his every word like gospel. But when it comes to nutrition I am skeptical of practically everyone, no matter how credentialed or qualified, since nutritional studies are unreliable, contradictory, and frequently derived from non-human experiments. I just experiment with various diets and adopt principles which help me accomplish my objectives.

    I’ve experimented with most of his dietary recommendations including the anti-estrogenic carrot salad, nutrient-dense liver once weekly, orange juice daily, gelatin with muscle meat, coffee with iron-rich food servings, and elimination of PUFA seed oils in favor of coconut oil, ghee, tallow and butter. I’ve noticed some improvements in metabolism but nothing drastic. My mood, energy and general satisfaction has subtly increased over past couple of months, though I’ve also changed several other variables in lifestyle over the same period, and they may play a confounding role.

    I ignored some of his gay recommendations like limiting egg consumption to one egg per day and avoiding PUFA-heavy fish like salmon and tuna. Peat was unfortunately a pencil-necked academic who did not appreciate the virtues of strength and mass.

    On a related note, I’m currently experimenting with Vince Gironda’s 36 raw eggs daily to promote anabolism. I nearly threw up gulping 8 raw eggs the other day, but experienced perceptible increases in energy and vitality. I’ll keep increasing the dosage and see if it works over the long-term.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Yahya

    Peat has great ideas which surely are productive for a small minority of diverse humans.

    Diet experimental research results are all over the place. If Peat ever advised everybody to follow his plan I missed it. Surely he knew better than that.

    Liver is not food. For nearly anybody. Liver King loves the stuff.

    https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/1*T4hcbf3WgGSlRmMsHnBraQ.jpeg

    Replies: @Yahya

    , @Dmitry
    @Yahya

    Are you still living in Egypt?

    It might be a good idea to look at some things related to the local ecology like your water supply?

    , @Mikel
    @Yahya


    Wondering if this forum’s health enthusiasts (Mikel, Emil, Dmitry etc.) have heard of Ray Peat and his writings on nutrition, and what they make of it?
     
    Well, one in that group is not what I would call a health enthusiast lol. I would stay clear of his advice if the goal is to achieve high levels of fitness and stay healthy for as long as possible.

    More importantly though, I don't think I had ever heard of this Peat guy (though the anti-PUFA fanatics show up at every discussion forum) but I have read a couple of his articles at the link you provided and I think I can confidently say that he is a total crackpot. Plenty of outdated references too. At your age your body can tolerate plenty of insults but do yourself a favor and stay away from the advice of the apostles of nutrition who recommend nutrition regimes drastically at odds with the general consensus in the field.

    If your main goal is to build muscle mass, a guy probably worth listening to is Mike Israetel, a competitive bodybuilder with a PhD in sports physiology. As is obvious from his physique, he takes anabolic steroids, which he admits will probably reduce his life by a few years, but he seems to know what he is talking about and is funny as hell too.

    https://youtu.be/aYPNWwsNBkA

    Replies: @Yahya

    , @sudden death
    @Yahya


    gulping 8 raw eggs
     
    That must require quite the trust in egg supplier safety standards and their execution in Egypt;) Maybe it's personal homegrown hen material?
  676. A123 says: • Website
    @Mikel
    @Greasy William


    Not neck and neck, Trump is clearly winning
     
    He was up just 45-44 yesterday at the poll aggregator I check regularly and I think there were some new swing states polls coming in today. It's looking bad right now.

    Replies: @A123

    Aggregation is a useful technique once there are enough polls. The difficulty is needing swing state results when the frequency is not that high. As I pointed out earlier, there has been some intentionally deceptive pro-Harris poll rigging going on. It will take a while to pull weight off these outliers.

    It will be weeks before there is enough volume for swing state aggregation to be meaningful.
    ____

    The best places to look at currently are the markets (1). Harris is doing slightly better than pre-debate Biden. However, she is topping out now, either slow rise or flat. Trump 56¢ to Harris 40¢ gives four points of room to RFKjr and others. This is quite believable as Harris has huge built in negatives.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.realclearpolling.com/betting-odds/2024/president

  677. @Mikhail
    Great War Movie

    Finally got to see it:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw3mDJ0qdp0

    Replies: @Wielgus

    It is very good.

    • Agree: Mikhail
  678. @Yahya
    Wondering if this forum’s health enthusiasts (Mikel, Emil, Dmitry etc.) have heard of Ray Peat and his writings on nutrition, and what they make of it?

    https://raypeat2.com/articles/

    I came across his works about two months ago, and was intrigued by the erudition and intellect displayed in above-mentioned articles, although I also think Peat is a habitual contrarian and mentally unhinged.

    He’s managed to form a cult of Peatards who hang onto his every word like gospel. But when it comes to nutrition I am skeptical of practically everyone, no matter how credentialed or qualified, since nutritional studies are unreliable, contradictory, and frequently derived from non-human experiments. I just experiment with various diets and adopt principles which help me accomplish my objectives.

    I’ve experimented with most of his dietary recommendations including the anti-estrogenic carrot salad, nutrient-dense liver once weekly, orange juice daily, gelatin with muscle meat, coffee with iron-rich food servings, and elimination of PUFA seed oils in favor of coconut oil, ghee, tallow and butter. I’ve noticed some improvements in metabolism but nothing drastic. My mood, energy and general satisfaction has subtly increased over past couple of months, though I’ve also changed several other variables in lifestyle over the same period, and they may play a confounding role.

    I ignored some of his gay recommendations like limiting egg consumption to one egg per day and avoiding PUFA-heavy fish like salmon and tuna. Peat was unfortunately a pencil-necked academic who did not appreciate the virtues of strength and mass.

    On a related note, I’m currently experimenting with Vince Gironda’s 36 raw eggs daily to promote anabolism. I nearly threw up gulping 8 raw eggs the other day, but experienced perceptible increases in energy and vitality. I’ll keep increasing the dosage and see if it works over the long-term.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Dmitry, @Mikel, @sudden death

    Peat has great ideas which surely are productive for a small minority of diverse humans.

    Diet experimental research results are all over the place. If Peat ever advised everybody to follow his plan I missed it. Surely he knew better than that.

    Liver is not food. For nearly anybody. Liver King loves the stuff.

    • Replies: @Yahya
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    Liver is not food. For nearly anybody.
     
    Liver is a staple in the Middle Eastern diet.

    You don’t buy into the “nature’s multi-vitamin” trope regarding liver’s nutrient-dense profile?

    I think it’s legit. Weston A. Price also highlighted the desirability of eating offal meats for their nutritional value.

    Organ meats are a critical part of many traditional diets, but were dropped by modern industrial Western societies.

    @Dmitry


    Are you still living in Egypt?
     
    Yes.

    It might be a good idea to look at some things related to the local ecology like your water supply?
     
    What specifically should I look out for in the water supply?

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Dmitry

  679. @Yahya
    Wondering if this forum’s health enthusiasts (Mikel, Emil, Dmitry etc.) have heard of Ray Peat and his writings on nutrition, and what they make of it?

    https://raypeat2.com/articles/

    I came across his works about two months ago, and was intrigued by the erudition and intellect displayed in above-mentioned articles, although I also think Peat is a habitual contrarian and mentally unhinged.

    He’s managed to form a cult of Peatards who hang onto his every word like gospel. But when it comes to nutrition I am skeptical of practically everyone, no matter how credentialed or qualified, since nutritional studies are unreliable, contradictory, and frequently derived from non-human experiments. I just experiment with various diets and adopt principles which help me accomplish my objectives.

    I’ve experimented with most of his dietary recommendations including the anti-estrogenic carrot salad, nutrient-dense liver once weekly, orange juice daily, gelatin with muscle meat, coffee with iron-rich food servings, and elimination of PUFA seed oils in favor of coconut oil, ghee, tallow and butter. I’ve noticed some improvements in metabolism but nothing drastic. My mood, energy and general satisfaction has subtly increased over past couple of months, though I’ve also changed several other variables in lifestyle over the same period, and they may play a confounding role.

    I ignored some of his gay recommendations like limiting egg consumption to one egg per day and avoiding PUFA-heavy fish like salmon and tuna. Peat was unfortunately a pencil-necked academic who did not appreciate the virtues of strength and mass.

    On a related note, I’m currently experimenting with Vince Gironda’s 36 raw eggs daily to promote anabolism. I nearly threw up gulping 8 raw eggs the other day, but experienced perceptible increases in energy and vitality. I’ll keep increasing the dosage and see if it works over the long-term.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Dmitry, @Mikel, @sudden death

    Are you still living in Egypt?

    It might be a good idea to look at some things related to the local ecology like your water supply?

  680. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird


    it is actually better to save the Somalis until last, as it makes the others more cooperative, if you make them live among them.
     
    OK now this part is funny.

    When they renamed the Washington football team because Redskins is racist, if I was the owner of the team I definitely would have called them the Cannibals. And hired R. Crumb to draw the new logo. A bollywood choreographer for the new Barbie Kali theme cheerleader squad.

    Have you ever asked an Indian computer programmer if they still have cannibals where they come from?

    Immigrants can be a lot of fun.

    Replies: @songbird

    When they renamed the Washington football team because Redskins is racist

    For the life of me, I can’t understand where they got their new mascot, unless from the theories of Eugene McCarty or from reading the Chinese classic Journey to the West.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Tuddy

    [MORE]

    if I was the owner of the team I definitely would have called them the Cannibals

    I don’t think AI is up to the task yet, but one day I wonder if it will be able to turn Tintin in the Congo into a movie.

    A bollywood choreographer for the new Barbie Kali theme cheerleader squad.

    Jackie Chan once did a sort of Bollywood crossover that ended with dancing. Wasn’t one of his better movies, but I think it’s interesting sociologically, as I believe it demonstrates an idea of the other, seemingly rarer in Hollywood and IIRC has an Indian villain.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fu_Yoga

    Have you ever asked an Indian computer programmer if they still have cannibals where they come from?

    no, but I once saw a Nigerian very engrossed in a documentary on African cannibals. I think they were also gay, or at least the guy studying them was.

    Immigrants can be a lot of fun.

    I was impressed by that woman Torna posted saying “I’ll kill you”, with a baby in her hand, in a foreign land. I still wonder what they said to her to set her off like that.

    • LOL: Torna atrás
  681. Amazing 19th Qur’an manuscript with Chinese translation. Seized by the British army in the city of Xiamen during the First Opium War. The British General William M. Gabbett wrote on the first page: “The most valuable Book yet found in China”

    [MORE]

    • Thanks: Bashibuzuk
  682. S1 says:

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/secret-service-confirms-internal-email-blasting-leadership-over-trump-shooting/ar-BB1qUOrh

    “This agency needs to change and if not now, when? The next assassination in 30 days?”…The counter sniper, who said they have been with the Secret Service for more than 20 years, also said the agency “SHOULD expect another assassination attempt” before November…”

    Secret Service confirms internal email blasting leadership over Trump shooting

    Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe on Tuesday confirmed an internal email reportedly sent from a counter sniper in the agency that blasted the organization’s top officials for an “inability to protect our leaders,” following former President Trump’s assassination attempt.

    The email, first reported by RealClearPolitics, was sent Monday night to the Secret Service’s entire Uniformed Division, with the unidentified writer threatening to not stop speaking out until “5 high-level supervisors (1 down) are either fired or removed from their current positions.”

    The “1 down” appears to reference former Director Kimberly Cheatle, who resigned last week after a dismal appearance before a House committee probing the July 13 shooting at a rally in Butler, Pa.

    Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) brought up the “very telling” email during a joint Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee hearing.

    “This agency needs to change and if not now, when? The next assassination in 30 days?” Blackburn said Tuesday, reading from the email which she alleged has been deleted.

    The counter sniper, who said they have been with the Secret Service for more than 20 years, also said the agency “SHOULD expect another assassination attempt” before November as “we’ve exposed our inability to protect our leaders due to our leadership.”

    Blackburn asked Rowe how he felt about those under him “worried about covering their behind and not worried about protecting a former president.”

    He replied that he is “hurt by that email … because my people are hurting right now. We need them.”

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @S1

    None of these people have any decent material.

    Here is what Trump should do pronto. He should announce Candace Owens is going to be his press secretary and media director. If you vote for Trump you will get a Real Black Woman in the White House.

    Trump has nearly no imagination.

    He called out Elizabeth Warren for being a fake Indian. When is he going to call out Kamala Harris for being a fake negro?

    Or. Same position and Roseanne Barr. She could be on the internet 24/7 telling the universe "I AM the crazy bitch you want to see in the White House! I can be fired put all my things in a box and be gone in 30 minutes. Not so easy with that other crazy bitch."

  683. @Greasy William
    Another free upset pick for you guys. Aldosivi +230 over San Telmo. Kickoff in 7 minutes. Let's do this

    Replies: @Greasy William

    Can someone fucking explain to me how extra time works in soccer? The team I picked is winning after 90 minutes of playing time. Well then why the fuck are they still fucking playing? Right now it says “90+3”. The game should be over and I should get my money.

    • LOL: Bashibuzuk
    • Replies: @Greasy William
    @Greasy William

    another upset pick, Argentina Cup: Atletico Mitre +190 to beat CA Temperley

    Replies: @Greasy William

  684. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Yahya

    Peat has great ideas which surely are productive for a small minority of diverse humans.

    Diet experimental research results are all over the place. If Peat ever advised everybody to follow his plan I missed it. Surely he knew better than that.

    Liver is not food. For nearly anybody. Liver King loves the stuff.

    https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/1*T4hcbf3WgGSlRmMsHnBraQ.jpeg

    Replies: @Yahya

    Liver is not food. For nearly anybody.

    Liver is a staple in the Middle Eastern diet.

    You don’t buy into the “nature’s multi-vitamin” trope regarding liver’s nutrient-dense profile?

    I think it’s legit. Weston A. Price also highlighted the desirability of eating offal meats for their nutritional value.

    Organ meats are a critical part of many traditional diets, but were dropped by modern industrial Western societies.

    Are you still living in Egypt?

    Yes.

    It might be a good idea to look at some things related to the local ecology like your water supply?

    What specifically should I look out for in the water supply?

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Yahya


    You don’t buy into the “nature’s multi-vitamin” trope regarding liver’s nutrient-dense profile?

     

    No.

    Healthy food is appetizing. All of your zillions of cells are unanimous when it's right. If you like liver go right on ahead. Most people do not.****

    I suppose the waste and toxin processes the organ functions for make it not healthy, but the scientific research on such topics is ALL OVER THE UNIVERSE.

    **** I believe this is a universal law but it obviously can't apply to children who hate broccoli and spinach. If I had Microsoft's research budget I would want to know all about children who hate things like olives or onions or cheese or broccoli and then twenty years later love the stuff and wonder, if they ever think about it at all, what all the fuss was about. I really think poison has a long undocumented history for infanticide and that might contribute to modern picky eating of children, but people from environments where all the children are wanted and precious tend to think this idea is erroneous.
    , @Dmitry
    @Yahya


    specifically should I look out for in the water supply?

     

    I don't know if you have any information about possible ecological contamination with the water you drink there?

    For example, in Russia, one of the patterns, is when the say the water is safe. But then some years later, they can admit some chemicals like trichloroethylene are many times higher than the safe limit which would not be great if you are using it to make tea every day. So, it's not a good idea to trust the authorities in this area in some countries.

    With bottled water, maybe from a glass bottle instead of plastic, even from a good European supplier depending on your price sensitivity and trust levels about the local companies.

  685. @S1
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/secret-service-confirms-internal-email-blasting-leadership-over-trump-shooting/ar-BB1qUOrh

    “This agency needs to change and if not now, when? The next assassination in 30 days?”...The counter sniper, who said they have been with the Secret Service for more than 20 years, also said the agency “SHOULD expect another assassination attempt” before November...”

    Secret Service confirms internal email blasting leadership over Trump shooting

    Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe on Tuesday confirmed an internal email reportedly sent from a counter sniper in the agency that blasted the organization’s top officials for an “inability to protect our leaders,” following former President Trump’s assassination attempt.

    The email, first reported by RealClearPolitics, was sent Monday night to the Secret Service’s entire Uniformed Division, with the unidentified writer threatening to not stop speaking out until “5 high-level supervisors (1 down) are either fired or removed from their current positions.”

    The “1 down” appears to reference former Director Kimberly Cheatle, who resigned last week after a dismal appearance before a House committee probing the July 13 shooting at a rally in Butler, Pa.

    Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) brought up the “very telling” email during a joint Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee hearing.

    “This agency needs to change and if not now, when? The next assassination in 30 days?” Blackburn said Tuesday, reading from the email which she alleged has been deleted.

    The counter sniper, who said they have been with the Secret Service for more than 20 years, also said the agency “SHOULD expect another assassination attempt” before November as “we’ve exposed our inability to protect our leaders due to our leadership.”

    Blackburn asked Rowe how he felt about those under him “worried about covering their behind and not worried about protecting a former president.”

    He replied that he is “hurt by that email … because my people are hurting right now. We need them.”

     


     

     

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    None of these people have any decent material.

    Here is what Trump should do pronto. He should announce Candace Owens is going to be his press secretary and media director. If you vote for Trump you will get a Real Black Woman in the White House.

    Trump has nearly no imagination.

    He called out Elizabeth Warren for being a fake Indian. When is he going to call out Kamala Harris for being a fake negro?

    Or. Same position and Roseanne Barr. She could be on the internet 24/7 telling the universe “I AM the crazy bitch you want to see in the White House! I can be fired put all my things in a box and be gone in 30 minutes. Not so easy with that other crazy bitch.”

  686. @Yahya
    Wondering if this forum’s health enthusiasts (Mikel, Emil, Dmitry etc.) have heard of Ray Peat and his writings on nutrition, and what they make of it?

    https://raypeat2.com/articles/

    I came across his works about two months ago, and was intrigued by the erudition and intellect displayed in above-mentioned articles, although I also think Peat is a habitual contrarian and mentally unhinged.

    He’s managed to form a cult of Peatards who hang onto his every word like gospel. But when it comes to nutrition I am skeptical of practically everyone, no matter how credentialed or qualified, since nutritional studies are unreliable, contradictory, and frequently derived from non-human experiments. I just experiment with various diets and adopt principles which help me accomplish my objectives.

    I’ve experimented with most of his dietary recommendations including the anti-estrogenic carrot salad, nutrient-dense liver once weekly, orange juice daily, gelatin with muscle meat, coffee with iron-rich food servings, and elimination of PUFA seed oils in favor of coconut oil, ghee, tallow and butter. I’ve noticed some improvements in metabolism but nothing drastic. My mood, energy and general satisfaction has subtly increased over past couple of months, though I’ve also changed several other variables in lifestyle over the same period, and they may play a confounding role.

    I ignored some of his gay recommendations like limiting egg consumption to one egg per day and avoiding PUFA-heavy fish like salmon and tuna. Peat was unfortunately a pencil-necked academic who did not appreciate the virtues of strength and mass.

    On a related note, I’m currently experimenting with Vince Gironda’s 36 raw eggs daily to promote anabolism. I nearly threw up gulping 8 raw eggs the other day, but experienced perceptible increases in energy and vitality. I’ll keep increasing the dosage and see if it works over the long-term.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Dmitry, @Mikel, @sudden death

    Wondering if this forum’s health enthusiasts (Mikel, Emil, Dmitry etc.) have heard of Ray Peat and his writings on nutrition, and what they make of it?

    Well, one in that group is not what I would call a health enthusiast lol. I would stay clear of his advice if the goal is to achieve high levels of fitness and stay healthy for as long as possible.

    More importantly though, I don’t think I had ever heard of this Peat guy (though the anti-PUFA fanatics show up at every discussion forum) but I have read a couple of his articles at the link you provided and I think I can confidently say that he is a total crackpot. Plenty of outdated references too. At your age your body can tolerate plenty of insults but do yourself a favor and stay away from the advice of the apostles of nutrition who recommend nutrition regimes drastically at odds with the general consensus in the field.

    If your main goal is to build muscle mass, a guy probably worth listening to is Mike Israetel, a competitive bodybuilder with a PhD in sports physiology. As is obvious from his physique, he takes anabolic steroids, which he admits will probably reduce his life by a few years, but he seems to know what he is talking about and is funny as hell too.

    • Replies: @Yahya
    @Mikel


    At your age your body can tolerate plenty of insults
     
    That’s precisely why I’m experimenting with various crazy dietary recommendations. So far it’s only resulted in some temporary acute stomach pain, nothing I can’t handle. But the trade-offs could be huge in the positive direction if they end up working. Vince Gironda claims that 36 raw eggs daily are equivalent to taking Dianabol synthetic steroids. I’m not even 20% convinced that that is true, but it’s still worth a try. And it’s a superior risk-reward proposition imo than outright taking anabolic steroids.

    I’m familiar with the RP channel. Israetel is smart and highly knowledgeable, but I realized that following bodybuilder common wisdom (“bro science”) is far superior than “following the science” in the field of strength training. Practically all the fundamentals of strength training were figured out by the silver era guys; modern exercise science is merely playing catch-up and confirming what they knew all along.

    The field of nutrition is just all over the place. I’m unsure who to trust, so I took the experimentation approach. I will try things out and see what works for me.

    @songbird and Mr. Hack


    I wonder if he has watched another anime movie.
     
    I have not watched any anime since Princess M. The genre does not appeal to me.

    My film consumption has been lackluster this year. I’ve just been passing time with action movies and the occasional artistic film thrown in. I’ve only watched four movies I would place in my personal cannon: Apocalypse Now, Loro, Barry Lyndon, and Four Brothers.

    Might do a review of them if I can muster some willpower.

    Replies: @songbird, @Mikel

  687. @Yahya
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    Liver is not food. For nearly anybody.
     
    Liver is a staple in the Middle Eastern diet.

    You don’t buy into the “nature’s multi-vitamin” trope regarding liver’s nutrient-dense profile?

    I think it’s legit. Weston A. Price also highlighted the desirability of eating offal meats for their nutritional value.

    Organ meats are a critical part of many traditional diets, but were dropped by modern industrial Western societies.

    @Dmitry


    Are you still living in Egypt?
     
    Yes.

    It might be a good idea to look at some things related to the local ecology like your water supply?
     
    What specifically should I look out for in the water supply?

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Dmitry

    You don’t buy into the “nature’s multi-vitamin” trope regarding liver’s nutrient-dense profile?

    No.

    Healthy food is appetizing. All of your zillions of cells are unanimous when it’s right. If you like liver go right on ahead. Most people do not.****

    I suppose the waste and toxin processes the organ functions for make it not healthy, but the scientific research on such topics is ALL OVER THE UNIVERSE.

    **** I believe this is a universal law but it obviously can’t apply to children who hate broccoli and spinach. If I had Microsoft’s research budget I would want to know all about children who hate things like olives or onions or cheese or broccoli and then twenty years later love the stuff and wonder, if they ever think about it at all, what all the fuss was about. I really think poison has a long undocumented history for infanticide and that might contribute to modern picky eating of children, but people from environments where all the children are wanted and precious tend to think this idea is erroneous.

  688. Mamdouh Elssbiay > Yahya Haqqi

  689. @Greasy William
    @Greasy William

    Can someone fucking explain to me how extra time works in soccer? The team I picked is winning after 90 minutes of playing time. Well then why the fuck are they still fucking playing? Right now it says "90+3". The game should be over and I should get my money.

    Replies: @Greasy William

    another upset pick, Argentina Cup: Atletico Mitre +190 to beat CA Temperley

    • Replies: @Greasy William
    @Greasy William

    1 and 1 today. Both were sizeable underdogs so I did still make a profit.

    Tie breaker!: Hiroshima +185 over Stuttgart

    Replies: @QCIC

  690. @Mikel
    @Dmitry


    If you mean unlikeable in a superficial personal sense or in terms of her political policies?
     
    Both. But the second is much worse.

    If your office is going to the restaurant at the end of year, who would sit next to on the table?
     
    Of course Trump. But perhaps you would find Kamala's conversation more entertaining.

    “IQ” test results relate to word games or some basic number games. They are from 19th or early 20th century French and English puzzle books
     
    LOL. There you go again, erasing whole fields of laborious academic research with the stroke of a pen. Clearly, you just can't help yourself.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    perhaps you would find Kamala’s conversation more entertaining.

    Yes, it seems usually Trump talks about himself or compliments people to get things.

    He’s of course entertaining to watch on television, but these kind of people are unlikely to feel so entertaining in ordinary life, in the office.

    LOL. There you go again, erasing whole fields of laborious academic research with the stroke of a pen. Clearly, you just can’t help yourself.

    It’s not some kind of secret the tests are based on 19th century games and puzzle books.

    If you read Binet’s books, he was also sometimes quantifying the “intelligence” of patients by how quickly they can order playing cards and a lot of similar concepts.


    The way Binet is categorizing was related to a late 19th century middle class culture and he was generally focusing a lot on the patients’ vocabulary and literacy level, which is still a lot of the focus in popular tests today.

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Dmitry

    For dinner with Trump, keep the group fairly small and induce him to tell crazy stories. If handled properly he would be bragging about his access and not his own deeds. Heads would probably explode from the disclosures.

    , @Mikel
    @Dmitry


    It’s not some kind of secret the tests are based on 19th century games and puzzle books.
     
    Sure. And a century and a half later nobody in the field of psychometrics has thought of designing tests that can measure innate intelligence in an education and culture-neutral way. But fortunately we have Dmitry the Sage here, who has discovered another gross mistake by generations of scientists and is kind enough to alert us about it.

    This discussion was pretty much closed for me a quarter of a century ago, with the Gould-Murray debates and others. Since you'd rather die than do the necessary reading to catch up, I'm out of any further exchange on the topic. Not interesting enough.
  691. @Yahya
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    Liver is not food. For nearly anybody.
     
    Liver is a staple in the Middle Eastern diet.

    You don’t buy into the “nature’s multi-vitamin” trope regarding liver’s nutrient-dense profile?

    I think it’s legit. Weston A. Price also highlighted the desirability of eating offal meats for their nutritional value.

    Organ meats are a critical part of many traditional diets, but were dropped by modern industrial Western societies.

    @Dmitry


    Are you still living in Egypt?
     
    Yes.

    It might be a good idea to look at some things related to the local ecology like your water supply?
     
    What specifically should I look out for in the water supply?

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Dmitry

    specifically should I look out for in the water supply?

    I don’t know if you have any information about possible ecological contamination with the water you drink there?

    For example, in Russia, one of the patterns, is when the say the water is safe. But then some years later, they can admit some chemicals like trichloroethylene are many times higher than the safe limit which would not be great if you are using it to make tea every day. So, it’s not a good idea to trust the authorities in this area in some countries.

    With bottled water, maybe from a glass bottle instead of plastic, even from a good European supplier depending on your price sensitivity and trust levels about the local companies.

  692. Can German_reader please confirm this spurious Nigerian newsstory about Baerbock (presumably) employing a gigolo, when she goes on African trips?
    https://dailypost.ng/2024/07/30/i-provide-emotional-comfort-to-lonely-elites-kingsley-talks-about-his-career-as-gigolo/

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    I have discovered where the CIA got the idea in the first place.

    "This whole town operates on conspiracy".

    Scroll to 14:20

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKuJefJcnfU

    Every episode is great. Well to be fair I scrolled past almost everything but the Barbara Parkins scenes.

    Replies: @QCIC

    , @German_reader
    @songbird

    lol, I don't think she's really the type for that (unlike when it comes to facilitating Afghan immigration or jumping around on trampolines).
    I sometimes wonder if she could eventually find herself as defendant in a war crimes tribunal for her support of Israel and end up like her predecessor Joachim von Ribbentropp. That would be pretty funny, though it seems rather unlikely. But she could definitely get the kind of reputation Kissinger got over his support of Pakistan in 1971. Which is also quite ironic.

  693. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk

    For late Soviet change was faster with the political breaks than international average change, partly because the Soviet has an "elevated" popular culture in a way which was artificial or at least requires more "top down" control than is typical in democracy.

    Today, the former super-power's popular cultural situation of course is nothing unusual or tragic internationally. 2020s popular culture in Russia is similar to other upper-middle/lower-upper income countries' popular culture like Chile or Argentina. *

    But yes, compared to 1982, the culture atmosphere change has been unusual.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1beWgIJMTA


    -

    *Celebrities nowadays like Niletto are matching a taste which is maybe still more "aristocratic" than in Chile. But you know, it could still probably be in the history textbook with Chile for "aesthetics of the upper-middle/lower-upper income countries' popular culture"


    There is Niletto compared with randomly selected concert in Chile.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Pokeqgyd3s

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9RamqI7p5o

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    There is Niletto

    Sigh…

    Ну и х** с ним…

    It’s an extremely interesting historical period, when you can see the whole World steadily losing its acquired level of knowledge, culture, decency. Basically going to shit. That’s what’s amazing about our times. And you waste time on some tattooed Russian (?) jock…

    How much of your time do you spend on thinking about the fall of the Roman Empire ?

    Because you should think about it…

    https://fortune.com/2023/09/30/men-cant-stop-thinking-about-the-roman-empire-masculinity-polycrisis-culture/

    Listen to this Chinese Canadian dude telling it straight to you and your generation:

    Listen to this high IQ Asian and dump that Niletto pidor to the historical dumpster he rightfully belongs to.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk


    much of your time do you spend on thinking about the fall of the Roman Empire ?
     
    Isn't this a meme which is promoted by Musk?

    The cause of the culture strangeness and dislocation as we move through the stages of history, is technology changes.

    Elon is an investor in technology, so in some way he's working in the engine carriage for the locomotive of history. One of the themes of his investment, is increasing automation.


    -

    If you know in 1848 Marx and Engels, have written about some of this process and what the result feels like.


    Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere. The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property.
     

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    , @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6G6AW7oApA
     
    I posted this song from Minsk and we discussed some years ago. Few years ago, we were discussing a lot about the popularity in the West of this general theme of the postsoviet trashcan of history.

    It's the general theme that there can be more beauty in the trashcan of history than in the manicured gardens of successful countries.

    This music is English though and it is copying from the famous English bands like Joy Division, while I think their audience is mainly in the West, and Western audiences are particularly obsessed with the theme of postsoviet decay.



    There is Niletto

     

    Sigh…

    Ну и х** с ним…
     

    Niletto isn't Russian music and it's overall just American dancing origin. Still, he's not unlikeable.

    He is at least a talented dancing person, his dancing filmed without cuts and adding short moments of gopnik bodylanguage and local dances.

    E.g. 1:30 there are some short moments of real gopnik dances
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCn92IKdU8s

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  694. @Yahya
    Wondering if this forum’s health enthusiasts (Mikel, Emil, Dmitry etc.) have heard of Ray Peat and his writings on nutrition, and what they make of it?

    https://raypeat2.com/articles/

    I came across his works about two months ago, and was intrigued by the erudition and intellect displayed in above-mentioned articles, although I also think Peat is a habitual contrarian and mentally unhinged.

    He’s managed to form a cult of Peatards who hang onto his every word like gospel. But when it comes to nutrition I am skeptical of practically everyone, no matter how credentialed or qualified, since nutritional studies are unreliable, contradictory, and frequently derived from non-human experiments. I just experiment with various diets and adopt principles which help me accomplish my objectives.

    I’ve experimented with most of his dietary recommendations including the anti-estrogenic carrot salad, nutrient-dense liver once weekly, orange juice daily, gelatin with muscle meat, coffee with iron-rich food servings, and elimination of PUFA seed oils in favor of coconut oil, ghee, tallow and butter. I’ve noticed some improvements in metabolism but nothing drastic. My mood, energy and general satisfaction has subtly increased over past couple of months, though I’ve also changed several other variables in lifestyle over the same period, and they may play a confounding role.

    I ignored some of his gay recommendations like limiting egg consumption to one egg per day and avoiding PUFA-heavy fish like salmon and tuna. Peat was unfortunately a pencil-necked academic who did not appreciate the virtues of strength and mass.

    On a related note, I’m currently experimenting with Vince Gironda’s 36 raw eggs daily to promote anabolism. I nearly threw up gulping 8 raw eggs the other day, but experienced perceptible increases in energy and vitality. I’ll keep increasing the dosage and see if it works over the long-term.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Dmitry, @Mikel, @sudden death

    gulping 8 raw eggs

    That must require quite the trust in egg supplier safety standards and their execution in Egypt;) Maybe it’s personal homegrown hen material?

  695. A123 says: • Website

    Trump out flanks Harris before she reaches the starting line: (1)

    President Trump Announces New Policy Proposal – No Taxes on Social Security for Seniors

      

    This comes on the heels of President Trump supported policy that income received from service tips should not be taxed.

    Combined, both of these policies would result in massive numbers of middle-class Americans having more money in their bank accounts. The national economic benefits of these two combined policies are extremely significant and could actually offset the financial damage done by Joe Biden.

    Trump makes a solid appeal to independent and moderate voters in swing states, designed to add to his strength with those groups.

    Harris’s Globalist backers loathe the idea that Americans would have more of their own money. They might spend it on fire arms or V-8 trucks.

    Yet, how does she publicly oppose this winning & popular idea?

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2024/07/31/president-trump-announces-new-policy-proposal-no-taxes-on-social-security-for-seniors/

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @A123

    So what are you personally going to do when Kamala is assigned to presidency?

    Not elected, she can’t be, but assigned?

    You gonna wait for the next election?

    And then the next again?

    They stole it in 2020, they prepare to steal it again. And you still write as if your vote really matters. This is truly touchingly naive.

    Replies: @A123, @Mikel

  696. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Mikel


    If you are like me and can barely comprehend how people can vote for such an unlikable candidate as Kamala
     
    Ha ha same difference.

    In the one case after the election Willie Brown gets to boast to his buddies at the barber shop he banged her before she was president.

    In the other case after the election Roy Cohn's shadow gets to boast to his buddies in hell he banged him before he was president.

    Anybody who gets worked up over this hasn't done any research at all.

    Replies: @QCIC

    Agree, but it is tough to shake off the conditioning.

  697. @Dmitry
    @Mikel


    perhaps you would find Kamala’s conversation more entertaining.
     
    Yes, it seems usually Trump talks about himself or compliments people to get things.

    He's of course entertaining to watch on television, but these kind of people are unlikely to feel so entertaining in ordinary life, in the office.


    LOL. There you go again, erasing whole fields of laborious academic research with the stroke of a pen. Clearly, you just can’t help yourself.

     

    It's not some kind of secret the tests are based on 19th century games and puzzle books.

    If you read Binet's books, he was also sometimes quantifying the "intelligence" of patients by how quickly they can order playing cards and a lot of similar concepts.


    https://i.imgur.com/LLxRDoH.jpeg

    The way Binet is categorizing was related to a late 19th century middle class culture and he was generally focusing a lot on the patients' vocabulary and literacy level, which is still a lot of the focus in popular tests today.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Mikel

    For dinner with Trump, keep the group fairly small and induce him to tell crazy stories. If handled properly he would be bragging about his access and not his own deeds. Heads would probably explode from the disclosures.

  698. Bashibuzuk says:
    @A123
    Trump out flanks Harris before she reaches the starting line: (1)

    President Trump Announces New Policy Proposal – No Taxes on Social Security for Seniors

     
    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Trump-Truth-Social-Security.jpg
     

    This comes on the heels of President Trump supported policy that income received from service tips should not be taxed.

    Combined, both of these policies would result in massive numbers of middle-class Americans having more money in their bank accounts. The national economic benefits of these two combined policies are extremely significant and could actually offset the financial damage done by Joe Biden.
     

    Trump makes a solid appeal to independent and moderate voters in swing states, designed to add to his strength with those groups.

    Harris's Globalist backers loathe the idea that Americans would have more of their own money. They might spend it on fire arms or V-8 trucks.

    Yet, how does she publicly oppose this winning & popular idea?


    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2024/07/31/president-trump-announces-new-policy-proposal-no-taxes-on-social-security-for-seniors/

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    So what are you personally going to do when Kamala is assigned to presidency?

    Not elected, she can’t be, but assigned?

    You gonna wait for the next election?

    And then the next again?

    They stole it in 2020, they prepare to steal it again. And you still write as if your vote really matters. This is truly touchingly naive.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Bashibuzuk

    😆 ROTFLMAO 😂

    Bashi the Slaver,

    Everyone knows that you support your precious Harris because she is the descendant of slave owners. Your slaving ways are amazingly naive and 100% out of touch with American reality.

    You desperately need to cut back on whatever you are huffing, snorting, smoking, and shooting up. The drugs are hurting your brain.

    The unique circumstances of WUHAN-19 restricted voting & counting. This created a "once in a lifetime" opportunity to steal an election. The CCP is not going to release another virus. Without such an outside factor, there will be many fewer opportunities.

    Your pro-slavery, precious Harris may *try* to steal the vote, but there are too many people watching for it. That means any attempt is going to *fail*. Given how bad Harris is, they may not even try. Your IslamoGloboHomo cannot fake millions of ballots.

    • What are you going to do when your precious Harris loses?
    • Will you spend the next 4 years cowering in your basement?

    You gonna wait for MAGA to win the next election? And, the one after that?

    PEACE 😇

    , @Mikel
    @Bashibuzuk


    They stole it in 2020, they prepare to steal it again. And you still write as if your vote really matters.
     
    Sigh.

    OK, since you're totally certain of what happened 4 years ago and is going to happen 3 months from now, surely you have perfectly figured out how "they" are going to cheat the hundred thousand plus (the number keeps growing) volunteers who are going to watch every voting station. Could you kindly explain what the exact method is going to be? I wouldn't like to waste my time that day having so many other things to do.

    Be specific please. As you surely know, the results of every district are announced publicly. Since there are going to be election watchers at every single district, any discrepancy with the results they have verified with their own eyes will be immediately clear to them. Failing to disclose the cheating system while you are aware of it actually makes you complicit in the conspiracy.

    Replies: @Beckow, @Bashibuzuk

  699. have any of you guys seen the history meme about the War of the Triple Alliance? It’s pretty funny:

    How the Paraguayan War ended
    byu/WinterPlanet inHistoryMemes

  700. @Dmitry
    @Coconuts


    higher IQs
     
    "IQ" test results relate to word games or some basic number games. They are from 19th or early 20th century French and English puzzle books, which were designed for entertainment in one of the tragic epochs before the invention of Playstation.

    If you want to use them as a sociological measure, they would correlate with literacy levels in the society. After industrialization, a lot of the service industries in the economy need literate employees, so it could be useful in this way to check for literacy levels and peoples' skill with words or vocabulary.

    However, in the earlier epochs, the more important kind of thinking for most professions would have been things like "street smarts", "good relationship with plants and animals", "intuition about the seasons" (for farmers), "skill in using hands", while literacy skills required for doing word puzzles might be useful for less common professions like rhetoricians in Ancient Athens or the writers of plays in Elizabethan England.


    did tend to have more surviving children,

     

    A physical selection for peoples' general talent or interest in word puzzles, although some historical epochs could plausibly contain this, would be quite slow.

    The recent cultural changes we notice, mainly caused by technology and change it causes for cultural ideals, through the changing mode of production, but also sometimes highlighted political changes,* are often very fast.

    This is why people who like the film "Idiocracy", are saying in 2016 with the election of Trump, comments like "Idiocracy happened much faster than we predicted".

    -

    *AP is relating last thread about the redneck kind of behavior of the children in the West of postsoviet "New money", compared to more "civilized behavior" of the Soviet intellectual class. His story is quite good symbol of the changing of economic power from the Soviet intellectual class to the business class in the 1990s.

    In the Soviet Union, there was a strong emphasis on intellectual culture, both literary and technical, which is in some way mismatching with typical culture of a middle income country.

    But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the culture is doing something like a "reversion to the mean" relative to the economy, in the sense the intellectual and literary culture is becoming deprioritized. By the 2010s, Russian general culture is more like you expect in a middle income country.

    So, from the perspective of the intellectually elevated Soviet culture, it could seem like the culture became a relative "Idiocracy" within around 20-30 years.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Coconuts

    If you want to use them as a sociological measure, they would correlate with literacy levels in the society.

    I have heard that they also correlate with a range of other psychological traits, and things like reaction times. Among psychological traits, things like conscientiousness, impulse control, verbal reasoning, agreeableness and so on. It seems sometimes measurement of these other traits can be used to estimate IQ, if those being assessed have no formal education.

    However, in the earlier epochs, the more important kind of thinking for most professions would have been things like “street smarts”…

    Many of the psychological traits that correlate with IQ would be useful in helping your children survive in agricultural societies in pre-industrial times. Only the unusually high levels of IQ may be a problem, as a number of the relevant correlations don’t seem to hold in those cases.

    The recent cultural changes we notice, mainly caused by technology…

    In my post I was writing about the difference between industrial and pre-industrial societies. I quoted Mary Harrington, one of whose favourite subjects is how technology has changed women’s lives, family, fertility etc.

    There seems to be a whole debate in intelligence research about how far intelligence is inherited and how far it is environmental, I would guess the same applies to the other psychological traits.

  701. A123 says: • Website
    @Bashibuzuk
    @A123

    So what are you personally going to do when Kamala is assigned to presidency?

    Not elected, she can’t be, but assigned?

    You gonna wait for the next election?

    And then the next again?

    They stole it in 2020, they prepare to steal it again. And you still write as if your vote really matters. This is truly touchingly naive.

    Replies: @A123, @Mikel

    😆 ROTFLMAO 😂

    Bashi the Slaver,

    Everyone knows that you support your precious Harris because she is the descendant of slave owners. Your slaving ways are amazingly naive and 100% out of touch with American reality.

    You desperately need to cut back on whatever you are huffing, snorting, smoking, and shooting up. The drugs are hurting your brain.

    The unique circumstances of WUHAN-19 restricted voting & counting. This created a “once in a lifetime” opportunity to steal an election. The CCP is not going to release another virus. Without such an outside factor, there will be many fewer opportunities.

    Your pro-slavery, precious Harris may *try* to steal the vote, but there are too many people watching for it. That means any attempt is going to *fail*. Given how bad Harris is, they may not even try. Your IslamoGloboHomo cannot fake millions of ballots.

    • What are you going to do when your precious Harris loses?
    • Will you spend the next 4 years cowering in your basement?

    You gonna wait for MAGA to win the next election? And, the one after that?

    PEACE 😇

  702. @Dmitry
    @Mikel


    perhaps you would find Kamala’s conversation more entertaining.
     
    Yes, it seems usually Trump talks about himself or compliments people to get things.

    He's of course entertaining to watch on television, but these kind of people are unlikely to feel so entertaining in ordinary life, in the office.


    LOL. There you go again, erasing whole fields of laborious academic research with the stroke of a pen. Clearly, you just can’t help yourself.

     

    It's not some kind of secret the tests are based on 19th century games and puzzle books.

    If you read Binet's books, he was also sometimes quantifying the "intelligence" of patients by how quickly they can order playing cards and a lot of similar concepts.


    https://i.imgur.com/LLxRDoH.jpeg

    The way Binet is categorizing was related to a late 19th century middle class culture and he was generally focusing a lot on the patients' vocabulary and literacy level, which is still a lot of the focus in popular tests today.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Mikel

    It’s not some kind of secret the tests are based on 19th century games and puzzle books.

    Sure. And a century and a half later nobody in the field of psychometrics has thought of designing tests that can measure innate intelligence in an education and culture-neutral way. But fortunately we have Dmitry the Sage here, who has discovered another gross mistake by generations of scientists and is kind enough to alert us about it.

    This discussion was pretty much closed for me a quarter of a century ago, with the Gould-Murray debates and others. Since you’d rather die than do the necessary reading to catch up, I’m out of any further exchange on the topic. Not interesting enough.

  703. @Bashibuzuk
    @A123

    So what are you personally going to do when Kamala is assigned to presidency?

    Not elected, she can’t be, but assigned?

    You gonna wait for the next election?

    And then the next again?

    They stole it in 2020, they prepare to steal it again. And you still write as if your vote really matters. This is truly touchingly naive.

    Replies: @A123, @Mikel

    They stole it in 2020, they prepare to steal it again. And you still write as if your vote really matters.

    Sigh.

    OK, since you’re totally certain of what happened 4 years ago and is going to happen 3 months from now, surely you have perfectly figured out how “they” are going to cheat the hundred thousand plus (the number keeps growing) volunteers who are going to watch every voting station. Could you kindly explain what the exact method is going to be? I wouldn’t like to waste my time that day having so many other things to do.

    Be specific please. As you surely know, the results of every district are announced publicly. Since there are going to be election watchers at every single district, any discrepancy with the results they have verified with their own eyes will be immediately clear to them. Failing to disclose the cheating system while you are aware of it actually makes you complicit in the conspiracy.

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @Mikel

    How about mail-in votes for registered voters who otherwise wouldn't vote?

    Or people who were 'registered' and don't qualify because they are non-citizens (residents only, there are 30 million of them in US) or they moved, or they are dead...and someone mails in their votes?

    Be specific how that could be stopped. 'Checking signatures' doesn't count. And not in Utah, in the large metro areas.

    I agree that it only works in the states where the election is very close - but it looks like it will be close.

    Venezuela has a substantially more solid electoral system - double check manual-electronic. And as you see US says that they 'cheated'...if it can happen in Caracas, why not in Phillie?

    Replies: @Mikel

    , @Bashibuzuk
    @Mikel

    So you are certain that Biden won 2020 elections fair and square?

    🙂

    Replies: @Mikel

  704. @AP
    @QCIC


    Is the Harris polling believable? She is extremely unlikable and comes across as completely incompetent
     
    Compared to Biden?

    She came across as unlikable and incompetent compared to other politicians in the Democratic primary but now she is being compared to eyeliner wearing extremist Vance, sleazy elderly grandiose criminal blowhard Trump and elderly and senile Biden. For many, her presentation is a breath of fresh air and relative normalcy so one can expect such a bump. Hailey would have seen the same advantage, had she been nominated. If Harris picks a moderate straight, married white guy with kids as her running mate she will further seal the deal.

    Among normal people Harris is more popular now than Biden, which in a divided country means she can certainly be a couple percentage points more popular than Trump.

    And fortunately for her, Harris had a record of cynical opportunistic flip flopping so she can pick and choose how to present herself. To appeal to moderates, she might ignore her record of senate votes and instead push her past as California’s attorney general at a time when California still put criminals in prison. Apparently she was even putting people in prison for marijuana violations. I think she’s a more adept and smooth flip-flopper than the equally cynical opportunist Vance.

    This looks like a pre-installed justification for election vote fraud, something that misguided people might reference in November to avoid acknowledging blatant election tampering.
     
    And of course you are off to the races. Such large scale fraud and tampering isn’t feasible for various reasons. Oversight by both parties, etc.

    The Democratic advantage isn’t in election fraud but in the control over the media, from the news (blackout and censorship of Hunter’s laptop right before the election), to popular culture (beloved stars tell people who is horrible and socially unacceptable). Corporations help too - Pfizer conveniently withheld the good news of the vaccine until right after the election. But tampering with actual votes is for crude brutish amateurs like the goons in Venezuela, Russia or Belarus.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ, @Mr. XYZ

    The Democratic advantage isn’t in election fraud but in the control over the media, from the news (blackout and censorship of Hunter’s laptop right before the election), to popular culture (beloved stars tell people who is horrible and socially unacceptable). Corporations help too – Pfizer conveniently withheld the good news of the vaccine until right after the election. But tampering with actual votes is for crude brutish amateurs like the goons in Venezuela, Russia or Belarus.

    Isn’t some of the Democrats’ advantage in regards to this simply due to the fact that EHC (elite human capital) leans left?

    https://www.richardhanania.com/p/listen-to-the-science-conservatives

  705. @Mikel
    @Bashibuzuk


    They stole it in 2020, they prepare to steal it again. And you still write as if your vote really matters.
     
    Sigh.

    OK, since you're totally certain of what happened 4 years ago and is going to happen 3 months from now, surely you have perfectly figured out how "they" are going to cheat the hundred thousand plus (the number keeps growing) volunteers who are going to watch every voting station. Could you kindly explain what the exact method is going to be? I wouldn't like to waste my time that day having so many other things to do.

    Be specific please. As you surely know, the results of every district are announced publicly. Since there are going to be election watchers at every single district, any discrepancy with the results they have verified with their own eyes will be immediately clear to them. Failing to disclose the cheating system while you are aware of it actually makes you complicit in the conspiracy.

    Replies: @Beckow, @Bashibuzuk

    How about mail-in votes for registered voters who otherwise wouldn’t vote?

    Or people who were ‘registered’ and don’t qualify because they are non-citizens (residents only, there are 30 million of them in US) or they moved, or they are dead…and someone mails in their votes?

    Be specific how that could be stopped. ‘Checking signatures’ doesn’t count. And not in Utah, in the large metro areas.

    I agree that it only works in the states where the election is very close – but it looks like it will be close.

    Venezuela has a substantially more solid electoral system – double check manual-electronic. And as you see US says that they ‘cheated’…if it can happen in Caracas, why not in Phillie?

    • Replies: @Mikel
    @Beckow

    I like this comment because it gets into specifics instead of making proclamations about the existence of grand conspiracies.


    How about mail-in votes for registered voters who otherwise wouldn’t vote?
     
    It's impossible to discern who "would" or "wouldn't" vote. A person voting in person may be doing it under duress, a submissive wife or obedient son/daughter going to vote in person may be doing it just because they want to spare themselves the reprimands they'd get from their husband/father if they don't vote according to his wishes, etc.

    In fact, a large percentage of votes in any election are cast under this kind of personal circumstances. Seeing or not seeing the face of the voter for a few seconds changes little in this respect. Mail-in votes are ballots returned by registered voters who received one and can only send that one back, whatever motivated them to do it.


    Or people who were ‘registered’ and don’t qualify because they are non-citizens (residents only, there are 30 million of them in US) or they moved, or they are dead…and someone mails in their votes?
     
    We have discussed this before. There aren't millions of non-citizens registered to vote, too risky for them. But there are some, undoubtedly. However, it would be too risky also for the Democrats to have knowledge of all these people in sufficient numbers and actually use them to rig elections. How could they manage to make sure that such a large number of people who don't care much about going to prison and losing their citizenship rights don't spill the beans? We would have heard lots of such stories if they were a real problem. If there were so many non-citizens voting to change an election, they would be doing it of their own accord and there is no one "stealing" the election through them.

    People who move are responsible for updating their registration and bipartisan election officials are supposed to remove the dead from the rolls. Exactly the same system as anywhere else in the civilized world. I do have reasons to believe that there are more irregularities of this kind in the US than in other Western countries but they are by their nature mostly random, hard to see how these irregularities favor one party systematically.

    ‘Checking signatures’ doesn’t count.
     
    Checking signatures is not the method used to verify that a vote is legitimate. It's an additional layer of security for suspect votes. Lots of votes are voided in any election, once they become impossible to verify. It's been happening forever.

    I agree that it only works in the states where the election is very close
     
    Glad to see some level of common sense. It is not inconceivable that in some specific districts the Democrat machinery is corrupt and competent enough to evade all verification measures. But it's not easy. There are going to be lots of eyes watching them, more than ever, and it is impossible for anyone to know beforehand how close the election will be and how much those select districts will count. So the difficult possibility that you are bringing up is a totally different thing from the conviction that people like Bashi keep announcing: the election will be stolen.

    Let's also remember that the 2018 and 2022 midterms were rather bad for the Republicans and MAGA in particular but nobody claimed that they were stolen. Yet the results were pretty consistent with the 2020 ones. Same general trends in the same states/districts.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  706. @AP
    @QCIC


    Is the Harris polling believable? She is extremely unlikable and comes across as completely incompetent
     
    Compared to Biden?

    She came across as unlikable and incompetent compared to other politicians in the Democratic primary but now she is being compared to eyeliner wearing extremist Vance, sleazy elderly grandiose criminal blowhard Trump and elderly and senile Biden. For many, her presentation is a breath of fresh air and relative normalcy so one can expect such a bump. Hailey would have seen the same advantage, had she been nominated. If Harris picks a moderate straight, married white guy with kids as her running mate she will further seal the deal.

    Among normal people Harris is more popular now than Biden, which in a divided country means she can certainly be a couple percentage points more popular than Trump.

    And fortunately for her, Harris had a record of cynical opportunistic flip flopping so she can pick and choose how to present herself. To appeal to moderates, she might ignore her record of senate votes and instead push her past as California’s attorney general at a time when California still put criminals in prison. Apparently she was even putting people in prison for marijuana violations. I think she’s a more adept and smooth flip-flopper than the equally cynical opportunist Vance.

    This looks like a pre-installed justification for election vote fraud, something that misguided people might reference in November to avoid acknowledging blatant election tampering.
     
    And of course you are off to the races. Such large scale fraud and tampering isn’t feasible for various reasons. Oversight by both parties, etc.

    The Democratic advantage isn’t in election fraud but in the control over the media, from the news (blackout and censorship of Hunter’s laptop right before the election), to popular culture (beloved stars tell people who is horrible and socially unacceptable). Corporations help too - Pfizer conveniently withheld the good news of the vaccine until right after the election. But tampering with actual votes is for crude brutish amateurs like the goons in Venezuela, Russia or Belarus.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ, @Mr. XYZ

    Also, AP, this is off-topic, but in regards to Ukraine, what do you think of this article?

    https://scholarship.law.uwyo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1491&context=wlr

    Specifically this section?

    “B. Equitable Utilization & Bolivia’s Artificial Flows”

    Would this section of this article, talking about a particular South American water dispute involving natural and artificial waterways, support Russia or Ukraine more in the (past) dispute over the North Crimean Canal?

  707. Kamala on her open lust for massive tax hikes and mandatory government healthcare.

    If she had only a few policy blunders, it would have been difficult. Perhaps something could have been done. However, every policy she has ever touched has problems.

    Given the amount of Super PAC money for negative advertising, being on both sides of an issue is simply double the vulnerability. Bill Clinton’s “triangulation” technique is over 20 years out of date.

    PEACE 😇

  708. @Beckow
    @Mikel

    How about mail-in votes for registered voters who otherwise wouldn't vote?

    Or people who were 'registered' and don't qualify because they are non-citizens (residents only, there are 30 million of them in US) or they moved, or they are dead...and someone mails in their votes?

    Be specific how that could be stopped. 'Checking signatures' doesn't count. And not in Utah, in the large metro areas.

    I agree that it only works in the states where the election is very close - but it looks like it will be close.

    Venezuela has a substantially more solid electoral system - double check manual-electronic. And as you see US says that they 'cheated'...if it can happen in Caracas, why not in Phillie?

    Replies: @Mikel

    I like this comment because it gets into specifics instead of making proclamations about the existence of grand conspiracies.

    How about mail-in votes for registered voters who otherwise wouldn’t vote?

    It’s impossible to discern who “would” or “wouldn’t” vote. A person voting in person may be doing it under duress, a submissive wife or obedient son/daughter going to vote in person may be doing it just because they want to spare themselves the reprimands they’d get from their husband/father if they don’t vote according to his wishes, etc.

    In fact, a large percentage of votes in any election are cast under this kind of personal circumstances. Seeing or not seeing the face of the voter for a few seconds changes little in this respect. Mail-in votes are ballots returned by registered voters who received one and can only send that one back, whatever motivated them to do it.

    Or people who were ‘registered’ and don’t qualify because they are non-citizens (residents only, there are 30 million of them in US) or they moved, or they are dead…and someone mails in their votes?

    We have discussed this before. There aren’t millions of non-citizens registered to vote, too risky for them. But there are some, undoubtedly. However, it would be too risky also for the Democrats to have knowledge of all these people in sufficient numbers and actually use them to rig elections. How could they manage to make sure that such a large number of people who don’t care much about going to prison and losing their citizenship rights don’t spill the beans? We would have heard lots of such stories if they were a real problem. If there were so many non-citizens voting to change an election, they would be doing it of their own accord and there is no one “stealing” the election through them.

    People who move are responsible for updating their registration and bipartisan election officials are supposed to remove the dead from the rolls. Exactly the same system as anywhere else in the civilized world. I do have reasons to believe that there are more irregularities of this kind in the US than in other Western countries but they are by their nature mostly random, hard to see how these irregularities favor one party systematically.

    ‘Checking signatures’ doesn’t count.

    Checking signatures is not the method used to verify that a vote is legitimate. It’s an additional layer of security for suspect votes. Lots of votes are voided in any election, once they become impossible to verify. It’s been happening forever.

    I agree that it only works in the states where the election is very close

    Glad to see some level of common sense. It is not inconceivable that in some specific districts the Democrat machinery is corrupt and competent enough to evade all verification measures. But it’s not easy. There are going to be lots of eyes watching them, more than ever, and it is impossible for anyone to know beforehand how close the election will be and how much those select districts will count. So the difficult possibility that you are bringing up is a totally different thing from the conviction that people like Bashi keep announcing: the election will be stolen.

    Let’s also remember that the 2018 and 2022 midterms were rather bad for the Republicans and MAGA in particular but nobody claimed that they were stolen. Yet the results were pretty consistent with the 2020 ones. Same general trends in the same states/districts.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Mikel


    Mail-in votes are ballots returned by registered voters who received one and can only send that one back, whatever motivated them to do it.
     
    Heartland/Rasmussen Poll: One-in-Five Mail-In Voters Admit to Committing at Least One Kind of Voter Fraud During 2020 Election

    The results of these survey questions appear to show that voter fraud was widespread in the 2020 election, especially among those who cast mail-in ballots.

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/heartland-rasmussen-poll-one-five-161100197.html

    Replies: @QCIC, @AP

  709. @Mikel
    @Bashibuzuk


    They stole it in 2020, they prepare to steal it again. And you still write as if your vote really matters.
     
    Sigh.

    OK, since you're totally certain of what happened 4 years ago and is going to happen 3 months from now, surely you have perfectly figured out how "they" are going to cheat the hundred thousand plus (the number keeps growing) volunteers who are going to watch every voting station. Could you kindly explain what the exact method is going to be? I wouldn't like to waste my time that day having so many other things to do.

    Be specific please. As you surely know, the results of every district are announced publicly. Since there are going to be election watchers at every single district, any discrepancy with the results they have verified with their own eyes will be immediately clear to them. Failing to disclose the cheating system while you are aware of it actually makes you complicit in the conspiracy.

    Replies: @Beckow, @Bashibuzuk

    So you are certain that Biden won 2020 elections fair and square?

    🙂

    • Replies: @Mikel
    @Bashibuzuk


    So you are certain that Biden won 2020 elections fair and square?
     
    No. Unlike you, I am a poor soul living in a world of permanent uncertainty and trying to navigate it as best I can with my limited thinking abilities. But I don't believe the election was stolen, as proven quite convincingly in Arizona.

    :-)

    Heartland/Rasmussen Poll: One-in-Five Mail-In Voters Admit to Committing at Least One Kind of Voter Fraud During 2020 Election

     

    a) How do you know this one poll is not fraudulent? You just agreed with the idea that dozens of pollsters are conspiring to deceive the American public.

    b) Have you actually read the results of that poll? Similar amounts of Republican and Democrat voters took part in it and the "fraud" consisted in answering yes to questions like "did you help someone cast their vote"? I have helped my wife cast hers many times. She actually votes more often than I do but always asks me for help. Am I a fraudster?

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  710. The Musk v. Maduro fight has about as much chance as the Musk v. Zuck fight. But one can imagine some interesting backdrops:

    1.) Warao villiage in the Orinoco Delta
    2.) Angel Falls
    3.) Starship stacked on Mechzilla
    4.) Space
    5.) Tesla factory with robots.
    6.) Pretoria

    I also like the idea of the Columbus Lighthouse in DR as neutral ground befitting a fight in the Americas. But I guess DR is supporting the other guy.

    Come to think of it, I can’t really imagine any politically safe or neutral zones for the both of them.

  711. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Mikel
    @Beckow

    I like this comment because it gets into specifics instead of making proclamations about the existence of grand conspiracies.


    How about mail-in votes for registered voters who otherwise wouldn’t vote?
     
    It's impossible to discern who "would" or "wouldn't" vote. A person voting in person may be doing it under duress, a submissive wife or obedient son/daughter going to vote in person may be doing it just because they want to spare themselves the reprimands they'd get from their husband/father if they don't vote according to his wishes, etc.

    In fact, a large percentage of votes in any election are cast under this kind of personal circumstances. Seeing or not seeing the face of the voter for a few seconds changes little in this respect. Mail-in votes are ballots returned by registered voters who received one and can only send that one back, whatever motivated them to do it.


    Or people who were ‘registered’ and don’t qualify because they are non-citizens (residents only, there are 30 million of them in US) or they moved, or they are dead…and someone mails in their votes?
     
    We have discussed this before. There aren't millions of non-citizens registered to vote, too risky for them. But there are some, undoubtedly. However, it would be too risky also for the Democrats to have knowledge of all these people in sufficient numbers and actually use them to rig elections. How could they manage to make sure that such a large number of people who don't care much about going to prison and losing their citizenship rights don't spill the beans? We would have heard lots of such stories if they were a real problem. If there were so many non-citizens voting to change an election, they would be doing it of their own accord and there is no one "stealing" the election through them.

    People who move are responsible for updating their registration and bipartisan election officials are supposed to remove the dead from the rolls. Exactly the same system as anywhere else in the civilized world. I do have reasons to believe that there are more irregularities of this kind in the US than in other Western countries but they are by their nature mostly random, hard to see how these irregularities favor one party systematically.

    ‘Checking signatures’ doesn’t count.
     
    Checking signatures is not the method used to verify that a vote is legitimate. It's an additional layer of security for suspect votes. Lots of votes are voided in any election, once they become impossible to verify. It's been happening forever.

    I agree that it only works in the states where the election is very close
     
    Glad to see some level of common sense. It is not inconceivable that in some specific districts the Democrat machinery is corrupt and competent enough to evade all verification measures. But it's not easy. There are going to be lots of eyes watching them, more than ever, and it is impossible for anyone to know beforehand how close the election will be and how much those select districts will count. So the difficult possibility that you are bringing up is a totally different thing from the conviction that people like Bashi keep announcing: the election will be stolen.

    Let's also remember that the 2018 and 2022 midterms were rather bad for the Republicans and MAGA in particular but nobody claimed that they were stolen. Yet the results were pretty consistent with the 2020 ones. Same general trends in the same states/districts.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    Mail-in votes are ballots returned by registered voters who received one and can only send that one back, whatever motivated them to do it.

    Heartland/Rasmussen Poll: One-in-Five Mail-In Voters Admit to Committing at Least One Kind of Voter Fraud During 2020 Election

    The results of these survey questions appear to show that voter fraud was widespread in the 2020 election, especially among those who cast mail-in ballots.

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/heartland-rasmussen-poll-one-five-161100197.html

    • Thanks: A123
    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Bashibuzuk

    Wow. Unlike some surveys where notional anonymity promotes truthful answers, I think most people committing these voting misdeeds would not acknowledge it to third parties outside of their circle of confidants. In other words the real numbers are probably higher!

    , @AP
    @Bashibuzuk

    The specific frauds here are someone voting for their spouse and someone voting in the wrong place because they’ve moved.

    These wouldn’t mean that the results are fake or not a democracy. The frauds are still one person one vote.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  712. @songbird
    Can German_reader please confirm this spurious Nigerian newsstory about Baerbock (presumably) employing a gigolo, when she goes on African trips?
    https://dailypost.ng/2024/07/30/i-provide-emotional-comfort-to-lonely-elites-kingsley-talks-about-his-career-as-gigolo/

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @German_reader

    I have discovered where the CIA got the idea in the first place.

    “This whole town operates on conspiracy”.

    Scroll to 14:20

    Every episode is great. Well to be fair I scrolled past almost everything but the Barbara Parkins scenes.

    • Thanks: songbird
    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    I thought I would make it to the end of the road without ever seeing this show. I guess our wise conspiracy girl is a pretty young Mia Farrow.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

  713. Would like to see Keith Woods become a travel vlogger, like Indigo Traveller on YouTube.

    [MORE]

    Whereas Indigo is kind of careful of what he says while he lets the ominous music, scary people, and garbage-filled streets speak for themselves, Keith could step over that line and bring out the World’s Most Important Graph each time.

  714. The Covid-19 vaccines were perhaps the greatest medical achievement of the 21st century. Completed in record time and extraordinarily safe, they built on 30 years of research into mRNA technology to deliver a tool that in its first year alone prevented an estimated 19.8 million deaths worldwide, and even more infections and hospitalizations. The vaccines, unlike masking and social distancing, required virtually no sacrifice from Americans: Just one or two shots protected people from the worst outcomes of the disease with few side effects. And as more people were vaccinated, society began to rebound from Covid, too.

    https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23438552/covid-vaccine-refusal-hesitancy-politics-polarization-pandemic-mandates

    • LOL: Bashibuzuk
    • Replies: @A123
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    The Covid-19 vaccines were perhaps the greatest medical achievement of the 21st century. Completed in record time and extraordinarily safe

     

    Emil the Corpulent,

    Are you going for satire?
    Or, is this another admission of catastrophic naivety?

    PEACE 😇

     
    https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMzwoqc0H0eBRtgBaODfB2nylgOjDtKiSg05d2aecm8crJRLztNvjmPsixV5fSauQ-ei2n-2FLZ7KN58CRTI_HPfDeRYCpYHIiFmK0Ux2GlzMQjduforfx1RIkiwjnBsPKkFPCecm9hNaoIIONaqunpeyQkYYk-6xAQUxidPswADwxNlNmyMqY1-JD2EE/s808/1%20fgsdfggfdf.jpg

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

  715. @Bashibuzuk
    @Mikel

    So you are certain that Biden won 2020 elections fair and square?

    🙂

    Replies: @Mikel

    So you are certain that Biden won 2020 elections fair and square?

    No. Unlike you, I am a poor soul living in a world of permanent uncertainty and trying to navigate it as best I can with my limited thinking abilities. But I don’t believe the election was stolen, as proven quite convincingly in Arizona.

    🙂

    Heartland/Rasmussen Poll: One-in-Five Mail-In Voters Admit to Committing at Least One Kind of Voter Fraud During 2020 Election

    a) How do you know this one poll is not fraudulent? You just agreed with the idea that dozens of pollsters are conspiring to deceive the American public.

    b) Have you actually read the results of that poll? Similar amounts of Republican and Democrat voters took part in it and the “fraud” consisted in answering yes to questions like “did you help someone cast their vote”? I have helped my wife cast hers many times. She actually votes more often than I do but always asks me for help. Am I a fraudster?

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Mikel


    Unlike you, I am a poor soul living in a world of permanent uncertainty and trying to navigate it as best I can with my limited thinking abilities.
     
    Whatever…

    🙂

    Are you sure Biden won square and fair in 2020?

    That’s a simple yes or no question.

    Replies: @Mikel

  716. A123 says: • Website
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    The Covid-19 vaccines were perhaps the greatest medical achievement of the 21st century. Completed in record time and extraordinarily safe, they built on 30 years of research into mRNA technology to deliver a tool that in its first year alone prevented an estimated 19.8 million deaths worldwide, and even more infections and hospitalizations. The vaccines, unlike masking and social distancing, required virtually no sacrifice from Americans: Just one or two shots protected people from the worst outcomes of the disease with few side effects. And as more people were vaccinated, society began to rebound from Covid, too.
     
    https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23438552/covid-vaccine-refusal-hesitancy-politics-polarization-pandemic-mandates

    Replies: @A123

    The Covid-19 vaccines were perhaps the greatest medical achievement of the 21st century. Completed in record time and extraordinarily safe

    Emil the Corpulent,

    Are you going for satire?
    Or, is this another admission of catastrophic naivety?

    PEACE 😇

     

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @A123

    There was very little in the news but a prominent ex-NFL player from New Orleans who starred for Houston and Baltimore died a couple weeks ago in his sleep at the age of 40 years with no ostensible health imperfections. The news said nothing except he died.

    I'm sort of an asshole but I really would like to know how many experimental gene medicine injections were foisted upon the fellow.

    Google search for autopsy Jacoby Jones and tell me what is available at your ISP.

    This one is new-ish from 3 days ago.

    https://theblackwallsttimes.com/2024/07/29/jacoby-jones-cause-of-death/

  717. @Mikel
    @Bashibuzuk


    So you are certain that Biden won 2020 elections fair and square?
     
    No. Unlike you, I am a poor soul living in a world of permanent uncertainty and trying to navigate it as best I can with my limited thinking abilities. But I don't believe the election was stolen, as proven quite convincingly in Arizona.

    :-)

    Heartland/Rasmussen Poll: One-in-Five Mail-In Voters Admit to Committing at Least One Kind of Voter Fraud During 2020 Election

     

    a) How do you know this one poll is not fraudulent? You just agreed with the idea that dozens of pollsters are conspiring to deceive the American public.

    b) Have you actually read the results of that poll? Similar amounts of Republican and Democrat voters took part in it and the "fraud" consisted in answering yes to questions like "did you help someone cast their vote"? I have helped my wife cast hers many times. She actually votes more often than I do but always asks me for help. Am I a fraudster?

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    Unlike you, I am a poor soul living in a world of permanent uncertainty and trying to navigate it as best I can with my limited thinking abilities.

    Whatever…

    🙂

    Are you sure Biden won square and fair in 2020?

    That’s a simple yes or no question.

    • LOL: QCIC
    • Replies: @Mikel
    @Bashibuzuk


    That’s a simple yes or no question.
     
    Indeed. Read again the very first word of my answer.

    And then have the courtesy of returning the favor and answering yourself the question I posed to you. If you don't have any clue how exactly "they" are going to steal the election, perhaps you should refrain from discouraging foreigners from voting in an important election in their country?

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  718. @A123
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    The Covid-19 vaccines were perhaps the greatest medical achievement of the 21st century. Completed in record time and extraordinarily safe

     

    Emil the Corpulent,

    Are you going for satire?
    Or, is this another admission of catastrophic naivety?

    PEACE 😇

     
    https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMzwoqc0H0eBRtgBaODfB2nylgOjDtKiSg05d2aecm8crJRLztNvjmPsixV5fSauQ-ei2n-2FLZ7KN58CRTI_HPfDeRYCpYHIiFmK0Ux2GlzMQjduforfx1RIkiwjnBsPKkFPCecm9hNaoIIONaqunpeyQkYYk-6xAQUxidPswADwxNlNmyMqY1-JD2EE/s808/1%20fgsdfggfdf.jpg

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    There was very little in the news but a prominent ex-NFL player from New Orleans who starred for Houston and Baltimore died a couple weeks ago in his sleep at the age of 40 years with no ostensible health imperfections. The news said nothing except he died.

    I’m sort of an asshole but I really would like to know how many experimental gene medicine injections were foisted upon the fellow.

    Google search for autopsy Jacoby Jones and tell me what is available at your ISP.

    This one is new-ish from 3 days ago.

    https://theblackwallsttimes.com/2024/07/29/jacoby-jones-cause-of-death/

  719. How long will Mr. Hack continue to abuse his poor tastebuds with bland, over-processed Desi food, before becoming a true cosmopolitan gourmet and citizen of the world by partaking in the fresh, tasty, epicurean fare of Worora and Narinjin tribesmen?

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    Have you ever seen one of those abo documentaries where they have close-ups of them gobbling up live worms and beetles?

    For all I know that is in every abo documentary.

    Replies: @songbird

    , @Mr. Hack
    @songbird

    "Cosmopolitan" (you forgot to include the adjective "degenerate"), "gourmet" (I like chicken tikka masala), "citizen of the world", you might as well label me as a incontrite commie faggot, and be done with it all.

    Hasn't anybody ever informed you that:

    https://www.cartoonistgroup.com/properties/strangebrew/art_images/cg590404e9edc64.jpg

    Have you given any notice that Yahya has returned to join us from the land of nutritional supplements and Jack Lalane fetishism? I almost forgot how good his movie reviews were...enough to challenge Dmitry's role as chief editor here of movie reviews?...

    https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/LlgAAOSwJ9dmpXyO/s-l1600.webp
    Thorffinnson used to hold the old guy in very high esteem. :-)
    Last I heard, he (T-son) was on a carnivore diet, probably loved to eat liver.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @songbird

  720. @songbird
    How long will Mr. Hack continue to abuse his poor tastebuds with bland, over-processed Desi food, before becoming a true cosmopolitan gourmet and citizen of the world by partaking in the fresh, tasty, epicurean fare of Worora and Narinjin tribesmen?

    https://twitter.com/MungoManic/status/1818456722882670961

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mr. Hack

    Have you ever seen one of those abo documentaries where they have close-ups of them gobbling up live worms and beetles?

    For all I know that is in every abo documentary.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    I think the pickiness of kids is some calibration error. Figure hunter-gatherers were eating quite differently. Food was very seasonal,. No regular food available all year around. No comfort food. Regular periods of dearth and they were often hungry. They were probably eating a lot of plants, and relying partly on taste and smell to avoid the wrong ones.

    Makes a lot of sense why kids often don't like onions as they burn the eyes.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

  721. @Greasy William
    @Greasy William

    another upset pick, Argentina Cup: Atletico Mitre +190 to beat CA Temperley

    Replies: @Greasy William

    1 and 1 today. Both were sizeable underdogs so I did still make a profit.

    Tie breaker!: Hiroshima +185 over Stuttgart

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Greasy William

    Be sure to send us an update when God smites you for foolishly abusing powers beyond your ken. Talk about hubris!

  722. @Bashibuzuk
    @Mikel


    Mail-in votes are ballots returned by registered voters who received one and can only send that one back, whatever motivated them to do it.
     
    Heartland/Rasmussen Poll: One-in-Five Mail-In Voters Admit to Committing at Least One Kind of Voter Fraud During 2020 Election

    The results of these survey questions appear to show that voter fraud was widespread in the 2020 election, especially among those who cast mail-in ballots.

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/heartland-rasmussen-poll-one-five-161100197.html

    Replies: @QCIC, @AP

    Wow. Unlike some surveys where notional anonymity promotes truthful answers, I think most people committing these voting misdeeds would not acknowledge it to third parties outside of their circle of confidants. In other words the real numbers are probably higher!

    • Agree: Bashibuzuk
  723. @Bashibuzuk
    @Mikel


    Mail-in votes are ballots returned by registered voters who received one and can only send that one back, whatever motivated them to do it.
     
    Heartland/Rasmussen Poll: One-in-Five Mail-In Voters Admit to Committing at Least One Kind of Voter Fraud During 2020 Election

    The results of these survey questions appear to show that voter fraud was widespread in the 2020 election, especially among those who cast mail-in ballots.

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/heartland-rasmussen-poll-one-five-161100197.html

    Replies: @QCIC, @AP

    The specific frauds here are someone voting for their spouse and someone voting in the wrong place because they’ve moved.

    These wouldn’t mean that the results are fake or not a democracy. The frauds are still one person one vote.

    • Agree: Mr. XYZ
    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @AP


    The 2020 election was full of chaos and irregularities. States like Georgia and Pennsylvania took days to finalize election results. Mail ballots were found on floors of apartment floor lobbies. Dead people were even voting in states across the country!

    Unfortunately, people have been voting from beyond the grave since well before 2020.

    The left claims that voter fraud is non-existent, and that dead people are not voting. But, we have proof that deceased individuals are casting ballots.

    The Public Interest Legal Foundation’s database of the country’s voter rolls found nearly 350,000 deceased registrants before the 2020 election. The inevitable question is always well did any of them vote. Unfortunately, some always do.

    The Foundation is even beginning to see people being registered after their death. Yes, you read that right. People are registering deceased individuals to vote.

    One such individual the Public Interest Legal Foundation uncovered was Judith Presto. Presto voted in the 2020 election in Pennsylvania. She died in 2013. Closer examination of our data revealed her husband registered and voted for her following her death.

    We turned this information in to Pennsylvania authorities, which led to the ultimate arrest of her husband.

    My organization sued Pennsylvania to remove the over 20,000 deceased registrants from the Commonwealth’s voter rolls. In one of the few victories for election integrity in 2020, we won the case. Pennsylvania has removed the deceased registrants from their voter rolls. It is now a lot harder to vote from beyond the grave in Pennsylvania.
     
    https://www.citizensjournal.us/adams-the-evidence-is-real-dead-people-are-voting/

    Replies: @AP

  724. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    I have discovered where the CIA got the idea in the first place.

    "This whole town operates on conspiracy".

    Scroll to 14:20

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKuJefJcnfU

    Every episode is great. Well to be fair I scrolled past almost everything but the Barbara Parkins scenes.

    Replies: @QCIC

    I thought I would make it to the end of the road without ever seeing this show. I guess our wise conspiracy girl is a pretty young Mia Farrow.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @QCIC

    I was going to leave her out unless one of the die hards wanted to mention IQ again. She is exceptional in that what our odd female friends do with cats she did with human children.

    Her mom was a movie star and she grew up in Beverly Hills.

  725. As best as I can tell, the plan is for Iran, Lebanon, Yemen and various militias in Iraq and Syria to launch a coordinated missile attack on Israel on Friday, after the Hamas guy’s funeral. The barrage will be massive, substantially larger than that of April, but will be limited to government and military targets. Bibi has all but declared that Israel will not respond as long as no civilian targets are struck.

  726. @Greasy William
    @Greasy William

    1 and 1 today. Both were sizeable underdogs so I did still make a profit.

    Tie breaker!: Hiroshima +185 over Stuttgart

    Replies: @QCIC

    Be sure to send us an update when God smites you for foolishly abusing powers beyond your ken. Talk about hubris!

  727. @QCIC
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    I thought I would make it to the end of the road without ever seeing this show. I guess our wise conspiracy girl is a pretty young Mia Farrow.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    I was going to leave her out unless one of the die hards wanted to mention IQ again. She is exceptional in that what our odd female friends do with cats she did with human children.

    Her mom was a movie star and she grew up in Beverly Hills.

  728. @Bashibuzuk
    @Mikel


    Unlike you, I am a poor soul living in a world of permanent uncertainty and trying to navigate it as best I can with my limited thinking abilities.
     
    Whatever…

    🙂

    Are you sure Biden won square and fair in 2020?

    That’s a simple yes or no question.

    Replies: @Mikel

    That’s a simple yes or no question.

    Indeed. Read again the very first word of my answer.

    And then have the courtesy of returning the favor and answering yourself the question I posed to you. If you don’t have any clue how exactly “they” are going to steal the election, perhaps you should refrain from discouraging foreigners from voting in an important election in their country?

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Mikel

    Unlike what you implied, I don’t have a definitive opinion on whether the election was outright rigged. I also don’t want to make this discussion personal with implied connotations about your mentality, mine mentality or anyone else’s (Kamala’s and Donald’s included). But I think we both can agree that the US 2020 elections were a somewhat spurious affair to put it mildly. There were irregularities on a scale that lead to lingering suspicions of electoral fraud. Something that should not happen in a leading democracy.

    BTW, Mikel, I have always had a great respect for your opinions and the way you express them here on UR. We often agree on different subjects. And if we don’t, then I believe that we can disagree in a respectful and reasonable way and thoughtfully discuss our divergent perspectives.

    So what I suggest is either we go case by case about the different fraud allegations that have been made: voting machines, non-citizens’ vote, dead people vote, in mail ballots and vote counting manipulation. Or instead of looking at the past election, we might look at the coming one and discuss how a result could be weighed against all potential fraud allegations (I am certain that there will be allegations).

    And about discouraging the Americans from voting, I don’t think my Russian Troll (Registered TM) opinion about anything would really influence our American friends on this site. I don’t trust democracy since at least 1996, probably more of 1993. But I don’t think everyone has to follow me on the slippery slopes of seeing the representative democracy as basically an ideological tool in manipulating the masses and keeping them busy, while the important issues are decided by the elite groups behind tightly closed doors.

    It’s like peanut butter, I don’t really like it (except with bananas sliced and honey sprinkled over it) but I don’t mind if you or anyone else eats it three times a day.

    🙂

    Replies: @A123, @Mikel

  729. @songbird
    How long will Mr. Hack continue to abuse his poor tastebuds with bland, over-processed Desi food, before becoming a true cosmopolitan gourmet and citizen of the world by partaking in the fresh, tasty, epicurean fare of Worora and Narinjin tribesmen?

    https://twitter.com/MungoManic/status/1818456722882670961

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mr. Hack

    “Cosmopolitan” (you forgot to include the adjective “degenerate”), “gourmet” (I like chicken tikka masala), “citizen of the world”, you might as well label me as a incontrite commie faggot, and be done with it all.

    Hasn’t anybody ever informed you that:

    Have you given any notice that Yahya has returned to join us from the land of nutritional supplements and Jack Lalane fetishism? I almost forgot how good his movie reviews were…enough to challenge Dmitry’s role as chief editor here of movie reviews?…
    Thorffinnson used to hold the old guy in very high esteem. 🙂
    Last I heard, he (T-son) was on a carnivore diet, probably loved to eat liver.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Mr. Hack


    “Cosmopolitan” (you forgot to include the adjective “degenerate”), “gourmet” (I like chicken tikka masala), “citizen of the world”, you might as well label me as a incontrite commie faggot, and be done with it all.
     
    That’s the spirit, Mr Hack!

    🙂
    , @songbird
    @Mr. Hack


    Hasn’t anybody ever informed you that:
     
    Don't want to get in a food fight with you, for I don't want to get tumeric in my eye 😉. But I did enjoy accusing you of being lactose intolerant over the internet. (Seemed like I was waiting for years, for the opportunity.) I just can't understand why you refuse to cross the Wallace Line.

    Have you given any notice that Yahya has returned to join us from the land of nutritional supplements and Jack Lalane fetishism?
     
    Impressed that he is eating raw eggs. I don't even like sunny-side-up or soft-boiled.

    enough to challenge Dmitry’s role as chief editor here of movie reviews?…
     
    can't recall the last time Dmitry mentioned a movie unless it was 1917 or the Ford v. Ferrari film. (I didn't see the second, didn't enjoy the first, as among other flaws it had the evil German trope.)

    He seemed to have a period where he liked French new wave. And he ducked our attempts to get him to review more. But I still feel like I have one over him, as I recommended to him Ferris Bueller's Day Off, as being a very American film for teenagers (and I thought he was an Americanophile?), but he hated it.

    I recall Yahya didn't like Princess Monoko, and he said that he stopped watching it at x mark, and I was reading some book, where it said that is exactly the time the movie picks up. (It had some sort of graph of tension, based on biosensors on the audience or air sampling or something, You Are What You Watch. But I myself don't recall liking the movie, though I saw it quite a long time ago, and I think it was the first Miyazaki film I saw. I wonder if he has watched another anime movie. My favorite Miyazaki film is Castle Of Cagliostro, but it is probably a bit childish.

    I thought there was someone here who used to mention Ray Peat?

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  730. Bashibuzuk says:
    @AP
    @Bashibuzuk

    The specific frauds here are someone voting for their spouse and someone voting in the wrong place because they’ve moved.

    These wouldn’t mean that the results are fake or not a democracy. The frauds are still one person one vote.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    The 2020 election was full of chaos and irregularities. States like Georgia and Pennsylvania took days to finalize election results. Mail ballots were found on floors of apartment floor lobbies. Dead people were even voting in states across the country!

    Unfortunately, people have been voting from beyond the grave since well before 2020.

    The left claims that voter fraud is non-existent, and that dead people are not voting. But, we have proof that deceased individuals are casting ballots.

    The Public Interest Legal Foundation’s database of the country’s voter rolls found nearly 350,000 deceased registrants before the 2020 election. The inevitable question is always well did any of them vote. Unfortunately, some always do.

    The Foundation is even beginning to see people being registered after their death. Yes, you read that right. People are registering deceased individuals to vote.

    One such individual the Public Interest Legal Foundation uncovered was Judith Presto. Presto voted in the 2020 election in Pennsylvania. She died in 2013. Closer examination of our data revealed her husband registered and voted for her following her death.

    We turned this information in to Pennsylvania authorities, which led to the ultimate arrest of her husband.

    My organization sued Pennsylvania to remove the over 20,000 deceased registrants from the Commonwealth’s voter rolls. In one of the few victories for election integrity in 2020, we won the case. Pennsylvania has removed the deceased registrants from their voter rolls. It is now a lot harder to vote from beyond the grave in Pennsylvania.

    https://www.citizensjournal.us/adams-the-evidence-is-real-dead-people-are-voting/

    • Thanks: S1, A123
    • Replies: @AP
    @Bashibuzuk

    Such cases have been extremely rare (not enough to change the election results) and there is no evidence that they have a Democratic bias. In the case described above of the deceased Judith Presto, her husband who voted for her was a Republican.

    If I were inclined to believe in conspiracy theories, I would guess that pushing false ideas such as elections being determined by fake votes is a way to deflect from the real source of lack of fairness - the mass media almost all taking one side even to the point of censorship, and to discredit as crazy conspiracy theorists anyone who points out the real problem. And as a bonus, demoralise people into not voting.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Mr. XYZ

  731. @Mr. Hack
    @songbird

    "Cosmopolitan" (you forgot to include the adjective "degenerate"), "gourmet" (I like chicken tikka masala), "citizen of the world", you might as well label me as a incontrite commie faggot, and be done with it all.

    Hasn't anybody ever informed you that:

    https://www.cartoonistgroup.com/properties/strangebrew/art_images/cg590404e9edc64.jpg

    Have you given any notice that Yahya has returned to join us from the land of nutritional supplements and Jack Lalane fetishism? I almost forgot how good his movie reviews were...enough to challenge Dmitry's role as chief editor here of movie reviews?...

    https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/LlgAAOSwJ9dmpXyO/s-l1600.webp
    Thorffinnson used to hold the old guy in very high esteem. :-)
    Last I heard, he (T-son) was on a carnivore diet, probably loved to eat liver.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @songbird

    “Cosmopolitan” (you forgot to include the adjective “degenerate”), “gourmet” (I like chicken tikka masala), “citizen of the world”, you might as well label me as a incontrite commie faggot, and be done with it all.

    That’s the spirit, Mr Hack!

    🙂

    • Thanks: Mr. Hack
  732. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Mikel
    @Bashibuzuk


    That’s a simple yes or no question.
     
    Indeed. Read again the very first word of my answer.

    And then have the courtesy of returning the favor and answering yourself the question I posed to you. If you don't have any clue how exactly "they" are going to steal the election, perhaps you should refrain from discouraging foreigners from voting in an important election in their country?

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    Unlike what you implied, I don’t have a definitive opinion on whether the election was outright rigged. I also don’t want to make this discussion personal with implied connotations about your mentality, mine mentality or anyone else’s (Kamala’s and Donald’s included). But I think we both can agree that the US 2020 elections were a somewhat spurious affair to put it mildly. There were irregularities on a scale that lead to lingering suspicions of electoral fraud. Something that should not happen in a leading democracy.

    BTW, Mikel, I have always had a great respect for your opinions and the way you express them here on UR. We often agree on different subjects. And if we don’t, then I believe that we can disagree in a respectful and reasonable way and thoughtfully discuss our divergent perspectives.

    So what I suggest is either we go case by case about the different fraud allegations that have been made: voting machines, non-citizens’ vote, dead people vote, in mail ballots and vote counting manipulation. Or instead of looking at the past election, we might look at the coming one and discuss how a result could be weighed against all potential fraud allegations (I am certain that there will be allegations).

    And about discouraging the Americans from voting, I don’t think my Russian Troll (Registered TM) opinion about anything would really influence our American friends on this site. I don’t trust democracy since at least 1996, probably more of 1993. But I don’t think everyone has to follow me on the slippery slopes of seeing the representative democracy as basically an ideological tool in manipulating the masses and keeping them busy, while the important issues are decided by the elite groups behind tightly closed doors.

    It’s like peanut butter, I don’t really like it (except with bananas sliced and honey sprinkled over it) but I don’t mind if you or anyone else eats it three times a day.

    🙂

    • Replies: @A123
    @Bashibuzuk

    One of the larger problems with mail in voting is -- Voting for others who were already on the rolls. Most often the dead, but other registration hijacking also exists.

    Here is an example of how rules are becoming tighter in a swing state: (1)


    Michigan Judge Shuts Down Secretary Of State’s Lax Ballot Signature Guidance For Good

     

    At Monday’s hearing, RNC attorney Robert L. Avers verified that the “initial presumption of validity” language had been removed from the guidance manual. But he questioned whether clerks had been notified. He pointed out what is at stake, telling Judge Yates, “The presumption [of signature validity] was applied during the presidential primary in February, and so this is a change and it’s an important one. … Time is of the essence here, right? And that goes to the communication too. I mean, there’s clerks reviewing signatures right now.”
     
    When fraudsters do not know the signature on file, validating versus that record can catch the crime.
    ___

    Of course, this is only one improvement among many. Bottom line -- After the unprecedented issues in 2020, the process will be much better (though still flawed) in 2024.

    Voting is important. Cheating is only viable when changing a limited number of ballots impacts the outcome. Can some fraud still succeed? Likely. This is why pushing MAGA's margin of victory over the DNC is vital.


    I don’t trust democracy since at least 1996, probably more of 1993. But I don’t think everyone has to follow me on the slippery slopes of seeing the representative democracy as basically an ideological tool in manipulating the masses and keeping them busy, while the important issues are decided by the elite groups behind tightly closed doors.
     
    Before 2016, many Americans would have agreed with you about Uniparty rule:
        • The GOP claimed to support Christian values, but did not.
        • The DNC claimed to support workers, but did not.
    As a Christian worker, there was no one to vote for at the federal level. State elections also typically offered unappealing options.

    The emergence of MAGA is a once in a century political shift. The opportunity to have a party that supports Christians and workers is necessary, even if it cannot meet Mikel's standard of delivering 100% of absolutely everything instantly.

    Giving up on the 2024 election, or allowing it to be stolen, could break the country. Both in terms of trust and economically for workers.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://thefederalist.com/2024/07/31/michigan-judge-shuts-down-secretary-of-states-lax-ballot-signature-guidance-for-good/

    , @Mikel
    @Bashibuzuk


    BTW, Mikel, I have always had a great respect for your opinions and the way you express them here on UR. We often agree on different subjects. And if we don’t, then I believe that we can disagree in a respectful and reasonable way and thoughtfully discuss our divergent perspectives.
     
    Yes, sorry if I came across too combative. I also respect you and value your contributions a lot, although I think you know we part ways when it comes to grand conspiracy theories.*

    I guess I shouldn't care too much. Caring about political matters too much often leads to disasters (like we see in Ukraine now). And most often it's stuff we have little influence on anyway so taking some distance is always a wise course of action. At the same time, it's difficult not to care about the country that has generously accepted you as one of its citizens and where you plan to spend the rest of your life. As I have often explained here, I have an advantage over native-born Americans in that I know Latin America very well and I definitely wouldn't like to see such a wonderful country as the US turn into one of those banana republics if it's possible to avoid it at all.

    To be sure, I think that the Brazilianization of the US is already baked in. Nobody's going to prevent that, it's not realistic to have such an expectation. The changes I have seen in a decade in a state that was officially listed as ~90% white in the census when I came here are too big to think that this is reversible. You go out anywhere and it feels like it's down to 50% or so right now. And quite frankly, I would myself oppose policies that implied cruelty or outright discrimination against people of color who are here legally.

    However, the reality is that 4 more years of a Biden-like regime (Kamala is if anything worse) is going to accelerate the decline considerably, not only with the demographic issue but also with the woke agenda, foreign wars, risk of nuclear war and out of control debt.

    Again, this is the REALITY in front of our noses if we let Kamala win. By contrast, the POSSIBILITY of obscure forces stealing the election, which allegedly makes voting useless is just a hypothetical threat with doubtful evidence behind. I doubt most of the people claiming that the 2020 elections were stolen have spent as much time as I did examining the evidence, that I found quite persuasive at the beginning. I have mentioned it here several times but I haven't managed to get anyone to explain to me the results of the Arizona audit if it's true, as Trump and his lawyers claimed, that it was one of the states where the election was stolen. According to them, some Democrat cabal committed the same fraud in Maricopa county as in the other swing state districts but when an audit forced by MAGA-aligned state congressmen recounted all the votes and examined all the voting machines with IT forensic experts, they actually found a few more legitimate votes for Biden. Feel free to be the first one to address this easily verifiable fact.

    So I hope you understand where I'm coming from when I lose my patience with people telling me that my vote doesn't count and some secret forces will steal the election, no matter how many of us vote against Kamala and how many of us volunteer to watch the vote counting process.

    * Didn't you read Gramsci in the USSR? It would be quite ironic if you didn't because your leaders sure used people like him to sow discord in our countries. Gramsci's theories were a semi-scientific approach to social processes much more effective than conspiracies, that require too many moving parts acting in unison. As he pointed out, the way to make an ideology dominant in a society is to place its adherents at the critical places that control the narratives and the rest follows by itself: academia, education, the media, the arts,... It's a well tested method used through generations by the leftists that works wonders. Leaving perhaps some religious people aside, progressives are much more focused and organized than rightists and this type of processes acquire a life of of its own. If you don't look and sound in, you are not going to be elected as a students' representative or a teachers union leader and eventually everybody in the places that matter end up having the same sort of ideas. Things that look like conspiracies tend to have much more prosaic explanations. It was all invented a long time ago, even if now the Commies have turned into woke globalists.

    Replies: @A123, @Bashibuzuk

  733. @Bashibuzuk
    @AP


    The 2020 election was full of chaos and irregularities. States like Georgia and Pennsylvania took days to finalize election results. Mail ballots were found on floors of apartment floor lobbies. Dead people were even voting in states across the country!

    Unfortunately, people have been voting from beyond the grave since well before 2020.

    The left claims that voter fraud is non-existent, and that dead people are not voting. But, we have proof that deceased individuals are casting ballots.

    The Public Interest Legal Foundation’s database of the country’s voter rolls found nearly 350,000 deceased registrants before the 2020 election. The inevitable question is always well did any of them vote. Unfortunately, some always do.

    The Foundation is even beginning to see people being registered after their death. Yes, you read that right. People are registering deceased individuals to vote.

    One such individual the Public Interest Legal Foundation uncovered was Judith Presto. Presto voted in the 2020 election in Pennsylvania. She died in 2013. Closer examination of our data revealed her husband registered and voted for her following her death.

    We turned this information in to Pennsylvania authorities, which led to the ultimate arrest of her husband.

    My organization sued Pennsylvania to remove the over 20,000 deceased registrants from the Commonwealth’s voter rolls. In one of the few victories for election integrity in 2020, we won the case. Pennsylvania has removed the deceased registrants from their voter rolls. It is now a lot harder to vote from beyond the grave in Pennsylvania.
     
    https://www.citizensjournal.us/adams-the-evidence-is-real-dead-people-are-voting/

    Replies: @AP

    Such cases have been extremely rare (not enough to change the election results) and there is no evidence that they have a Democratic bias. In the case described above of the deceased Judith Presto, her husband who voted for her was a Republican.

    If I were inclined to believe in conspiracy theories, I would guess that pushing false ideas such as elections being determined by fake votes is a way to deflect from the real source of lack of fairness – the mass media almost all taking one side even to the point of censorship, and to discredit as crazy conspiracy theorists anyone who points out the real problem. And as a bonus, demoralise people into not voting.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @AP


    Voting by noncitizens, including illegal aliens, is expressly prohibited by law.


    About a dozen jurisdictions now permit noncitizens, and even illegal aliens, to vote in local elections.


    In 2014, a study estimated that approximately 6.4 percent of noncitizens voted in the 2008 presidential election and that 2.2 percent voted in the 2010 midterm elections.


    The U.S. and the United Kingdom are the only democracies that do not have voter identification requirements.


    According to a 2018 survey, a large majority of Americans – including Republicans, independents, and Democrats – opposes voting by noncitizens and illegal aliens.
     
    https://www.fairus.org/issue/noncitizens-voting-violations-and-us-elections

    Undercover footage reported by the Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project from Muckracker.com reveals that 14% of illegal immigrants in a single apartment complex in Georgia admitted to being registered to vote. The video, taken by journalist Carlos Arellano, has over 21 million views as of this writing.

    […]

    If that same 14% is applied state-wide, that suggests that 47,000 of Georgia's estimated 339,000 non-citizens are registered to vote in a state that Joe Biden 'won' by less than 12,000 votes in 2020.

    The Heritage Foundation were unable to find these individuals on GA voter rolls, making it "unclear exactly what information these individuals gave when registering to vote."
     
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/viral-video-reveals-14-illegal-immigrants-admit-being-registered-voters

    Replies: @QCIC, @AP, @Mikel

    , @Mr. XYZ
    @AP

    The media took Bush's side in 2000. Up to the point that there was even a Gore supporter filing a lawsuit against the media for this during the 2000 campaign.

  734. Popular RF state paid propagandist Dmitriy Steshin publicly floated the threat, masquaraded as the advice to the authorities, to blow up Power of Siberia natgas pipeline in order to punish CCPíed China:

    We are solving the problem of enemy drones from the wrong end. I am about to write something unpleasant and will surprise many. All drones on the front, on both sides, are bought in the same place – China. All these motors, controllers, sensors, remote controls and blades – all from our dear partners. And it seems to me that it is a very stupid exercise to try to buy more drones from China than Ukraine buys. We just need to make sure that China sells drones and components only to us.

    Since China, by definition, does not delve into such subtleties, makes a blank face, although it could figure it out on its own, we need to conduct explanatory work with it. If I were the “Dark Lord of the Planet”, I would do the following, in the Anglo-Saxon tradition: a drone, made of Chinese components, in a defiant “yellow and blue coloring”, would be flown straight into to the “Power of Siberia”. And I would tell China that it is to blame for this and, in general, is a bad, unreliable ally. Which is the pure truth, reasoning ontologically. Of course, there are more civilized ways to convince China, which is tightly attached to the resource gorge of my Motherland. But this is the fastest and most obvious. And believe me, if China wanted to, not a single motor, not a single blade would have gotten to the Banderites, even through complex logistics.

    P.S.
    But the most correct method is to create completely our own drones and powerful, unified electronic warfare. I don’t know how many years we are behind in this area. I’m afraid to think.

    https://t.me/DmitriySteshin/11273

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @sudden death

    If the will is there, in practical terms Russia is probably 3 to 5 years behind at the basic level (90% of things), but 15 years behind on the most computationally intensive parts.

    Conceivably Russia could follow a different branch of the computer family tree and catch up in a few years as well, even on the computational frontier. Maybe they are collaborating with China on photonics computers.

    Replies: @sudden death, @Derer

  735. @AP
    @Sean


    Supply Ukraine with the weapons permission and intel for devastating strikes on the Russian army, and you will see Putin just sit there at take repeated decimation of his forces, because he is too scared of the US.

    Or, maybe he would think dramatic escalation was an existential necessity. The people in Washington, who know far more than anyone on here, are not looking to find out what Putin would do if he believed he was losing.
     

    Three problems with your reasoning:

    1. Most others, from both within the USA and from allied countries, with access to the same information as the Biden administration, want a stronger policy against Russia and oppose the ridiculous limitations on weapons usage demanded by the weak-on-Russia Biden administration.

    2. The Biden Administration is and has been weak across the board, towards entities such as Iran, Taliban, etc. that do not have nuclear capabilities. It is soft towards all of America’s rivals.

    3. Various supposed red lines have repeatedly been crossed (eventually) without the escalation feared by the Biden administration.

    :::::::::

    These suggest that the real issue is the Biden administration’s global policy of weakness and not a realistic threat of nuke use by Russia.

    But given the Biden administration’s weakness, we can expect Russia to continue to make threats either overtly or through diplomatic channels. They work on the Biden administration, so why not?

    Replies: @QCIC, @A123, @Greasy William, @Sean

    Various supposed red lines have repeatedly been crossed (eventually) without the escalation feared by the Biden administration.

    I certainly do not think there is any sort of principle or honour behind the Russian reactions or the lack of them so far, it is based on what they consider to be the least risky way to attain their objectives. Apoplectic two tits for one tat way to US help for Ukraine would be counter productive as long as they are winning–or at least think they are.

    And yes so far Putin has been a pussycat; in my opinion that inaction is because the real red line of Russia is losing in Ukraine and Biden is not giving Ukraine remotely enough arms to win. Ceasing to think they are winning would be a watershed in Kremlin thinking because they would have to do something risky. Or just back down like Khrushchev did … although Cuba Crisis happened when the USSR had no capability to annihilate US cities.

    Brezhnev changed all that and put everything into making the Soviet ICBM forces essentially equivalent to the American ones not necessarily in counterforce but in ability to level cities. And Russia retains that capability today. Khrushchev was deposed largely for backing down and Putin would be too. Anyway, with or without Putin at its head, if Russia was to withdraw from Ukraine no one would ever take it or its enormously expensive thermonuclear weapons seriously again. They might as well scrap them.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Sean


    Ceasing to think they are winning would be a watershed in Kremlin thinking because they would have to do something risky

     

    They may be looking for a face-saving gesture. Apparently Pompeo’s co-author of that paper from the WSJ I posted is financed by a Russian oligarch close to Putin. Might be a road map to an acceptable deal.

    if Russia was to withdraw from Ukraine no one would ever take it or its enormously expensive thermonuclear weapons seriously again. They might as well scrap them.
     
    The point of these weapons is not to prevent loss in war (otherwise the USA would have nuked its way to victory in Korea and Vietnam, USSR in Afghanistan). It is to prevent conquest by another country. Losing in Ukraine doesn’t qualify. NATO forces crossing into Russia and surging towards Moscow (or, in a different timeline, Chinese forces surging into the Far East and Siberia) probably would.

    Replies: @Sean

    , @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Sean


    Or just back down like Khrushchev did … although Cuba Crisis happened when the USSR had no capability to annihilate US cities.
     
    Didn't Krushchev succeed in getting Kennedy to remove a bunch of missiles from Turkey?

    Replies: @S1

    , @Derer
    @Sean


    Khrushchev was deposed largely for backing down and Putin would be too.
     
    It is not that important now, but Khrushchev was deposed because of screwing up the relationship with China in that period. BTW, Putin is following methodically his objectives, and we do not understand all the intricacies - outsiders, including dummies in the CIA, only speculate.

    Replies: @Sean

  736. Most Lithuanians disagree with their government’s China policies.

    Despite the current government’s combative stance towards China and enthusiastic embrace of relations with Chinese Taipei, a new study shows that the general public would prefer friendly and pragmatic ties with Beijing.

    Almost half of people in Lithuania believe China is a profitable market and that Lithuania should be pragmatic and refrain from criticising it, a new poll shows: 47.6 percent of respondents agreed with this statement, while 21 percent disagreed and 31.5 percent were neutral or undecided.

    The study also shows that 44 percent of Lithuanians believe that the country’s economy would struggle without investments from China. More than a third did not have a clear opinion on the issue and only a minority disagreed.

    A higher proportion of Lithuanians agreed that Lithuania was to blame for the Vilnius-Beijing dispute. More than a third did not have a clear opinion on the issue and slightly more than a fifth disagreed with the statement, the poll shows.

    Almost two-thirds, 63.3 percent, believe that Lithuania should not interfere in China’s internal affairs. According to the researchers, these beliefs are partly related to a deep-rooted perception that their country lacks power and influence in global affairs.

    Forty percent agreed that Lithuania’s industrial sector and consumers are heavily dependent on supply chains from China, and therefore, they thought, the country should not support any EU economic sanctions against China. More than a fifth disagreed, while more than a third were neutral or undecided.

    A majority of the respondents, 59.4 percent, agreed that good relations with China are economically and politically beneficial for both countries. A minority of Lithuanians disagreed, while just under a third did not have a clear opinion on the issue.

    And respondents were also undecided on whether China respects small countries, such as Lithuania.

    The study was carried out by the Latvian Institute of International Affairs and the International Center for Defense and Security in Estonia.

    [MORE]

    • Replies: @sudden death
    @Torna atrás

    Meanwhile during Lithuania government’s combative stance towards China and enthusiastic embrace of relations with Chinese Taipei, quite notable local economc divergence also happened as Lithuania continued it's economic rise in contrast with other two countries while previously the economic performance was quite similar:

    https://i.postimg.cc/bNFmVpFH/Baltic-states-real-GDP-2017-2024.jpg

    Also should be noted that this particular institute in Latvia has agenda of pushing CCPíed China Belt and Road Initiative and other various imaginable initiatives involving the Baltic region, so it's not some neutral player acting in pure academic scientific vacuum:


    As of July 2017, Latvian Institute of International Affairs (LIIA) has launched the New Silk Road Programme. In the context of the development of the New Silk Road interconnectivity initiatives, the LIIA New Silk Road Programme aims at promoting and coordinating research activities involving countries and regions in Europe and Asia integrated into the initiatives along the New Silk Road, conceptualising and assessing the involvement of Latvia into the transportation, logistics, information, financial, digital and human capital exchange connected to China's Belt and Road Initiative, providing expertise on China’s initiatives involving the Baltic region, including the China-CEEC “16+1” cooperation mechanisms, representing Latvia at think tank networks and participating in research activities related to the assessment of the developments along the New Silk Road, as well as assessing the prospects and strategies of India, Iran, Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries in the context of forming Eurasian infrastructural and civilizational highways.
     
    https://liia.lv/en/news/liia-presents-the-official-website-of-the-new-silk-road-programme-752
  737. @Bashibuzuk
    @Mikel

    Unlike what you implied, I don’t have a definitive opinion on whether the election was outright rigged. I also don’t want to make this discussion personal with implied connotations about your mentality, mine mentality or anyone else’s (Kamala’s and Donald’s included). But I think we both can agree that the US 2020 elections were a somewhat spurious affair to put it mildly. There were irregularities on a scale that lead to lingering suspicions of electoral fraud. Something that should not happen in a leading democracy.

    BTW, Mikel, I have always had a great respect for your opinions and the way you express them here on UR. We often agree on different subjects. And if we don’t, then I believe that we can disagree in a respectful and reasonable way and thoughtfully discuss our divergent perspectives.

    So what I suggest is either we go case by case about the different fraud allegations that have been made: voting machines, non-citizens’ vote, dead people vote, in mail ballots and vote counting manipulation. Or instead of looking at the past election, we might look at the coming one and discuss how a result could be weighed against all potential fraud allegations (I am certain that there will be allegations).

    And about discouraging the Americans from voting, I don’t think my Russian Troll (Registered TM) opinion about anything would really influence our American friends on this site. I don’t trust democracy since at least 1996, probably more of 1993. But I don’t think everyone has to follow me on the slippery slopes of seeing the representative democracy as basically an ideological tool in manipulating the masses and keeping them busy, while the important issues are decided by the elite groups behind tightly closed doors.

    It’s like peanut butter, I don’t really like it (except with bananas sliced and honey sprinkled over it) but I don’t mind if you or anyone else eats it three times a day.

    🙂

    Replies: @A123, @Mikel

    One of the larger problems with mail in voting is — Voting for others who were already on the rolls. Most often the dead, but other registration hijacking also exists.

    Here is an example of how rules are becoming tighter in a swing state: (1)

    Michigan Judge Shuts Down Secretary Of State’s Lax Ballot Signature Guidance For Good

    At Monday’s hearing, RNC attorney Robert L. Avers verified that the “initial presumption of validity” language had been removed from the guidance manual. But he questioned whether clerks had been notified. He pointed out what is at stake, telling Judge Yates, “The presumption [of signature validity] was applied during the presidential primary in February, and so this is a change and it’s an important one. … Time is of the essence here, right? And that goes to the communication too. I mean, there’s clerks reviewing signatures right now.”

    When fraudsters do not know the signature on file, validating versus that record can catch the crime.
    ___

    Of course, this is only one improvement among many. Bottom line — After the unprecedented issues in 2020, the process will be much better (though still flawed) in 2024.

    Voting is important. Cheating is only viable when changing a limited number of ballots impacts the outcome. Can some fraud still succeed? Likely. This is why pushing MAGA’s margin of victory over the DNC is vital.

    I don’t trust democracy since at least 1996, probably more of 1993. But I don’t think everyone has to follow me on the slippery slopes of seeing the representative democracy as basically an ideological tool in manipulating the masses and keeping them busy, while the important issues are decided by the elite groups behind tightly closed doors.

    Before 2016, many Americans would have agreed with you about Uniparty rule:
        • The GOP claimed to support Christian values, but did not.
        • The DNC claimed to support workers, but did not.
    As a Christian worker, there was no one to vote for at the federal level. State elections also typically offered unappealing options.

    The emergence of MAGA is a once in a century political shift. The opportunity to have a party that supports Christians and workers is necessary, even if it cannot meet Mikel’s standard of delivering 100% of absolutely everything instantly.

    Giving up on the 2024 election, or allowing it to be stolen, could break the country. Both in terms of trust and economically for workers.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://thefederalist.com/2024/07/31/michigan-judge-shuts-down-secretary-of-states-lax-ballot-signature-guidance-for-good/

  738. @Torna atrás
    Most Lithuanians disagree with their government’s China policies.

    Despite the current government’s combative stance towards China and enthusiastic embrace of relations with Chinese Taipei, a new study shows that the general public would prefer friendly and pragmatic ties with Beijing.

    Almost half of people in Lithuania believe China is a profitable market and that Lithuania should be pragmatic and refrain from criticising it, a new poll shows: 47.6 percent of respondents agreed with this statement, while 21 percent disagreed and 31.5 percent were neutral or undecided.

    The study also shows that 44 percent of Lithuanians believe that the country’s economy would struggle without investments from China. More than a third did not have a clear opinion on the issue and only a minority disagreed.

    A higher proportion of Lithuanians agreed that Lithuania was to blame for the Vilnius-Beijing dispute. More than a third did not have a clear opinion on the issue and slightly more than a fifth disagreed with the statement, the poll shows.

    Almost two-thirds, 63.3 percent, believe that Lithuania should not interfere in China’s internal affairs. According to the researchers, these beliefs are partly related to a deep-rooted perception that their country lacks power and influence in global affairs.

    Forty percent agreed that Lithuania’s industrial sector and consumers are heavily dependent on supply chains from China, and therefore, they thought, the country should not support any EU economic sanctions against China. More than a fifth disagreed, while more than a third were neutral or undecided.

    A majority of the respondents, 59.4 percent, agreed that good relations with China are economically and politically beneficial for both countries. A minority of Lithuanians disagreed, while just under a third did not have a clear opinion on the issue.

    And respondents were also undecided on whether China respects small countries, such as Lithuania.

    The study was carried out by the Latvian Institute of International Affairs and the International Center for Defense and Security in Estonia.



    https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQeRvd5W-YMVMl8WX2kLxNTr7OitfwwvmKOgw&s.jpg

    Replies: @sudden death

    Meanwhile during Lithuania government’s combative stance towards China and enthusiastic embrace of relations with Chinese Taipei, quite notable local economc divergence also happened as Lithuania continued it’s economic rise in contrast with other two countries while previously the economic performance was quite similar:

    Also should be noted that this particular institute in Latvia has agenda of pushing CCPíed China Belt and Road Initiative and other various imaginable initiatives involving the Baltic region, so it’s not some neutral player acting in pure academic scientific vacuum:

    As of July 2017, Latvian Institute of International Affairs (LIIA) has launched the New Silk Road Programme. In the context of the development of the New Silk Road interconnectivity initiatives, the LIIA New Silk Road Programme aims at promoting and coordinating research activities involving countries and regions in Europe and Asia integrated into the initiatives along the New Silk Road, conceptualising and assessing the involvement of Latvia into the transportation, logistics, information, financial, digital and human capital exchange connected to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, providing expertise on China’s initiatives involving the Baltic region, including the China-CEEC “16+1” cooperation mechanisms, representing Latvia at think tank networks and participating in research activities related to the assessment of the developments along the New Silk Road, as well as assessing the prospects and strategies of India, Iran, Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries in the context of forming Eurasian infrastructural and civilizational highways.

    https://liia.lv/en/news/liia-presents-the-official-website-of-the-new-silk-road-programme-752

  739. At least 130-million-euro-worth of dual-use goods have been shipped through Lithuania to Russia since the start of the Ukraine conflict. The shipments are routed via countries such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan. Lithuanian companies involved in the exports claim they did not know that the dual-use goods and technologies would end up in Russia.

    While Lithuania simultaneously pledges to help Kyiv repatriate Ukrainians subject to military draft. Lithuania has said they are prepared to help Ukrainian authorities return men subject to military conscription to the country.

    Foreign Minister Laurynas Kasčiūnas, “Ukraine is very short of mobilisation reserve … This is not fair to those citizens who are fighting for their country,”

    [MORE]

  740. @Sean
    @AP


    Various supposed red lines have repeatedly been crossed (eventually) without the escalation feared by the Biden administration.
     
    I certainly do not think there is any sort of principle or honour behind the Russian reactions or the lack of them so far, it is based on what they consider to be the least risky way to attain their objectives. Apoplectic two tits for one tat way to US help for Ukraine would be counter productive as long as they are winning--or at least think they are.

    And yes so far Putin has been a pussycat; in my opinion that inaction is because the real red line of Russia is losing in Ukraine and Biden is not giving Ukraine remotely enough arms to win. Ceasing to think they are winning would be a watershed in Kremlin thinking because they would have to do something risky. Or just back down like Khrushchev did ... although Cuba Crisis happened when the USSR had no capability to annihilate US cities.

    Brezhnev changed all that and put everything into making the Soviet ICBM forces essentially equivalent to the American ones not necessarily in counterforce but in ability to level cities. And Russia retains that capability today. Khrushchev was deposed largely for backing down and Putin would be too. Anyway, with or without Putin at its head, if Russia was to withdraw from Ukraine no one would ever take it or its enormously expensive thermonuclear weapons seriously again. They might as well scrap them.

    Replies: @AP, @Emil Nikola Richard, @Derer

    Ceasing to think they are winning would be a watershed in Kremlin thinking because they would have to do something risky

    They may be looking for a face-saving gesture. Apparently Pompeo’s co-author of that paper from the WSJ I posted is financed by a Russian oligarch close to Putin. Might be a road map to an acceptable deal.

    if Russia was to withdraw from Ukraine no one would ever take it or its enormously expensive thermonuclear weapons seriously again. They might as well scrap them.

    The point of these weapons is not to prevent loss in war (otherwise the USA would have nuked its way to victory in Korea and Vietnam, USSR in Afghanistan). It is to prevent conquest by another country. Losing in Ukraine doesn’t qualify. NATO forces crossing into Russia and surging towards Moscow (or, in a different timeline, Chinese forces surging into the Far East and Siberia) probably would.

    • Replies: @Sean
    @AP

    Withdrawing from Ukrainian territory that they already occupy would be an unbearable humiliation for Russia. And the rest of the world would see it that way too. China would be appalled and conclude that Russia would always fold and is therefor not a useful ally. Withdrawing from Ukraine would give the Chinese ideas about how they could intimidate Russia because it had ceased to be a serious country.


    The point of these weapons is not to prevent loss in war (otherwise the USA would have nuked its way to victory in Korea and Vietnam, USSR in Afghanistan). It is to prevent conquest by another country.
     
    Thermonuclear weapons d0 not come cheap and it is unrealistic to think that superpowers have then just to deter a conventional attack, or nuclear one. There is not a single nuclear armed country in the world that says its nuclear weapons would only be used in the case of its territory being invade or nuked Brezhnev was determined that Russia would never have to back down again like it did in the Cuba crisis. America threatened use of nuclear weapon to end the Korean hostilities and it was also considered an option at Khe Sanh if the Americans were to begin losing.

    Replies: @AP

  741. @Mr. Hack
    @songbird

    "Cosmopolitan" (you forgot to include the adjective "degenerate"), "gourmet" (I like chicken tikka masala), "citizen of the world", you might as well label me as a incontrite commie faggot, and be done with it all.

    Hasn't anybody ever informed you that:

    https://www.cartoonistgroup.com/properties/strangebrew/art_images/cg590404e9edc64.jpg

    Have you given any notice that Yahya has returned to join us from the land of nutritional supplements and Jack Lalane fetishism? I almost forgot how good his movie reviews were...enough to challenge Dmitry's role as chief editor here of movie reviews?...

    https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/LlgAAOSwJ9dmpXyO/s-l1600.webp
    Thorffinnson used to hold the old guy in very high esteem. :-)
    Last I heard, he (T-son) was on a carnivore diet, probably loved to eat liver.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @songbird

    Hasn’t anybody ever informed you that:

    Don’t want to get in a food fight with you, for I don’t want to get tumeric in my eye 😉. But I did enjoy accusing you of being lactose intolerant over the internet. (Seemed like I was waiting for years, for the opportunity.) I just can’t understand why you refuse to cross the Wallace Line.

    Have you given any notice that Yahya has returned to join us from the land of nutritional supplements and Jack Lalane fetishism?

    Impressed that he is eating raw eggs. I don’t even like sunny-side-up or soft-boiled.

    enough to challenge Dmitry’s role as chief editor here of movie reviews?…

    can’t recall the last time Dmitry mentioned a movie unless it was 1917 or the Ford v. Ferrari film. (I didn’t see the second, didn’t enjoy the first, as among other flaws it had the evil German trope.)

    He seemed to have a period where he liked French new wave. And he ducked our attempts to get him to review more. But I still feel like I have one over him, as I recommended to him Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, as being a very American film for teenagers (and I thought he was an Americanophile?), but he hated it.

    I recall Yahya didn’t like Princess Monoko, and he said that he stopped watching it at x mark, and I was reading some book, where it said that is exactly the time the movie picks up. (It had some sort of graph of tension, based on biosensors on the audience or air sampling or something, You Are What You Watch. But I myself don’t recall liking the movie, though I saw it quite a long time ago, and I think it was the first Miyazaki film I saw. I wonder if he has watched another anime movie. My favorite Miyazaki film is Castle Of Cagliostro, but it is probably a bit childish.

    I thought there was someone here who used to mention Ray Peat?

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @songbird

    The only film that you mention that I've viewed was the "Ford vs Ferrrari"one, that I quite enjoyed. The story line and acting were good, but what really set it apart for me was the directing, especially the racing scenes. I watched it both times on a very large TV screen. Very exciting racing scenes! :-)

    https://youtu.be/ac8_ds5nLSA
    Great scene, even better on a large screen!

  742. @songbird
    @Mr. Hack


    Hasn’t anybody ever informed you that:
     
    Don't want to get in a food fight with you, for I don't want to get tumeric in my eye 😉. But I did enjoy accusing you of being lactose intolerant over the internet. (Seemed like I was waiting for years, for the opportunity.) I just can't understand why you refuse to cross the Wallace Line.

    Have you given any notice that Yahya has returned to join us from the land of nutritional supplements and Jack Lalane fetishism?
     
    Impressed that he is eating raw eggs. I don't even like sunny-side-up or soft-boiled.

    enough to challenge Dmitry’s role as chief editor here of movie reviews?…
     
    can't recall the last time Dmitry mentioned a movie unless it was 1917 or the Ford v. Ferrari film. (I didn't see the second, didn't enjoy the first, as among other flaws it had the evil German trope.)

    He seemed to have a period where he liked French new wave. And he ducked our attempts to get him to review more. But I still feel like I have one over him, as I recommended to him Ferris Bueller's Day Off, as being a very American film for teenagers (and I thought he was an Americanophile?), but he hated it.

    I recall Yahya didn't like Princess Monoko, and he said that he stopped watching it at x mark, and I was reading some book, where it said that is exactly the time the movie picks up. (It had some sort of graph of tension, based on biosensors on the audience or air sampling or something, You Are What You Watch. But I myself don't recall liking the movie, though I saw it quite a long time ago, and I think it was the first Miyazaki film I saw. I wonder if he has watched another anime movie. My favorite Miyazaki film is Castle Of Cagliostro, but it is probably a bit childish.

    I thought there was someone here who used to mention Ray Peat?

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    The only film that you mention that I’ve viewed was the “Ford vs Ferrrari”one, that I quite enjoyed. The story line and acting were good, but what really set it apart for me was the directing, especially the racing scenes. I watched it both times on a very large TV screen. Very exciting racing scenes! 🙂

    Great scene, even better on a large screen!

    • Thanks: songbird
  743. We all know what the Latvians are like, but at least they haven’t tried to war profiteer like their southern neighbours.

    The unprecedented boom in Lithuanian trade with Central Asia raises important questions. After all, why incur the added transportation cost of shipping goods to landlocked countries with often limited cargo capacity, unless shipments in question are at the very least questionable under current Western export controls.

    As of October 2023, the trade turnover between Kazakhstan and Lithuania for the previous 12 months increased by 28.7% annually to $584.3m. Last year, the countries reached an agreement to increase the trade potential across 70 categories worth $350.5m.

    The Latvia comes nowhere near the surge in Lithuanian exports to Russia via 3rd countries. An EU problem and the EU pretends it isn’t happening, The EU needs to get this under control and stop looking the other way even if it’s pushed the Lithuania economy up in the short term.

  744. @sudden death
    Popular RF state paid propagandist Dmitriy Steshin publicly floated the threat, masquaraded as the advice to the authorities, to blow up Power of Siberia natgas pipeline in order to punish CCPíed China:

    We are solving the problem of enemy drones from the wrong end. I am about to write something unpleasant and will surprise many. All drones on the front, on both sides, are bought in the same place - China. All these motors, controllers, sensors, remote controls and blades - all from our dear partners. And it seems to me that it is a very stupid exercise to try to buy more drones from China than Ukraine buys. We just need to make sure that China sells drones and components only to us.

    Since China, by definition, does not delve into such subtleties, makes a blank face, although it could figure it out on its own, we need to conduct explanatory work with it. If I were the "Dark Lord of the Planet", I would do the following, in the Anglo-Saxon tradition: a drone, made of Chinese components, in a defiant "yellow and blue coloring", would be flown straight into to the "Power of Siberia". And I would tell China that it is to blame for this and, in general, is a bad, unreliable ally. Which is the pure truth, reasoning ontologically. Of course, there are more civilized ways to convince China, which is tightly attached to the resource gorge of my Motherland. But this is the fastest and most obvious. And believe me, if China wanted to, not a single motor, not a single blade would have gotten to the Banderites, even through complex logistics.

    P.S.
    But the most correct method is to create completely our own drones and powerful, unified electronic warfare. I don’t know how many years we are behind in this area. I’m afraid to think.
     

    https://t.me/DmitriySteshin/11273

    Replies: @QCIC

    If the will is there, in practical terms Russia is probably 3 to 5 years behind at the basic level (90% of things), but 15 years behind on the most computationally intensive parts.

    Conceivably Russia could follow a different branch of the computer family tree and catch up in a few years as well, even on the computational frontier. Maybe they are collaborating with China on photonics computers.

    • Replies: @sudden death
    @QCIC

    The more important here is the typical RF "patriotic" security mentality demonstrated when potential blowing of own natgas pipelines is perfectly acceptable and even desirable;)

    , @Derer
    @QCIC


    Russia is probably 3 to 5 years behind at the basic level (90% of things), but 15 years behind on the most computationally intensive parts.
     
    How far behind are in the use of supersonic missiles? Or alternatively, how much ahead of NATO. In 1971, Soviet Mars rover ‘Mars 3’ performed a soft landing on Mars for the first time in the history of humankind. Remember the West will hypocritically not propagate the Russian accomplishments but only failures. The world public, including us, know mostly what Western propaganda machine telling us.

    Replies: @QCIC

  745. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    Have you ever seen one of those abo documentaries where they have close-ups of them gobbling up live worms and beetles?

    For all I know that is in every abo documentary.

    Replies: @songbird

    I think the pickiness of kids is some calibration error. Figure hunter-gatherers were eating quite differently. Food was very seasonal,. No regular food available all year around. No comfort food. Regular periods of dearth and they were often hungry. They were probably eating a lot of plants, and relying partly on taste and smell to avoid the wrong ones.

    Makes a lot of sense why kids often don’t like onions as they burn the eyes.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    Is the reaction with chopped onion aromatics for the eyes the same as the reaction of shut-indoor eyes for prolonged time periods to sudden sun light?

    Now see this is where a biochemistry molecular biology guy might be handy.

  746. GDP of Lithuania equaled $78.346 billion (nominal, 2023 est.) $137.389 billion (PPP, 2023 est.), so the mentioned increase of trade with KZ was roughly 167 million USD which is total 0,21% of whole yearly GDP.

    Meanwhile GDP growth was 4.94% (2021) 1.84% (2022) 2.59% (2023), so if you want that much to categorize grand amount of 0,21% GDP as achieved only thanx to various slimeball company traders (potentially owned by various imaginable nationalities including foreign citizens from RF too), it can be obviously done as Lithuania isn’t some totalitarian state owned economy, so some private slips through the cracks might always potentially happen;)

  747. Lets look on the bright side, at least all those EU Cohesion Funds have finally had a civilizing effect.

    This year Lithuania Pride offered various activities and shows, including DJs, drag performances, a community stage and family area, a conference on education diversity, and free HIV testing. The main march concluded with a huge concert featuring international stars of the LGBT community.

    NSFW

    [MORE]

    • LOL: Bashibuzuk
  748. @Mikel
    @Yahya


    Wondering if this forum’s health enthusiasts (Mikel, Emil, Dmitry etc.) have heard of Ray Peat and his writings on nutrition, and what they make of it?
     
    Well, one in that group is not what I would call a health enthusiast lol. I would stay clear of his advice if the goal is to achieve high levels of fitness and stay healthy for as long as possible.

    More importantly though, I don't think I had ever heard of this Peat guy (though the anti-PUFA fanatics show up at every discussion forum) but I have read a couple of his articles at the link you provided and I think I can confidently say that he is a total crackpot. Plenty of outdated references too. At your age your body can tolerate plenty of insults but do yourself a favor and stay away from the advice of the apostles of nutrition who recommend nutrition regimes drastically at odds with the general consensus in the field.

    If your main goal is to build muscle mass, a guy probably worth listening to is Mike Israetel, a competitive bodybuilder with a PhD in sports physiology. As is obvious from his physique, he takes anabolic steroids, which he admits will probably reduce his life by a few years, but he seems to know what he is talking about and is funny as hell too.

    https://youtu.be/aYPNWwsNBkA

    Replies: @Yahya

    At your age your body can tolerate plenty of insults

    That’s precisely why I’m experimenting with various crazy dietary recommendations. So far it’s only resulted in some temporary acute stomach pain, nothing I can’t handle. But the trade-offs could be huge in the positive direction if they end up working. Vince Gironda claims that 36 raw eggs daily are equivalent to taking Dianabol synthetic steroids. I’m not even 20% convinced that that is true, but it’s still worth a try. And it’s a superior risk-reward proposition imo than outright taking anabolic steroids.

    I’m familiar with the RP channel. Israetel is smart and highly knowledgeable, but I realized that following bodybuilder common wisdom (“bro science”) is far superior than “following the science” in the field of strength training. Practically all the fundamentals of strength training were figured out by the silver era guys; modern exercise science is merely playing catch-up and confirming what they knew all along.

    The field of nutrition is just all over the place. I’m unsure who to trust, so I took the experimentation approach. I will try things out and see what works for me.

    and Mr. Hack

    I wonder if he has watched another anime movie.

    I have not watched any anime since Princess M. The genre does not appeal to me.

    My film consumption has been lackluster this year. I’ve just been passing time with action movies and the occasional artistic film thrown in. I’ve only watched four movies I would place in my personal cannon: Apocalypse Now, Loro, Barry Lyndon, and Four Brothers.

    Might do a review of them if I can muster some willpower.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Yahya


    Might do a review of them if I can muster some willpower.
     
    please do, I have only seen parts of Apocalypse Now, and not the others. We don't seem to have many film enthusiasts here, at the moment. Silvio and Aaron had a bit of appreciation of these things, as I recall.

    I have not watched any anime since Princess M. The genre does not appeal to me.
     
    Americans have a very strong prejudice against both cartoons and foreign movies. The initial films promoted here were of the gorier type - there was a kind sensationalism about them that didn't altogether impress me. Like, they were trying to be adult, through the blood. I would say that it was years before I really began to respect the medium.

    You can see a lot of Japanese things in it: the appreciation of flawed things, the spirit of places, introspection, and quiet. The humor is able to be exaggerated and so more visible. There is a strong artistic merit in the composition of certain shots, sometimes a symbolic value even in mundane objects. A touch of Shintoism.

    Japan really is the premier comics (and animation) nation. and a large part of their culture both filters through and derives from the medium. In some way, I think it is the most Japanese medium. Even Godzilla (which to be sure has Japanese aspects) largely derives from Hollywood.

    Of course, Sturgeon's Law applies to any medium. But with Hollywood so full of dreck, it has gotten to the point where I can appreciate even parts of movies I don't fully like. Ideas or images.

    I still think about the geniusness of the little, three-legged chair in Suzume (for me, symbolic of the flaws of people) even though I did not enjoy the movie as a whole, and wouldn't recommend it, but to the most hardcore fan.

    Fundamentally, I think there is more design in anime which comes from the hand of artists than in regular film.

    Looking at the whole of the genre, the better parts, I think there is certainly a lot one could find above the level of a Disney movie.
    , @Mikel
    @Yahya


    Practically all the fundamentals of strength training were figured out by the silver era guys; modern exercise science is merely playing catch-up and confirming what they knew all along.
     
    That's possibly true with regards to the training itself. But when it comes to nutrition and supplementation, those guys had no clue what they were doing and some paid for it with their lives. A very good friend of mine in my 20s was a committed bodybuilder that achieved some success in competition but he followed an insane diet, like everyone did those days, of 5-7 meals of bland food every single day. Lean protein with plain rice, potatoes or pasta all year round and protein shakes that they had to take with them everywhere they went. If you read the experts today none of this is necessary at all. RFKjr, at age 70, may be the most muscular presidential candidate in history and he actually does intermittent fasting.

    Vince Gironda claims that 36 raw eggs daily are equivalent to taking Dianabol synthetic steroids.
     
    I'm not sure it's less unhealthy though. Leaving sanitary considerations aside, the current consensus has shifted and dietary cholesterol doesn't matter anymore but nobody has still put a dent in the guidelines on saturated fat and atherosclerosis. The actual mechanistic relationship seems to be quite well understood. 36 eggs have a ton of saturated fat. If I were you, I would do some blood tests to see how the lipid profile evolves with such a diet.

    Replies: @songbird

  749. @Sean
    @AP


    Various supposed red lines have repeatedly been crossed (eventually) without the escalation feared by the Biden administration.
     
    I certainly do not think there is any sort of principle or honour behind the Russian reactions or the lack of them so far, it is based on what they consider to be the least risky way to attain their objectives. Apoplectic two tits for one tat way to US help for Ukraine would be counter productive as long as they are winning--or at least think they are.

    And yes so far Putin has been a pussycat; in my opinion that inaction is because the real red line of Russia is losing in Ukraine and Biden is not giving Ukraine remotely enough arms to win. Ceasing to think they are winning would be a watershed in Kremlin thinking because they would have to do something risky. Or just back down like Khrushchev did ... although Cuba Crisis happened when the USSR had no capability to annihilate US cities.

    Brezhnev changed all that and put everything into making the Soviet ICBM forces essentially equivalent to the American ones not necessarily in counterforce but in ability to level cities. And Russia retains that capability today. Khrushchev was deposed largely for backing down and Putin would be too. Anyway, with or without Putin at its head, if Russia was to withdraw from Ukraine no one would ever take it or its enormously expensive thermonuclear weapons seriously again. They might as well scrap them.

    Replies: @AP, @Emil Nikola Richard, @Derer

    Or just back down like Khrushchev did … although Cuba Crisis happened when the USSR had no capability to annihilate US cities.

    Didn’t Krushchev succeed in getting Kennedy to remove a bunch of missiles from Turkey?

    • Agree: Bashibuzuk
    • Replies: @S1
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    Didn’t Krushchev succeed in getting Kennedy to remove a bunch of missiles from Turkey?
     
    That's one of those underemphasized facts of history they don't like you to think too much about.

    Some others are:

    The first US flag, the 'Grand Union', is for all practical purposes identical to the flag of the multi-national corporation British East India Company.

    And..

    The 1776 American and 1789 French revolutions were respectively proto-Capitalist and proto-Communist in their political orientation.

    And that..

    Some of the heaviest hitters intimately involved in the 1776 proto-Capitalist American Revolution, ie Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, probably Ben Franklin, and an honorable mention of Lafayette, were also quite involved in the 1789 proto-Communist French Revolution.

    That they are underemphasized (and why that might be) says a lot in and of itself.

  750. @QCIC
    @sudden death

    If the will is there, in practical terms Russia is probably 3 to 5 years behind at the basic level (90% of things), but 15 years behind on the most computationally intensive parts.

    Conceivably Russia could follow a different branch of the computer family tree and catch up in a few years as well, even on the computational frontier. Maybe they are collaborating with China on photonics computers.

    Replies: @sudden death, @Derer

    The more important here is the typical RF “patriotic” security mentality demonstrated when potential blowing of own natgas pipelines is perfectly acceptable and even desirable;)

  751. Yes, is a classic: “Desperate times require desperate measures.”

    A more subtle explanation would be to block the Russian oligarchs benefitting from the pipeline to force them to revive the defunct Russian brick and mortar industries which build useful hardware instead of just creating zeros in a bank account somewhere. The ROI is lower, but the benefits are more tangible.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @QCIC

    And it’s also typical that Putin made a situation that needn’t be desperate into something that is edging towards desperation. There’s a Russian saying that summarizes it: «что не сделает дурак, всё он сделает не так» (whatever a morron does, he will make it wrong). As my friends in Odessa told me in 2022 after the bombings started: “we waited for him in 2014 preparing flowers to greet him, but he arrived 8 years later with bombs”. That’s one of the (many) reasons I am not a fan of the man and his regime.

    Replies: @Beckow, @Derer

    , @sudden death
    @QCIC


    Russian oligarchs benefitting from the pipeline
     
    At least officially there are no any private oligarchs in RF using the natgas pipelines to transport that substance as the pipeline natgas export exclusive state monopoly belongs only to Gazprom;) The situation is different with oil/LNG sectors.
  752. It’s impossible to discern who “would” or “wouldn’t” vote.

    It is possible – especially after a massive ‘registration’ drive of new voters in an urban area. Not 100%, but definitely with a high accuracy.

    under duress…a large percentage of votes in any election are cast under this kind of personal circumstances.

    There is a huge difference between onsite duress limited by the individual, secret nature of voting – and filling out potentially thousands of ballots remotely an mailing them in. It is not the same, that’s why historically people setup in-person voting.

    The fact that remote voting can work well – Utah or Stockholm 1955 – doesn’t mean mail-in voting in atomized society in large messy cities can avoid fraud. Large or small fraud depending on how many votes are needed – in 2020 in many places 10-20k votes was all that was needed, out of millions.

    Mail-in votes are ballots returned by registered voters who received one and can only send that one back

    Ideally. But if they don’t care and if the registration data is faulty others can use those ballots. It is not that hard in many precincts – no audit is possible, it is electronically scanned and too many pieces of paper are floating around.

    People who move are responsible for updating their registration and bipartisan election officials are supposed to remove the dead from the rolls.

    In today’s high mobility world? How many do it? I recall seeing an audit of ‘all registered’ voters in one state (Georgia?) and it showed close to one million incorrect registration: people left the state, dead, wrong names. You base your argument on trusting data that is a mess. In Europe that is generally not possible with better systems to track people.

    I will concede that conscious false voting by residents or ‘illegals’ is unlikely. It is the abuse by insiders with access to the data that is hard to police.

    200 million votes in 2020 and the decision was based on around 100k in 5-6 states that mostly showed up as mail-ins in the middle of the night. That is 0.1% or less. It is possible but we will never know. Demonizing skeptics suggests that there is some bad conscience. Why do it?

    Finally, US regularly dismisses elections around the world that have better safe-guards, thousands of observers, functioning ID system, same-day onsite voting and no ‘mail-ins’. Where results are tabulated in person and often on camera within hours and a recount is easy. They just did it in Venezuela. It is entirely possible that there is cheating in some of those elections (the central election count cam always be manipulated), but why ignore any issues at home?

    You seem stuck in the ideological “we are just better, so shut up!” bubble. Think about it a little instead of dismissing others.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Beckow

    More on intentionally fake polls for Harris: (1)


    This is a poll of “registered voters”, names on the voter rolls. A more accurate sample would be of “likely voters”, the approach Rasmussen Reports takes in its political opinion polls. Many registered voters rarely or never vote. Likely voters are far more enthusiastic about voting, based on their past voting record.

    More important are the political preferences of the survey sample. In the Reuters/Ipsos survey, buried in the methodology, far from the headline, is this gem, “The sample includes 1,018 registered voters, 426 Democrats, 376 Republicans, and 341 Independents.”

    In percentages, their poll was 42% Democrat and 37% Republican, a 5-point difference, far more than Harris’s 2-point edge in the poll. Independents only represented 21% of the survey.

    Why not poll the studio audience of The View or Jimmy Kimmel Live for an even more pro Harris sample and result? Garbage in, garbage out.

    Is the sample representative of the electorate? Hardly. According to Gallup, the US electorate is currently 25% Republican, 23% Democrat, and 51% Independent, far different than the surveyed sample in the Reuters/Ipsos poll. A skewed sample cannot be extrapolated to the entire voting population.
     

    Anyone relying on the recent round of obviously corrupt polling is deep into self delusion.
    ___

    The next big test will be the DNC convention. The elites snuffed out any possibility of a floor fight. Let's see how the progressives react to being, once again, cut out of the discussion.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/08/media_gaslighting_trump_harris_polls.html

    , @Mikel
    @Beckow

    I'm thinking that perhaps it wasn't such a great idea to discuss specifics. This feels like a debate on Covid or the keto diet. People who have made their minds on the subject are not really going to change it because you provide solid arguments. There's always some space for doubt if you're committed to finding it.

    Years ago (before 2020) the Republican leaders in Utah decided to implement what had already been tested in quite a few other countries: non-absentee mail-in vote. Not nearly as revolutionary as what countries like Canada and Estonia use (vote by internet) but still a novelty. And it worked great. If there's something politicians of all stripes hate is losing elections so they made sure that the system was secure, which wasn't difficult because absentee mail-vote had already been used since ages ago (1st World War if I'm not mistaken).

    Like everything in the US, details vary from state to state and sometimes even from county to county, but the mail-in voting system used here has several layers of security. The most important are that 1) Every registered voter receives one ballot with a barcode that serves two purposes: you can track it online to see where your ballot is and verify that it has been counted and election officials use it to verify that you send back the ballot that was sent to you specifically. 2) You must sign the ballot you return at the secured places where you can deposit it. If the election officials or the observers watching them have any doubt about your vote, they can also check if your signature matches the one on record for every registered voter. 3) Election officials are entitled to contact you though the phone/email that you provide along with your ballot in case your vote fails any of the verification methods above and they want to clarify the validity of your vote.

    I don't know if voting mechanisms in the suspect precincts of the swing states are much less secure than all of this. If you can provide solid evidence that they are, I will concede that in a close enough election result-altering fraud is theoretically possible. But then you will also have to explain why Republicans are accepting to participate in those precincts and why they are not announcing right now that they can't trust the results there. What I see them doing instead is calling for volunteers to watch the counting process. How rational is it to be more worried that the Democrats will steal the election from the Republicans than the Republicans themselves?

    Replies: @A123

    , @Mikel
    @Beckow


    US regularly dismisses elections around the world that have better safe-guards, thousands of observers, functioning ID system, same-day onsite voting and no ‘mail-ins’. Where results are tabulated in person and often on camera within hours and a recount is easy. They just did it in Venezuela.
     
    LOL.

    You sure have a penchant for defending lost causes. With Venezuela we can't even debate seriously. It's too comical to waste time on it. Here is the goon they selected to announce the results with allegedly 80% of the vote counted:

    https://www.infobae.com/venezuela/2024/07/30/el-burdo-calculo-matematico-en-la-informacion-oficial-que-aumenta-las-sospechas-sobre-la-manipulacion-de-la-eleccion-en-venezuela/

    They are so third-worldish that they officially gave mathematically impossible results. And they did it twice! The most damning one is when that idiot reads the exact numbers of votes and it turns out that if you add them and calculate the percentages over the total, you get 6 consecutive zeros in the decimal places. The probabilities of getting 6 zeros by chance are something like 1 in 10,000. And the probabilities of getting all 3 results (Maduro, Gonzalez, all the rest) with 6 consecutive zeros in the decimals are several million in one. The only possible explanation is that they had decided the percentages to one decimal in advance and then made up the actual numbers. Which is exactly what you would expect from people who have turned an oil-rich country into a hellhole where millions have had to escape abroad.

    My wife has several Venezuelan escapee friends. Next time we invite them home I'll tell them that someone I know on the internet claims that the last election results are legit, for the laughs.

    Replies: @Beckow

  753. Bashibuzuk says:
    @QCIC
    Yes, is a classic: "Desperate times require desperate measures."

    A more subtle explanation would be to block the Russian oligarchs benefitting from the pipeline to force them to revive the defunct Russian brick and mortar industries which build useful hardware instead of just creating zeros in a bank account somewhere. The ROI is lower, but the benefits are more tangible.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @sudden death

    And it’s also typical that Putin made a situation that needn’t be desperate into something that is edging towards desperation. There’s a Russian saying that summarizes it: «что не сделает дурак, всё он сделает не так» (whatever a morron does, he will make it wrong). As my friends in Odessa told me in 2022 after the bombings started: “we waited for him in 2014 preparing flowers to greet him, but he arrived 8 years later with bombs”. That’s one of the (many) reasons I am not a fan of the man and his regime.

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @Bashibuzuk


    ...As my friends in Odessa told me in 2022 after the bombings started: “we waited for him in 2014 preparing flowers to greet him, but he arrived 8 years later with bombs”...I am not a fan
     
    Fandom is overrated. But look at the situation: can you imagine a massive Russian invasion in 2014? How would that work? The 8 years was bad enough (probably too long), but a country can't just preventively invade a neighbor.

    Russia always procrastinates. They prefer to sit back - until they don't. They lack the initiative and ambition of some of the Western elites and are the opposite of the Western made-up image: slow, stodgy, lazy, not into plotting, obsessed with own security, always looking for a way to avoid doing something.

    Odessa people were scared after Maidan and did very little (for a good reason) - why should Russia be more pro-Odessa people than the Odessans? They have the result of 30 years of uncontrolled Ukie madness...they sat back for too long.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Dmitry

    , @Derer
    @Bashibuzuk


    “we waited for him in 2014 preparing flowers to greet him, but he arrived 8 years later with bombs”.
     
    On the other hand I think that those bombs would have been used in 2014 as well. The NATO was on an uncompromising roll to expand eastward. The Ukraine project was postponed by the Russian dangerous red lines.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  754. @QCIC
    Yes, is a classic: "Desperate times require desperate measures."

    A more subtle explanation would be to block the Russian oligarchs benefitting from the pipeline to force them to revive the defunct Russian brick and mortar industries which build useful hardware instead of just creating zeros in a bank account somewhere. The ROI is lower, but the benefits are more tangible.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @sudden death

    Russian oligarchs benefitting from the pipeline

    At least officially there are no any private oligarchs in RF using the natgas pipelines to transport that substance as the pipeline natgas export exclusive state monopoly belongs only to Gazprom;) The situation is different with oil/LNG sectors.

  755. Lithuanians are loud when it comes to the fight against Russia,while in actuality Lithuania is a hotbed of trade diversion. Direct exports to Russia and indirect exports via Central Asia never fell like in the rest of the EU.

    The refrain you hear from them is: “we border Russia, we can’t possibly keep track of everything.” That’s true of Estonia too, but they walk the walk on trade with Russia. Then they also claim that they can’t cut back on these exports because of their political system, the very same one that Estonia has, appalling!

    They’re just too busy making a quick buck exporting sanctioned goods. The EU doesn’t need grand visions for the future. It needs people who will make Lithuania transparent and accountable in the here and now. The EU Cohesion Funds must come with strings attached!

    • LOL: Bashibuzuk
    • Replies: @sudden death
    @Torna atrás


    That’s true of Estonia too, but they walk the walk on trade with Russia
     
    Heh, they had more than plenty of dealing with another apparent oil giant state, named Belarus;)

    A year later, trade with the Baltics is booming at record levels and Estonia is the main beneficiary. Imports of oil products were up three-fold compared to 2020. In addition, about a third of the Belarussian oil which was previously destined to Latvian ports was now going to Estonia (the value of Latvian imports from Belarus have also risen significantly, but this is down to timber, not oil).

    A joint investigation by Re:Baltica, Delfi Estonia and the Belarusian Investigative Center investigation has found two reasons for this. One is the fact that the trade is going through the cluster of companies that appear to be connected to sanctioned Belarussian oligarch Mikalai Varabei (Nikolay Vorobey). The second is a little trick with customs codes which allow the trade to continue uninterrupted.

    This has left the Estonian government in a dire situation. On paper, everything looks correct. But the government that has taken a leading role in pushing for strict sanctions, is also allowing the state-owned railway carrier to carry huge amounts of Belarussian oil products.
     

    https://news.err.ee/1608483629/investigation-how-record-amounts-of-belarusian-oil-flows-through-estonia

    For the record though, I'm fully completely in favour of eradicating any illegal trading with RF, so Blinky in essence is doing useful job and can help even more by using his Chinese or RF connections and informing competent EU or local Lithuanian authorities in detail about all those individual appaling cases of sanction violating imports into RF market;)

  756. @Bashibuzuk
    @QCIC

    And it’s also typical that Putin made a situation that needn’t be desperate into something that is edging towards desperation. There’s a Russian saying that summarizes it: «что не сделает дурак, всё он сделает не так» (whatever a morron does, he will make it wrong). As my friends in Odessa told me in 2022 after the bombings started: “we waited for him in 2014 preparing flowers to greet him, but he arrived 8 years later with bombs”. That’s one of the (many) reasons I am not a fan of the man and his regime.

    Replies: @Beckow, @Derer

    …As my friends in Odessa told me in 2022 after the bombings started: “we waited for him in 2014 preparing flowers to greet him, but he arrived 8 years later with bombs”…I am not a fan

    Fandom is overrated. But look at the situation: can you imagine a massive Russian invasion in 2014? How would that work? The 8 years was bad enough (probably too long), but a country can’t just preventively invade a neighbor.

    Russia always procrastinates. They prefer to sit back – until they don’t. They lack the initiative and ambition of some of the Western elites and are the opposite of the Western made-up image: slow, stodgy, lazy, not into plotting, obsessed with own security, always looking for a way to avoid doing something.

    Odessa people were scared after Maidan and did very little (for a good reason) – why should Russia be more pro-Odessa people than the Odessans? They have the result of 30 years of uncontrolled Ukie madness…they sat back for too long.

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Beckow

    Most of us have little understanding of the actual strengths and weaknesses of the Russian military. I think in 2014 they were way too vulnerable militarily and economically to risk sticking their neck out in Odessa. I think the West had a plan to make Russia into the aggressor which would justify some strong quasi-NATO response. Russia skirted that tripwire very skillfully so NATO kept a relatively low profile in Ukraine which gave Russia time to become stronger. They went to Syria instead to begin building themselves up in a way that was less politically charged than high profile involvement in Ukraine, but even by 2022 they were not overwhelmingly strong, far from it.

    The Russian military concern is to be strong enough to keep NATO out. If NATO moves in because Russia is perceived as weak, this could force a serious nuclear confrontation; if one side is feeble they will probably capitulate, even if they have a lot of nukes. I assume this was the Western strategy. Since 2014 Russia has hardened her economy and strengthened her nuclear forces significantly. The third piece was strengthening the conventional forces. This process became slightly visible in Syria, but seemed to go very slowly until even 2023. In Syria Russia demonstrated long-range cruise missile strikes and decent air-defenses (not always effective) and lots of air-to-ground combat. However, the scale and threat level were tiny compared to a full confrontation with AFU backed by NATO.

    I have no idea how much Putin has to do with any of this and what his preferred policies might be. In retrospect it all seems like very deliberate military-industrial decision making, except for leaving the conventional forces so weak.

    , @Dmitry
    @Beckow

    You don't understand, Odessity who in 2014 were not just supporting Russia, but who in the Russian media were called "Russians", are the same people who now are mostly Ukrainians with anti-Russian views.

    That doesn't mean "Moscow should have invaded Odessa in 2014" or "Moscow was too slow".

    The aggressive policy of Moscow on one side and Kiev on the other side, has accelerated a lot of the transition to a kind of more diverse postsoviet Ukrainian identity and created more unity from internal populations which had been more divided in 2014.

    If you look at videos of the Ukrainian army on social media, they are likely the same population which in 2014 in the Russian media, everyone was calling them "Russians". It's the "Russians in Ukraine" who are the core of the Ukrainian army, at least looking at their videos. Battalion "Azov", nowadays seem mostly people from Eastern Ukraine.

    Replies: @Beckow

  757. Another potential reason why AnonfromTN wisely decided to run out in advance when he previously enthusiastically touted the alleged illegitimacy of UA political power since 2024 May as some serious obstacle for Kremlin?;)

    Legal nuances regarding the legitimacy of the Ukrainian authorities cannot be an obstacle to the start of serious negotiations, Peskov said.

    https://t.me/rusbrief/255306

    • Replies: @Gerard1234
    @sudden death


    AnonFronTN wisely decides to run
     
    LMFAO - maybe AnonFromTN left to go to France because Russia, despite being banned, is about to go ahead of the useless, midget-head, suicidal,alcoholic shithole Lithuania in the Olympics Medal table!
    Gold or Silver guaranteed in Olympics tennis. Surely nonentity nations as the Baltics shouldn't be allowed to compete?

    As for Peskov's statement - the same nothing, ambiguous ,diplomatic statement he makes nearly every day you thick shithead. Maybe being part of a dying,alcoholic,suicidal Nazi worthless, nonexistent at Olympics shithole has got your inferiority complex shitbag self assuming that boorish, attention-whoring khamstvo is the default method for all political figures, or their assistants to speak in.

    Literally ,is Litva banned from the Olympics too? The ukroreich very close to the same accusation. LOL

    It's still a fact that from legal point of view the clown drug-addict isn't the President of 404 you thick retard - the protoplasm-Nazi who is speaker at V. Rada is. AnonFromTN is of course correct - its entirely the western powers dictating what 404 will and will not do and sign.

    Replies: @sudden death

  758. @Greasy William
    @Torna atrás


    What do you think the wider geopolitical repercussions are going to be?
     
    None. The Resistance Axis is currently winning the war. These assassinations are indeed humiliating for the RA but, let's be honest, everyone already knew that they were incompetent, blowhard clowns. Strategically, these attacks have no impact whatsoever.

    Magnier has connections with the top people in Hezbollah and he said last night that there will be no retaliation.

    Look at the broader strategic situation: Hamas still rules Gaza, the hostages haven't been returned and the north is still depopulated. The current Israeli regime, led by that coward rat Bibi Netanyahu, is fundamentally incapable for properly prosecuting this war.

    In October when shitbird Bibi is finally gone, that is when the fun will start.

    Replies: @ShortOnTime

    This looks to be a mostly correct assessment of the strategic situation although nobody really knows what’s next for certain since the Middle East is likely on the brink of a major war.

    Otherwise, I wanted to clarify to you that the last time I had conversation with you here some time ago I had 0.00% sleep (so sleep deprivation) for several days in a row (meaning some outbursts, embarrassment and lapses were inevitable) since I made the mistake of looking at civilians in Gaza being killed day in and day out. (This is not an apology since apologies are usually a bad life strategy).

    There are still a few Christian souls worth caring about in Gaza and that part of the world. Since a missile by Israel recently failed to explode at the Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza the heavens, providence, and the saints must be on the side of Christians. To be fair, Israel has taken care to spare majority Maronite Christian villages in Lebanon from its airstrikes and bombardment (at least for now).

    • Replies: @A123
    @ShortOnTime


    To be fair, Israel has taken care to spare majority Maronite Christian villages in Lebanon from its airstrikes and bombardment (at least for now).
     
    Druze and Maronite Christians loathe Hezbollah. Shia terrorists cannot use them as human shields, as they will not cooperate. Areas free of Iranian contamination are unlikely to be caught up in the fighting. God helps those who help themselves.

    Partitioning Lebanon makes sense as a idea. Many problems would be permanently solved by a Maronite & Druze (Southern) Lebanon separate from a Muslim (Northern) Lebanon. Unfortunately, the population distribution makes drawing lines difficult. It would take relocation both directions to create cohesive populations.


    There are still a few Christian souls worth caring about in Gaza and that part of the world.
     
    The only way to save them is de-Islamification. Alas, no one will seriously consider the idea.

    This leaves minority Christians with few options. They often wind up emigrating to escape the violence and oppression at the hands of Muhammad's followers.

    PEACE 😇

  759. @AP
    @ShortOnTime


    It always leads to dumbing things down to banalities like (in this case) whether 15th century Czech/Bohemian Hussites count as Protestants or whether a few dozen, few hundred or few thousand nobles and merchants (and some peasants and beggars) is “a large number” of impaled or not.
     
    With your type, it is always ultimately about you.

    In this case, you "dumb things down to banalities" because the point wasn't about impalings specifically but the fact that Vlad Tepes killed large numbers of Christians. Whether he burned them or impaled them is a triviality. Though in your ignorance you are wrong even when it comes to that:

    and a few dozens of Saxon merchants over many years doesn’t really count as “large numbers
     
    He killed far more Saxon Christians than that.

    https://www.medievalists.net/2023/02/crime-and-punishment-in-the-reign-of-vlad-the-impaler/

    After failing to convince the Saxons to stop aiding these two, Vlad crossed into Transylvania after Easter 1457, set fire to various villages, destroyed any opposition, and took many prisoners – men, women, young and old – and had them impaled in Wallachia.



    The two main Saxon towns, Hermannstadt/Sibiu and Kronstadt/Brașov, in revenge, started to infringe upon the commercial treaties, and they confiscated goods from Wallachian merchants and even executed some by impaling them. Hence, Vlad found himself again at war with the Saxons at the beginning of 1459. He called back his merchants from Transylvania and started punishing and impaling the Saxon merchants in Wallachia and confiscating their goods.

    At the beginning of May, Vlad crossed the border into Transylvania and started destroying villages, crops, and the outskirts of towns, and taking people prisoner. It is said that he had dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people impaled in front of Kronstadt, as a reminder of the wretched help they had given to his enemy. The looting was also great. Other sources mention whole villages massacred – people “cut like cabbage” – and other prisoners beheaded or taken to Wallachia and impaled there.

    To be clear, Hussites usually aren’t considered as Protestants
     
    Which is why I correctly referred to him as a proto-Protestant.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ, @ShortOnTime

    Your own link acknowledges that the Transylvania Saxons chose to harbor Vlad III’s political enemies and so chose to pick a fight with Vlad III. Also, the commercial monopoly of Saxon merchants from Transylvania was designed to exploit Wallachia’s vulnerable lowland geographic position as a border territory with the Ottoman Empire and obviously Saxon merchants skillfully exploited Wallachian peasants. Vlad III checked the cunning schemes of Saxon merchants.

    Vlad III’s main focus and lifelong struggle was war against the Ottoman Empire (for what they did to his family at a young age) and Saxon merchants never had any interest in supporting his struggle. Even Hungary (Janos Hunyadi and Matthias Corvinus) barely and only occasionally supported Vlad III in his uneven and epic struggle. Creating a consolidated and centralized autocracy capable of resisting the Ottomans, by any means necessary regardless of cruelty, was the only route that Vlad III as the leader of a small and weak nation had to stand a chance in the fight against the Ottomans.

    Vlad III’s reputation has notoriety for the frequent use of impalement that he learnt from the Ottomans with things like burning villages being standard fare and somewhat unremarkable in the Medieval era. Burning and looting villages was standard fare by even the pettiest of feudal lords or lesser leaders of armed bands in the pre-modern world.

    It is Vlad III’s existential struggle against the Ottoman Empire and the lack of Christian solidarity with him in that fight which truly stands out in hindsight. Vlad III’s resistance and the otherwise relatively peripheral geographic position of Wallachia (compared to the high strategic relevance of Moldova and Serbia, or Bessarabia and Belgrade in particular) explains why Wallachia and Romania were never fully conquered by the Ottomans, but preserved some autonomy as a vassal principality (meaning Vlad III’s resistance meant Romanians fared somewhat better for centuries overall compared to all their other Christian neighbors in the Balkans).

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @ShortOnTime


    ...the lack of Christian solidarity with Wallachia...stands out in hindsight.
     
    It is beyond religion: European solidarity. The attempted destruction of the eastern Europe: Balkans, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, has been the leitmotif of the Euro-history. In almost every case the French, Germans, Anglos, Vatican, sided against the local populations. The pathetic 200-year babysitting of the effectively dead Ottomans Empire after it collapsed was part of that. English-French even went to war in the mid-19th century to keep the Ottomans going so they can murder more Balkan Christians.

    Today they are doing the same in Ukraine - encouraging its destruction so Russia is weakened. The Ukies are just the last throw-away population to use.

    It's hard to explain. A combination of the fear of Euro alternative that is not 'fully-Western', greed for resources, personal dislike of the Eastern Euros...plus the local traitors, people who wistfully dream of being what they are not, to be Atlantic using the latest term. (Where is that Vlad guy when we need him?)

    Replies: @AP

    , @AP
    @ShortOnTime


    Your own link acknowledges that the Transylvania Saxons chose to harbor Vlad III’s political enemies and so chose to pick a fight with Vlad III.
     
    Sure. Vlad killed large numbers of Christians (including impaling many Christian women and children) for reasons.

    You complained of pedantry but then engage in it. Maybe Mr. Hack was wrong about banal trivialities such as that Protestants weren't killed by Vlad because Huss and his followers were merely proto-Protestants or because the Transylvanian Saxons hadn't converted yet, but the bottom line is that in addition to killing many of his main enemies, Muslims, Vlad also slaughtered very large numbers of European Christians.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  760. @songbird
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    I think the pickiness of kids is some calibration error. Figure hunter-gatherers were eating quite differently. Food was very seasonal,. No regular food available all year around. No comfort food. Regular periods of dearth and they were often hungry. They were probably eating a lot of plants, and relying partly on taste and smell to avoid the wrong ones.

    Makes a lot of sense why kids often don't like onions as they burn the eyes.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    Is the reaction with chopped onion aromatics for the eyes the same as the reaction of shut-indoor eyes for prolonged time periods to sudden sun light?

    Now see this is where a biochemistry molecular biology guy might be handy.

  761. Battle of the Nations
    China Poland

    [MORE]

    Zheng Qinwen took out Miss Poland.

    Also Russia is offering a 170K bounty to whoever takes out an F-16.
    https://www.eurasiantimes.com/f-16-for-ukraine-russians-offer-170000-bounty/

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    I thought there were some gun enthusiasts here? What is going on with the guy on the left? Is he gay or does he have scoliosis? Or both?
    https://twitter.com/CrankyFed/status/1819041465328123971

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

  762. @Greasy William

    Yes, it is. No idea where sudden death has found that extreme outlier in Michigan but all poll aggregators at the moment show Kamala tied neck to neck with Trump, both nationally and in most swing states.
     
    Not neck and neck, Trump is clearly winning and that is with Kamala still in her honeymoon stage. Let's see where things are in September. The fact that no high profile Dem wants anything to do with the ticket shows that the Dems are anticipating a Trump victory.

    Replies: @Mikel, @LondonBob

    Kamala is there to save down ticket Democrats, Biden was leading them to oblivion.

    • Replies: @Greasy William
    @LondonBob

    yeah. But apparently she has many believing that she can actually win the election. I don't see it and I don't think it's even going to be close

    Replies: @A123

  763. @Beckow
    @Bashibuzuk


    ...As my friends in Odessa told me in 2022 after the bombings started: “we waited for him in 2014 preparing flowers to greet him, but he arrived 8 years later with bombs”...I am not a fan
     
    Fandom is overrated. But look at the situation: can you imagine a massive Russian invasion in 2014? How would that work? The 8 years was bad enough (probably too long), but a country can't just preventively invade a neighbor.

    Russia always procrastinates. They prefer to sit back - until they don't. They lack the initiative and ambition of some of the Western elites and are the opposite of the Western made-up image: slow, stodgy, lazy, not into plotting, obsessed with own security, always looking for a way to avoid doing something.

    Odessa people were scared after Maidan and did very little (for a good reason) - why should Russia be more pro-Odessa people than the Odessans? They have the result of 30 years of uncontrolled Ukie madness...they sat back for too long.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Dmitry

    Most of us have little understanding of the actual strengths and weaknesses of the Russian military. I think in 2014 they were way too vulnerable militarily and economically to risk sticking their neck out in Odessa. I think the West had a plan to make Russia into the aggressor which would justify some strong quasi-NATO response. Russia skirted that tripwire very skillfully so NATO kept a relatively low profile in Ukraine which gave Russia time to become stronger. They went to Syria instead to begin building themselves up in a way that was less politically charged than high profile involvement in Ukraine, but even by 2022 they were not overwhelmingly strong, far from it.

    The Russian military concern is to be strong enough to keep NATO out. If NATO moves in because Russia is perceived as weak, this could force a serious nuclear confrontation; if one side is feeble they will probably capitulate, even if they have a lot of nukes. I assume this was the Western strategy. Since 2014 Russia has hardened her economy and strengthened her nuclear forces significantly. The third piece was strengthening the conventional forces. This process became slightly visible in Syria, but seemed to go very slowly until even 2023. In Syria Russia demonstrated long-range cruise missile strikes and decent air-defenses (not always effective) and lots of air-to-ground combat. However, the scale and threat level were tiny compared to a full confrontation with AFU backed by NATO.

    I have no idea how much Putin has to do with any of this and what his preferred policies might be. In retrospect it all seems like very deliberate military-industrial decision making, except for leaving the conventional forces so weak.

  764. @ShortOnTime
    @AP

    Your own link acknowledges that the Transylvania Saxons chose to harbor Vlad III's political enemies and so chose to pick a fight with Vlad III. Also, the commercial monopoly of Saxon merchants from Transylvania was designed to exploit Wallachia's vulnerable lowland geographic position as a border territory with the Ottoman Empire and obviously Saxon merchants skillfully exploited Wallachian peasants. Vlad III checked the cunning schemes of Saxon merchants.

    Vlad III's main focus and lifelong struggle was war against the Ottoman Empire (for what they did to his family at a young age) and Saxon merchants never had any interest in supporting his struggle. Even Hungary (Janos Hunyadi and Matthias Corvinus) barely and only occasionally supported Vlad III in his uneven and epic struggle. Creating a consolidated and centralized autocracy capable of resisting the Ottomans, by any means necessary regardless of cruelty, was the only route that Vlad III as the leader of a small and weak nation had to stand a chance in the fight against the Ottomans.

    Vlad III's reputation has notoriety for the frequent use of impalement that he learnt from the Ottomans with things like burning villages being standard fare and somewhat unremarkable in the Medieval era. Burning and looting villages was standard fare by even the pettiest of feudal lords or lesser leaders of armed bands in the pre-modern world.

    It is Vlad III's existential struggle against the Ottoman Empire and the lack of Christian solidarity with him in that fight which truly stands out in hindsight. Vlad III's resistance and the otherwise relatively peripheral geographic position of Wallachia (compared to the high strategic relevance of Moldova and Serbia, or Bessarabia and Belgrade in particular) explains why Wallachia and Romania were never fully conquered by the Ottomans, but preserved some autonomy as a vassal principality (meaning Vlad III's resistance meant Romanians fared somewhat better for centuries overall compared to all their other Christian neighbors in the Balkans).

    Replies: @Beckow, @AP

    …the lack of Christian solidarity with Wallachia…stands out in hindsight.

    It is beyond religion: European solidarity. The attempted destruction of the eastern Europe: Balkans, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, has been the leitmotif of the Euro-history. In almost every case the French, Germans, Anglos, Vatican, sided against the local populations. The pathetic 200-year babysitting of the effectively dead Ottomans Empire after it collapsed was part of that. English-French even went to war in the mid-19th century to keep the Ottomans going so they can murder more Balkan Christians.

    Today they are doing the same in Ukraine – encouraging its destruction so Russia is weakened. The Ukies are just the last throw-away population to use.

    It’s hard to explain. A combination of the fear of Euro alternative that is not ‘fully-Western’, greed for resources, personal dislike of the Eastern Euros…plus the local traitors, people who wistfully dream of being what they are not, to be Atlantic using the latest term. (Where is that Vlad guy when we need him?)

    • Agree: ShortOnTime, Derer
    • Replies: @AP
    @Beckow


    It is beyond religion: European solidarity. The attempted destruction of the eastern Europe: Balkans, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, has been the leitmotif of the Euro-history. In almost every case the French, Germans, Anglos, Vatican, sided against the local populations
     
    You focus on threats from the West but ignore the equally brutal ones from the East. Muscovy/Russia, Ottoman Empire/Turkey, and even their little brother Hungary. Magyars came from Eurasia to the heart of Europe, enslaving and assimilating others (especially Slavs) along the way. Unlike the Avars who disappeared or the Bulgars who were assimilated, the Magyars retained their Eurasian language and identity, unnecessary intruders squatting in the heart of Europe, separating Slovenes and Croats from their northern brothers. Predictably, on the side of the Slav-killers - whether they be Germans or Muscovites. And they even have ridiculous pet lackeys among the Slavs - their Slovak servants who follow them.

    It’s hard to explain. A combination of the fear of Euro alternative that is not ‘fully-Western’, greed for resources, personal dislike of the Eastern Euros

     

    If forced to choose, rule from Vienna was easily preferable than rule from Moscow, Istanbul or Budapest. Berlin slightly so (Poles could compare Vienna, Moscow, and Berlin).

    Replies: @Beckow, @Mr. XYZ, @Mr. XYZ

  765. A123 says: • Website
    @ShortOnTime
    @Greasy William

    This looks to be a mostly correct assessment of the strategic situation although nobody really knows what's next for certain since the Middle East is likely on the brink of a major war.

    Otherwise, I wanted to clarify to you that the last time I had conversation with you here some time ago I had 0.00% sleep (so sleep deprivation) for several days in a row (meaning some outbursts, embarrassment and lapses were inevitable) since I made the mistake of looking at civilians in Gaza being killed day in and day out. (This is not an apology since apologies are usually a bad life strategy).

    There are still a few Christian souls worth caring about in Gaza and that part of the world. Since a missile by Israel recently failed to explode at the Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza the heavens, providence, and the saints must be on the side of Christians. To be fair, Israel has taken care to spare majority Maronite Christian villages in Lebanon from its airstrikes and bombardment (at least for now).

    Replies: @A123

    To be fair, Israel has taken care to spare majority Maronite Christian villages in Lebanon from its airstrikes and bombardment (at least for now).

    Druze and Maronite Christians loathe Hezbollah. Shia terrorists cannot use them as human shields, as they will not cooperate. Areas free of Iranian contamination are unlikely to be caught up in the fighting. God helps those who help themselves.

    Partitioning Lebanon makes sense as a idea. Many problems would be permanently solved by a Maronite & Druze (Southern) Lebanon separate from a Muslim (Northern) Lebanon. Unfortunately, the population distribution makes drawing lines difficult. It would take relocation both directions to create cohesive populations.

    There are still a few Christian souls worth caring about in Gaza and that part of the world.

    The only way to save them is de-Islamification. Alas, no one will seriously consider the idea.

    This leaves minority Christians with few options. They often wind up emigrating to escape the violence and oppression at the hands of Muhammad’s followers.

    PEACE 😇

  766. …if one side is feeble they will probably capitulate, even if they have a lot of nukes. I assume this was the Western strategy.

    That definitely was the NATO strategy. And ‘capitulation‘ has many forms: from massive economic concessions, installing foreign puppets, alliance against China, free hand in the Middle East…to simply being a kind of Latin America, controlled and easily exploited. Some crazies may have dreamed of Russia ceding lands (Kaliningrad, Sachalin…even Siberia) or breaking up Russia into a set of smaller countries.

    in 2014 they were way too vulnerable militarily and economically to risk sticking their neck out in Odessa

    Possibly. They also needed to make sure China has their back – in 2014 it definitely didn’t (this was pre-Trump), today it seems to. But there were also political constraints: moving into Ukraine in 2014 before most of the Kiev-initiated sh..t happened (bombing, killing, ultra nationalism) was much more tricky both domestically and abroad.

    On the other hand Ukraine was much weaker: 8 years strengthen Russia but also Kiev.

    except for leaving the conventional forces so weak.

    All conventional forces in the developed world today are very weak. It is unimaginable that Euros or Americans would be able to fight a conventional war like 50-100 years ago: casualties, media exposure, political blowback. There is a reason the West lost every recent war that required long-term conventional fighting. It can’t be done…Russia is not unique in that.

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Beckow

    I think the Russian military in 2022 was disproportionately weaker for conventional combat than they should be considering their situation. I don't know if this was due to budget or political factors (graft) or even some miscalculation based on the notion that a strong nuclear capability allowed them to be weaker conventionally. None of this makes much sense so I view it as a result of internal graft which was so widespread it was seen as normal. I am not saying they were hopelessly weak, but surely they had senior officers who knew the importance of drones and smart weapons which the Army apparently did not have enough of until mid-2023.

    On the other hand, if Russia had the equivalent level of 1000 more modernized T90M tanks in 2022 would it have changed the situation? I think they would still try to remove the Western parasite without killing the Ukrainian host, but maybe the Russian losses would be lower. This would have required a more serious conventional force going back to 2015 which they were apparently unable to build more rapidly. It is a mystery for the history books, but may be a moot point now. I think the military will build up to be much more capable over the next five years as they grow and rebound from the SMO.

    Maybe there was an intentional Noviop/Rusfed plan not to allow the conventional Russian military to become too strong. These forces could be directed inward while nuclear forces are really only oriented externally.

  767. @AP
    @Sean


    Ceasing to think they are winning would be a watershed in Kremlin thinking because they would have to do something risky

     

    They may be looking for a face-saving gesture. Apparently Pompeo’s co-author of that paper from the WSJ I posted is financed by a Russian oligarch close to Putin. Might be a road map to an acceptable deal.

    if Russia was to withdraw from Ukraine no one would ever take it or its enormously expensive thermonuclear weapons seriously again. They might as well scrap them.
     
    The point of these weapons is not to prevent loss in war (otherwise the USA would have nuked its way to victory in Korea and Vietnam, USSR in Afghanistan). It is to prevent conquest by another country. Losing in Ukraine doesn’t qualify. NATO forces crossing into Russia and surging towards Moscow (or, in a different timeline, Chinese forces surging into the Far East and Siberia) probably would.

    Replies: @Sean

    Withdrawing from Ukrainian territory that they already occupy would be an unbearable humiliation for Russia. And the rest of the world would see it that way too. China would be appalled and conclude that Russia would always fold and is therefor not a useful ally. Withdrawing from Ukraine would give the Chinese ideas about how they could intimidate Russia because it had ceased to be a serious country.

    The point of these weapons is not to prevent loss in war (otherwise the USA would have nuked its way to victory in Korea and Vietnam, USSR in Afghanistan). It is to prevent conquest by another country.

    Thermonuclear weapons d0 not come cheap and it is unrealistic to think that superpowers have then just to deter a conventional attack, or nuclear one. There is not a single nuclear armed country in the world that says its nuclear weapons would only be used in the case of its territory being invade or nuked Brezhnev was determined that Russia would never have to back down again like it did in the Cuba crisis. America threatened use of nuclear weapon to end the Korean hostilities and it was also considered an option at Khe Sanh if the Americans were to begin losing.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Sean

    Sean,

    You have not addressed the facts that other countries and other politicians within the USA with good intelligence on Russia want Ukraine to be given sufficient aid to defeat Russia. Are they all wrong and is the Biden administration right? Or rather, is the Biden administration simply following its pattern of being weak and timid (as in Afghanistan, and against Iran). Which is more likely?


    Withdrawing from Ukrainian territory that they already occupy would be an unbearable humiliation for Russia. And the rest of the world would see it that way too.
     
    USA withdrew from Afghanistan, that they once almost fully occupied. As they did from South Vietnam. Countries do lose wars. Russia can say they were up against the entire West, and if they are allowed to keep the 2022 lands with full recognition (plus maybe lands they have taken within Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts such Mariupol or Avdiivka) as a face-saving gesture they can call it a partial win.

    Thermonuclear weapons d0 not come cheap and it is unrealistic to think that superpowers have then just to deter a conventional attack, or nuclear one.
     
    And yet that is exactly how they have been used (or rather, not used) by every nuclear power since 1945.
  768. @Sean
    @AP


    Various supposed red lines have repeatedly been crossed (eventually) without the escalation feared by the Biden administration.
     
    I certainly do not think there is any sort of principle or honour behind the Russian reactions or the lack of them so far, it is based on what they consider to be the least risky way to attain their objectives. Apoplectic two tits for one tat way to US help for Ukraine would be counter productive as long as they are winning--or at least think they are.

    And yes so far Putin has been a pussycat; in my opinion that inaction is because the real red line of Russia is losing in Ukraine and Biden is not giving Ukraine remotely enough arms to win. Ceasing to think they are winning would be a watershed in Kremlin thinking because they would have to do something risky. Or just back down like Khrushchev did ... although Cuba Crisis happened when the USSR had no capability to annihilate US cities.

    Brezhnev changed all that and put everything into making the Soviet ICBM forces essentially equivalent to the American ones not necessarily in counterforce but in ability to level cities. And Russia retains that capability today. Khrushchev was deposed largely for backing down and Putin would be too. Anyway, with or without Putin at its head, if Russia was to withdraw from Ukraine no one would ever take it or its enormously expensive thermonuclear weapons seriously again. They might as well scrap them.

    Replies: @AP, @Emil Nikola Richard, @Derer

    Khrushchev was deposed largely for backing down and Putin would be too.

    It is not that important now, but Khrushchev was deposed because of screwing up the relationship with China in that period. BTW, Putin is following methodically his objectives, and we do not understand all the intricacies – outsiders, including dummies in the CIA, only speculate.

    • Replies: @Sean
    @Derer

    Eisenhower wanted to give West Germany a share in the decision to use nuclear weapons as a way of getting Germany to stop depending on US taxpayers for defence, JFK continued the policy and Khrushchev became terrified of a German invasion of Russia under Nato's nuclear umbrella. The Cuba Missile Crisis (Russia was totally lacking in the ability to destroy American cities at this time) was caused by a move to try and get the US to halt its German finger on the NATO nuke trigger initiative. Khrushchev was offering a deal in which Germany was unified but became neutral; he was offering to give up East Germany in this proposal of course, which was made through irregular non diplomatic channels.

    When the Central Committee became aware of this latest and most egregious of a string of important decisions taken without consultation with the rest of the leadership (giving Ukraine Crimea was likely one of them) Khrushchev was deposed and eventually Brezhnev became leader, with a far more consensus style. The Russians under Brezhnev made it a priority to give Russia the ability to destroy American cities, so in any future confrontation like the Cuban Missile Crisis Russia would not have to bluff. Russian adventurism was not merely due to America being sickened by Vietnam but a genuine growth in Soviet Russian power to destroy America caused by their determinedly pouring all their resources into making ICBMs. The Soviet Union eventually achieved city busting ICBM parity with the US and possibly even an overall superiority at one point.

    Lyndon Johnson might have avoided domestic strife had he withdrawn from Vietnam as Kennedy said he wanted to, but Kennedy never said he would withdraw without victory. Leaders of countries just don't things like that in practice because they instinctively believe states will ally with the strongest and most successful power and even the US needs to keep its status to hold its alliances together, therefore had to step up an demonstrate in Korea and Vietnam that it was a serious country. I doubt that Putin has much more on his mind than showing everyone that Russia is a serious country--one that cannot be taken lightly. Or defeated. Since 2007 he was complaining and he was taken lightly, the neocons at that years Munich conference were chuckling at his complaints. Even 20o8 and 2014 did not cause any readjustment in their attitude. The only way to get Russian concerns meaningfully addressed is to fight on in Ukraine. Reality therapy for the Ukraine, and the West.

    Replies: @QCIC

  769. @Torna atrás
    Lithuanians are loud when it comes to the fight against Russia,while in actuality Lithuania is a hotbed of trade diversion. Direct exports to Russia and indirect exports via Central Asia never fell like in the rest of the EU.

    The refrain you hear from them is: "we border Russia, we can't possibly keep track of everything." That's true of Estonia too, but they walk the walk on trade with Russia. Then they also claim that they can't cut back on these exports because of their political system, the very same one that Estonia has, appalling!

    They're just too busy making a quick buck exporting sanctioned goods. The EU doesn't need grand visions for the future. It needs people who will make Lithuania transparent and accountable in the here and now. The EU Cohesion Funds must come with strings attached!

    Replies: @sudden death

    That’s true of Estonia too, but they walk the walk on trade with Russia

    Heh, they had more than plenty of dealing with another apparent oil giant state, named Belarus;)

    A year later, trade with the Baltics is booming at record levels and Estonia is the main beneficiary. Imports of oil products were up three-fold compared to 2020. In addition, about a third of the Belarussian oil which was previously destined to Latvian ports was now going to Estonia (the value of Latvian imports from Belarus have also risen significantly, but this is down to timber, not oil).

    A joint investigation by Re:Baltica, Delfi Estonia and the Belarusian Investigative Center investigation has found two reasons for this. One is the fact that the trade is going through the cluster of companies that appear to be connected to sanctioned Belarussian oligarch Mikalai Varabei (Nikolay Vorobey). The second is a little trick with customs codes which allow the trade to continue uninterrupted.

    This has left the Estonian government in a dire situation. On paper, everything looks correct. But the government that has taken a leading role in pushing for strict sanctions, is also allowing the state-owned railway carrier to carry huge amounts of Belarussian oil products.

    https://news.err.ee/1608483629/investigation-how-record-amounts-of-belarusian-oil-flows-through-estonia

    For the record though, I’m fully completely in favour of eradicating any illegal trading with RF, so Blinky in essence is doing useful job and can help even more by using his Chinese or RF connections and informing competent EU or local Lithuanian authorities in detail about all those individual appaling cases of sanction violating imports into RF market;)

    • LOL: Bashibuzuk
  770. @QCIC
    @sudden death

    If the will is there, in practical terms Russia is probably 3 to 5 years behind at the basic level (90% of things), but 15 years behind on the most computationally intensive parts.

    Conceivably Russia could follow a different branch of the computer family tree and catch up in a few years as well, even on the computational frontier. Maybe they are collaborating with China on photonics computers.

    Replies: @sudden death, @Derer

    Russia is probably 3 to 5 years behind at the basic level (90% of things), but 15 years behind on the most computationally intensive parts.

    How far behind are in the use of supersonic missiles? Or alternatively, how much ahead of NATO. In 1971, Soviet Mars rover ‘Mars 3’ performed a soft landing on Mars for the first time in the history of humankind. Remember the West will hypocritically not propagate the Russian accomplishments but only failures. The world public, including us, know mostly what Western propaganda machine telling us.

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Derer

    What I wrote was short hand for a longer, probably boring conversation. I meant in the Russian weapons industries where they seem to have major supply chain gaps (for example, the little drone parts all from China or the West) the Russians can and will rebuild most of those industries fairly soon. I think this has been going on since 2015.

    For more advanced computer electronics used in missiles and radars they may continue to rely on grey market imports for the most advanced chips for a long time. This could change if they get off the path of silicon Moore's law, but that is pure speculation at the moment.

    I think Russian missiles overall are very advanced, but many countries have competitive technology. I assume spies and Ukie scavengers will rapidly sell the Russian secrets to the West. This may put some pressure on Russia to wrap up the SMO before the West can fill in the tactical weaponry gaps such as hypersonic maneuvering weapons.

  771. @Emil Nikola Richard
    Battle of the Nations
    China Poland

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j27Gj34WTD4
    Zheng Qinwen took out Miss Poland.

    Also Russia is offering a 170K bounty to whoever takes out an F-16.
    https://www.eurasiantimes.com/f-16-for-ukraine-russians-offer-170000-bounty/

    Replies: @songbird

    I thought there were some gun enthusiasts here? What is going on with the guy on the left? Is he gay or does he have scoliosis? Or both?

    [MORE]

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    Twitter olympics is pretty lame if you ask me.

    The only NBC youtube olympics highlights which have interested me so far is tennis. I might be interested in swimming although I haven't noticed anything so far. Track and field is the big sport. I always am interested in who wins the men's decathlon. After Tokyo, this time I am going to pay attention to the men's 400m hurdles.

    I also want to see who wins women's 49kg weightlifting where Miss Romania is favored right behind China.

    I have no interest in who wins gymnastics although those people are amazing; if you need a judge to put up a number between 9.6 and 9.9 to figure out what happened that isn't really an interesting spectator sport. More like an exhibition.

    Was sad to see Daniil Medvedev lost yesterday. I still haven't seen any details about what happened--just the score.

    Replies: @songbird

  772. @Beckow

    ...if one side is feeble they will probably capitulate, even if they have a lot of nukes. I assume this was the Western strategy.
     
    That definitely was the NATO strategy. And 'capitulation' has many forms: from massive economic concessions, installing foreign puppets, alliance against China, free hand in the Middle East...to simply being a kind of Latin America, controlled and easily exploited. Some crazies may have dreamed of Russia ceding lands (Kaliningrad, Sachalin...even Siberia) or breaking up Russia into a set of smaller countries.

    in 2014 they were way too vulnerable militarily and economically to risk sticking their neck out in Odessa
     
    Possibly. They also needed to make sure China has their back - in 2014 it definitely didn't (this was pre-Trump), today it seems to. But there were also political constraints: moving into Ukraine in 2014 before most of the Kiev-initiated sh..t happened (bombing, killing, ultra nationalism) was much more tricky both domestically and abroad.

    On the other hand Ukraine was much weaker: 8 years strengthen Russia but also Kiev.


    except for leaving the conventional forces so weak.
     
    All conventional forces in the developed world today are very weak. It is unimaginable that Euros or Americans would be able to fight a conventional war like 50-100 years ago: casualties, media exposure, political blowback. There is a reason the West lost every recent war that required long-term conventional fighting. It can't be done...Russia is not unique in that.

    Replies: @QCIC

    I think the Russian military in 2022 was disproportionately weaker for conventional combat than they should be considering their situation. I don’t know if this was due to budget or political factors (graft) or even some miscalculation based on the notion that a strong nuclear capability allowed them to be weaker conventionally. None of this makes much sense so I view it as a result of internal graft which was so widespread it was seen as normal. I am not saying they were hopelessly weak, but surely they had senior officers who knew the importance of drones and smart weapons which the Army apparently did not have enough of until mid-2023.

    On the other hand, if Russia had the equivalent level of 1000 more modernized T90M tanks in 2022 would it have changed the situation? I think they would still try to remove the Western parasite without killing the Ukrainian host, but maybe the Russian losses would be lower. This would have required a more serious conventional force going back to 2015 which they were apparently unable to build more rapidly. It is a mystery for the history books, but may be a moot point now. I think the military will build up to be much more capable over the next five years as they grow and rebound from the SMO.

    Maybe there was an intentional Noviop/Rusfed plan not to allow the conventional Russian military to become too strong. These forces could be directed inward while nuclear forces are really only oriented externally.

  773. Like crabs in a bucket.

  774. @Derer
    @QCIC


    Russia is probably 3 to 5 years behind at the basic level (90% of things), but 15 years behind on the most computationally intensive parts.
     
    How far behind are in the use of supersonic missiles? Or alternatively, how much ahead of NATO. In 1971, Soviet Mars rover ‘Mars 3’ performed a soft landing on Mars for the first time in the history of humankind. Remember the West will hypocritically not propagate the Russian accomplishments but only failures. The world public, including us, know mostly what Western propaganda machine telling us.

    Replies: @QCIC

    What I wrote was short hand for a longer, probably boring conversation. I meant in the Russian weapons industries where they seem to have major supply chain gaps (for example, the little drone parts all from China or the West) the Russians can and will rebuild most of those industries fairly soon. I think this has been going on since 2015.

    For more advanced computer electronics used in missiles and radars they may continue to rely on grey market imports for the most advanced chips for a long time. This could change if they get off the path of silicon Moore’s law, but that is pure speculation at the moment.

    I think Russian missiles overall are very advanced, but many countries have competitive technology. I assume spies and Ukie scavengers will rapidly sell the Russian secrets to the West. This may put some pressure on Russia to wrap up the SMO before the West can fill in the tactical weaponry gaps such as hypersonic maneuvering weapons.

    • Agree: Derer
  775. @Derer
    @Sean


    Khrushchev was deposed largely for backing down and Putin would be too.
     
    It is not that important now, but Khrushchev was deposed because of screwing up the relationship with China in that period. BTW, Putin is following methodically his objectives, and we do not understand all the intricacies - outsiders, including dummies in the CIA, only speculate.

    Replies: @Sean

    Eisenhower wanted to give West Germany a share in the decision to use nuclear weapons as a way of getting Germany to stop depending on US taxpayers for defence, JFK continued the policy and Khrushchev became terrified of a German invasion of Russia under Nato’s nuclear umbrella. The Cuba Missile Crisis (Russia was totally lacking in the ability to destroy American cities at this time) was caused by a move to try and get the US to halt its German finger on the NATO nuke trigger initiative. Khrushchev was offering a deal in which Germany was unified but became neutral; he was offering to give up East Germany in this proposal of course, which was made through irregular non diplomatic channels.

    When the Central Committee became aware of this latest and most egregious of a string of important decisions taken without consultation with the rest of the leadership (giving Ukraine Crimea was likely one of them) Khrushchev was deposed and eventually Brezhnev became leader, with a far more consensus style. The Russians under Brezhnev made it a priority to give Russia the ability to destroy American cities, so in any future confrontation like the Cuban Missile Crisis Russia would not have to bluff. Russian adventurism was not merely due to America being sickened by Vietnam but a genuine growth in Soviet Russian power to destroy America caused by their determinedly pouring all their resources into making ICBMs. The Soviet Union eventually achieved city busting ICBM parity with the US and possibly even an overall superiority at one point.

    Lyndon Johnson might have avoided domestic strife had he withdrawn from Vietnam as Kennedy said he wanted to, but Kennedy never said he would withdraw without victory. Leaders of countries just don’t things like that in practice because they instinctively believe states will ally with the strongest and most successful power and even the US needs to keep its status to hold its alliances together, therefore had to step up an demonstrate in Korea and Vietnam that it was a serious country. I doubt that Putin has much more on his mind than showing everyone that Russia is a serious country–one that cannot be taken lightly. Or defeated. Since 2007 he was complaining and he was taken lightly, the neocons at that years Munich conference were chuckling at his complaints. Even 20o8 and 2014 did not cause any readjustment in their attitude. The only way to get Russian concerns meaningfully addressed is to fight on in Ukraine. Reality therapy for the Ukraine, and the West.

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Sean

    According to Wikipedia, during the Cuban Missile Crisis the USSR had at least 20 R-16 ICBMs which could strike US cities with 3 megaton warheads. The earlier R-7 could reach the US by 1959. This was only 14 years after the USA nuked two Japanese cities for no good reason.

    Why does anyone still discuss the Cuban Missile Crisis without keeping the USA Jupiter missiles emplaced in Italy and Turkey front and center in the discussion? This oversight helps perpetuate a misleading Cold War narrative.

    I am anti-Communist, pro-USA and pro-Western civilization; getting the facts straight on epochal events is important.

    Replies: @Derer, @Sean

  776. German_reader says:
    @songbird
    Can German_reader please confirm this spurious Nigerian newsstory about Baerbock (presumably) employing a gigolo, when she goes on African trips?
    https://dailypost.ng/2024/07/30/i-provide-emotional-comfort-to-lonely-elites-kingsley-talks-about-his-career-as-gigolo/

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @German_reader

    lol, I don’t think she’s really the type for that (unlike when it comes to facilitating Afghan immigration or jumping around on trampolines).
    I sometimes wonder if she could eventually find herself as defendant in a war crimes tribunal for her support of Israel and end up like her predecessor Joachim von Ribbentropp. That would be pretty funny, though it seems rather unlikely. But she could definitely get the kind of reputation Kissinger got over his support of Pakistan in 1971. Which is also quite ironic.

    • Thanks: songbird
  777. @Bashibuzuk
    @QCIC

    And it’s also typical that Putin made a situation that needn’t be desperate into something that is edging towards desperation. There’s a Russian saying that summarizes it: «что не сделает дурак, всё он сделает не так» (whatever a morron does, he will make it wrong). As my friends in Odessa told me in 2022 after the bombings started: “we waited for him in 2014 preparing flowers to greet him, but he arrived 8 years later with bombs”. That’s one of the (many) reasons I am not a fan of the man and his regime.

    Replies: @Beckow, @Derer

    “we waited for him in 2014 preparing flowers to greet him, but he arrived 8 years later with bombs”.

    On the other hand I think that those bombs would have been used in 2014 as well. The NATO was on an uncompromising roll to expand eastward. The Ukraine project was postponed by the Russian dangerous red lines.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Derer

    No. Ukraine had no army and no nationalist consensus back then. NATO was not ready to fight RF back then (they’re not now either). RF army could seize all Russian-speaking South-Eastern Ukraine, bring back Yanukovich and pretend all is well. They even had a signed letter from Yanukovich inviting them to do just that. They didn’t.

    Why ?

    Simple: Putin received the visit of the Swiss president, mandated by the Global West to warn that if he made a move, the Russian Klept assets would be seized everywhere in the West, Switzerland included. Putin was really shaking in his boots that day during the TV presser with Didier Burkhalter who was also the head of OSCE back then. Putin looked like a wimp. Burkhalter looked at him with the assured superiority of a White Western Chad looking at some Pigmy tribal chief.

    https://youtu.be/WJGIa-rbGXk?si=hTza74RNXljrTi28

    https://pp.vk.me/c627930/v627930666/3e94c/lH9FxkzZmvA.jpg

    Russian nationalists were truly disgusted with Putin’s waggling, wobbling and wabbling. We should remember that it happened less than ten days after the pro-Russian militants got burned alive in Odessa…

    Replies: @Derer, @Mr. Hack

  778. They just can’t help themselves.

  779. @Yahya
    @Mikel


    At your age your body can tolerate plenty of insults
     
    That’s precisely why I’m experimenting with various crazy dietary recommendations. So far it’s only resulted in some temporary acute stomach pain, nothing I can’t handle. But the trade-offs could be huge in the positive direction if they end up working. Vince Gironda claims that 36 raw eggs daily are equivalent to taking Dianabol synthetic steroids. I’m not even 20% convinced that that is true, but it’s still worth a try. And it’s a superior risk-reward proposition imo than outright taking anabolic steroids.

    I’m familiar with the RP channel. Israetel is smart and highly knowledgeable, but I realized that following bodybuilder common wisdom (“bro science”) is far superior than “following the science” in the field of strength training. Practically all the fundamentals of strength training were figured out by the silver era guys; modern exercise science is merely playing catch-up and confirming what they knew all along.

    The field of nutrition is just all over the place. I’m unsure who to trust, so I took the experimentation approach. I will try things out and see what works for me.

    @songbird and Mr. Hack


    I wonder if he has watched another anime movie.
     
    I have not watched any anime since Princess M. The genre does not appeal to me.

    My film consumption has been lackluster this year. I’ve just been passing time with action movies and the occasional artistic film thrown in. I’ve only watched four movies I would place in my personal cannon: Apocalypse Now, Loro, Barry Lyndon, and Four Brothers.

    Might do a review of them if I can muster some willpower.

    Replies: @songbird, @Mikel

    Might do a review of them if I can muster some willpower.

    please do, I have only seen parts of Apocalypse Now, and not the others. We don’t seem to have many film enthusiasts here, at the moment. Silvio and Aaron had a bit of appreciation of these things, as I recall.

    I have not watched any anime since Princess M. The genre does not appeal to me.

    Americans have a very strong prejudice against both cartoons and foreign movies. The initial films promoted here were of the gorier type – there was a kind sensationalism about them that didn’t altogether impress me. Like, they were trying to be adult, through the blood. I would say that it was years before I really began to respect the medium.

    [MORE]

    You can see a lot of Japanese things in it: the appreciation of flawed things, the spirit of places, introspection, and quiet. The humor is able to be exaggerated and so more visible. There is a strong artistic merit in the composition of certain shots, sometimes a symbolic value even in mundane objects. A touch of Shintoism.

    Japan really is the premier comics (and animation) nation. and a large part of their culture both filters through and derives from the medium. In some way, I think it is the most Japanese medium. Even Godzilla (which to be sure has Japanese aspects) largely derives from Hollywood.

    Of course, Sturgeon’s Law applies to any medium. But with Hollywood so full of dreck, it has gotten to the point where I can appreciate even parts of movies I don’t fully like. Ideas or images.

    I still think about the geniusness of the little, three-legged chair in Suzume (for me, symbolic of the flaws of people) even though I did not enjoy the movie as a whole, and wouldn’t recommend it, but to the most hardcore fan.

    Fundamentally, I think there is more design in anime which comes from the hand of artists than in regular film.

    Looking at the whole of the genre, the better parts, I think there is certainly a lot one could find above the level of a Disney movie.

  780. @Sean
    @Derer

    Eisenhower wanted to give West Germany a share in the decision to use nuclear weapons as a way of getting Germany to stop depending on US taxpayers for defence, JFK continued the policy and Khrushchev became terrified of a German invasion of Russia under Nato's nuclear umbrella. The Cuba Missile Crisis (Russia was totally lacking in the ability to destroy American cities at this time) was caused by a move to try and get the US to halt its German finger on the NATO nuke trigger initiative. Khrushchev was offering a deal in which Germany was unified but became neutral; he was offering to give up East Germany in this proposal of course, which was made through irregular non diplomatic channels.

    When the Central Committee became aware of this latest and most egregious of a string of important decisions taken without consultation with the rest of the leadership (giving Ukraine Crimea was likely one of them) Khrushchev was deposed and eventually Brezhnev became leader, with a far more consensus style. The Russians under Brezhnev made it a priority to give Russia the ability to destroy American cities, so in any future confrontation like the Cuban Missile Crisis Russia would not have to bluff. Russian adventurism was not merely due to America being sickened by Vietnam but a genuine growth in Soviet Russian power to destroy America caused by their determinedly pouring all their resources into making ICBMs. The Soviet Union eventually achieved city busting ICBM parity with the US and possibly even an overall superiority at one point.

    Lyndon Johnson might have avoided domestic strife had he withdrawn from Vietnam as Kennedy said he wanted to, but Kennedy never said he would withdraw without victory. Leaders of countries just don't things like that in practice because they instinctively believe states will ally with the strongest and most successful power and even the US needs to keep its status to hold its alliances together, therefore had to step up an demonstrate in Korea and Vietnam that it was a serious country. I doubt that Putin has much more on his mind than showing everyone that Russia is a serious country--one that cannot be taken lightly. Or defeated. Since 2007 he was complaining and he was taken lightly, the neocons at that years Munich conference were chuckling at his complaints. Even 20o8 and 2014 did not cause any readjustment in their attitude. The only way to get Russian concerns meaningfully addressed is to fight on in Ukraine. Reality therapy for the Ukraine, and the West.

    Replies: @QCIC

    According to Wikipedia, during the Cuban Missile Crisis the USSR had at least 20 R-16 ICBMs which could strike US cities with 3 megaton warheads. The earlier R-7 could reach the US by 1959. This was only 14 years after the USA nuked two Japanese cities for no good reason.

    Why does anyone still discuss the Cuban Missile Crisis without keeping the USA Jupiter missiles emplaced in Italy and Turkey front and center in the discussion? This oversight helps perpetuate a misleading Cold War narrative.

    I am anti-Communist, pro-USA and pro-Western civilization; getting the facts straight on epochal events is important.

    • Replies: @Derer
    @QCIC

    I am anti-Communist, in fact I crossed the Iron Curtain close to the 007 circumstances, floating with friend in a river under the tree trunk to the other side, dodging the bullets. However, I became disillusioned with the American semi-democracy with wide spread hypocrisy. A candidate drops from the race not for the lack of ideas but for lack of money.

    , @Sean
    @QCIC

    The US had an overwhelming advantage at the time of the Cuban missile crisis. The policy of the US in the 50s and right into the 6os was if nuclear weapons were use by America it would be in a single all out 'wargasm' attack ignoring what the Soviets might do, but Brezhnev's ICBM build up altered that thinking. The assured destruction had become truely mutual so M.A.D. was no longer tenable.

    Replies: @QCIC

  781. What do you make of the US-Russia prisoner swap?

    • Replies: @sudden death
    @QCIC

    Leaving it for the checkup in next 3 months:


    Swap and peace in Ukraine - in a few months a peace treaty in Ukraine may be signed. The logic here is very simple.
    1. Peace in Ukraine is possible in the event of a concession from the US.
    2. The swap showed that before the elections the US is ready to make concessions in the interests of Harris's victory.
    3. Therefore, in the fall, the US, in order to show Harris as a candidate for peace, may make concessions to Russia on Ukraine, as they have already made concessions on the exchange.
    4. Therefore, in September-October a peace treaty on Ukraine may be signed.
    We can be prepared.
     
    https://t.me/logikamarkova/13232

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

  782. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Sean


    Or just back down like Khrushchev did … although Cuba Crisis happened when the USSR had no capability to annihilate US cities.
     
    Didn't Krushchev succeed in getting Kennedy to remove a bunch of missiles from Turkey?

    Replies: @S1

    Didn’t Krushchev succeed in getting Kennedy to remove a bunch of missiles from Turkey?

    That’s one of those underemphasized facts of history they don’t like you to think too much about.

    Some others are:

    The first US flag, the ‘Grand Union’, is for all practical purposes identical to the flag of the multi-national corporation British East India Company.

    And..

    The 1776 American and 1789 French revolutions were respectively proto-Capitalist and proto-Communist in their political orientation.

    And that..

    Some of the heaviest hitters intimately involved in the 1776 proto-Capitalist American Revolution, ie Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, probably Ben Franklin, and an honorable mention of Lafayette, were also quite involved in the 1789 proto-Communist French Revolution.

    That they are underemphasized (and why that might be) says a lot in and of itself.

  783. @Beckow

    It’s impossible to discern who “would” or “wouldn’t” vote.
     
    It is possible - especially after a massive 'registration' drive of new voters in an urban area. Not 100%, but definitely with a high accuracy.

    under duress...a large percentage of votes in any election are cast under this kind of personal circumstances.
     
    There is a huge difference between onsite duress limited by the individual, secret nature of voting - and filling out potentially thousands of ballots remotely an mailing them in. It is not the same, that's why historically people setup in-person voting.

    The fact that remote voting can work well - Utah or Stockholm 1955 - doesn't mean mail-in voting in atomized society in large messy cities can avoid fraud. Large or small fraud depending on how many votes are needed - in 2020 in many places 10-20k votes was all that was needed, out of millions.


    Mail-in votes are ballots returned by registered voters who received one and can only send that one back
     
    Ideally. But if they don't care and if the registration data is faulty others can use those ballots. It is not that hard in many precincts - no audit is possible, it is electronically scanned and too many pieces of paper are floating around.

    People who move are responsible for updating their registration and bipartisan election officials are supposed to remove the dead from the rolls.
     
    In today's high mobility world? How many do it? I recall seeing an audit of 'all registered' voters in one state (Georgia?) and it showed close to one million incorrect registration: people left the state, dead, wrong names. You base your argument on trusting data that is a mess. In Europe that is generally not possible with better systems to track people.

    I will concede that conscious false voting by residents or 'illegals' is unlikely. It is the abuse by insiders with access to the data that is hard to police.

    200 million votes in 2020 and the decision was based on around 100k in 5-6 states that mostly showed up as mail-ins in the middle of the night. That is 0.1% or less. It is possible but we will never know. Demonizing skeptics suggests that there is some bad conscience. Why do it?

    Finally, US regularly dismisses elections around the world that have better safe-guards, thousands of observers, functioning ID system, same-day onsite voting and no 'mail-ins'. Where results are tabulated in person and often on camera within hours and a recount is easy. They just did it in Venezuela. It is entirely possible that there is cheating in some of those elections (the central election count cam always be manipulated), but why ignore any issues at home?

    You seem stuck in the ideological "we are just better, so shut up!" bubble. Think about it a little instead of dismissing others.

    Replies: @A123, @Mikel, @Mikel

    More on intentionally fake polls for Harris: (1)

    This is a poll of “registered voters”, names on the voter rolls. A more accurate sample would be of “likely voters”, the approach Rasmussen Reports takes in its political opinion polls. Many registered voters rarely or never vote. Likely voters are far more enthusiastic about voting, based on their past voting record.

    More important are the political preferences of the survey sample. In the Reuters/Ipsos survey, buried in the methodology, far from the headline, is this gem, “The sample includes 1,018 registered voters, 426 Democrats, 376 Republicans, and 341 Independents.”

    In percentages, their poll was 42% Democrat and 37% Republican, a 5-point difference, far more than Harris’s 2-point edge in the poll. Independents only represented 21% of the survey.

    Why not poll the studio audience of The View or Jimmy Kimmel Live for an even more pro Harris sample and result? Garbage in, garbage out.

    Is the sample representative of the electorate? Hardly. According to Gallup, the US electorate is currently 25% Republican, 23% Democrat, and 51% Independent, far different than the surveyed sample in the Reuters/Ipsos poll. A skewed sample cannot be extrapolated to the entire voting population.

    Anyone relying on the recent round of obviously corrupt polling is deep into self delusion.
    ___

    The next big test will be the DNC convention. The elites snuffed out any possibility of a floor fight. Let’s see how the progressives react to being, once again, cut out of the discussion.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/08/media_gaslighting_trump_harris_polls.html

  784. @songbird
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    I thought there were some gun enthusiasts here? What is going on with the guy on the left? Is he gay or does he have scoliosis? Or both?
    https://twitter.com/CrankyFed/status/1819041465328123971

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    Twitter olympics is pretty lame if you ask me.

    The only NBC youtube olympics highlights which have interested me so far is tennis. I might be interested in swimming although I haven’t noticed anything so far. Track and field is the big sport. I always am interested in who wins the men’s decathlon. After Tokyo, this time I am going to pay attention to the men’s 400m hurdles.

    I also want to see who wins women’s 49kg weightlifting where Miss Romania is favored right behind China.

    I have no interest in who wins gymnastics although those people are amazing; if you need a judge to put up a number between 9.6 and 9.9 to figure out what happened that isn’t really an interesting spectator sport. More like an exhibition.

    Was sad to see Daniil Medvedev lost yesterday. I still haven’t seen any details about what happened–just the score.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    I might be interested in swimming although I haven’t noticed anything so far
     
    Might be oversimplifying as I don't follow it closely, but I thought it was dominated by mutant, half-fish men. Phelps was like some creature out of The Shadow over Innsmouth. His proportions were all wrong, including his face and ears.

    Only other thing I recall about Olympic swimming was one year, there was this female medalist - and I am not exaggerating - she looked to me like a sex maniac - like she had a look in her eye, that she could barely control herself and stop herself from bounding across the room to the nearest man. (And I really never say this sort of thing.). And coincidentally, seemingly proving the point, there was some revenge pics released of her. (I will withhold national identity out of respect.). It may be I heard the rumor first - but, believe me, if so, it fit the image uncannily.

    Her sociosexual number must have been astronomical.
  785. This is an excellent video summarizing DNC media operations.

    PEACE 😇

  786. @Bashibuzuk
    @Mikel

    Unlike what you implied, I don’t have a definitive opinion on whether the election was outright rigged. I also don’t want to make this discussion personal with implied connotations about your mentality, mine mentality or anyone else’s (Kamala’s and Donald’s included). But I think we both can agree that the US 2020 elections were a somewhat spurious affair to put it mildly. There were irregularities on a scale that lead to lingering suspicions of electoral fraud. Something that should not happen in a leading democracy.

    BTW, Mikel, I have always had a great respect for your opinions and the way you express them here on UR. We often agree on different subjects. And if we don’t, then I believe that we can disagree in a respectful and reasonable way and thoughtfully discuss our divergent perspectives.

    So what I suggest is either we go case by case about the different fraud allegations that have been made: voting machines, non-citizens’ vote, dead people vote, in mail ballots and vote counting manipulation. Or instead of looking at the past election, we might look at the coming one and discuss how a result could be weighed against all potential fraud allegations (I am certain that there will be allegations).

    And about discouraging the Americans from voting, I don’t think my Russian Troll (Registered TM) opinion about anything would really influence our American friends on this site. I don’t trust democracy since at least 1996, probably more of 1993. But I don’t think everyone has to follow me on the slippery slopes of seeing the representative democracy as basically an ideological tool in manipulating the masses and keeping them busy, while the important issues are decided by the elite groups behind tightly closed doors.

    It’s like peanut butter, I don’t really like it (except with bananas sliced and honey sprinkled over it) but I don’t mind if you or anyone else eats it three times a day.

    🙂

    Replies: @A123, @Mikel

    BTW, Mikel, I have always had a great respect for your opinions and the way you express them here on UR. We often agree on different subjects. And if we don’t, then I believe that we can disagree in a respectful and reasonable way and thoughtfully discuss our divergent perspectives.

    Yes, sorry if I came across too combative. I also respect you and value your contributions a lot, although I think you know we part ways when it comes to grand conspiracy theories.*

    I guess I shouldn’t care too much. Caring about political matters too much often leads to disasters (like we see in Ukraine now). And most often it’s stuff we have little influence on anyway so taking some distance is always a wise course of action. At the same time, it’s difficult not to care about the country that has generously accepted you as one of its citizens and where you plan to spend the rest of your life. As I have often explained here, I have an advantage over native-born Americans in that I know Latin America very well and I definitely wouldn’t like to see such a wonderful country as the US turn into one of those banana republics if it’s possible to avoid it at all.

    To be sure, I think that the Brazilianization of the US is already baked in. Nobody’s going to prevent that, it’s not realistic to have such an expectation. The changes I have seen in a decade in a state that was officially listed as ~90% white in the census when I came here are too big to think that this is reversible. You go out anywhere and it feels like it’s down to 50% or so right now. And quite frankly, I would myself oppose policies that implied cruelty or outright discrimination against people of color who are here legally.

    However, the reality is that 4 more years of a Biden-like regime (Kamala is if anything worse) is going to accelerate the decline considerably, not only with the demographic issue but also with the woke agenda, foreign wars, risk of nuclear war and out of control debt.

    Again, this is the REALITY in front of our noses if we let Kamala win. By contrast, the POSSIBILITY of obscure forces stealing the election, which allegedly makes voting useless is just a hypothetical threat with doubtful evidence behind. I doubt most of the people claiming that the 2020 elections were stolen have spent as much time as I did examining the evidence, that I found quite persuasive at the beginning. I have mentioned it here several times but I haven’t managed to get anyone to explain to me the results of the Arizona audit if it’s true, as Trump and his lawyers claimed, that it was one of the states where the election was stolen. According to them, some Democrat cabal committed the same fraud in Maricopa county as in the other swing state districts but when an audit forced by MAGA-aligned state congressmen recounted all the votes and examined all the voting machines with IT forensic experts, they actually found a few more legitimate votes for Biden. Feel free to be the first one to address this easily verifiable fact.

    So I hope you understand where I’m coming from when I lose my patience with people telling me that my vote doesn’t count and some secret forces will steal the election, no matter how many of us vote against Kamala and how many of us volunteer to watch the vote counting process.

    * Didn’t you read Gramsci in the USSR? It would be quite ironic if you didn’t because your leaders sure used people like him to sow discord in our countries. Gramsci’s theories were a semi-scientific approach to social processes much more effective than conspiracies, that require too many moving parts acting in unison. As he pointed out, the way to make an ideology dominant in a society is to place its adherents at the critical places that control the narratives and the rest follows by itself: academia, education, the media, the arts,… It’s a well tested method used through generations by the leftists that works wonders. Leaving perhaps some religious people aside, progressives are much more focused and organized than rightists and this type of processes acquire a life of of its own. If you don’t look and sound in, you are not going to be elected as a students’ representative or a teachers union leader and eventually everybody in the places that matter end up having the same sort of ideas. Things that look like conspiracies tend to have much more prosaic explanations. It was all invented a long time ago, even if now the Commies have turned into woke globalists.

    • Thanks: Torna atrás
    • Replies: @A123
    @Mikel


    the reality is that 4 more years of a Biden-like regime (Kamala is if anything worse) is going to accelerate the decline considerably, not only with the demographic issue but also with the woke agenda, foreign wars, risk of nuclear war and out of control debt.
     
    If you actually believe that, why have you spent so much time opposing MAGA? For example:

    • Lying about Trump's record.
    • Failing to understand that the Senate forced picks onto his 1st term.
    • Refusing to build bridges to MAGA after inferior, establishment DeSantis lost.
    • Embracing the race reparations candidate RFKjr.

    There's no contradiction in recognizing that; 2020 was stolen, and; A steal in 2024 can be prevented.
    ___

    Overwhelming naivety claiming "cheating is impossible" is serious part of the problem. No one can follow your declaration that only "day of election" issues matter, everything else must be abandoned. Those who are serious about MAGA winning grasp that key factors include:

    • Work hardening the system long before election day. This has been done over the last 4 years, though some locales have been more successful than others.
    • Good "day of election" monitoring
    • Rapid "day after election" identification of tight races and inexplicable anomalies
    • A well prepared and staffed response team of lawyers to descend on districts where the process is obviously failing.

    The election does not end when your ProtectTheVote.com cadre leaves the scene. It is not over until the counting, and alas judicial actions, deliver a final result.

    PEACE 😇
    , @Bashibuzuk
    @Mikel


    I think you know we part ways when it comes to grand conspiracy theories.*

    […]

    To be sure, I think that the Brazilianization of the US is already baked in. Nobody’s going to prevent that, it’s not realistic to have such an expectation. The changes I have seen in a decade in a state that was officially listed as ~90% white in the census when I came here are too big to think that this is reversible. You go out anywhere and it feels like it’s down to 50% or so right now.

    […]

    * Didn’t you read Gramsci in the USSR? It would be quite ironic if you didn’t because your leaders sure used people like him to sow discord in our countries. Gramsci’s theories were a semi-scientific approach to social processes much more effective than conspiracies, that require too many moving parts acting in unison. As he pointed out, the way to make an ideology dominant in a society is to place its adherents at the critical places that control the narratives and the rest follows by itself: academia, education, the media, the arts,… It’s a well tested method used through generations by the leftists that works wonders.
     
    I put it all together because it’s kind of related.



    Gramci was basically a Trotskyite who played an important role in the inception of the cultural marxism. Gramci was not promoted in USSR, and was actually not used by the USSR against the Western values either. But somebody else used his (and the Frankfurt School) ideas very successfully to covertly fight and oppress the Western masses. And those who used it as a tool of social engineering and oppression are the direct (in a social sense) inheritors of those Jewish NY bankers who financed Trotsky. That is why many NY Jewish Trotskyites later basically rebranded themselves Neocon.

    Italian fascism had been in power since 1922, and since about 1926 had snuffed out all legal labour-movement activity in Italy. Leonetti, Ravazzoli, and Tresso wanted to campaign for bourgeois-democratic demands against the fascist regime, and to challenge social democracy with united-front proposals rather than complacently declaring that social democracy was already dead and the future was single combat between the Communist Party and fascism.
    The three formed the "New Italian Opposition", the first Italian Trotskyist group.
    Since 1927 the Italian CP had been led by Palmiro Togliatti, an ingenious and supple-spined politician who remained in post and in line with Stalin until his death in 1964. Before Togliatti the main leader had been Antonio Gramsci.
    Since 8 November 1926 Gramsci had been isolated, in fascist jails; but his brother Gennaro could visit him. According to Antonio Gramsci's orthodox Communist Party biographer, Giuseppe Fiori: "Antonio... supported the attitude of Leonetti, Tresso, and Ravazzoli... and rejected the International's new policy".
    Gennaro went back to Togliatti, in exile, "and told him Nino [Antonio] was in complete agreement with him... Had I told a different story, not even Nino would have been saved from expulsion".
    Antonio Gramsci was cold-shouldered by the CP until he died in 1937, and taken up again as a hero only later, in the 1950s, when Togliatti could safely use him as a symbol of a "national" orientation without clashing with Moscow
     
    https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2019-04-11/gramsci-and-trotsky

    Gramsci’s ideas influenced the Frankfurt School, an approach to social theory and critical philosophy originally centered in the Institute for Social Research at Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany. Founded in 1923 by Carl Grünberg, a Marxist, the school was heavily influenced not just by Marx, but by Kant, Hegel, Freud, Max Weber, and others. Its work centered on the institutional conditions that allow social change. The school recognized that neither capitalism nor Marxism was adequate for the task, and so they attempted to do their analysis from a non-ideological perspective, at least in principle.

    We see Gramsci’s ideas reflected in the early years of the Frankfurt School in the work of Max Horkheimer. Horkheimer defined Critical Theory as social critique with the goal of sociological change based on a non-dogmatic approach to intellectual liberation. Horkheimer argues that the dominant ideology in bourgeois society misrepresents social relations in ways that lend legitimacy to capitalist exploitation of the masses. This was essentially the same argument Gramsci makes about cultural hegemony, and Horkheimer’s intellectual liberation parallels Gramsci’s ideas about developing a counter-hegemony.
     
    https://breakpoint.org/cultural-marxism-gramsci-and-the-frankfurt-school-emerging-worldviews-4/

    Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Walter Benjamin (and the philosophers and literary scholars around them like Günther Stern-Anders or Hans Mayer) were, like Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg, what Isaac Deutscher termed “non-Jewish Jews” or what Sigmund Freud termed (in characterizing himself) “godless Jews.” All of them were “outsiders,” and all of them were persecuted as socialists and Jews, expelled from their countries and in danger of being killed. Belonging to the Jewish minorities of Russia or Germany, their sensitivity to social inequality and injustice was highly developed, and they were looking for a way out of the labyrinth of the existing class society. Assimilation within the Christian imperial states had failed. The exodus to Palestine in order to construct a Jewish national state by expelling the Palestinians looked like another dead end. So they adopted the Marxian theory of the origin, structure, and potential transcending of capitalist society. In this specific society the relationship of man to nature, himself, and his fellow men is governed by constant calculations of the labor time necessary to produce and to reproduce goods and the normal capacity to work in form of commodities—in short, a market society. In this society the shrinking class of private owners of the means of production control the whole societal production. But increasing productivity of labor creates the possibility of a new society without classes and without a repressive state. Troubled by disastrous wars and crises the working class would eventually discover this hidden possibility, abolish private control over the economy, and transform society into a worldwide society of affluence and freedom.
     
    https://platypus1917.org/2015/10/12/trotsky-frankfurt-school/

    For the father-in-law of Max Warburg's brother, Felix, was Jacob Schiff, senior partner in Kuhn, Loeb & Co. (Paul and Felix Warburg, you will recall, were also partners in Kuhn, Loeb & Co. while Max ran the Rothschild-allied family bank of Frankfurt.) Jacob Schiff also helped finance Leon Trotsky. According to the New York Journal-American of February 3, 1949: "Today it is estimated by Jacob's grandson, John Schiff, that the old man sank about 20,000,000 dollars for the final triumph of Bolshevism in Russia." (See Chart 6)
     
    https://www.heritage-history.com/index.php?c=read&author=allen&book=none&story=bankroll

    Many of the early neoconservatives were members of “the family,” Murray Kempton’s apt designation for that disputatious tribe otherwise known as the New York intellectuals. They had come of age in the 1930s at the City College of New York (CCNY), a common destination for smart working-class Jews who otherwise might have attended Ivy League schools, where quotas prohibited much Jewish enrollment until after World War II.

    Gertrude Himmelfarb, Irving Kristol, and their milieu learned the art of polemics during years spent in the CCNY cafeteria’s celebrated Alcove No. 1, where young Trotskyists waged ideological warfare against the Communist students who occupied Alcove No. 2. During their flirtations with Trotskyism in the 1930s, when tussles with other radical students seemed like a matter of life and death, future neoconservatives developed habits of mind that never atrophied.
     
    https://jacobin.com/2015/04/neoconservatives-kristol-podhoretz-hartman-culture-war

    The Neocon are basically the Globalist financial elite’s pitbull dogs. Now, one must simply realize that the real threat to the Globalist financial elites might only come the global (mostly Western) middle class. This is typical Marxist class struggle stuff. The Globalist elites understand this perfectly well; as Bush the father had said in his New World Order speech: “we will not make the same mistakes”, and they therefore preventively weaken the global middle class. The two best ways of weakening the global middle class is the destruction of the nuclear family and mass immigration.

    Which brings to the “grand conspiracy theories” that this young Chinese Canadian lays out for his generation in a very straightforward way:

    https://youtu.be/N9nfiRIooiU?si=op2uOxmLvKIWYA4q

    This guy with his limited experience and education understood on his own what I had to read about for years to understand. Smart dude. There is hope for the young generation. I feel optimistic today.

    🙂

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mikel

  787. @Beckow
    @Bashibuzuk


    ...As my friends in Odessa told me in 2022 after the bombings started: “we waited for him in 2014 preparing flowers to greet him, but he arrived 8 years later with bombs”...I am not a fan
     
    Fandom is overrated. But look at the situation: can you imagine a massive Russian invasion in 2014? How would that work? The 8 years was bad enough (probably too long), but a country can't just preventively invade a neighbor.

    Russia always procrastinates. They prefer to sit back - until they don't. They lack the initiative and ambition of some of the Western elites and are the opposite of the Western made-up image: slow, stodgy, lazy, not into plotting, obsessed with own security, always looking for a way to avoid doing something.

    Odessa people were scared after Maidan and did very little (for a good reason) - why should Russia be more pro-Odessa people than the Odessans? They have the result of 30 years of uncontrolled Ukie madness...they sat back for too long.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Dmitry

    You don’t understand, Odessity who in 2014 were not just supporting Russia, but who in the Russian media were called “Russians”, are the same people who now are mostly Ukrainians with anti-Russian views.

    That doesn’t mean “Moscow should have invaded Odessa in 2014” or “Moscow was too slow”.

    The aggressive policy of Moscow on one side and Kiev on the other side, has accelerated a lot of the transition to a kind of more diverse postsoviet Ukrainian identity and created more unity from internal populations which had been more divided in 2014.

    If you look at videos of the Ukrainian army on social media, they are likely the same population which in 2014 in the Russian media, everyone was calling them “Russians”. It’s the “Russians in Ukraine” who are the core of the Ukrainian army, at least looking at their videos. Battalion “Azov”, nowadays seem mostly people from Eastern Ukraine.

    • Agree: AP, Mr. XYZ
    • Replies: @Beckow
    @Dmitry


    ...the same people who now are mostly Ukrainians with anti-Russian views.
     
    That's certainly the hope among Ukie boosters. But there is no way to know - you can't discern real views in the middle of a war, too emotional and dangerous. The long-term sympathies will only be clear after the war.

    We have seen it in the recent history: the West-obsessed committed minority of 15-20% with a full pro-Western mania, even hysteria. They forget all else, volunteer to sell-out, dream of visas and freebees, dump on their own nations and spin one-sided stories the West loves to hear (some even true)...

    Then the project doesn't work and they sober up. Western sponsors break their promises and carry out their threats. There are a few well-connected winners, but the restis nursing the loss - maybe with the 'great appliances' (that AP is hilarious, isn't he?) Many leave permanently not having any other choice psychologically - they committed too far. The rest go back to normal lives and grumble about the whole unfortunate thing - the deep-seated local identities reassert.

    Is that the case in Odessa? We simply don't know. This could be the exception and it's a real sea-shift in the long-term identity because of the bloody nature of the war. But identity is not skin deep, it is hard to discard -and the stories can by spun in so many different ways: who is more guilty and who won.

    The fact that nobody is volunteering to fight in Odessa an d they have to chase them in the streets and forests suggests that I am closer to the truth. We will see in the next few years.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Dmitry

  788. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    Twitter olympics is pretty lame if you ask me.

    The only NBC youtube olympics highlights which have interested me so far is tennis. I might be interested in swimming although I haven't noticed anything so far. Track and field is the big sport. I always am interested in who wins the men's decathlon. After Tokyo, this time I am going to pay attention to the men's 400m hurdles.

    I also want to see who wins women's 49kg weightlifting where Miss Romania is favored right behind China.

    I have no interest in who wins gymnastics although those people are amazing; if you need a judge to put up a number between 9.6 and 9.9 to figure out what happened that isn't really an interesting spectator sport. More like an exhibition.

    Was sad to see Daniil Medvedev lost yesterday. I still haven't seen any details about what happened--just the score.

    Replies: @songbird

    I might be interested in swimming although I haven’t noticed anything so far

    Might be oversimplifying as I don’t follow it closely, but I thought it was dominated by mutant, half-fish men. Phelps was like some creature out of The Shadow over Innsmouth. His proportions were all wrong, including his face and ears.

    [MORE]

    Only other thing I recall about Olympic swimming was one year, there was this female medalist – and I am not exaggerating – she looked to me like a sex maniac – like she had a look in her eye, that she could barely control herself and stop herself from bounding across the room to the nearest man. (And I really never say this sort of thing.). And coincidentally, seemingly proving the point, there was some revenge pics released of her. (I will withhold national identity out of respect.). It may be I heard the rumor first – but, believe me, if so, it fit the image uncannily.

    Her sociosexual number must have been astronomical.

  789. @Yahya
    @Mikel


    At your age your body can tolerate plenty of insults
     
    That’s precisely why I’m experimenting with various crazy dietary recommendations. So far it’s only resulted in some temporary acute stomach pain, nothing I can’t handle. But the trade-offs could be huge in the positive direction if they end up working. Vince Gironda claims that 36 raw eggs daily are equivalent to taking Dianabol synthetic steroids. I’m not even 20% convinced that that is true, but it’s still worth a try. And it’s a superior risk-reward proposition imo than outright taking anabolic steroids.

    I’m familiar with the RP channel. Israetel is smart and highly knowledgeable, but I realized that following bodybuilder common wisdom (“bro science”) is far superior than “following the science” in the field of strength training. Practically all the fundamentals of strength training were figured out by the silver era guys; modern exercise science is merely playing catch-up and confirming what they knew all along.

    The field of nutrition is just all over the place. I’m unsure who to trust, so I took the experimentation approach. I will try things out and see what works for me.

    @songbird and Mr. Hack


    I wonder if he has watched another anime movie.
     
    I have not watched any anime since Princess M. The genre does not appeal to me.

    My film consumption has been lackluster this year. I’ve just been passing time with action movies and the occasional artistic film thrown in. I’ve only watched four movies I would place in my personal cannon: Apocalypse Now, Loro, Barry Lyndon, and Four Brothers.

    Might do a review of them if I can muster some willpower.

    Replies: @songbird, @Mikel

    Practically all the fundamentals of strength training were figured out by the silver era guys; modern exercise science is merely playing catch-up and confirming what they knew all along.

    That’s possibly true with regards to the training itself. But when it comes to nutrition and supplementation, those guys had no clue what they were doing and some paid for it with their lives. A very good friend of mine in my 20s was a committed bodybuilder that achieved some success in competition but he followed an insane diet, like everyone did those days, of 5-7 meals of bland food every single day. Lean protein with plain rice, potatoes or pasta all year round and protein shakes that they had to take with them everywhere they went. If you read the experts today none of this is necessary at all. RFKjr, at age 70, may be the most muscular presidential candidate in history and he actually does intermittent fasting.

    Vince Gironda claims that 36 raw eggs daily are equivalent to taking Dianabol synthetic steroids.

    I’m not sure it’s less unhealthy though. Leaving sanitary considerations aside, the current consensus has shifted and dietary cholesterol doesn’t matter anymore but nobody has still put a dent in the guidelines on saturated fat and atherosclerosis. The actual mechanistic relationship seems to be quite well understood. 36 eggs have a ton of saturated fat. If I were you, I would do some blood tests to see how the lipid profile evolves with such a diet.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Mikel


    Leaving sanitary considerations aside
     
    Should be easy to get pasteurized eggs in Egypt.
  790. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Derer
    @Bashibuzuk


    “we waited for him in 2014 preparing flowers to greet him, but he arrived 8 years later with bombs”.
     
    On the other hand I think that those bombs would have been used in 2014 as well. The NATO was on an uncompromising roll to expand eastward. The Ukraine project was postponed by the Russian dangerous red lines.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    No. Ukraine had no army and no nationalist consensus back then. NATO was not ready to fight RF back then (they’re not now either). RF army could seize all Russian-speaking South-Eastern Ukraine, bring back Yanukovich and pretend all is well. They even had a signed letter from Yanukovich inviting them to do just that. They didn’t.

    Why ?

    Simple: Putin received the visit of the Swiss president, mandated by the Global West to warn that if he made a move, the Russian Klept assets would be seized everywhere in the West, Switzerland included. Putin was really shaking in his boots that day during the TV presser with Didier Burkhalter who was also the head of OSCE back then. Putin looked like a wimp. Burkhalter looked at him with the assured superiority of a White Western Chad looking at some Pigmy tribal chief.

    Russian nationalists were truly disgusted with Putin’s waggling, wobbling and wabbling. We should remember that it happened less than ten days after the pro-Russian militants got burned alive in Odessa…

    • Replies: @Derer
    @Bashibuzuk


    RF army could seize all Russian-speaking South-Eastern Ukraine, bring back Yanukovich and pretend all is well.
     
    It could've been done with Crimea annexation, but he would have lost the East Ukraine to NATO. He want the whole Ukraine in Russian sphere of influence - that is the epicentre of the difficult fight now.

    Although the Western warmongers were prepared since the NATO expansion to the east started. Hell, they organized the Yanukovich removal - not possible without preparation. The sanctions are a declaration of enemy status. Putin learned hard way, and the Russian public as well, not to trust the West bastards in anything. As a former KGB operator, he is not scared of some Swiss sissy.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    , @Mr. Hack
    @Bashibuzuk


    Putin received the visit of the Swiss president, mandated by the Global West to warn that if he made a move, the Russian Klept assets would be seized everywhere in the West, Switzerland included. Putin was really shaking in his boots that day
     
    Why didn't he continue shaking in his boots, when the collective West applied all sorts of sanctions and froze all sorts of Klept assets in the West as retribution for his brazen Ukrainian invasion? I can't imagine that the kleptocrats, having lost so much of their ill gotten gains, are happy with the results? Actually, I'm surprised that they haven't managed to take things back to a more lucrative and peaceful day to day environment, better for business and profits for all?

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  791. @Mikel
    @Bashibuzuk


    BTW, Mikel, I have always had a great respect for your opinions and the way you express them here on UR. We often agree on different subjects. And if we don’t, then I believe that we can disagree in a respectful and reasonable way and thoughtfully discuss our divergent perspectives.
     
    Yes, sorry if I came across too combative. I also respect you and value your contributions a lot, although I think you know we part ways when it comes to grand conspiracy theories.*

    I guess I shouldn't care too much. Caring about political matters too much often leads to disasters (like we see in Ukraine now). And most often it's stuff we have little influence on anyway so taking some distance is always a wise course of action. At the same time, it's difficult not to care about the country that has generously accepted you as one of its citizens and where you plan to spend the rest of your life. As I have often explained here, I have an advantage over native-born Americans in that I know Latin America very well and I definitely wouldn't like to see such a wonderful country as the US turn into one of those banana republics if it's possible to avoid it at all.

    To be sure, I think that the Brazilianization of the US is already baked in. Nobody's going to prevent that, it's not realistic to have such an expectation. The changes I have seen in a decade in a state that was officially listed as ~90% white in the census when I came here are too big to think that this is reversible. You go out anywhere and it feels like it's down to 50% or so right now. And quite frankly, I would myself oppose policies that implied cruelty or outright discrimination against people of color who are here legally.

    However, the reality is that 4 more years of a Biden-like regime (Kamala is if anything worse) is going to accelerate the decline considerably, not only with the demographic issue but also with the woke agenda, foreign wars, risk of nuclear war and out of control debt.

    Again, this is the REALITY in front of our noses if we let Kamala win. By contrast, the POSSIBILITY of obscure forces stealing the election, which allegedly makes voting useless is just a hypothetical threat with doubtful evidence behind. I doubt most of the people claiming that the 2020 elections were stolen have spent as much time as I did examining the evidence, that I found quite persuasive at the beginning. I have mentioned it here several times but I haven't managed to get anyone to explain to me the results of the Arizona audit if it's true, as Trump and his lawyers claimed, that it was one of the states where the election was stolen. According to them, some Democrat cabal committed the same fraud in Maricopa county as in the other swing state districts but when an audit forced by MAGA-aligned state congressmen recounted all the votes and examined all the voting machines with IT forensic experts, they actually found a few more legitimate votes for Biden. Feel free to be the first one to address this easily verifiable fact.

    So I hope you understand where I'm coming from when I lose my patience with people telling me that my vote doesn't count and some secret forces will steal the election, no matter how many of us vote against Kamala and how many of us volunteer to watch the vote counting process.

    * Didn't you read Gramsci in the USSR? It would be quite ironic if you didn't because your leaders sure used people like him to sow discord in our countries. Gramsci's theories were a semi-scientific approach to social processes much more effective than conspiracies, that require too many moving parts acting in unison. As he pointed out, the way to make an ideology dominant in a society is to place its adherents at the critical places that control the narratives and the rest follows by itself: academia, education, the media, the arts,... It's a well tested method used through generations by the leftists that works wonders. Leaving perhaps some religious people aside, progressives are much more focused and organized than rightists and this type of processes acquire a life of of its own. If you don't look and sound in, you are not going to be elected as a students' representative or a teachers union leader and eventually everybody in the places that matter end up having the same sort of ideas. Things that look like conspiracies tend to have much more prosaic explanations. It was all invented a long time ago, even if now the Commies have turned into woke globalists.

    Replies: @A123, @Bashibuzuk

    the reality is that 4 more years of a Biden-like regime (Kamala is if anything worse) is going to accelerate the decline considerably, not only with the demographic issue but also with the woke agenda, foreign wars, risk of nuclear war and out of control debt.

    If you actually believe that, why have you spent so much time opposing MAGA? For example:

    • Lying about Trump’s record.
    • Failing to understand that the Senate forced picks onto his 1st term.
    • Refusing to build bridges to MAGA after inferior, establishment DeSantis lost.
    • Embracing the race reparations candidate RFKjr.

    There’s no contradiction in recognizing that; 2020 was stolen, and; A steal in 2024 can be prevented.
    ___

    Overwhelming naivety claiming “cheating is impossible” is serious part of the problem. No one can follow your declaration that only “day of election” issues matter, everything else must be abandoned. Those who are serious about MAGA winning grasp that key factors include:

    • Work hardening the system long before election day. This has been done over the last 4 years, though some locales have been more successful than others.
    • Good “day of election” monitoring
    • Rapid “day after election” identification of tight races and inexplicable anomalies
    • A well prepared and staffed response team of lawyers to descend on districts where the process is obviously failing.

    The election does not end when your ProtectTheVote.com cadre leaves the scene. It is not over until the counting, and alas judicial actions, deliver a final result.

    PEACE 😇

  792. @LondonBob
    @Greasy William

    Kamala is there to save down ticket Democrats, Biden was leading them to oblivion.

    Replies: @Greasy William

    yeah. But apparently she has many believing that she can actually win the election. I don’t see it and I don’t think it’s even going to be close

    • Replies: @A123
    @Greasy William


    yeah. But apparently she has many believing that she can actually win the election. I don’t see it and I don’t think it’s even going to be close
     
    There is a large, short term bounce from the "Not Biden" effect. After the Veggie-In-Chief's debate debacle, no one should be surprised at this.

    As people get past "the moment" and look at her record, what positives can she push? Her record as Border Czar? She is burdened by her past. There is a reason (actually many reasons) why she obtained 1% in the 2016 DNC primaries.

    • Will there be a Trump-Harris debate?
    • Will she place CCP spy balloon accomplice Mark Kelly on her ticket?

    Inquiring minds want to know! 😉

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Greasy William

  793. Will eco the unpopular opinion that PP≠TF.

    [MORE]

    IMO, most alts can be linked within the first 10 comments, provided they are not exceedingly short. But I did not feel the linkage at that threshold in this case.

    Felt their emotional content was different. PP was sometimes very dry and didactic. Thulean was more emotional, and more given to humor and trolling.

    Their prose did not seem the same to me. This will sound funny because I don’t proofread my comments very well most of the time (incl. spelling and grammar), but I think this is possibly something only a native speaker would pick up on. It is almost something subconscious. I mean something relating to the text, as a whole. They seemed to me like two different foreigners.

    The opinions they seemed to share were common ones and most of vocab. The only really idiosyncratic word to me seemed to be “neo-Cohenist.”. Possibly explainable if TF was lurking and reading PP or they both browsed some other site.

    Most of all: I don’t think anyone has a good explanation for why the one would turn into the other. (Unless the thrill of promulgating a false identity 2x) But Torna made good arguments too about interests, knowledge, and adversary/friend relationships.

    I would like to see some machine-learning algorithm make a prediction based on their commenting history. (Feature request.). Or for one to return and reveal he was the other.

    • Agree: Torna atrás
  794. A123 says: • Website
    @Greasy William
    @LondonBob

    yeah. But apparently she has many believing that she can actually win the election. I don't see it and I don't think it's even going to be close

    Replies: @A123

    yeah. But apparently she has many believing that she can actually win the election. I don’t see it and I don’t think it’s even going to be close

    There is a large, short term bounce from the “Not Biden” effect. After the Veggie-In-Chief’s debate debacle, no one should be surprised at this.

    As people get past “the moment” and look at her record, what positives can she push? Her record as Border Czar? She is burdened by her past. There is a reason (actually many reasons) why she obtained 1% in the 2016 DNC primaries.

    • Will there be a Trump-Harris debate?
    • Will she place CCP spy balloon accomplice Mark Kelly on her ticket?

    Inquiring minds want to know! 😉

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @Greasy William
    @A123

    Nobody cares about policies, accomplishments or the border. People only care about the economy and "vibes". The economy sucks and is going to crash completely before election day and Kamala's vibes are shit.

    Trump by 3 points minimum

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @LondonBob

  795. @A123
    @Greasy William


    yeah. But apparently she has many believing that she can actually win the election. I don’t see it and I don’t think it’s even going to be close
     
    There is a large, short term bounce from the "Not Biden" effect. After the Veggie-In-Chief's debate debacle, no one should be surprised at this.

    As people get past "the moment" and look at her record, what positives can she push? Her record as Border Czar? She is burdened by her past. There is a reason (actually many reasons) why she obtained 1% in the 2016 DNC primaries.

    • Will there be a Trump-Harris debate?
    • Will she place CCP spy balloon accomplice Mark Kelly on her ticket?

    Inquiring minds want to know! 😉

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Greasy William

    Nobody cares about policies, accomplishments or the border. People only care about the economy and “vibes”. The economy sucks and is going to crash completely before election day and Kamala’s vibes are shit.

    Trump by 3 points minimum

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Greasy William


    Trump by 3 points minimum
     
    If the vote was honestly processed, he’d win by more than that. But he won’t because:



    https://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/1819062815690215752

    Replies: @A123, @Greasy William

    , @LondonBob
    @Greasy William

    US economy is starting to accelerate to the downside, markets are starting to rollover, always the last to do so. Hope everyone took my advice to load up on gold a few years ago.

    Replies: @Greasy William

  796. @Mikel
    @Yahya


    Practically all the fundamentals of strength training were figured out by the silver era guys; modern exercise science is merely playing catch-up and confirming what they knew all along.
     
    That's possibly true with regards to the training itself. But when it comes to nutrition and supplementation, those guys had no clue what they were doing and some paid for it with their lives. A very good friend of mine in my 20s was a committed bodybuilder that achieved some success in competition but he followed an insane diet, like everyone did those days, of 5-7 meals of bland food every single day. Lean protein with plain rice, potatoes or pasta all year round and protein shakes that they had to take with them everywhere they went. If you read the experts today none of this is necessary at all. RFKjr, at age 70, may be the most muscular presidential candidate in history and he actually does intermittent fasting.

    Vince Gironda claims that 36 raw eggs daily are equivalent to taking Dianabol synthetic steroids.
     
    I'm not sure it's less unhealthy though. Leaving sanitary considerations aside, the current consensus has shifted and dietary cholesterol doesn't matter anymore but nobody has still put a dent in the guidelines on saturated fat and atherosclerosis. The actual mechanistic relationship seems to be quite well understood. 36 eggs have a ton of saturated fat. If I were you, I would do some blood tests to see how the lipid profile evolves with such a diet.

    Replies: @songbird

    Leaving sanitary considerations aside

    Should be easy to get pasteurized eggs in Egypt.

  797. Bashibuzuk says:
    @AP
    @Bashibuzuk

    Such cases have been extremely rare (not enough to change the election results) and there is no evidence that they have a Democratic bias. In the case described above of the deceased Judith Presto, her husband who voted for her was a Republican.

    If I were inclined to believe in conspiracy theories, I would guess that pushing false ideas such as elections being determined by fake votes is a way to deflect from the real source of lack of fairness - the mass media almost all taking one side even to the point of censorship, and to discredit as crazy conspiracy theorists anyone who points out the real problem. And as a bonus, demoralise people into not voting.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Mr. XYZ

    Voting by noncitizens, including illegal aliens, is expressly prohibited by law.

    About a dozen jurisdictions now permit noncitizens, and even illegal aliens, to vote in local elections.

    In 2014, a study estimated that approximately 6.4 percent of noncitizens voted in the 2008 presidential election and that 2.2 percent voted in the 2010 midterm elections.

    The U.S. and the United Kingdom are the only democracies that do not have voter identification requirements.

    According to a 2018 survey, a large majority of Americans – including Republicans, independents, and Democrats – opposes voting by noncitizens and illegal aliens.

    https://www.fairus.org/issue/noncitizens-voting-violations-and-us-elections

    Undercover footage reported by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project from Muckracker.com reveals that 14% of illegal immigrants in a single apartment complex in Georgia admitted to being registered to vote. The video, taken by journalist Carlos Arellano, has over 21 million views as of this writing.

    […]

    If that same 14% is applied state-wide, that suggests that 47,000 of Georgia’s estimated 339,000 non-citizens are registered to vote in a state that Joe Biden ‘won’ by less than 12,000 votes in 2020.

    The Heritage Foundation were unable to find these individuals on GA voter rolls, making it “unclear exactly what information these individuals gave when registering to vote.”

    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/viral-video-reveals-14-illegal-immigrants-admit-being-registered-voters

    • Thanks: A123
    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Bashibuzuk

    Spread the word:

    Any non-citizen found voting in the Presidential election, attempting to vote in the Presidential election or illegally registered to vote will be deported immediately.

    "We're gonna need a bigger boat!"

    , @AP
    @Bashibuzuk


    Voting by noncitizens, including illegal aliens, is expressly prohibited by law.

    About a dozen jurisdictions now permit noncitizens, and even illegal aliens, to vote in local elections.

    In 2014, a study estimated that approximately 6.4 percent of noncitizens voted in the 2008 presidential election and that 2.2 percent voted in the 2010 midterm elections.
     
    This was debunked here:

    https://www.cato.org/blog/noncitizens-dont-illegally-vote-detectable-numbers


    (under "more")

    It's statistical error.

    More details:

    https://cces.gov.harvard.edu/news/perils-cherry-picking-low-frequency-events-large-sample-surveys

    And indeed:

    If that same 14% is applied state-wide, that suggests that 47,000 of Georgia’s estimated 339,000 non-citizens are registered to vote in a state that Joe Biden ‘won’ by less than 12,000 votes in 2020.

    The Heritage Foundation were unable to find these individuals on GA voter rolls, making it “unclear exactly what information these individuals gave when registering to vote.”
     
    There was no information to be given, because 47,000 non-citizens didn't register to vote. It's funny that rather than reconsider the idea that the 47,000 are out there, the author complains that it's unclear under what name they registered.

    ::::::::::::::

    If there were real problems with physical voting that impacted the election, there would be more serious evidence than people voting for their living spouses, a rare case of a Republican voting for his dead spouse, and this example of statistics being misinterpreted. Given all the eyes on these elections, someone would have actually found real cases on a large scale of ineligible immigrants voting or coordinated numbers of dead people voting.



    One of the most frequent and less serious criticisms that comes across my desk is that immigration is bad because non-citizens vote illegally in such large numbers that sway elections. A new report by James D. Agresti, pushed by some news outlets, argues that the number of noncitizens who illegally voted in 2020 substantially increased Biden’s vote share but did not affect the outcome of the election. It has been illegal for non-citizens to vote for federal elected officials since 1996, so these noncitizen voters would all be breaking federal law. Is the Agresti paper reliable? Are large numbers of noncitizens voting in federal elections to such an extent that several states voted for Biden as a result?

    No, but to understand why you have to follow how the Agresti paper arrived at its conclusion. The Agresti report relies on a peer-reviewed academic paper by political scientists Jesse T. Richman, Gulshan A. Chattha, and David C. Earnest that was published in 2014 that estimates the rate at which noncitizens voted for president in 2008. Their paper relies upon responses to the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) for the 2008 election that found a substantial proportion of noncitizens voted in that year. The Agresti paper combined two figures from the Richman, Chattha, and Earnest paper to get their primary estimate that 15.8 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008. Agresti then apples that 15.8 percent rate to the non-citizen population in swing states in 2020 to reach their conclusion.

    The big problem, as explained in two succinct pieces, is that non-citizens voting illegally is a small subset of a small population of Americans measured in the CCES survey. In the CCES survey, as in any survey, a certain number of respondents click the wrong box. Thus, some respondents will incorrectly click that they are non-citizens by accident and that they voted. Or they will make any number of other errors. This general problem is called measurement error and it afflicts every survey. These errors are common in surveys, but if it surveys enough people and there isn’t a tragic flaw in design that causes large numbers of people to make the same error, then it doesn’t matter much for the final result.

    The problem is that the authors focused on a small number of non-citizens in a very large survey that likely accidentally said they were noncitizens who voted when they were really citizens who voted. The CCES survey asked about 20,000 people how they voted and about 19,500 of them said that they were U.S. citizens. Since the CCES is about federal elections, it oversamples citizens who can vote and under sample non-citizens who can’t vote. In fact, the number of reported non-citizens in the CCES survey who said they voted in a federal election is just about exactly the number who should have misidentified themselves as non-citizens in such a large survey:


    This problem arises because the survey was not designed to sample non-citizens, and the non-citizen category in the citizenship question is included for completeness and to identify those respondents who might be non-citizens. We expect that most of that group are in fact non-citizens (85 of 105), but the very low level of misclassification of citizens, who comprise 97.4 percent of the sample, means that we expect that 19 “non-citizen” respondents (16.5 percent of all reported non-citizens) are citizens who are misclassified. And, those misclassified people can readily account for the observed vote among those who reported that they are non-citizens [emphasis added].

    Survey misuse, misdesign, and misinterpretation is a serious problem that we all witnessed right after the 2020 election. This strain of research appears to be another instance of that. There are likely many problems with America’s voting system and there is no doubt that a non-zero number of non-citizens illegally voted, but there is no good evidence that noncitizens voted illegally in large enough numbers to actually shift the outcome of elections or even change the number of electoral votes.
    , @Mikel
    @Bashibuzuk


    Undercover footage reported by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project from Muckracker.com reveals that 14% of illegal immigrants in a single apartment complex in Georgia admitted to being registered to vote.
     
    It's nice to see that people on my side of the political divide are not like the normies and the lefties. They are highly critical of everything they read, even if it comes from their preferred sources and aligns with their preconceived ideas.

    I'm sure everybody here took the time to listen to the actual clips of the conversations this journalist had with these illegals, that I presume were cherry-picked for maximum effect. I wasn't particularly impressed, to be honest. I have spent years of my life surrounded by people similar to these Central Americans and I know them very well. If you asked these people if they have ever witnessed a miracle, I know for a fact that 75% or more would reply "yes". These are the people who take those IQ tests psychologists use to try to compare country averages and get results in the 60s or lower (Honduras 62, Guatemala 47!, Lynn/Becker).

    So the dialogues they posted went like this: "Have you already registered?" "Yes, I have".

    We must therefore all believe that they understood what the exact question was and gave a perfectly reliable answer. Of course, all of these people have a perfect understanding of the US electoral system, can immediately discern in which context the work "register" is being used and whatever they chose to answer is as truthful as the time on my watch lol.

    So, exactly as you would expect (I could have told them from the beginning), when the Heritage Foundation guys went to verify if any of these 14% in ONE apartment complex in Georgia had actually registered to vote, they couldn't find any. It was just part of the magical realism they live in.

    But what does the Heritage Foundation conclude from all this? That they did register! How could these people possibly misunderstand the question or give a false answer? But they must have done it under some mysterious different name and address that nobody can now trace. 14% of all illegals in Georgia are registered to vote. It's been proven beyond doubt and now we all know what the reason will be if Kamala gets more votes than Trump in Georgia, because we are all so different from the normies...

    Replies: @QCIC

  798. @Bashibuzuk
    @Derer

    No. Ukraine had no army and no nationalist consensus back then. NATO was not ready to fight RF back then (they’re not now either). RF army could seize all Russian-speaking South-Eastern Ukraine, bring back Yanukovich and pretend all is well. They even had a signed letter from Yanukovich inviting them to do just that. They didn’t.

    Why ?

    Simple: Putin received the visit of the Swiss president, mandated by the Global West to warn that if he made a move, the Russian Klept assets would be seized everywhere in the West, Switzerland included. Putin was really shaking in his boots that day during the TV presser with Didier Burkhalter who was also the head of OSCE back then. Putin looked like a wimp. Burkhalter looked at him with the assured superiority of a White Western Chad looking at some Pigmy tribal chief.

    https://youtu.be/WJGIa-rbGXk?si=hTza74RNXljrTi28

    https://pp.vk.me/c627930/v627930666/3e94c/lH9FxkzZmvA.jpg

    Russian nationalists were truly disgusted with Putin’s waggling, wobbling and wabbling. We should remember that it happened less than ten days after the pro-Russian militants got burned alive in Odessa…

    Replies: @Derer, @Mr. Hack

    RF army could seize all Russian-speaking South-Eastern Ukraine, bring back Yanukovich and pretend all is well.

    It could’ve been done with Crimea annexation, but he would have lost the East Ukraine to NATO. He want the whole Ukraine in Russian sphere of influence – that is the epicentre of the difficult fight now.

    Although the Western warmongers were prepared since the NATO expansion to the east started. Hell, they organized the Yanukovich removal – not possible without preparation. The sanctions are a declaration of enemy status. Putin learned hard way, and the Russian public as well, not to trust the West bastards in anything. As a former KGB operator, he is not scared of some Swiss sissy.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Derer


    Hell, they organized the Yanukovich removal – not possible without preparation. The sanctions are a declaration of enemy status. Putin learned hard way, and the Russian public as well, not to trust the West bastards in anything. As a former KGB operator, he is not scared of some Swiss sissy.
     
    There have been persistent rumours that he has been a BND double agent since 1988. It would explain how he managed to climb the ladder of power so rapidly.

    And abut the Yanikovich removal, Yanukovich fled to RF and gave a signed letter asking for military assistance. Putin refused to overtly intervene, even in Crimea, where he pretended that the “Green Men” were not RF army.
  799. @Greasy William
    @A123

    Nobody cares about policies, accomplishments or the border. People only care about the economy and "vibes". The economy sucks and is going to crash completely before election day and Kamala's vibes are shit.

    Trump by 3 points minimum

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @LondonBob

    Trump by 3 points minimum

    If the vote was honestly processed, he’d win by more than that. But he won’t because:

    [MORE]

    • Replies: @A123
    @Bashibuzuk

    I think you missed my recent post (1). Polls from the Fake Stream Media, including the Economist, are intentionally incorrect.

    Fortunately, trust in corporate media is at an all time low.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-255/#comment-6691752

    , @Greasy William
    @Bashibuzuk

    please don't make me break out the charts again

  800. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Derer
    @Bashibuzuk


    RF army could seize all Russian-speaking South-Eastern Ukraine, bring back Yanukovich and pretend all is well.
     
    It could've been done with Crimea annexation, but he would have lost the East Ukraine to NATO. He want the whole Ukraine in Russian sphere of influence - that is the epicentre of the difficult fight now.

    Although the Western warmongers were prepared since the NATO expansion to the east started. Hell, they organized the Yanukovich removal - not possible without preparation. The sanctions are a declaration of enemy status. Putin learned hard way, and the Russian public as well, not to trust the West bastards in anything. As a former KGB operator, he is not scared of some Swiss sissy.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    Hell, they organized the Yanukovich removal – not possible without preparation. The sanctions are a declaration of enemy status. Putin learned hard way, and the Russian public as well, not to trust the West bastards in anything. As a former KGB operator, he is not scared of some Swiss sissy.

    There have been persistent rumours that he has been a BND double agent since 1988. It would explain how he managed to climb the ladder of power so rapidly.

    And abut the Yanikovich removal, Yanukovich fled to RF and gave a signed letter asking for military assistance. Putin refused to overtly intervene, even in Crimea, where he pretended that the “Green Men” were not RF army.

  801. @Bashibuzuk
    @Greasy William


    Trump by 3 points minimum
     
    If the vote was honestly processed, he’d win by more than that. But he won’t because:



    https://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/1819062815690215752

    Replies: @A123, @Greasy William

    I think you missed my recent post (1). Polls from the Fake Stream Media, including the Economist, are intentionally incorrect.

    Fortunately, trust in corporate media is at an all time low.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-255/#comment-6691752

  802. @Bashibuzuk
    @Greasy William


    Trump by 3 points minimum
     
    If the vote was honestly processed, he’d win by more than that. But he won’t because:



    https://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/1819062815690215752

    Replies: @A123, @Greasy William

    please don’t make me break out the charts again

  803. @Bashibuzuk
    @AP


    Voting by noncitizens, including illegal aliens, is expressly prohibited by law.


    About a dozen jurisdictions now permit noncitizens, and even illegal aliens, to vote in local elections.


    In 2014, a study estimated that approximately 6.4 percent of noncitizens voted in the 2008 presidential election and that 2.2 percent voted in the 2010 midterm elections.


    The U.S. and the United Kingdom are the only democracies that do not have voter identification requirements.


    According to a 2018 survey, a large majority of Americans – including Republicans, independents, and Democrats – opposes voting by noncitizens and illegal aliens.
     
    https://www.fairus.org/issue/noncitizens-voting-violations-and-us-elections

    Undercover footage reported by the Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project from Muckracker.com reveals that 14% of illegal immigrants in a single apartment complex in Georgia admitted to being registered to vote. The video, taken by journalist Carlos Arellano, has over 21 million views as of this writing.

    […]

    If that same 14% is applied state-wide, that suggests that 47,000 of Georgia's estimated 339,000 non-citizens are registered to vote in a state that Joe Biden 'won' by less than 12,000 votes in 2020.

    The Heritage Foundation were unable to find these individuals on GA voter rolls, making it "unclear exactly what information these individuals gave when registering to vote."
     
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/viral-video-reveals-14-illegal-immigrants-admit-being-registered-voters

    Replies: @QCIC, @AP, @Mikel

    Spread the word:

    Any non-citizen found voting in the Presidential election, attempting to vote in the Presidential election or illegally registered to vote will be deported immediately.

    “We’re gonna need a bigger boat!”

  804. @Beckow

    It’s impossible to discern who “would” or “wouldn’t” vote.
     
    It is possible - especially after a massive 'registration' drive of new voters in an urban area. Not 100%, but definitely with a high accuracy.

    under duress...a large percentage of votes in any election are cast under this kind of personal circumstances.
     
    There is a huge difference between onsite duress limited by the individual, secret nature of voting - and filling out potentially thousands of ballots remotely an mailing them in. It is not the same, that's why historically people setup in-person voting.

    The fact that remote voting can work well - Utah or Stockholm 1955 - doesn't mean mail-in voting in atomized society in large messy cities can avoid fraud. Large or small fraud depending on how many votes are needed - in 2020 in many places 10-20k votes was all that was needed, out of millions.


    Mail-in votes are ballots returned by registered voters who received one and can only send that one back
     
    Ideally. But if they don't care and if the registration data is faulty others can use those ballots. It is not that hard in many precincts - no audit is possible, it is electronically scanned and too many pieces of paper are floating around.

    People who move are responsible for updating their registration and bipartisan election officials are supposed to remove the dead from the rolls.
     
    In today's high mobility world? How many do it? I recall seeing an audit of 'all registered' voters in one state (Georgia?) and it showed close to one million incorrect registration: people left the state, dead, wrong names. You base your argument on trusting data that is a mess. In Europe that is generally not possible with better systems to track people.

    I will concede that conscious false voting by residents or 'illegals' is unlikely. It is the abuse by insiders with access to the data that is hard to police.

    200 million votes in 2020 and the decision was based on around 100k in 5-6 states that mostly showed up as mail-ins in the middle of the night. That is 0.1% or less. It is possible but we will never know. Demonizing skeptics suggests that there is some bad conscience. Why do it?

    Finally, US regularly dismisses elections around the world that have better safe-guards, thousands of observers, functioning ID system, same-day onsite voting and no 'mail-ins'. Where results are tabulated in person and often on camera within hours and a recount is easy. They just did it in Venezuela. It is entirely possible that there is cheating in some of those elections (the central election count cam always be manipulated), but why ignore any issues at home?

    You seem stuck in the ideological "we are just better, so shut up!" bubble. Think about it a little instead of dismissing others.

    Replies: @A123, @Mikel, @Mikel

    I’m thinking that perhaps it wasn’t such a great idea to discuss specifics. This feels like a debate on Covid or the keto diet. People who have made their minds on the subject are not really going to change it because you provide solid arguments. There’s always some space for doubt if you’re committed to finding it.

    Years ago (before 2020) the Republican leaders in Utah decided to implement what had already been tested in quite a few other countries: non-absentee mail-in vote. Not nearly as revolutionary as what countries like Canada and Estonia use (vote by internet) but still a novelty. And it worked great. If there’s something politicians of all stripes hate is losing elections so they made sure that the system was secure, which wasn’t difficult because absentee mail-vote had already been used since ages ago (1st World War if I’m not mistaken).

    Like everything in the US, details vary from state to state and sometimes even from county to county, but the mail-in voting system used here has several layers of security. The most important are that 1) Every registered voter receives one ballot with a barcode that serves two purposes: you can track it online to see where your ballot is and verify that it has been counted and election officials use it to verify that you send back the ballot that was sent to you specifically. 2) You must sign the ballot you return at the secured places where you can deposit it. If the election officials or the observers watching them have any doubt about your vote, they can also check if your signature matches the one on record for every registered voter. 3) Election officials are entitled to contact you though the phone/email that you provide along with your ballot in case your vote fails any of the verification methods above and they want to clarify the validity of your vote.

    I don’t know if voting mechanisms in the suspect precincts of the swing states are much less secure than all of this. If you can provide solid evidence that they are, I will concede that in a close enough election result-altering fraud is theoretically possible. But then you will also have to explain why Republicans are accepting to participate in those precincts and why they are not announcing right now that they can’t trust the results there. What I see them doing instead is calling for volunteers to watch the counting process. How rational is it to be more worried that the Democrats will steal the election from the Republicans than the Republicans themselves?

    • Replies: @A123
    @Mikel


    Like everything in the US, details vary from state to state and sometimes even from county to county, but the mail-in voting system used here has several layers of security
     
    This is the exact point several of us have been trying to make for some time.

    In Utah "the mail-in voting system used here" is not representative of the country. Details vary from state to state and sometimes even from county to county, but the mail-in voting system across the U.S. is quite poor.

    Your advocacy for anti-MAGA balloting methodology is both noted and unsurprising.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Mikel

  805. @Beckow

    It’s impossible to discern who “would” or “wouldn’t” vote.
     
    It is possible - especially after a massive 'registration' drive of new voters in an urban area. Not 100%, but definitely with a high accuracy.

    under duress...a large percentage of votes in any election are cast under this kind of personal circumstances.
     
    There is a huge difference between onsite duress limited by the individual, secret nature of voting - and filling out potentially thousands of ballots remotely an mailing them in. It is not the same, that's why historically people setup in-person voting.

    The fact that remote voting can work well - Utah or Stockholm 1955 - doesn't mean mail-in voting in atomized society in large messy cities can avoid fraud. Large or small fraud depending on how many votes are needed - in 2020 in many places 10-20k votes was all that was needed, out of millions.


    Mail-in votes are ballots returned by registered voters who received one and can only send that one back
     
    Ideally. But if they don't care and if the registration data is faulty others can use those ballots. It is not that hard in many precincts - no audit is possible, it is electronically scanned and too many pieces of paper are floating around.

    People who move are responsible for updating their registration and bipartisan election officials are supposed to remove the dead from the rolls.
     
    In today's high mobility world? How many do it? I recall seeing an audit of 'all registered' voters in one state (Georgia?) and it showed close to one million incorrect registration: people left the state, dead, wrong names. You base your argument on trusting data that is a mess. In Europe that is generally not possible with better systems to track people.

    I will concede that conscious false voting by residents or 'illegals' is unlikely. It is the abuse by insiders with access to the data that is hard to police.

    200 million votes in 2020 and the decision was based on around 100k in 5-6 states that mostly showed up as mail-ins in the middle of the night. That is 0.1% or less. It is possible but we will never know. Demonizing skeptics suggests that there is some bad conscience. Why do it?

    Finally, US regularly dismisses elections around the world that have better safe-guards, thousands of observers, functioning ID system, same-day onsite voting and no 'mail-ins'. Where results are tabulated in person and often on camera within hours and a recount is easy. They just did it in Venezuela. It is entirely possible that there is cheating in some of those elections (the central election count cam always be manipulated), but why ignore any issues at home?

    You seem stuck in the ideological "we are just better, so shut up!" bubble. Think about it a little instead of dismissing others.

    Replies: @A123, @Mikel, @Mikel

    US regularly dismisses elections around the world that have better safe-guards, thousands of observers, functioning ID system, same-day onsite voting and no ‘mail-ins’. Where results are tabulated in person and often on camera within hours and a recount is easy. They just did it in Venezuela.

    LOL.

    You sure have a penchant for defending lost causes. With Venezuela we can’t even debate seriously. It’s too comical to waste time on it. Here is the goon they selected to announce the results with allegedly 80% of the vote counted:

    https://www.infobae.com/venezuela/2024/07/30/el-burdo-calculo-matematico-en-la-informacion-oficial-que-aumenta-las-sospechas-sobre-la-manipulacion-de-la-eleccion-en-venezuela/

    They are so third-worldish that they officially gave mathematically impossible results. And they did it twice! The most damning one is when that idiot reads the exact numbers of votes and it turns out that if you add them and calculate the percentages over the total, you get 6 consecutive zeros in the decimal places. The probabilities of getting 6 zeros by chance are something like 1 in 10,000. And the probabilities of getting all 3 results (Maduro, Gonzalez, all the rest) with 6 consecutive zeros in the decimals are several million in one. The only possible explanation is that they had decided the percentages to one decimal in advance and then made up the actual numbers. Which is exactly what you would expect from people who have turned an oil-rich country into a hellhole where millions have had to escape abroad.

    My wife has several Venezuelan escapee friends. Next time we invite them home I’ll tell them that someone I know on the internet claims that the last election results are legit, for the laughs.

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @Mikel


    ...a penchant for defending lost causes.
     
    I like to defend the underdog - people usually lie more about the weaker side, they pile on. You do it too.

    ...mathematically impossible results
     
    Really? That's your 'proof'? Those numbers games are easily debunked - people round up numbers, make mistakes, ignore digits, etc...you can play that game everywhere. But it is entirely possible that there was fraud and adding of votes - but I also don't believe the Western sponsored "polls" (how would they do it in Venezuela?) or that the opposition won 70-80%. That's an over-reach - Maduro still has substantial support. If both sides lie why do you only focus on one?

    The same happened with Lukashenka, the opposition went too far in their claims and it was easily seen as two sides fighting by any means - how is one to choose? Usually the inside party (government) prevails.

    My point is that it looks weird that you defend the 100% accuracy in US and believe any far-fetched nonsense about 'enemy' countries. Do you work for the US State Department? Was the Russian election this year also fake? If so, who would have won?


    expect from people who have turned an oil-rich country into a hellhole
     
    Venezuela was a hell-hole for the majority of its population for years. But the Miami exiles - or previously the shoppers and the cute babes wouldn't tell you that. So it goes on, this time with different winners and losers.

    My wife has several Venezuelan escapee friends.
     
    No kidding, that's where you get your info? I am assuming she was previously a 'chavista' but now she knows...:) Never trust bitter exiles, they never tell the truth...

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @AP, @Mikel

  806. AP says:
    @Bashibuzuk
    @AP


    Voting by noncitizens, including illegal aliens, is expressly prohibited by law.


    About a dozen jurisdictions now permit noncitizens, and even illegal aliens, to vote in local elections.


    In 2014, a study estimated that approximately 6.4 percent of noncitizens voted in the 2008 presidential election and that 2.2 percent voted in the 2010 midterm elections.


    The U.S. and the United Kingdom are the only democracies that do not have voter identification requirements.


    According to a 2018 survey, a large majority of Americans – including Republicans, independents, and Democrats – opposes voting by noncitizens and illegal aliens.
     
    https://www.fairus.org/issue/noncitizens-voting-violations-and-us-elections

    Undercover footage reported by the Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project from Muckracker.com reveals that 14% of illegal immigrants in a single apartment complex in Georgia admitted to being registered to vote. The video, taken by journalist Carlos Arellano, has over 21 million views as of this writing.

    […]

    If that same 14% is applied state-wide, that suggests that 47,000 of Georgia's estimated 339,000 non-citizens are registered to vote in a state that Joe Biden 'won' by less than 12,000 votes in 2020.

    The Heritage Foundation were unable to find these individuals on GA voter rolls, making it "unclear exactly what information these individuals gave when registering to vote."
     
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/viral-video-reveals-14-illegal-immigrants-admit-being-registered-voters

    Replies: @QCIC, @AP, @Mikel

    Voting by noncitizens, including illegal aliens, is expressly prohibited by law.

    About a dozen jurisdictions now permit noncitizens, and even illegal aliens, to vote in local elections.

    In 2014, a study estimated that approximately 6.4 percent of noncitizens voted in the 2008 presidential election and that 2.2 percent voted in the 2010 midterm elections.

    This was debunked here:

    https://www.cato.org/blog/noncitizens-dont-illegally-vote-detectable-numbers

    (under “more”)

    It’s statistical error.

    More details:

    https://cces.gov.harvard.edu/news/perils-cherry-picking-low-frequency-events-large-sample-surveys

    And indeed:

    If that same 14% is applied state-wide, that suggests that 47,000 of Georgia’s estimated 339,000 non-citizens are registered to vote in a state that Joe Biden ‘won’ by less than 12,000 votes in 2020.

    The Heritage Foundation were unable to find these individuals on GA voter rolls, making it “unclear exactly what information these individuals gave when registering to vote.”

    There was no information to be given, because 47,000 non-citizens didn’t register to vote. It’s funny that rather than reconsider the idea that the 47,000 are out there, the author complains that it’s unclear under what name they registered.

    ::::::::::::::

    If there were real problems with physical voting that impacted the election, there would be more serious evidence than people voting for their living spouses, a rare case of a Republican voting for his dead spouse, and this example of statistics being misinterpreted. Given all the eyes on these elections, someone would have actually found real cases on a large scale of ineligible immigrants voting or coordinated numbers of dead people voting.

    [MORE]

    One of the most frequent and less serious criticisms that comes across my desk is that immigration is bad because non-citizens vote illegally in such large numbers that sway elections. A new report by James D. Agresti, pushed by some news outlets, argues that the number of noncitizens who illegally voted in 2020 substantially increased Biden’s vote share but did not affect the outcome of the election. It has been illegal for non-citizens to vote for federal elected officials since 1996, so these noncitizen voters would all be breaking federal law. Is the Agresti paper reliable? Are large numbers of noncitizens voting in federal elections to such an extent that several states voted for Biden as a result?

    No, but to understand why you have to follow how the Agresti paper arrived at its conclusion. The Agresti report relies on a peer-reviewed academic paper by political scientists Jesse T. Richman, Gulshan A. Chattha, and David C. Earnest that was published in 2014 that estimates the rate at which noncitizens voted for president in 2008. Their paper relies upon responses to the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) for the 2008 election that found a substantial proportion of noncitizens voted in that year. The Agresti paper combined two figures from the Richman, Chattha, and Earnest paper to get their primary estimate that 15.8 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008. Agresti then apples that 15.8 percent rate to the non-citizen population in swing states in 2020 to reach their conclusion.

    The big problem, as explained in two succinct pieces, is that non-citizens voting illegally is a small subset of a small population of Americans measured in the CCES survey. In the CCES survey, as in any survey, a certain number of respondents click the wrong box. Thus, some respondents will incorrectly click that they are non-citizens by accident and that they voted. Or they will make any number of other errors. This general problem is called measurement error and it afflicts every survey. These errors are common in surveys, but if it surveys enough people and there isn’t a tragic flaw in design that causes large numbers of people to make the same error, then it doesn’t matter much for the final result.

    The problem is that the authors focused on a small number of non-citizens in a very large survey that likely accidentally said they were noncitizens who voted when they were really citizens who voted. The CCES survey asked about 20,000 people how they voted and about 19,500 of them said that they were U.S. citizens. Since the CCES is about federal elections, it oversamples citizens who can vote and under sample non-citizens who can’t vote. In fact, the number of reported non-citizens in the CCES survey who said they voted in a federal election is just about exactly the number who should have misidentified themselves as non-citizens in such a large survey:

    This problem arises because the survey was not designed to sample non-citizens, and the non-citizen category in the citizenship question is included for completeness and to identify those respondents who might be non-citizens. We expect that most of that group are in fact non-citizens (85 of 105), but the very low level of misclassification of citizens, who comprise 97.4 percent of the sample, means that we expect that 19 “non-citizen” respondents (16.5 percent of all reported non-citizens) are citizens who are misclassified. And, those misclassified people can readily account for the observed vote among those who reported that they are non-citizens [emphasis added].

    Survey misuse, misdesign, and misinterpretation is a serious problem that we all witnessed right after the 2020 election. This strain of research appears to be another instance of that. There are likely many problems with America’s voting system and there is no doubt that a non-zero number of non-citizens illegally voted, but there is no good evidence that noncitizens voted illegally in large enough numbers to actually shift the outcome of elections or even change the number of electoral votes.

    • Agree: Mr. XYZ
  807. AP says:
    @Sean
    @AP

    Withdrawing from Ukrainian territory that they already occupy would be an unbearable humiliation for Russia. And the rest of the world would see it that way too. China would be appalled and conclude that Russia would always fold and is therefor not a useful ally. Withdrawing from Ukraine would give the Chinese ideas about how they could intimidate Russia because it had ceased to be a serious country.


    The point of these weapons is not to prevent loss in war (otherwise the USA would have nuked its way to victory in Korea and Vietnam, USSR in Afghanistan). It is to prevent conquest by another country.
     
    Thermonuclear weapons d0 not come cheap and it is unrealistic to think that superpowers have then just to deter a conventional attack, or nuclear one. There is not a single nuclear armed country in the world that says its nuclear weapons would only be used in the case of its territory being invade or nuked Brezhnev was determined that Russia would never have to back down again like it did in the Cuba crisis. America threatened use of nuclear weapon to end the Korean hostilities and it was also considered an option at Khe Sanh if the Americans were to begin losing.

    Replies: @AP

    Sean,

    You have not addressed the facts that other countries and other politicians within the USA with good intelligence on Russia want Ukraine to be given sufficient aid to defeat Russia. Are they all wrong and is the Biden administration right? Or rather, is the Biden administration simply following its pattern of being weak and timid (as in Afghanistan, and against Iran). Which is more likely?

    Withdrawing from Ukrainian territory that they already occupy would be an unbearable humiliation for Russia. And the rest of the world would see it that way too.

    USA withdrew from Afghanistan, that they once almost fully occupied. As they did from South Vietnam. Countries do lose wars. Russia can say they were up against the entire West, and if they are allowed to keep the 2022 lands with full recognition (plus maybe lands they have taken within Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts such Mariupol or Avdiivka) as a face-saving gesture they can call it a partial win.

    Thermonuclear weapons d0 not come cheap and it is unrealistic to think that superpowers have then just to deter a conventional attack, or nuclear one.

    And yet that is exactly how they have been used (or rather, not used) by every nuclear power since 1945.

  808. AP says:
    @ShortOnTime
    @AP

    Your own link acknowledges that the Transylvania Saxons chose to harbor Vlad III's political enemies and so chose to pick a fight with Vlad III. Also, the commercial monopoly of Saxon merchants from Transylvania was designed to exploit Wallachia's vulnerable lowland geographic position as a border territory with the Ottoman Empire and obviously Saxon merchants skillfully exploited Wallachian peasants. Vlad III checked the cunning schemes of Saxon merchants.

    Vlad III's main focus and lifelong struggle was war against the Ottoman Empire (for what they did to his family at a young age) and Saxon merchants never had any interest in supporting his struggle. Even Hungary (Janos Hunyadi and Matthias Corvinus) barely and only occasionally supported Vlad III in his uneven and epic struggle. Creating a consolidated and centralized autocracy capable of resisting the Ottomans, by any means necessary regardless of cruelty, was the only route that Vlad III as the leader of a small and weak nation had to stand a chance in the fight against the Ottomans.

    Vlad III's reputation has notoriety for the frequent use of impalement that he learnt from the Ottomans with things like burning villages being standard fare and somewhat unremarkable in the Medieval era. Burning and looting villages was standard fare by even the pettiest of feudal lords or lesser leaders of armed bands in the pre-modern world.

    It is Vlad III's existential struggle against the Ottoman Empire and the lack of Christian solidarity with him in that fight which truly stands out in hindsight. Vlad III's resistance and the otherwise relatively peripheral geographic position of Wallachia (compared to the high strategic relevance of Moldova and Serbia, or Bessarabia and Belgrade in particular) explains why Wallachia and Romania were never fully conquered by the Ottomans, but preserved some autonomy as a vassal principality (meaning Vlad III's resistance meant Romanians fared somewhat better for centuries overall compared to all their other Christian neighbors in the Balkans).

    Replies: @Beckow, @AP

    Your own link acknowledges that the Transylvania Saxons chose to harbor Vlad III’s political enemies and so chose to pick a fight with Vlad III.

    Sure. Vlad killed large numbers of Christians (including impaling many Christian women and children) for reasons.

    You complained of pedantry but then engage in it. Maybe Mr. Hack was wrong about banal trivialities such as that Protestants weren’t killed by Vlad because Huss and his followers were merely proto-Protestants or because the Transylvanian Saxons hadn’t converted yet, but the bottom line is that in addition to killing many of his main enemies, Muslims, Vlad also slaughtered very large numbers of European Christians.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @AP


    Maybe Mr. Hack was wrong about banal trivialities such as that Protestants weren’t killed by Vlad because Huss and his followers were merely proto-Protestants or because the Transylvanian Saxons hadn’t converted yet, but the bottom line is that in addition to killing many of his main enemies, Muslims, Vlad also slaughtered very large numbers of European Christians.
     
    I didn't fact check my original comment. I know that protestants did eventually settle in parts of modern Romania, "back in the day", and remember once reading about how indiscriminatory things got with old Vlad's propensity to impale anybody in sight. "proto-protestants" vs fully developed "protestants"?...time to move on guys? :-)
  809. Important societal issue 2024 to ????

    GOD/NATURE created:
    two genders for reproduction with remarkable split, the one
    with pichula and the other with concha for physical engagement

    HOMO SAPIENS reacted:
    By accepting these duties/pleasures with reflexivity

    GOD/NATURE created:
    many malfunctions like malaria or impotence etc.

    HOMO SAPIENS reacted:
    By eradicating malfunctions with join forces.

    GOD/NATURE created:
    A special malfunction – homosexuality

    HOMO SAPIENS reacted:
    By eradication, weaken by malfunction hiding in cocoon.This long approach
    finally backfired by opening cocoons that overwhelmed homo sapiens brain.

  810. A123 says: • Website
    @Mikel
    @Beckow

    I'm thinking that perhaps it wasn't such a great idea to discuss specifics. This feels like a debate on Covid or the keto diet. People who have made their minds on the subject are not really going to change it because you provide solid arguments. There's always some space for doubt if you're committed to finding it.

    Years ago (before 2020) the Republican leaders in Utah decided to implement what had already been tested in quite a few other countries: non-absentee mail-in vote. Not nearly as revolutionary as what countries like Canada and Estonia use (vote by internet) but still a novelty. And it worked great. If there's something politicians of all stripes hate is losing elections so they made sure that the system was secure, which wasn't difficult because absentee mail-vote had already been used since ages ago (1st World War if I'm not mistaken).

    Like everything in the US, details vary from state to state and sometimes even from county to county, but the mail-in voting system used here has several layers of security. The most important are that 1) Every registered voter receives one ballot with a barcode that serves two purposes: you can track it online to see where your ballot is and verify that it has been counted and election officials use it to verify that you send back the ballot that was sent to you specifically. 2) You must sign the ballot you return at the secured places where you can deposit it. If the election officials or the observers watching them have any doubt about your vote, they can also check if your signature matches the one on record for every registered voter. 3) Election officials are entitled to contact you though the phone/email that you provide along with your ballot in case your vote fails any of the verification methods above and they want to clarify the validity of your vote.

    I don't know if voting mechanisms in the suspect precincts of the swing states are much less secure than all of this. If you can provide solid evidence that they are, I will concede that in a close enough election result-altering fraud is theoretically possible. But then you will also have to explain why Republicans are accepting to participate in those precincts and why they are not announcing right now that they can't trust the results there. What I see them doing instead is calling for volunteers to watch the counting process. How rational is it to be more worried that the Democrats will steal the election from the Republicans than the Republicans themselves?

    Replies: @A123

    Like everything in the US, details vary from state to state and sometimes even from county to county, but the mail-in voting system used here has several layers of security

    This is the exact point several of us have been trying to make for some time.

    In Utah “the mail-in voting system used here” is not representative of the country. Details vary from state to state and sometimes even from county to county, but the mail-in voting system across the U.S. is quite poor.

    Your advocacy for anti-MAGA balloting methodology is both noted and unsurprising.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @Mikel
    @A123


    Details vary from state to state and sometimes even from county to county, but the mail-in voting system across the U.S. is quite poor.
     
    As I said, I have not checked what exact systems they use everywhere. Perhaps they are as bad as you say in Fulton or inner Detroit and Philadelphia. I'm sure that information is easy to find but please feel free to show me how exactly their systems are much less secure than what I have described if you really know for a fact that they are. Perhaps the Republican party is making people waste their time asking them to volunteer when they could instead run constant campaign ads explaining how rigged the system is in those districts.

    I am all ears, don't skip details please.

    Replies: @A123

  811. @AP
    @Bashibuzuk

    Such cases have been extremely rare (not enough to change the election results) and there is no evidence that they have a Democratic bias. In the case described above of the deceased Judith Presto, her husband who voted for her was a Republican.

    If I were inclined to believe in conspiracy theories, I would guess that pushing false ideas such as elections being determined by fake votes is a way to deflect from the real source of lack of fairness - the mass media almost all taking one side even to the point of censorship, and to discredit as crazy conspiracy theorists anyone who points out the real problem. And as a bonus, demoralise people into not voting.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Mr. XYZ

    The media took Bush’s side in 2000. Up to the point that there was even a Gore supporter filing a lawsuit against the media for this during the 2000 campaign.

  812. @QCIC
    @Sean

    According to Wikipedia, during the Cuban Missile Crisis the USSR had at least 20 R-16 ICBMs which could strike US cities with 3 megaton warheads. The earlier R-7 could reach the US by 1959. This was only 14 years after the USA nuked two Japanese cities for no good reason.

    Why does anyone still discuss the Cuban Missile Crisis without keeping the USA Jupiter missiles emplaced in Italy and Turkey front and center in the discussion? This oversight helps perpetuate a misleading Cold War narrative.

    I am anti-Communist, pro-USA and pro-Western civilization; getting the facts straight on epochal events is important.

    Replies: @Derer, @Sean

    I am anti-Communist, in fact I crossed the Iron Curtain close to the 007 circumstances, floating with friend in a river under the tree trunk to the other side, dodging the bullets. However, I became disillusioned with the American semi-democracy with wide spread hypocrisy. A candidate drops from the race not for the lack of ideas but for lack of money.

  813. @Greasy William
    @A123

    Nobody cares about policies, accomplishments or the border. People only care about the economy and "vibes". The economy sucks and is going to crash completely before election day and Kamala's vibes are shit.

    Trump by 3 points minimum

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @LondonBob

    US economy is starting to accelerate to the downside, markets are starting to rollover, always the last to do so. Hope everyone took my advice to load up on gold a few years ago.

    • Replies: @Greasy William
    @LondonBob

    I believe we've already been in recession since at least June. And we've been in a sort of quasi recession for the last two years. Today the SAHM rule has been triggered, which historically means that we are already in a recession. The Dow is down nearly 1000 as of the moment I'm writing this.

    Usually a collapse doesn't start until the Fed starts cutting rates. We'll see if there will be an emergency rate cute in August.

    I'm still calling a massive market crash on October 28.

  814. Maybe this is one of the more sophisticated new social media influencers of the far-right political movement in America, in the epoch of TikTok.

    She adds intelligent ideas for political marketing like saying Republicans will give you food. This is like “sausage” politics in Russia/Ukraine, where they incentivize people to support them by giving them food or talking about food.

    Part of an effect of the technology is allowing greater levels of the removal of context by the social media creators. She complains about China although her social media is making videos with the media presentation style of China’s TikTok. She uses as background of official neoclassical building and this makes Gomez seem like a politician, while being an unemployed person currently.

    But the clickbait is not necessarily”anti-system”.

    She could probably make marketing compatible to J.D. Vance or Vivek Ramaswamy.

    • Replies: @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    Maybe this is now one of the most talented new social media stars of the far-right political movement in America, in the epoch of TikTok.
     
    I was wondering if calling her far-right would be an exaggeration but the video where the message is:

    Guns, food and ammunition vs. Gay shit

    That sounds like it could be genuine far-right messaging.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    , @QCIC
    @Dmitry

    Face not beautiful.

    Yes, JD you are crazy.

    I agree on the policy points.

  815. @Dmitry
    Maybe this is one of the more sophisticated new social media influencers of the far-right political movement in America, in the epoch of TikTok.

    She adds intelligent ideas for political marketing like saying Republicans will give you food. This is like "sausage" politics in Russia/Ukraine, where they incentivize people to support them by giving them food or talking about food.

    https://twitter.com/ValentinaForSOS/status/1814359925981884465


    Part of an effect of the technology is allowing greater levels of the removal of context by the social media creators. She complains about China although her social media is making videos with the media presentation style of China's TikTok. She uses as background of official neoclassical building and this makes Gomez seem like a politician, while being an unemployed person currently.

    https://twitter.com/ValentinaForSOS/status/1817343842338656529


    But the clickbait is not necessarily"anti-system".

    She could probably make marketing compatible to J.D. Vance or Vivek Ramaswamy.

    https://twitter.com/ValentinaForSOS/status/1817208391795675537

    Replies: @Coconuts, @QCIC

    Maybe this is now one of the most talented new social media stars of the far-right political movement in America, in the epoch of TikTok.

    I was wondering if calling her far-right would be an exaggeration but the video where the message is:

    Guns, food and ammunition vs. Gay shit

    That sounds like it could be genuine far-right messaging.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Coconuts

    Her posts seem too far-right to be accepted in the Republican Party. Also, Elon Musk is ignoring them, even when they are some of the most popular on his platform.

    But they were an employee in Nestle, so they probably aren't so inadequate as they pretend.

    Unlike they pretend, their views might not be really anti-system and they could possible be compatible for marketing for politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene, J.D. Vance, Vivek Ramaswany.

    -

    It might not be relevant, but her family seem kind of "too normal" for usually anti-system far-right people. They are Olympic swimmers for Colombia.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_G%C3%B3mez_(swimmer)

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Coconuts

  816. @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    Maybe this is now one of the most talented new social media stars of the far-right political movement in America, in the epoch of TikTok.
     
    I was wondering if calling her far-right would be an exaggeration but the video where the message is:

    Guns, food and ammunition vs. Gay shit

    That sounds like it could be genuine far-right messaging.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    Her posts seem too far-right to be accepted in the Republican Party. Also, Elon Musk is ignoring them, even when they are some of the most popular on his platform.

    But they were an employee in Nestle, so they probably aren’t so inadequate as they pretend.

    Unlike they pretend, their views might not be really anti-system and they could possible be compatible for marketing for politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene, J.D. Vance, Vivek Ramaswany.

    It might not be relevant, but her family seem kind of “too normal” for usually anti-system far-right people. They are Olympic swimmers for Colombia.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_G%C3%B3mez_(swimmer)

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Dmitry

    Her political manager and brother is assistant for the Mayor of New Jersey, who is Democrat. All her family have MBAs so they should understand about management.

    So, I would guess she was doing clickbait to become successful, but accidentally they could have moved too far-right because that's popular. But if she becomes not compatible for Elon Musk or official Republicans.

    https://i.imgur.com/sOoHvTj.jpeg

    , @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    Her posts seem too far-right to be accepted in the Republican Party. Also, Elon Musk is ignoring them, even when they are some of the most popular on his platform.
     
    It's understandable. I think on the far-right there are different brands of authoritarian conservative, but also the genuine fascist element which is less predictable and controllable and can become a problem for conservatives.

    So, I would guess she was doing clickbait to become successful, but accidentally they could have moved too far-right because that’s popular.
     
    It seems likely. The Columbian background is interesting as well, because from what I can tell the radical right still has more of an organic cultural existence among the elites and middle classes in Latin countries, in a way that is less the case in Northern Europe.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  817. @Dmitry
    @Coconuts

    Her posts seem too far-right to be accepted in the Republican Party. Also, Elon Musk is ignoring them, even when they are some of the most popular on his platform.

    But they were an employee in Nestle, so they probably aren't so inadequate as they pretend.

    Unlike they pretend, their views might not be really anti-system and they could possible be compatible for marketing for politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene, J.D. Vance, Vivek Ramaswany.

    -

    It might not be relevant, but her family seem kind of "too normal" for usually anti-system far-right people. They are Olympic swimmers for Colombia.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_G%C3%B3mez_(swimmer)

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Coconuts

    Her political manager and brother is assistant for the Mayor of New Jersey, who is Democrat. All her family have MBAs so they should understand about management.

    So, I would guess she was doing clickbait to become successful, but accidentally they could have moved too far-right because that’s popular. But if she becomes not compatible for Elon Musk or official Republicans.

  818. @songbird
    @Coconuts


    The China angle is interesting, that they were interested in counter signaling that at the same time as the more traditional targets.
     
    Yes, I think more traditional-type leftists would have liked the Beijing ceremony. But the trigglypuff, gay race communists apparently did not.

    It will be interesting to see how much the regime reorients to seeing China as fascist, and what the Chinese response might be. For now, I think the focus is on Russia because it is seen as white, and they are still reluctant to step over that line because it could muddy the internal message. And both China's and Russia's messages seem to be third worldist, which kind of makes them allies of gay race communists, if in an indirect way.

    Replies: @Coconuts

    Yes, I think more traditional-type leftists would have liked the Beijing ceremony. But the trigglypuff, gay race communists apparently did not.

    I think they come from two differing strands of the left. I quoted something from the Wiki entry on Michel Foucault further up the thread but here is what it says about his attitude to the older French Communists :

    “In the early 1950s, while never adopting an orthodox Marxist viewpoint, Foucault had been a member of the French Communist Party, leaving the party after three years as he expressed disgust in the prejudice within its ranks against Jews and homosexuals.”

    For now, I think the focus is on Russia because it is seen as white, and they are still reluctant to step over that line because it could muddy the internal message. And both China’s and Russia’s messages seem to be third worldist, which kind of makes them allies of gay race communists, if in an indirect way.

    A couple of weeks ago I read a book about the Decolonisation ideology by a British IR professor, there was a chapter where he explained how adopting this ideology would make it very difficult to oppose China that seemed well argued.

    The mainstream approach to Russia’s third worldism seems to be to ignore it (since Russia is white coded this is easier). But I think you are right about it being very difficult to plausibly do the same thing in relation to China.

    I noticed BAP has started talking about Putler’s third worldism, in one of his recent episodes he was saying that while he has always liked Putin he finds the third worldism too boomer and it is alienating him. He says he suspects Russia may be secretly boosting George Galloway and Sarah Wagenknecht.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Coconuts


    I quoted something from the Wiki entry on Michel Foucault
     
    Interesting how it says his father was a surgeon and his mother's parents were involved in surgery too. (Gay germ?)

    Sometimes, one hears a debate about whether AIDS is justice or not. I have heard it myself IRL. (Though I fear technological advances pushed by the gay lobby have rendered it somewhat obsolete.). Anyway, since it did in Foucault, I believe it was God's justice.

    The mainstream approach to Russia’s third worldism seems to be to ignore it
     
    It seems to definitely have no effect on liberals in richer countries.

    In some travel videos, I have seen poor Africans seem to either support Russia or support peace. But I am not sure how well this manifests at the state level, where I think the motivations would probably be different. (If sometimes the same result might be reached.)

    I'd be very curious to know what is taught in African schools. My prediction would be that they play up anticolonialism in order to cement the legitimacy of the regime, as well minimize intertribal conflict.

    The Russians and Chinese, though they seem like they are horribly out of date, could potentially simply be playing to this reality.
  819. @Dmitry
    @Coconuts

    Her posts seem too far-right to be accepted in the Republican Party. Also, Elon Musk is ignoring them, even when they are some of the most popular on his platform.

    But they were an employee in Nestle, so they probably aren't so inadequate as they pretend.

    Unlike they pretend, their views might not be really anti-system and they could possible be compatible for marketing for politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene, J.D. Vance, Vivek Ramaswany.

    -

    It might not be relevant, but her family seem kind of "too normal" for usually anti-system far-right people. They are Olympic swimmers for Colombia.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_G%C3%B3mez_(swimmer)

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Coconuts

    Her posts seem too far-right to be accepted in the Republican Party. Also, Elon Musk is ignoring them, even when they are some of the most popular on his platform.

    It’s understandable. I think on the far-right there are different brands of authoritarian conservative, but also the genuine fascist element which is less predictable and controllable and can become a problem for conservatives.

    So, I would guess she was doing clickbait to become successful, but accidentally they could have moved too far-right because that’s popular.

    It seems likely. The Columbian background is interesting as well, because from what I can tell the radical right still has more of an organic cultural existence among the elites and middle classes in Latin countries, in a way that is less the case in Northern Europe.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Coconuts

    Her manager (brother) is aide for Democrat Mayor Steven Fulop.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Fulop They are research assistant for CNN's historian. Timothy Naftali.


    -
    I guess they were not organic, but they are successful in making clickbait, but not managing too well, as they could go too far to be compatible to Fox/Republican/Musk.

    In January/February, her videos on X only have 50-100 views.* By June, her videos have hundreds of thousands of views.

    In August, her video from yesterday already has almost 20 million views.
    https://twitter.com/ValentinaForSOS/status/1819116948862783995.

    The X platform says about her video new "Visibility Limited. This Post may violate X’s rules against Hateful Conduct."

    They are talented at producing popular clickbait videos. But there's trade-off between what is popular for clickbait and what is compatible for employers.

    The new Republican Party could possibly be moving to more socially liberal in the absolute sense. Paypal investors like Elon, Sacks and Thiel will still be a kind of liberals.**

    -

    *Most of the views on X are only impressions, not real views. So, these are overestimating compared to YouTube views.

    A high proportion of the views on these platforms are not from the USA and not even from the developed countries.

    **They all have some origin in the 1970s-1980s South African society, which was a kind of minoritarian democracy, with liberal economic and social features, including the free speech in principle although sometimes not reality (as there was often emergency provisions).

    While they wouldn't accept this, I wonder how many of their political views correlate to popular concepts in 1970s/1980s South Africa.

    For example, Musk is very pro-Israel. Some journalists write, this is related to his investments in Israel. But it could also be the mainstream view of a general Protestant society and culture of his youth?

    I don't know the topic, but I wonder if anyone here knows what the political views of educated upper class/upper middle class in 1980s South African culture was actually like?

    Replies: @Coconuts

  820. @QCIC
    @Sean

    According to Wikipedia, during the Cuban Missile Crisis the USSR had at least 20 R-16 ICBMs which could strike US cities with 3 megaton warheads. The earlier R-7 could reach the US by 1959. This was only 14 years after the USA nuked two Japanese cities for no good reason.

    Why does anyone still discuss the Cuban Missile Crisis without keeping the USA Jupiter missiles emplaced in Italy and Turkey front and center in the discussion? This oversight helps perpetuate a misleading Cold War narrative.

    I am anti-Communist, pro-USA and pro-Western civilization; getting the facts straight on epochal events is important.

    Replies: @Derer, @Sean

    The US had an overwhelming advantage at the time of the Cuban missile crisis. The policy of the US in the 50s and right into the 6os was if nuclear weapons were use by America it would be in a single all out ‘wargasm’ attack ignoring what the Soviets might do, but Brezhnev’s ICBM build up altered that thinking. The assured destruction had become truely mutual so M.A.D. was no longer tenable.

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Sean

    We cannot read the minds of the people involved. If only ten of the Russian R-16's made it through and worked properly (highly likely) as a "counter-value strike", that leaves a 3 or 6 megaton warhead each for Boston, Washington, NYC, Houston, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle and Philadelphia. In other words, no more USA. USSR is even worse, with such a dense population and resource concentration in Moscow, St. Pete, Kiev and a few other places. The complications of the nuclear triad, counterforce strikes, missile defense and germ warfare do not change the fact that all of this was evil and retarded.

    The USA dropping away from the USSR-USA WMD security framework after 1990 was even more evil. Everyone who made this happen should be burned at the stake.

    Replies: @Sean

  821. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Mikel
    @Bashibuzuk


    BTW, Mikel, I have always had a great respect for your opinions and the way you express them here on UR. We often agree on different subjects. And if we don’t, then I believe that we can disagree in a respectful and reasonable way and thoughtfully discuss our divergent perspectives.
     
    Yes, sorry if I came across too combative. I also respect you and value your contributions a lot, although I think you know we part ways when it comes to grand conspiracy theories.*

    I guess I shouldn't care too much. Caring about political matters too much often leads to disasters (like we see in Ukraine now). And most often it's stuff we have little influence on anyway so taking some distance is always a wise course of action. At the same time, it's difficult not to care about the country that has generously accepted you as one of its citizens and where you plan to spend the rest of your life. As I have often explained here, I have an advantage over native-born Americans in that I know Latin America very well and I definitely wouldn't like to see such a wonderful country as the US turn into one of those banana republics if it's possible to avoid it at all.

    To be sure, I think that the Brazilianization of the US is already baked in. Nobody's going to prevent that, it's not realistic to have such an expectation. The changes I have seen in a decade in a state that was officially listed as ~90% white in the census when I came here are too big to think that this is reversible. You go out anywhere and it feels like it's down to 50% or so right now. And quite frankly, I would myself oppose policies that implied cruelty or outright discrimination against people of color who are here legally.

    However, the reality is that 4 more years of a Biden-like regime (Kamala is if anything worse) is going to accelerate the decline considerably, not only with the demographic issue but also with the woke agenda, foreign wars, risk of nuclear war and out of control debt.

    Again, this is the REALITY in front of our noses if we let Kamala win. By contrast, the POSSIBILITY of obscure forces stealing the election, which allegedly makes voting useless is just a hypothetical threat with doubtful evidence behind. I doubt most of the people claiming that the 2020 elections were stolen have spent as much time as I did examining the evidence, that I found quite persuasive at the beginning. I have mentioned it here several times but I haven't managed to get anyone to explain to me the results of the Arizona audit if it's true, as Trump and his lawyers claimed, that it was one of the states where the election was stolen. According to them, some Democrat cabal committed the same fraud in Maricopa county as in the other swing state districts but when an audit forced by MAGA-aligned state congressmen recounted all the votes and examined all the voting machines with IT forensic experts, they actually found a few more legitimate votes for Biden. Feel free to be the first one to address this easily verifiable fact.

    So I hope you understand where I'm coming from when I lose my patience with people telling me that my vote doesn't count and some secret forces will steal the election, no matter how many of us vote against Kamala and how many of us volunteer to watch the vote counting process.

    * Didn't you read Gramsci in the USSR? It would be quite ironic if you didn't because your leaders sure used people like him to sow discord in our countries. Gramsci's theories were a semi-scientific approach to social processes much more effective than conspiracies, that require too many moving parts acting in unison. As he pointed out, the way to make an ideology dominant in a society is to place its adherents at the critical places that control the narratives and the rest follows by itself: academia, education, the media, the arts,... It's a well tested method used through generations by the leftists that works wonders. Leaving perhaps some religious people aside, progressives are much more focused and organized than rightists and this type of processes acquire a life of of its own. If you don't look and sound in, you are not going to be elected as a students' representative or a teachers union leader and eventually everybody in the places that matter end up having the same sort of ideas. Things that look like conspiracies tend to have much more prosaic explanations. It was all invented a long time ago, even if now the Commies have turned into woke globalists.

    Replies: @A123, @Bashibuzuk

    I think you know we part ways when it comes to grand conspiracy theories.*

    […]

    To be sure, I think that the Brazilianization of the US is already baked in. Nobody’s going to prevent that, it’s not realistic to have such an expectation. The changes I have seen in a decade in a state that was officially listed as ~90% white in the census when I came here are too big to think that this is reversible. You go out anywhere and it feels like it’s down to 50% or so right now.

    […]

    * Didn’t you read Gramsci in the USSR? It would be quite ironic if you didn’t because your leaders sure used people like him to sow discord in our countries. Gramsci’s theories were a semi-scientific approach to social processes much more effective than conspiracies, that require too many moving parts acting in unison. As he pointed out, the way to make an ideology dominant in a society is to place its adherents at the critical places that control the narratives and the rest follows by itself: academia, education, the media, the arts,… It’s a well tested method used through generations by the leftists that works wonders.

    I put it all together because it’s kind of related.

    [MORE]

    Gramci was basically a Trotskyite who played an important role in the inception of the cultural marxism. Gramci was not promoted in USSR, and was actually not used by the USSR against the Western values either. But somebody else used his (and the Frankfurt School) ideas very successfully to covertly fight and oppress the Western masses. And those who used it as a tool of social engineering and oppression are the direct (in a social sense) inheritors of those Jewish NY bankers who financed Trotsky. That is why many NY Jewish Trotskyites later basically rebranded themselves Neocon.

    Italian fascism had been in power since 1922, and since about 1926 had snuffed out all legal labour-movement activity in Italy. Leonetti, Ravazzoli, and Tresso wanted to campaign for bourgeois-democratic demands against the fascist regime, and to challenge social democracy with united-front proposals rather than complacently declaring that social democracy was already dead and the future was single combat between the Communist Party and fascism.
    The three formed the “New Italian Opposition”, the first Italian Trotskyist group.
    Since 1927 the Italian CP had been led by Palmiro Togliatti, an ingenious and supple-spined politician who remained in post and in line with Stalin until his death in 1964. Before Togliatti the main leader had been Antonio Gramsci.
    Since 8 November 1926 Gramsci had been isolated, in fascist jails; but his brother Gennaro could visit him. According to Antonio Gramsci’s orthodox Communist Party biographer, Giuseppe Fiori: “Antonio… supported the attitude of Leonetti, Tresso, and Ravazzoli… and rejected the International’s new policy”.
    Gennaro went back to Togliatti, in exile, “and told him Nino [Antonio] was in complete agreement with him… Had I told a different story, not even Nino would have been saved from expulsion”.
    Antonio Gramsci was cold-shouldered by the CP until he died in 1937, and taken up again as a hero only later, in the 1950s, when Togliatti could safely use him as a symbol of a “national” orientation without clashing with Moscow

    https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2019-04-11/gramsci-and-trotsky

    Gramsci’s ideas influenced the Frankfurt School, an approach to social theory and critical philosophy originally centered in the Institute for Social Research at Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany. Founded in 1923 by Carl Grünberg, a Marxist, the school was heavily influenced not just by Marx, but by Kant, Hegel, Freud, Max Weber, and others. Its work centered on the institutional conditions that allow social change. The school recognized that neither capitalism nor Marxism was adequate for the task, and so they attempted to do their analysis from a non-ideological perspective, at least in principle.

    We see Gramsci’s ideas reflected in the early years of the Frankfurt School in the work of Max Horkheimer. Horkheimer defined Critical Theory as social critique with the goal of sociological change based on a non-dogmatic approach to intellectual liberation. Horkheimer argues that the dominant ideology in bourgeois society misrepresents social relations in ways that lend legitimacy to capitalist exploitation of the masses. This was essentially the same argument Gramsci makes about cultural hegemony, and Horkheimer’s intellectual liberation parallels Gramsci’s ideas about developing a counter-hegemony.

    https://breakpoint.org/cultural-marxism-gramsci-and-the-frankfurt-school-emerging-worldviews-4/

    Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Walter Benjamin (and the philosophers and literary scholars around them like Günther Stern-Anders or Hans Mayer) were, like Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg, what Isaac Deutscher termed “non-Jewish Jews” or what Sigmund Freud termed (in characterizing himself) “godless Jews.” All of them were “outsiders,” and all of them were persecuted as socialists and Jews, expelled from their countries and in danger of being killed. Belonging to the Jewish minorities of Russia or Germany, their sensitivity to social inequality and injustice was highly developed, and they were looking for a way out of the labyrinth of the existing class society. Assimilation within the Christian imperial states had failed. The exodus to Palestine in order to construct a Jewish national state by expelling the Palestinians looked like another dead end. So they adopted the Marxian theory of the origin, structure, and potential transcending of capitalist society. In this specific society the relationship of man to nature, himself, and his fellow men is governed by constant calculations of the labor time necessary to produce and to reproduce goods and the normal capacity to work in form of commodities—in short, a market society. In this society the shrinking class of private owners of the means of production control the whole societal production. But increasing productivity of labor creates the possibility of a new society without classes and without a repressive state. Troubled by disastrous wars and crises the working class would eventually discover this hidden possibility, abolish private control over the economy, and transform society into a worldwide society of affluence and freedom.

    https://platypus1917.org/2015/10/12/trotsky-frankfurt-school/

    For the father-in-law of Max Warburg’s brother, Felix, was Jacob Schiff, senior partner in Kuhn, Loeb & Co. (Paul and Felix Warburg, you will recall, were also partners in Kuhn, Loeb & Co. while Max ran the Rothschild-allied family bank of Frankfurt.) Jacob Schiff also helped finance Leon Trotsky. According to the New York Journal-American of February 3, 1949: “Today it is estimated by Jacob’s grandson, John Schiff, that the old man sank about 20,000,000 dollars for the final triumph of Bolshevism in Russia.” (See Chart 6)

    https://www.heritage-history.com/index.php?c=read&author=allen&book=none&story=bankroll

    Many of the early neoconservatives were members of “the family,” Murray Kempton’s apt designation for that disputatious tribe otherwise known as the New York intellectuals. They had come of age in the 1930s at the City College of New York (CCNY), a common destination for smart working-class Jews who otherwise might have attended Ivy League schools, where quotas prohibited much Jewish enrollment until after World War II.

    Gertrude Himmelfarb, Irving Kristol, and their milieu learned the art of polemics during years spent in the CCNY cafeteria’s celebrated Alcove No. 1, where young Trotskyists waged ideological warfare against the Communist students who occupied Alcove No. 2. During their flirtations with Trotskyism in the 1930s, when tussles with other radical students seemed like a matter of life and death, future neoconservatives developed habits of mind that never atrophied.

    https://jacobin.com/2015/04/neoconservatives-kristol-podhoretz-hartman-culture-war

    The Neocon are basically the Globalist financial elite’s pitbull dogs. Now, one must simply realize that the real threat to the Globalist financial elites might only come the global (mostly Western) middle class. This is typical Marxist class struggle stuff. The Globalist elites understand this perfectly well; as Bush the father had said in his New World Order speech: “we will not make the same mistakes”, and they therefore preventively weaken the global middle class. The two best ways of weakening the global middle class is the destruction of the nuclear family and mass immigration.

    Which brings to the “grand conspiracy theories” that this young Chinese Canadian lays out for his generation in a very straightforward way:

    This guy with his limited experience and education understood on his own what I had to read about for years to understand. Smart dude. There is hope for the young generation. I feel optimistic today.

    🙂

    • Thanks: Torna atrás, S1
    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Bashibuzuk


    Now, one must simply realize that the real threat to the Globalist financial elites might only come the global (mostly Western) middle class.
     
    No that's not it.

    The real threat to the Globalist financial elites is other Globalist financial elites. Presumably they will not keep being stupid all the way unto Armageddon. In which case they would take us all with them to the end of time for humans.

    So far so good if trickle down economics is working for you. It definitely ain't working for everybody. There doesn't seem to be anything to do about that.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    , @Mikel
    @Bashibuzuk


    Which brings to the “grand conspiracy theories” that this young Chinese Canadian lays out for his generation in a very straightforward way:
     
    OK, so I listened to the first 5 minutes of this guy's presentation and I got 9/11, The Hydra, Covid, JFKs assassination,...

    What can I say, Bashibuzuk? After the brainy texts you has posted right above I was expecting something... different. Don't you have anything lighter for novices like me?

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  822. AP says:
    @Beckow
    @ShortOnTime


    ...the lack of Christian solidarity with Wallachia...stands out in hindsight.
     
    It is beyond religion: European solidarity. The attempted destruction of the eastern Europe: Balkans, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, has been the leitmotif of the Euro-history. In almost every case the French, Germans, Anglos, Vatican, sided against the local populations. The pathetic 200-year babysitting of the effectively dead Ottomans Empire after it collapsed was part of that. English-French even went to war in the mid-19th century to keep the Ottomans going so they can murder more Balkan Christians.

    Today they are doing the same in Ukraine - encouraging its destruction so Russia is weakened. The Ukies are just the last throw-away population to use.

    It's hard to explain. A combination of the fear of Euro alternative that is not 'fully-Western', greed for resources, personal dislike of the Eastern Euros...plus the local traitors, people who wistfully dream of being what they are not, to be Atlantic using the latest term. (Where is that Vlad guy when we need him?)

    Replies: @AP

    It is beyond religion: European solidarity. The attempted destruction of the eastern Europe: Balkans, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, has been the leitmotif of the Euro-history. In almost every case the French, Germans, Anglos, Vatican, sided against the local populations

    You focus on threats from the West but ignore the equally brutal ones from the East. Muscovy/Russia, Ottoman Empire/Turkey, and even their little brother Hungary. Magyars came from Eurasia to the heart of Europe, enslaving and assimilating others (especially Slavs) along the way. Unlike the Avars who disappeared or the Bulgars who were assimilated, the Magyars retained their Eurasian language and identity, unnecessary intruders squatting in the heart of Europe, separating Slovenes and Croats from their northern brothers. Predictably, on the side of the Slav-killers – whether they be Germans or Muscovites. And they even have ridiculous pet lackeys among the Slavs – their Slovak servants who follow them.

    It’s hard to explain. A combination of the fear of Euro alternative that is not ‘fully-Western’, greed for resources, personal dislike of the Eastern Euros

    If forced to choose, rule from Vienna was easily preferable than rule from Moscow, Istanbul or Budapest. Berlin slightly so (Poles could compare Vienna, Moscow, and Berlin).

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @AP


    ...ignore the equally brutal ones from the East. Muscovy/Russia, Ottoman Empire/Turkey, and even their little brother Hungary.
     
    My point was that the West had endlessly supported the Ottomans in their murderous attacks: France always, Germans opportunistically, England enthusiastically in the last 150 years of the Ottoman collapse. Did you miss that?

    Magyars came 1100 years ago - it doesn't matter. Magyar DNA studies show they are 2-4% Asiatic (more in the puszta), the rest Germanic, Slav, Latins-Celts. The original Magyars were mostly destroyed by Tatars and Ottomans. It is like hallucinating about Huns in France (there are some) or Moors in Spain (there are a lot).

    Russia is Europe - we know you deny it, but you a moron.


    rule from Vienna was easily preferable than rule from Moscow
     
    Remote rule is always worse. Your idealization of Habsburgs is silly and uninformed. Stop watching those Hollywood flicks - how about that 'Sound of Music'? A total white-wash of the worst Nazi enthusiasts with historically retarded lies...but that's what they fed you, so you believe it.

    Replies: @AP

    , @Mr. XYZ
    @AP

    My impression is that the Galician Poles under Austria had it much better than the Posen Poles under Prussia, no? Prussia was notoriously Polonophobic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, unlike Austria.

    Replies: @AP

    , @Mr. XYZ
    @AP


    the Magyars retained their Eurasian language and identity, unnecessary intruders squatting in the heart of Europe,
     
    More like natives who LARP as intruders and adopt their culture, no? Since Magyars are less than 10% Asian by ancestry, no? Not very much.
  823. @Dmitry
    Maybe this is one of the more sophisticated new social media influencers of the far-right political movement in America, in the epoch of TikTok.

    She adds intelligent ideas for political marketing like saying Republicans will give you food. This is like "sausage" politics in Russia/Ukraine, where they incentivize people to support them by giving them food or talking about food.

    https://twitter.com/ValentinaForSOS/status/1814359925981884465


    Part of an effect of the technology is allowing greater levels of the removal of context by the social media creators. She complains about China although her social media is making videos with the media presentation style of China's TikTok. She uses as background of official neoclassical building and this makes Gomez seem like a politician, while being an unemployed person currently.

    https://twitter.com/ValentinaForSOS/status/1817343842338656529


    But the clickbait is not necessarily"anti-system".

    She could probably make marketing compatible to J.D. Vance or Vivek Ramaswamy.

    https://twitter.com/ValentinaForSOS/status/1817208391795675537

    Replies: @Coconuts, @QCIC

    Face not beautiful.

    Yes, JD you are crazy.

    I agree on the policy points.

  824. @Bashibuzuk
    @Derer

    No. Ukraine had no army and no nationalist consensus back then. NATO was not ready to fight RF back then (they’re not now either). RF army could seize all Russian-speaking South-Eastern Ukraine, bring back Yanukovich and pretend all is well. They even had a signed letter from Yanukovich inviting them to do just that. They didn’t.

    Why ?

    Simple: Putin received the visit of the Swiss president, mandated by the Global West to warn that if he made a move, the Russian Klept assets would be seized everywhere in the West, Switzerland included. Putin was really shaking in his boots that day during the TV presser with Didier Burkhalter who was also the head of OSCE back then. Putin looked like a wimp. Burkhalter looked at him with the assured superiority of a White Western Chad looking at some Pigmy tribal chief.

    https://youtu.be/WJGIa-rbGXk?si=hTza74RNXljrTi28

    https://pp.vk.me/c627930/v627930666/3e94c/lH9FxkzZmvA.jpg

    Russian nationalists were truly disgusted with Putin’s waggling, wobbling and wabbling. We should remember that it happened less than ten days after the pro-Russian militants got burned alive in Odessa…

    Replies: @Derer, @Mr. Hack

    Putin received the visit of the Swiss president, mandated by the Global West to warn that if he made a move, the Russian Klept assets would be seized everywhere in the West, Switzerland included. Putin was really shaking in his boots that day

    Why didn’t he continue shaking in his boots, when the collective West applied all sorts of sanctions and froze all sorts of Klept assets in the West as retribution for his brazen Ukrainian invasion? I can’t imagine that the kleptocrats, having lost so much of their ill gotten gains, are happy with the results? Actually, I’m surprised that they haven’t managed to take things back to a more lucrative and peaceful day to day environment, better for business and profits for all?

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Mr. Hack


    Why didn’t he continue shaking in his boots, when the collective West applied all sorts of sanctions and froze all sorts of Klept assets in the West as retribution for his brazen Ukrainian invasion?
     
    Because they had 8 years to adapt and move money around. After the invasion they got hundreds of billions of dollars seized but it would have been much worse in 2014. BTW, that’s an indirect proof of the fact that the RF Klept are not necessarily adversarial to the the Western Klept, they actually heavily invested in the West for nearly a generation, and the Western Klept (1%-ers) have also invested in RF during that time, and there were joint ventures developed. But the Klept world is a dog eat dog mob world where the real question is “who whom”. And the Western Klept being the top dog for a couple of generations was looking down on the RF Klept and wanted to boss them over. RF Klept want just to be treated as equals by the Western Klept. Putin and his circle are not into Empire building, but they want to be « respected in their hood ». It’s a turf war between two Klept cliques, the Western well established one and the Russian Noviop newcomers.

    Again, none has shown it better and in a more humorous manner than Pelevin in his Generation P novel, of which Victor Ginzburg made an excellent movie:

    https://youtu.be/r5BcWKcn84Y?si=5LM3F_GtCVlWUtHL

    Written nearly 30 years ago, still very much relevant today.

    BTW, the sequel to the Victor Ginzburg Generation P movie - Empire V (which reads as a close anagram to Vampire), and is a satire of the parasitic Globalist Elite by Pelevin, was filmed many years ago, but is yet to be released worldwide.

    https://youtu.be/6k4rdbhFOI8?si=282XcJZmfoYFYUKr

    English subtitles. The funniest sentence of the trailer is at the end, if one enjoys dark comedy… 🙂

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  825. @Bashibuzuk
    @Mikel


    I think you know we part ways when it comes to grand conspiracy theories.*

    […]

    To be sure, I think that the Brazilianization of the US is already baked in. Nobody’s going to prevent that, it’s not realistic to have such an expectation. The changes I have seen in a decade in a state that was officially listed as ~90% white in the census when I came here are too big to think that this is reversible. You go out anywhere and it feels like it’s down to 50% or so right now.

    […]

    * Didn’t you read Gramsci in the USSR? It would be quite ironic if you didn’t because your leaders sure used people like him to sow discord in our countries. Gramsci’s theories were a semi-scientific approach to social processes much more effective than conspiracies, that require too many moving parts acting in unison. As he pointed out, the way to make an ideology dominant in a society is to place its adherents at the critical places that control the narratives and the rest follows by itself: academia, education, the media, the arts,… It’s a well tested method used through generations by the leftists that works wonders.
     
    I put it all together because it’s kind of related.



    Gramci was basically a Trotskyite who played an important role in the inception of the cultural marxism. Gramci was not promoted in USSR, and was actually not used by the USSR against the Western values either. But somebody else used his (and the Frankfurt School) ideas very successfully to covertly fight and oppress the Western masses. And those who used it as a tool of social engineering and oppression are the direct (in a social sense) inheritors of those Jewish NY bankers who financed Trotsky. That is why many NY Jewish Trotskyites later basically rebranded themselves Neocon.

    Italian fascism had been in power since 1922, and since about 1926 had snuffed out all legal labour-movement activity in Italy. Leonetti, Ravazzoli, and Tresso wanted to campaign for bourgeois-democratic demands against the fascist regime, and to challenge social democracy with united-front proposals rather than complacently declaring that social democracy was already dead and the future was single combat between the Communist Party and fascism.
    The three formed the "New Italian Opposition", the first Italian Trotskyist group.
    Since 1927 the Italian CP had been led by Palmiro Togliatti, an ingenious and supple-spined politician who remained in post and in line with Stalin until his death in 1964. Before Togliatti the main leader had been Antonio Gramsci.
    Since 8 November 1926 Gramsci had been isolated, in fascist jails; but his brother Gennaro could visit him. According to Antonio Gramsci's orthodox Communist Party biographer, Giuseppe Fiori: "Antonio... supported the attitude of Leonetti, Tresso, and Ravazzoli... and rejected the International's new policy".
    Gennaro went back to Togliatti, in exile, "and told him Nino [Antonio] was in complete agreement with him... Had I told a different story, not even Nino would have been saved from expulsion".
    Antonio Gramsci was cold-shouldered by the CP until he died in 1937, and taken up again as a hero only later, in the 1950s, when Togliatti could safely use him as a symbol of a "national" orientation without clashing with Moscow
     
    https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2019-04-11/gramsci-and-trotsky

    Gramsci’s ideas influenced the Frankfurt School, an approach to social theory and critical philosophy originally centered in the Institute for Social Research at Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany. Founded in 1923 by Carl Grünberg, a Marxist, the school was heavily influenced not just by Marx, but by Kant, Hegel, Freud, Max Weber, and others. Its work centered on the institutional conditions that allow social change. The school recognized that neither capitalism nor Marxism was adequate for the task, and so they attempted to do their analysis from a non-ideological perspective, at least in principle.

    We see Gramsci’s ideas reflected in the early years of the Frankfurt School in the work of Max Horkheimer. Horkheimer defined Critical Theory as social critique with the goal of sociological change based on a non-dogmatic approach to intellectual liberation. Horkheimer argues that the dominant ideology in bourgeois society misrepresents social relations in ways that lend legitimacy to capitalist exploitation of the masses. This was essentially the same argument Gramsci makes about cultural hegemony, and Horkheimer’s intellectual liberation parallels Gramsci’s ideas about developing a counter-hegemony.
     
    https://breakpoint.org/cultural-marxism-gramsci-and-the-frankfurt-school-emerging-worldviews-4/

    Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Walter Benjamin (and the philosophers and literary scholars around them like Günther Stern-Anders or Hans Mayer) were, like Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg, what Isaac Deutscher termed “non-Jewish Jews” or what Sigmund Freud termed (in characterizing himself) “godless Jews.” All of them were “outsiders,” and all of them were persecuted as socialists and Jews, expelled from their countries and in danger of being killed. Belonging to the Jewish minorities of Russia or Germany, their sensitivity to social inequality and injustice was highly developed, and they were looking for a way out of the labyrinth of the existing class society. Assimilation within the Christian imperial states had failed. The exodus to Palestine in order to construct a Jewish national state by expelling the Palestinians looked like another dead end. So they adopted the Marxian theory of the origin, structure, and potential transcending of capitalist society. In this specific society the relationship of man to nature, himself, and his fellow men is governed by constant calculations of the labor time necessary to produce and to reproduce goods and the normal capacity to work in form of commodities—in short, a market society. In this society the shrinking class of private owners of the means of production control the whole societal production. But increasing productivity of labor creates the possibility of a new society without classes and without a repressive state. Troubled by disastrous wars and crises the working class would eventually discover this hidden possibility, abolish private control over the economy, and transform society into a worldwide society of affluence and freedom.
     
    https://platypus1917.org/2015/10/12/trotsky-frankfurt-school/

    For the father-in-law of Max Warburg's brother, Felix, was Jacob Schiff, senior partner in Kuhn, Loeb & Co. (Paul and Felix Warburg, you will recall, were also partners in Kuhn, Loeb & Co. while Max ran the Rothschild-allied family bank of Frankfurt.) Jacob Schiff also helped finance Leon Trotsky. According to the New York Journal-American of February 3, 1949: "Today it is estimated by Jacob's grandson, John Schiff, that the old man sank about 20,000,000 dollars for the final triumph of Bolshevism in Russia." (See Chart 6)
     
    https://www.heritage-history.com/index.php?c=read&author=allen&book=none&story=bankroll

    Many of the early neoconservatives were members of “the family,” Murray Kempton’s apt designation for that disputatious tribe otherwise known as the New York intellectuals. They had come of age in the 1930s at the City College of New York (CCNY), a common destination for smart working-class Jews who otherwise might have attended Ivy League schools, where quotas prohibited much Jewish enrollment until after World War II.

    Gertrude Himmelfarb, Irving Kristol, and their milieu learned the art of polemics during years spent in the CCNY cafeteria’s celebrated Alcove No. 1, where young Trotskyists waged ideological warfare against the Communist students who occupied Alcove No. 2. During their flirtations with Trotskyism in the 1930s, when tussles with other radical students seemed like a matter of life and death, future neoconservatives developed habits of mind that never atrophied.
     
    https://jacobin.com/2015/04/neoconservatives-kristol-podhoretz-hartman-culture-war

    The Neocon are basically the Globalist financial elite’s pitbull dogs. Now, one must simply realize that the real threat to the Globalist financial elites might only come the global (mostly Western) middle class. This is typical Marxist class struggle stuff. The Globalist elites understand this perfectly well; as Bush the father had said in his New World Order speech: “we will not make the same mistakes”, and they therefore preventively weaken the global middle class. The two best ways of weakening the global middle class is the destruction of the nuclear family and mass immigration.

    Which brings to the “grand conspiracy theories” that this young Chinese Canadian lays out for his generation in a very straightforward way:

    https://youtu.be/N9nfiRIooiU?si=op2uOxmLvKIWYA4q

    This guy with his limited experience and education understood on his own what I had to read about for years to understand. Smart dude. There is hope for the young generation. I feel optimistic today.

    🙂

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mikel

    Now, one must simply realize that the real threat to the Globalist financial elites might only come the global (mostly Western) middle class.

    No that’s not it.

    The real threat to the Globalist financial elites is other Globalist financial elites. Presumably they will not keep being stupid all the way unto Armageddon. In which case they would take us all with them to the end of time for humans.

    So far so good if trickle down economics is working for you. It definitely ain’t working for everybody. There doesn’t seem to be anything to do about that.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    No that’s not it.
     
    During the Feudal era, did all the barons always agree ?

    The answer is obviously a resounding No.

    Did the barons compete and fight each other?

    The answer is a resounding Yes.

    Despite all their internecine conflicts, did all these feudal lords more or less equally oppress their serfs ?

    😉

    Choose your tax-farm and your debt slavery wisely…

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

  826. @Sean
    @QCIC

    The US had an overwhelming advantage at the time of the Cuban missile crisis. The policy of the US in the 50s and right into the 6os was if nuclear weapons were use by America it would be in a single all out 'wargasm' attack ignoring what the Soviets might do, but Brezhnev's ICBM build up altered that thinking. The assured destruction had become truely mutual so M.A.D. was no longer tenable.

    Replies: @QCIC

    We cannot read the minds of the people involved. If only ten of the Russian R-16’s made it through and worked properly (highly likely) as a “counter-value strike”, that leaves a 3 or 6 megaton warhead each for Boston, Washington, NYC, Houston, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle and Philadelphia. In other words, no more USA. USSR is even worse, with such a dense population and resource concentration in Moscow, St. Pete, Kiev and a few other places. The complications of the nuclear triad, counterforce strikes, missile defense and germ warfare do not change the fact that all of this was evil and retarded.

    The USA dropping away from the USSR-USA WMD security framework after 1990 was even more evil. Everyone who made this happen should be burned at the stake.

    • Replies: @Sean
    @QCIC


    On normal duty the missiles were stored in hangars, and it took one to three hours to roll them out, fuel them, and reach launch readiness. The missiles could remain fueled for only a few days due to the corrosive nature of the nitric acid. After this, the fuel would have to be removed and the missile sent back to the factory for rebuilding. Even when fueled and in an alert posture, the Soviet missiles still needed to wait up to twenty minutes to spin up the gyroscopes in their guidance systems before launch was possible
     
    The Soviets did not have a counter deterrent until 1972.
  827. @Coconuts
    @songbird


    Yes, I think more traditional-type leftists would have liked the Beijing ceremony. But the trigglypuff, gay race communists apparently did not.
     
    I think they come from two differing strands of the left. I quoted something from the Wiki entry on Michel Foucault further up the thread but here is what it says about his attitude to the older French Communists :

    "In the early 1950s, while never adopting an orthodox Marxist viewpoint, Foucault had been a member of the French Communist Party, leaving the party after three years as he expressed disgust in the prejudice within its ranks against Jews and homosexuals."


    For now, I think the focus is on Russia because it is seen as white, and they are still reluctant to step over that line because it could muddy the internal message. And both China’s and Russia’s messages seem to be third worldist, which kind of makes them allies of gay race communists, if in an indirect way.
     
    A couple of weeks ago I read a book about the Decolonisation ideology by a British IR professor, there was a chapter where he explained how adopting this ideology would make it very difficult to oppose China that seemed well argued.

    The mainstream approach to Russia's third worldism seems to be to ignore it (since Russia is white coded this is easier). But I think you are right about it being very difficult to plausibly do the same thing in relation to China.

    I noticed BAP has started talking about Putler's third worldism, in one of his recent episodes he was saying that while he has always liked Putin he finds the third worldism too boomer and it is alienating him. He says he suspects Russia may be secretly boosting George Galloway and Sarah Wagenknecht.

    Replies: @songbird

    I quoted something from the Wiki entry on Michel Foucault

    Interesting how it says his father was a surgeon and his mother’s parents were involved in surgery too. (Gay germ?)

    Sometimes, one hears a debate about whether AIDS is justice or not. I have heard it myself IRL. (Though I fear technological advances pushed by the gay lobby have rendered it somewhat obsolete.). Anyway, since it did in Foucault, I believe it was God’s justice.

    [MORE]

    The mainstream approach to Russia’s third worldism seems to be to ignore it

    It seems to definitely have no effect on liberals in richer countries.

    In some travel videos, I have seen poor Africans seem to either support Russia or support peace. But I am not sure how well this manifests at the state level, where I think the motivations would probably be different. (If sometimes the same result might be reached.)

    I’d be very curious to know what is taught in African schools. My prediction would be that they play up anticolonialism in order to cement the legitimacy of the regime, as well minimize intertribal conflict.

    The Russians and Chinese, though they seem like they are horribly out of date, could potentially simply be playing to this reality.

  828. @AP
    @ShortOnTime


    Your own link acknowledges that the Transylvania Saxons chose to harbor Vlad III’s political enemies and so chose to pick a fight with Vlad III.
     
    Sure. Vlad killed large numbers of Christians (including impaling many Christian women and children) for reasons.

    You complained of pedantry but then engage in it. Maybe Mr. Hack was wrong about banal trivialities such as that Protestants weren't killed by Vlad because Huss and his followers were merely proto-Protestants or because the Transylvanian Saxons hadn't converted yet, but the bottom line is that in addition to killing many of his main enemies, Muslims, Vlad also slaughtered very large numbers of European Christians.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    Maybe Mr. Hack was wrong about banal trivialities such as that Protestants weren’t killed by Vlad because Huss and his followers were merely proto-Protestants or because the Transylvanian Saxons hadn’t converted yet, but the bottom line is that in addition to killing many of his main enemies, Muslims, Vlad also slaughtered very large numbers of European Christians.

    I didn’t fact check my original comment. I know that protestants did eventually settle in parts of modern Romania, “back in the day”, and remember once reading about how indiscriminatory things got with old Vlad’s propensity to impale anybody in sight. “proto-protestants” vs fully developed “protestants”?…time to move on guys? 🙂

  829. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Mr. Hack
    @Bashibuzuk


    Putin received the visit of the Swiss president, mandated by the Global West to warn that if he made a move, the Russian Klept assets would be seized everywhere in the West, Switzerland included. Putin was really shaking in his boots that day
     
    Why didn't he continue shaking in his boots, when the collective West applied all sorts of sanctions and froze all sorts of Klept assets in the West as retribution for his brazen Ukrainian invasion? I can't imagine that the kleptocrats, having lost so much of their ill gotten gains, are happy with the results? Actually, I'm surprised that they haven't managed to take things back to a more lucrative and peaceful day to day environment, better for business and profits for all?

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    Why didn’t he continue shaking in his boots, when the collective West applied all sorts of sanctions and froze all sorts of Klept assets in the West as retribution for his brazen Ukrainian invasion?

    Because they had 8 years to adapt and move money around. After the invasion they got hundreds of billions of dollars seized but it would have been much worse in 2014. BTW, that’s an indirect proof of the fact that the RF Klept are not necessarily adversarial to the the Western Klept, they actually heavily invested in the West for nearly a generation, and the Western Klept (1%-ers) have also invested in RF during that time, and there were joint ventures developed. But the Klept world is a dog eat dog mob world where the real question is “who whom”. And the Western Klept being the top dog for a couple of generations was looking down on the RF Klept and wanted to boss them over. RF Klept want just to be treated as equals by the Western Klept. Putin and his circle are not into Empire building, but they want to be « respected in their hood ». It’s a turf war between two Klept cliques, the Western well established one and the Russian Noviop newcomers.

    Again, none has shown it better and in a more humorous manner than Pelevin in his Generation P novel, of which Victor Ginzburg made an excellent movie:

    Written nearly 30 years ago, still very much relevant today.

    BTW, the sequel to the Victor Ginzburg Generation P movie – Empire V (which reads as a close anagram to Vampire), and is a satire of the parasitic Globalist Elite by Pelevin, was filmed many years ago, but is yet to be released worldwide.

    English subtitles. The funniest sentence of the trailer is at the end, if one enjoys dark comedy… 🙂

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Bashibuzuk


    Putin and his circle are not into Empire building, but they want to be « respected in their hood ». It’s a turf war between two Klept cliques, the Western well established one and the Russian Noviop newcomers.
     
    Yet, I think it's not inaccurate to paint Putler as an empire builder, as do so many of his moderna day analysts. He's on record stating that the loss of Ukraine was one of the greatest losses of the 20th century. His greatest Russian hero is Peter the Great, with whom he probably wants to have himself compared to favorably.

    Also, it's well known that the Ukrainian klepts, although not averse to dealing with the Russian mob on business deals, do not want them to win or take over there own turf franchises, and are vociferously averse to them poaching on their own territories. Some like Kolomoisky and Pinchuk have openly sided with the Ukrainian side, as has of course Poroshenko. Akhmetov remains an enigma, at least to me?...

  830. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Bashibuzuk


    Now, one must simply realize that the real threat to the Globalist financial elites might only come the global (mostly Western) middle class.
     
    No that's not it.

    The real threat to the Globalist financial elites is other Globalist financial elites. Presumably they will not keep being stupid all the way unto Armageddon. In which case they would take us all with them to the end of time for humans.

    So far so good if trickle down economics is working for you. It definitely ain't working for everybody. There doesn't seem to be anything to do about that.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    No that’s not it.

    During the Feudal era, did all the barons always agree ?

    The answer is obviously a resounding No.

    Did the barons compete and fight each other?

    The answer is a resounding Yes.

    Despite all their internecine conflicts, did all these feudal lords more or less equally oppress their serfs ?

    😉

    Choose your tax-farm and your debt slavery wisely…

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Bashibuzuk

    We could move to Galt's Gulch or to Ruritania and be our own feudal lords. Right?

    Have you ever been to Nome Alaska?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nome,_Alaska

    As far as I know they don't have any cannibals. Cannibal Eskimos are only characters in that anime porn for weirdos.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  831. @Dmitry
    @Beckow

    You don't understand, Odessity who in 2014 were not just supporting Russia, but who in the Russian media were called "Russians", are the same people who now are mostly Ukrainians with anti-Russian views.

    That doesn't mean "Moscow should have invaded Odessa in 2014" or "Moscow was too slow".

    The aggressive policy of Moscow on one side and Kiev on the other side, has accelerated a lot of the transition to a kind of more diverse postsoviet Ukrainian identity and created more unity from internal populations which had been more divided in 2014.

    If you look at videos of the Ukrainian army on social media, they are likely the same population which in 2014 in the Russian media, everyone was calling them "Russians". It's the "Russians in Ukraine" who are the core of the Ukrainian army, at least looking at their videos. Battalion "Azov", nowadays seem mostly people from Eastern Ukraine.

    Replies: @Beckow

    …the same people who now are mostly Ukrainians with anti-Russian views.

    That’s certainly the hope among Ukie boosters. But there is no way to know – you can’t discern real views in the middle of a war, too emotional and dangerous. The long-term sympathies will only be clear after the war.

    We have seen it in the recent history: the West-obsessed committed minority of 15-20% with a full pro-Western mania, even hysteria. They forget all else, volunteer to sell-out, dream of visas and freebees, dump on their own nations and spin one-sided stories the West loves to hear (some even true)…

    Then the project doesn’t work and they sober up. Western sponsors break their promises and carry out their threats. There are a few well-connected winners, but the restis nursing the loss – maybe with the ‘great appliances‘ (that AP is hilarious, isn’t he?) Many leave permanently not having any other choice psychologically – they committed too far. The rest go back to normal lives and grumble about the whole unfortunate thing – the deep-seated local identities reassert.

    Is that the case in Odessa? We simply don’t know. This could be the exception and it’s a real sea-shift in the long-term identity because of the bloody nature of the war. But identity is not skin deep, it is hard to discard -and the stories can by spun in so many different ways: who is more guilty and who won.

    The fact that nobody is volunteering to fight in Odessa an d they have to chase them in the streets and forests suggests that I am closer to the truth. We will see in the next few years.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Beckow


    Is that the case in Odessa? We simply don’t know.
     
    Been there in late 2018. My last conversation was on the way to the airport with the taxi driver, a man probably a few years older than me, when asked how does he feel about it all, he answered: “All I know is, it cannot continue like that. It has to end. And better a horrible end, than an endless horror”. It has been nearly 6 years ago, I guess the guy is still driving his taxi cab. There is no end in sight…

    Replies: @Beckow

    , @Dmitry
    @Beckow


    That’s certainly the hope among Ukie
     
    It's not "hope". It's reality if you watch the videos the Ukrainians are uploading, they are the "Russian-speaking population", just with some local culture and sense of humor. I remember in 2014, Moscow was supposed to "rescue" those "Russians".

    -

    The situation with Ukrainian nationalism changed in 2014. Before 2014, it has more atmosphere of redneck regionalism, directed a lot against the other Ukrainian citizens, who are suspected of "dual-loyalty". In 2014 at the latest, it becomes directed primarily against an external enemy, Moscow.

    It seems like the Ukrainian identity generally becomes more diverse and mainstream after 2014, as like the famous studies of social psychology, often populations could be becoming at least temporarily more united when they are orientated to an external enemy.

  832. @Bashibuzuk
    @AP


    Voting by noncitizens, including illegal aliens, is expressly prohibited by law.


    About a dozen jurisdictions now permit noncitizens, and even illegal aliens, to vote in local elections.


    In 2014, a study estimated that approximately 6.4 percent of noncitizens voted in the 2008 presidential election and that 2.2 percent voted in the 2010 midterm elections.


    The U.S. and the United Kingdom are the only democracies that do not have voter identification requirements.


    According to a 2018 survey, a large majority of Americans – including Republicans, independents, and Democrats – opposes voting by noncitizens and illegal aliens.
     
    https://www.fairus.org/issue/noncitizens-voting-violations-and-us-elections

    Undercover footage reported by the Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project from Muckracker.com reveals that 14% of illegal immigrants in a single apartment complex in Georgia admitted to being registered to vote. The video, taken by journalist Carlos Arellano, has over 21 million views as of this writing.

    […]

    If that same 14% is applied state-wide, that suggests that 47,000 of Georgia's estimated 339,000 non-citizens are registered to vote in a state that Joe Biden 'won' by less than 12,000 votes in 2020.

    The Heritage Foundation were unable to find these individuals on GA voter rolls, making it "unclear exactly what information these individuals gave when registering to vote."
     
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/viral-video-reveals-14-illegal-immigrants-admit-being-registered-voters

    Replies: @QCIC, @AP, @Mikel

    Undercover footage reported by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project from Muckracker.com reveals that 14% of illegal immigrants in a single apartment complex in Georgia admitted to being registered to vote.

    It’s nice to see that people on my side of the political divide are not like the normies and the lefties. They are highly critical of everything they read, even if it comes from their preferred sources and aligns with their preconceived ideas.

    I’m sure everybody here took the time to listen to the actual clips of the conversations this journalist had with these illegals, that I presume were cherry-picked for maximum effect. I wasn’t particularly impressed, to be honest. I have spent years of my life surrounded by people similar to these Central Americans and I know them very well. If you asked these people if they have ever witnessed a miracle, I know for a fact that 75% or more would reply “yes”. These are the people who take those IQ tests psychologists use to try to compare country averages and get results in the 60s or lower (Honduras 62, Guatemala 47!, Lynn/Becker).

    So the dialogues they posted went like this: “Have you already registered?” “Yes, I have”.

    We must therefore all believe that they understood what the exact question was and gave a perfectly reliable answer. Of course, all of these people have a perfect understanding of the US electoral system, can immediately discern in which context the work “register” is being used and whatever they chose to answer is as truthful as the time on my watch lol.

    So, exactly as you would expect (I could have told them from the beginning), when the Heritage Foundation guys went to verify if any of these 14% in ONE apartment complex in Georgia had actually registered to vote, they couldn’t find any. It was just part of the magical realism they live in.

    But what does the Heritage Foundation conclude from all this? That they did register! How could these people possibly misunderstand the question or give a false answer? But they must have done it under some mysterious different name and address that nobody can now trace. 14% of all illegals in Georgia are registered to vote. It’s been proven beyond doubt and now we all know what the reason will be if Kamala gets more votes than Trump in Georgia, because we are all so different from the normies…

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Mikel

    Yes, but we can see that bringing in the illegals is part of a long-term plan to change the demographics of the country. This is evident from the ongoing support for illegal immigration at the highest levels for decades. It is natural that NGO's would get many of these people to register to vote. We know there is a major incentive for the bogus votes, they admit to it and the downside is probably low, so quibbling over the number misses the point. This illegal/inappropriate registration is partly to get the votes, but also to create political leverage to change the system. It can also be used to claim the illegals want to be American citizens in good standing.

  833. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Beckow
    @Dmitry


    ...the same people who now are mostly Ukrainians with anti-Russian views.
     
    That's certainly the hope among Ukie boosters. But there is no way to know - you can't discern real views in the middle of a war, too emotional and dangerous. The long-term sympathies will only be clear after the war.

    We have seen it in the recent history: the West-obsessed committed minority of 15-20% with a full pro-Western mania, even hysteria. They forget all else, volunteer to sell-out, dream of visas and freebees, dump on their own nations and spin one-sided stories the West loves to hear (some even true)...

    Then the project doesn't work and they sober up. Western sponsors break their promises and carry out their threats. There are a few well-connected winners, but the restis nursing the loss - maybe with the 'great appliances' (that AP is hilarious, isn't he?) Many leave permanently not having any other choice psychologically - they committed too far. The rest go back to normal lives and grumble about the whole unfortunate thing - the deep-seated local identities reassert.

    Is that the case in Odessa? We simply don't know. This could be the exception and it's a real sea-shift in the long-term identity because of the bloody nature of the war. But identity is not skin deep, it is hard to discard -and the stories can by spun in so many different ways: who is more guilty and who won.

    The fact that nobody is volunteering to fight in Odessa an d they have to chase them in the streets and forests suggests that I am closer to the truth. We will see in the next few years.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Dmitry

    Is that the case in Odessa? We simply don’t know.

    Been there in late 2018. My last conversation was on the way to the airport with the taxi driver, a man probably a few years older than me, when asked how does he feel about it all, he answered: “All I know is, it cannot continue like that. It has to end. And better a horrible end, than an endless horror”. It has been nearly 6 years ago, I guess the guy is still driving his taxi cab. There is no end in sight…

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @Bashibuzuk


    Odessa taxi:All I know is, it cannot continue like that. It has to end. And better a horrible end, than an endless horror
     
    That suggests that he will take any decisive outcome. People tend to get tired of endless ambiguity and uncertainty. Any 'power' ending it will be welcomed.

    The reality is that political views-ideology always follow the actual situation people live in. We humans are made that way - we adapt. The ones who don't leave or don't make it, they are "dead-enders"...there are always plenty of them around and they are vocal. But they are not the society.

    But no matter what happens there will a residual memory of the 'heroic' war among all people in Ukraine. So they will have that to contend with for generations.

  834. @LondonBob
    @Greasy William

    US economy is starting to accelerate to the downside, markets are starting to rollover, always the last to do so. Hope everyone took my advice to load up on gold a few years ago.

    Replies: @Greasy William

    I believe we’ve already been in recession since at least June. And we’ve been in a sort of quasi recession for the last two years. Today the SAHM rule has been triggered, which historically means that we are already in a recession. The Dow is down nearly 1000 as of the moment I’m writing this.

    Usually a collapse doesn’t start until the Fed starts cutting rates. We’ll see if there will be an emergency rate cute in August.

    I’m still calling a massive market crash on October 28.

  835. @Bashibuzuk
    @Mikel


    I think you know we part ways when it comes to grand conspiracy theories.*

    […]

    To be sure, I think that the Brazilianization of the US is already baked in. Nobody’s going to prevent that, it’s not realistic to have such an expectation. The changes I have seen in a decade in a state that was officially listed as ~90% white in the census when I came here are too big to think that this is reversible. You go out anywhere and it feels like it’s down to 50% or so right now.

    […]

    * Didn’t you read Gramsci in the USSR? It would be quite ironic if you didn’t because your leaders sure used people like him to sow discord in our countries. Gramsci’s theories were a semi-scientific approach to social processes much more effective than conspiracies, that require too many moving parts acting in unison. As he pointed out, the way to make an ideology dominant in a society is to place its adherents at the critical places that control the narratives and the rest follows by itself: academia, education, the media, the arts,… It’s a well tested method used through generations by the leftists that works wonders.
     
    I put it all together because it’s kind of related.



    Gramci was basically a Trotskyite who played an important role in the inception of the cultural marxism. Gramci was not promoted in USSR, and was actually not used by the USSR against the Western values either. But somebody else used his (and the Frankfurt School) ideas very successfully to covertly fight and oppress the Western masses. And those who used it as a tool of social engineering and oppression are the direct (in a social sense) inheritors of those Jewish NY bankers who financed Trotsky. That is why many NY Jewish Trotskyites later basically rebranded themselves Neocon.

    Italian fascism had been in power since 1922, and since about 1926 had snuffed out all legal labour-movement activity in Italy. Leonetti, Ravazzoli, and Tresso wanted to campaign for bourgeois-democratic demands against the fascist regime, and to challenge social democracy with united-front proposals rather than complacently declaring that social democracy was already dead and the future was single combat between the Communist Party and fascism.
    The three formed the "New Italian Opposition", the first Italian Trotskyist group.
    Since 1927 the Italian CP had been led by Palmiro Togliatti, an ingenious and supple-spined politician who remained in post and in line with Stalin until his death in 1964. Before Togliatti the main leader had been Antonio Gramsci.
    Since 8 November 1926 Gramsci had been isolated, in fascist jails; but his brother Gennaro could visit him. According to Antonio Gramsci's orthodox Communist Party biographer, Giuseppe Fiori: "Antonio... supported the attitude of Leonetti, Tresso, and Ravazzoli... and rejected the International's new policy".
    Gennaro went back to Togliatti, in exile, "and told him Nino [Antonio] was in complete agreement with him... Had I told a different story, not even Nino would have been saved from expulsion".
    Antonio Gramsci was cold-shouldered by the CP until he died in 1937, and taken up again as a hero only later, in the 1950s, when Togliatti could safely use him as a symbol of a "national" orientation without clashing with Moscow
     
    https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2019-04-11/gramsci-and-trotsky

    Gramsci’s ideas influenced the Frankfurt School, an approach to social theory and critical philosophy originally centered in the Institute for Social Research at Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany. Founded in 1923 by Carl Grünberg, a Marxist, the school was heavily influenced not just by Marx, but by Kant, Hegel, Freud, Max Weber, and others. Its work centered on the institutional conditions that allow social change. The school recognized that neither capitalism nor Marxism was adequate for the task, and so they attempted to do their analysis from a non-ideological perspective, at least in principle.

    We see Gramsci’s ideas reflected in the early years of the Frankfurt School in the work of Max Horkheimer. Horkheimer defined Critical Theory as social critique with the goal of sociological change based on a non-dogmatic approach to intellectual liberation. Horkheimer argues that the dominant ideology in bourgeois society misrepresents social relations in ways that lend legitimacy to capitalist exploitation of the masses. This was essentially the same argument Gramsci makes about cultural hegemony, and Horkheimer’s intellectual liberation parallels Gramsci’s ideas about developing a counter-hegemony.
     
    https://breakpoint.org/cultural-marxism-gramsci-and-the-frankfurt-school-emerging-worldviews-4/

    Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Walter Benjamin (and the philosophers and literary scholars around them like Günther Stern-Anders or Hans Mayer) were, like Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg, what Isaac Deutscher termed “non-Jewish Jews” or what Sigmund Freud termed (in characterizing himself) “godless Jews.” All of them were “outsiders,” and all of them were persecuted as socialists and Jews, expelled from their countries and in danger of being killed. Belonging to the Jewish minorities of Russia or Germany, their sensitivity to social inequality and injustice was highly developed, and they were looking for a way out of the labyrinth of the existing class society. Assimilation within the Christian imperial states had failed. The exodus to Palestine in order to construct a Jewish national state by expelling the Palestinians looked like another dead end. So they adopted the Marxian theory of the origin, structure, and potential transcending of capitalist society. In this specific society the relationship of man to nature, himself, and his fellow men is governed by constant calculations of the labor time necessary to produce and to reproduce goods and the normal capacity to work in form of commodities—in short, a market society. In this society the shrinking class of private owners of the means of production control the whole societal production. But increasing productivity of labor creates the possibility of a new society without classes and without a repressive state. Troubled by disastrous wars and crises the working class would eventually discover this hidden possibility, abolish private control over the economy, and transform society into a worldwide society of affluence and freedom.
     
    https://platypus1917.org/2015/10/12/trotsky-frankfurt-school/

    For the father-in-law of Max Warburg's brother, Felix, was Jacob Schiff, senior partner in Kuhn, Loeb & Co. (Paul and Felix Warburg, you will recall, were also partners in Kuhn, Loeb & Co. while Max ran the Rothschild-allied family bank of Frankfurt.) Jacob Schiff also helped finance Leon Trotsky. According to the New York Journal-American of February 3, 1949: "Today it is estimated by Jacob's grandson, John Schiff, that the old man sank about 20,000,000 dollars for the final triumph of Bolshevism in Russia." (See Chart 6)
     
    https://www.heritage-history.com/index.php?c=read&author=allen&book=none&story=bankroll

    Many of the early neoconservatives were members of “the family,” Murray Kempton’s apt designation for that disputatious tribe otherwise known as the New York intellectuals. They had come of age in the 1930s at the City College of New York (CCNY), a common destination for smart working-class Jews who otherwise might have attended Ivy League schools, where quotas prohibited much Jewish enrollment until after World War II.

    Gertrude Himmelfarb, Irving Kristol, and their milieu learned the art of polemics during years spent in the CCNY cafeteria’s celebrated Alcove No. 1, where young Trotskyists waged ideological warfare against the Communist students who occupied Alcove No. 2. During their flirtations with Trotskyism in the 1930s, when tussles with other radical students seemed like a matter of life and death, future neoconservatives developed habits of mind that never atrophied.
     
    https://jacobin.com/2015/04/neoconservatives-kristol-podhoretz-hartman-culture-war

    The Neocon are basically the Globalist financial elite’s pitbull dogs. Now, one must simply realize that the real threat to the Globalist financial elites might only come the global (mostly Western) middle class. This is typical Marxist class struggle stuff. The Globalist elites understand this perfectly well; as Bush the father had said in his New World Order speech: “we will not make the same mistakes”, and they therefore preventively weaken the global middle class. The two best ways of weakening the global middle class is the destruction of the nuclear family and mass immigration.

    Which brings to the “grand conspiracy theories” that this young Chinese Canadian lays out for his generation in a very straightforward way:

    https://youtu.be/N9nfiRIooiU?si=op2uOxmLvKIWYA4q

    This guy with his limited experience and education understood on his own what I had to read about for years to understand. Smart dude. There is hope for the young generation. I feel optimistic today.

    🙂

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mikel

    Which brings to the “grand conspiracy theories” that this young Chinese Canadian lays out for his generation in a very straightforward way:

    OK, so I listened to the first 5 minutes of this guy’s presentation and I got 9/11, The Hydra, Covid, JFKs assassination,…

    What can I say, Bashibuzuk? After the brainy texts you has posted right above I was expecting something… different. Don’t you have anything lighter for novices like me?

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Mikel


    After the brainy texts you has posted right above I was expecting something… different.
     
    Why do you necessarily need it to be brainy ?

    https://youtu.be/yxmZ6VmvaLY?si=d4bCRfmJMOslbCFWL

    When the Narodniks went to propagandize the Russian peasants, they were usually not well received because they were too intellectual, educated, didn’t use the vocabulary of the countryside folks and so did not connect to their mentality. That Chinese dude is using exactly the right words to have an impact on the guys of his generation.

    What is important is that a not so educated kid listening to that Chinese dude gets to understand that the system is rigged, that developed countries core populations are dying out, and gets a sneak peek of why it is so. That’s all that matters.

    After that, a more brainy person might find relevant books to read (Anthony Sutton comes to mind), or start researching why it is really going that way and learn about the Calhoun’s mice utopia experiments. A really committed person would get into the structure of ownership of the major investment funds and TNCs and overall learn about the real “owners of the World”. Then lastly a truly committed thinker might want to see how far it is projecting into the past, how and when it all started. But first and foremost, kids must realize that they are getting screwed big time and that it doesn’t necessarily need to be that way.

    Truth is, both of us are getting closer to be called old farts Mikel, we’re not the future but the present and slowly fading into the past, our brainy readings and discussions didn’t prevent these kids from getting shafted and getting into a situation where many of them around the developed World are finding it harder to have a hope for a decent future that was more or less normal for anyone who exerted a decent effort in our generation.

    If one day they get full Red Khmer or ISIS against our and our parents generations, I wouldn’t even blame them. Would you blame them if they come and tell you in your face: “listen uncle, your belief in democracy allowed a parasitic elite to privatize the World, bankrupt the civilization and vacate us from the future.” ? I sure wouldn’t. We had all the information needed to prevent this from happening, we did little except perhaps voting in elections that don’t change much really.

    And some among us still keep voting in these Kabuki elections that really are just a distraction.

    Old habits die hard…

    🙂

    Replies: @Mikel

  836. @AP
    @Beckow


    It is beyond religion: European solidarity. The attempted destruction of the eastern Europe: Balkans, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, has been the leitmotif of the Euro-history. In almost every case the French, Germans, Anglos, Vatican, sided against the local populations
     
    You focus on threats from the West but ignore the equally brutal ones from the East. Muscovy/Russia, Ottoman Empire/Turkey, and even their little brother Hungary. Magyars came from Eurasia to the heart of Europe, enslaving and assimilating others (especially Slavs) along the way. Unlike the Avars who disappeared or the Bulgars who were assimilated, the Magyars retained their Eurasian language and identity, unnecessary intruders squatting in the heart of Europe, separating Slovenes and Croats from their northern brothers. Predictably, on the side of the Slav-killers - whether they be Germans or Muscovites. And they even have ridiculous pet lackeys among the Slavs - their Slovak servants who follow them.

    It’s hard to explain. A combination of the fear of Euro alternative that is not ‘fully-Western’, greed for resources, personal dislike of the Eastern Euros

     

    If forced to choose, rule from Vienna was easily preferable than rule from Moscow, Istanbul or Budapest. Berlin slightly so (Poles could compare Vienna, Moscow, and Berlin).

    Replies: @Beckow, @Mr. XYZ, @Mr. XYZ

    …ignore the equally brutal ones from the East. Muscovy/Russia, Ottoman Empire/Turkey, and even their little brother Hungary.

    My point was that the West had endlessly supported the Ottomans in their murderous attacks: France always, Germans opportunistically, England enthusiastically in the last 150 years of the Ottoman collapse. Did you miss that?

    Magyars came 1100 years ago – it doesn’t matter. Magyar DNA studies show they are 2-4% Asiatic (more in the puszta), the rest Germanic, Slav, Latins-Celts. The original Magyars were mostly destroyed by Tatars and Ottomans. It is like hallucinating about Huns in France (there are some) or Moors in Spain (there are a lot).

    Russia is Europe – we know you deny it, but you a moron.

    rule from Vienna was easily preferable than rule from Moscow

    Remote rule is always worse. Your idealization of Habsburgs is silly and uninformed. Stop watching those Hollywood flicks – how about that ‘Sound of Music’? A total white-wash of the worst Nazi enthusiasts with historically retarded lies…but that’s what they fed you, so you believe it.

    • Agree: ShortOnTime
    • Replies: @AP
    @Beckow


    Magyars came 1100 years ago – it doesn’t matter. Magyar DNA studies show they are 2-4% Asiatic (more in the puszta), the rest Germanic, Slav, Latins-Celts. The original Magyars were mostly destroyed by Tatars and Ottomans
     
    They retained the language and attitudes towards the Slavs whom they enslaved. They speak a Eurasian language.

    Russia is Europe – we know you deny it
     
    Much of Russia is in Europe. As are Kalmykia and Chechnya.

    Russians themselves usually deny they are Europeans. There’s a famous Russian poem about that. My Russian wife has never considered herself to be a European, despite having one Polish parent (or perhaps because - it involves less ignorance of Europe). But nevermind writers and anecdotes. Here is Levada:

    https://www.levada.ru/en/2021/03/22/russia-and-europe/

    29% of Russians consider Russia to be a European country, 64% – a non-European. Back in 2019, these numbers were 37% and 55%, respectively. Overall, since 2008 the number of those who believe that Russia is a European country has decreased by almost half: from 52% to 29%.

    So once, about half of Russians had considered theirs to be a European country but this has declined. With more familiarity with Europe.

    Russians consider themselves to be Eurasians, not Europeans. You are ignorant as usual. Did the socialist teachers at your inferior schools teach you that Russians are Europeans? Lol.

    rule from Vienna was easily preferable than rule from Moscow

    Remote rule is always worse

     

    Is remoteness your excuse? Krakow and Lviv are much further from Vienna than Slovakia from Budapest. Or Bulgaria from Istanbul. Whose rule was better?

    And Novgorod, destroyed by the Muscovites, wasn’t too far from Moscow.

    Answer the question: who had it better, those ruled from Vienna, Moscow, Budapest, or Istanbul?

    Replies: @Beckow, @Mr. XYZ

  837. @Bashibuzuk
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    No that’s not it.
     
    During the Feudal era, did all the barons always agree ?

    The answer is obviously a resounding No.

    Did the barons compete and fight each other?

    The answer is a resounding Yes.

    Despite all their internecine conflicts, did all these feudal lords more or less equally oppress their serfs ?

    😉

    Choose your tax-farm and your debt slavery wisely…

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    We could move to Galt’s Gulch or to Ruritania and be our own feudal lords. Right?

    Have you ever been to Nome Alaska?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nome,_Alaska

    As far as I know they don’t have any cannibals. Cannibal Eskimos are only characters in that anime porn for weirdos.

    • Agree: Bashibuzuk
    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Can we live a van life there and have nice fishing trips ?

    If the answer is yes, I’m in.

    🙂

  838. @Mikel
    @Beckow


    US regularly dismisses elections around the world that have better safe-guards, thousands of observers, functioning ID system, same-day onsite voting and no ‘mail-ins’. Where results are tabulated in person and often on camera within hours and a recount is easy. They just did it in Venezuela.
     
    LOL.

    You sure have a penchant for defending lost causes. With Venezuela we can't even debate seriously. It's too comical to waste time on it. Here is the goon they selected to announce the results with allegedly 80% of the vote counted:

    https://www.infobae.com/venezuela/2024/07/30/el-burdo-calculo-matematico-en-la-informacion-oficial-que-aumenta-las-sospechas-sobre-la-manipulacion-de-la-eleccion-en-venezuela/

    They are so third-worldish that they officially gave mathematically impossible results. And they did it twice! The most damning one is when that idiot reads the exact numbers of votes and it turns out that if you add them and calculate the percentages over the total, you get 6 consecutive zeros in the decimal places. The probabilities of getting 6 zeros by chance are something like 1 in 10,000. And the probabilities of getting all 3 results (Maduro, Gonzalez, all the rest) with 6 consecutive zeros in the decimals are several million in one. The only possible explanation is that they had decided the percentages to one decimal in advance and then made up the actual numbers. Which is exactly what you would expect from people who have turned an oil-rich country into a hellhole where millions have had to escape abroad.

    My wife has several Venezuelan escapee friends. Next time we invite them home I'll tell them that someone I know on the internet claims that the last election results are legit, for the laughs.

    Replies: @Beckow

    …a penchant for defending lost causes.

    I like to defend the underdog – people usually lie more about the weaker side, they pile on. You do it too.

    …mathematically impossible results

    Really? That’s your ‘proof’? Those numbers games are easily debunked – people round up numbers, make mistakes, ignore digits, etc…you can play that game everywhere. But it is entirely possible that there was fraud and adding of votes – but I also don’t believe the Western sponsored “polls” (how would they do it in Venezuela?) or that the opposition won 70-80%. That’s an over-reach – Maduro still has substantial support. If both sides lie why do you only focus on one?

    The same happened with Lukashenka, the opposition went too far in their claims and it was easily seen as two sides fighting by any means – how is one to choose? Usually the inside party (government) prevails.

    My point is that it looks weird that you defend the 100% accuracy in US and believe any far-fetched nonsense about ‘enemy’ countries. Do you work for the US State Department? Was the Russian election this year also fake? If so, who would have won?

    expect from people who have turned an oil-rich country into a hellhole

    Venezuela was a hell-hole for the majority of its population for years. But the Miami exiles – or previously the shoppers and the cute babes wouldn’t tell you that. So it goes on, this time with different winners and losers.

    My wife has several Venezuelan escapee friends.

    No kidding, that’s where you get your info? I am assuming she was previously a ‘chavista’ but now she knows…:) Never trust bitter exiles, they never tell the truth…

    • LOL: QCIC
    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Beckow


    Never trust bitter exiles, they never tell the truth

     

    OK this is the funnisest thing today for sure.

    In the Olympics today Poland beat Slovakia for women's singles tennis bronze medal match. The internet so far does not see fit to post any video highlights.
    , @AP
    @Beckow


    Never trust bitter exiles, they never tell the truth…
     
    And yet you base your opinion of what Ukrainians think, on the draft dodgers in your country (and those who left before the war began).

    Replies: @Beckow

    , @Mikel
    @Beckow


    Those numbers games are easily debunked
     
    Fair enough. Go ahead and debunk it for me please.

    But I fear you didn't understand the mathematical problem. My explanation was very clumsy. Let me explain it again. If you understand some Spanish, you may be able to hear this primate give 3 exact numbers for the results of the elections in this video. If not, you'll just have to trust me or do some research online:

    https://youtu.be/pB7g4y4M4s8

    He is saying that the results were these:

    Maduro: 5.150.092 (51.1%)
    Gonzalez: 4.445.978 (44.2%)
    Others: 432,704 (4.6%)

    So far, so good. But if you add those 3 numbers, you get a total number of votes of 10,058,774. Check it out. So now you do the math to see what percentage of this total each candidate got and you get this:

    Maduro: 51.20000%
    Gonzalez 44.2000%
    Others: 4.60000%

    You get 4 zeros after the first decimal place (or put differently, the percentages these clowns came up with were exact to the sixth decimal place).

    The probabilities of getting 4 consecutive zeros in a random percentage are exactly 1 in 10,000. And the probabilities of getting 4 consecutive zeros in all 3 percentages are exactly 1 in 100,000,000.

    So we're literally talking about a Caribbean miracle. As I said above, lots of people in that part of the world do believe in miracles. But I don't. Not sure where you stand.

    Was the Russian election this year also fake?
     
    Probably. But not in the same way at all and you're not doing Russia any favor by comparing them to Venezuela. Please let's have some sense of proportionality. Russians are known to mess up badly sometimes but not in this particular way.

    you defend the 100% accuracy in US
     
    You just made this up for no good reason. I've said this several times but let's do it again: compared to most other civilized countries (and even some 2rd World ones like Chile and Argentina), the US election system is a disaster. Where everybody gets their final results the night of the election, in the US there are always some counties still counting a week or several weeks later (in Utah too, btw).

    My wife has several Venezuelan escapee friends.

    No kidding, that’s where you get your info?
     
    Yes, unfortunately she keeps inviting them and I have to hear, against my will, the same old stories from the loudest people I have ever met. But who hasn't met lots of Venezuelans these days? I'm 100% sure that you have a community in Slovakia too. Something like a quarter of them (perhaps half but there's no need to exaggerate) have fled their country to all corners of the world. And a good percentage of those who still remain live off their remittances. It's not easy to f-ck up a country with the largest oil reserves in the world (~18% of the total) but Maduro has achieved that impressive goal.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Emil Nikola Richard, @QCIC, @QCIC, @Beckow, @Dmitry

  839. @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    Her posts seem too far-right to be accepted in the Republican Party. Also, Elon Musk is ignoring them, even when they are some of the most popular on his platform.
     
    It's understandable. I think on the far-right there are different brands of authoritarian conservative, but also the genuine fascist element which is less predictable and controllable and can become a problem for conservatives.

    So, I would guess she was doing clickbait to become successful, but accidentally they could have moved too far-right because that’s popular.
     
    It seems likely. The Columbian background is interesting as well, because from what I can tell the radical right still has more of an organic cultural existence among the elites and middle classes in Latin countries, in a way that is less the case in Northern Europe.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    Her manager (brother) is aide for Democrat Mayor Steven Fulop.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Fulop They are research assistant for CNN’s historian. Timothy Naftali.


    I guess they were not organic, but they are successful in making clickbait, but not managing too well, as they could go too far to be compatible to Fox/Republican/Musk.

    In January/February, her videos on X only have 50-100 views.* By June, her videos have hundreds of thousands of views.

    In August, her video from yesterday already has almost 20 million views.
    https://twitter.com/ValentinaForSOS/status/1819116948862783995.

    The X platform says about her video new “Visibility Limited. This Post may violate X’s rules against Hateful Conduct.”

    They are talented at producing popular clickbait videos. But there’s trade-off between what is popular for clickbait and what is compatible for employers.

    The new Republican Party could possibly be moving to more socially liberal in the absolute sense. Paypal investors like Elon, Sacks and Thiel will still be a kind of liberals.**

    *Most of the views on X are only impressions, not real views. So, these are overestimating compared to YouTube views.

    A high proportion of the views on these platforms are not from the USA and not even from the developed countries.

    **They all have some origin in the 1970s-1980s South African society, which was a kind of minoritarian democracy, with liberal economic and social features, including the free speech in principle although sometimes not reality (as there was often emergency provisions).

    While they wouldn’t accept this, I wonder how many of their political views correlate to popular concepts in 1970s/1980s South Africa.

    For example, Musk is very pro-Israel. Some journalists write, this is related to his investments in Israel. But it could also be the mainstream view of a general Protestant society and culture of his youth?

    I don’t know the topic, but I wonder if anyone here knows what the political views of educated upper class/upper middle class in 1980s South African culture was actually like?

    • Replies: @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    The X platform says about her video new “Visibility Limited. This Post may violate X’s rules against Hateful Conduct.”
     
    It sounds too confrontational for the US mainstream, but may be okay in some other places outside the US.

    The new Republican Party could possibly be moving to more socially liberal in the absolute sense. Paypal investors like Elon, Sacks and Thiel will still be a kind of liberals.
     
    I have seen these trends being called 'right-wing progressivism' or some new form of futurism. It involves tech billionaires, is anti-egalitarian and has some Nietzschean influences, at the same time it is more socially liberal and less religious than the current conservative right. It does seem possible this tendency will be more significant in the future.

    I don’t know the topic, but I wonder if anyone here knows what the political views of educated upper class/upper middle class in 1980s South African culture was actually like?
     
    It would be interesting if anyone is familiar with this.

    There seems to be ongoing interest in SA and Zimbabwe/Rhodesia, partly as a warning about a possible future for other parts of the world with current white majorities and maybe because it is one of the last parts of the world where a frontier type culture still exists among Western Europeans. I noticed that the latest issue of the French magazine Livre Noir is all about the white population of SA for example, with a focus on the poorer ones.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  840. @Beckow
    @Mikel


    ...a penchant for defending lost causes.
     
    I like to defend the underdog - people usually lie more about the weaker side, they pile on. You do it too.

    ...mathematically impossible results
     
    Really? That's your 'proof'? Those numbers games are easily debunked - people round up numbers, make mistakes, ignore digits, etc...you can play that game everywhere. But it is entirely possible that there was fraud and adding of votes - but I also don't believe the Western sponsored "polls" (how would they do it in Venezuela?) or that the opposition won 70-80%. That's an over-reach - Maduro still has substantial support. If both sides lie why do you only focus on one?

    The same happened with Lukashenka, the opposition went too far in their claims and it was easily seen as two sides fighting by any means - how is one to choose? Usually the inside party (government) prevails.

    My point is that it looks weird that you defend the 100% accuracy in US and believe any far-fetched nonsense about 'enemy' countries. Do you work for the US State Department? Was the Russian election this year also fake? If so, who would have won?


    expect from people who have turned an oil-rich country into a hellhole
     
    Venezuela was a hell-hole for the majority of its population for years. But the Miami exiles - or previously the shoppers and the cute babes wouldn't tell you that. So it goes on, this time with different winners and losers.

    My wife has several Venezuelan escapee friends.
     
    No kidding, that's where you get your info? I am assuming she was previously a 'chavista' but now she knows...:) Never trust bitter exiles, they never tell the truth...

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @AP, @Mikel

    Never trust bitter exiles, they never tell the truth

    OK this is the funnisest thing today for sure.

    In the Olympics today Poland beat Slovakia for women’s singles tennis bronze medal match. The internet so far does not see fit to post any video highlights.

    • Agree: QCIC
  841. I lied.

    The funniest thing is Carlton Meyer’s first video clip in his new Tales American Empire. He has Bidens negro lesbian press secretary intern telling the press briefing room that in the second world war the united states and ukraine fought against Hitler and Stalin.

    I am sure this was recorded before that other guy whose name I forget took over all the foreign policy questions.

    • LOL: Bashibuzuk
  842. @Beckow
    @Mikel


    ...a penchant for defending lost causes.
     
    I like to defend the underdog - people usually lie more about the weaker side, they pile on. You do it too.

    ...mathematically impossible results
     
    Really? That's your 'proof'? Those numbers games are easily debunked - people round up numbers, make mistakes, ignore digits, etc...you can play that game everywhere. But it is entirely possible that there was fraud and adding of votes - but I also don't believe the Western sponsored "polls" (how would they do it in Venezuela?) or that the opposition won 70-80%. That's an over-reach - Maduro still has substantial support. If both sides lie why do you only focus on one?

    The same happened with Lukashenka, the opposition went too far in their claims and it was easily seen as two sides fighting by any means - how is one to choose? Usually the inside party (government) prevails.

    My point is that it looks weird that you defend the 100% accuracy in US and believe any far-fetched nonsense about 'enemy' countries. Do you work for the US State Department? Was the Russian election this year also fake? If so, who would have won?


    expect from people who have turned an oil-rich country into a hellhole
     
    Venezuela was a hell-hole for the majority of its population for years. But the Miami exiles - or previously the shoppers and the cute babes wouldn't tell you that. So it goes on, this time with different winners and losers.

    My wife has several Venezuelan escapee friends.
     
    No kidding, that's where you get your info? I am assuming she was previously a 'chavista' but now she knows...:) Never trust bitter exiles, they never tell the truth...

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @AP, @Mikel

    Never trust bitter exiles, they never tell the truth…

    And yet you base your opinion of what Ukrainians think, on the draft dodgers in your country (and those who left before the war began).

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @AP


    ...Never trust bitter exiles
     
    That was aimed at you, a bitter exile offspring...

    on the draft dodgers in your country and those who left before the war began
     
    I prefer gender that doesn't get drafted...:)

    A simple rule when listening to exiles: if they show a deep dislike for their people they are probably lying about other things back home. It holds for both Ukies and Latins.

    If a Venezuelan woman tells me that life was "great" before the thieves Chavez-Maduro took over with help from the negrito underclass - "you know they are like animals, non-European!" - or that when the better people (her family and friends) come back into power it will be great again, I know she is lying...

  843. @Beckow
    @Dmitry


    ...the same people who now are mostly Ukrainians with anti-Russian views.
     
    That's certainly the hope among Ukie boosters. But there is no way to know - you can't discern real views in the middle of a war, too emotional and dangerous. The long-term sympathies will only be clear after the war.

    We have seen it in the recent history: the West-obsessed committed minority of 15-20% with a full pro-Western mania, even hysteria. They forget all else, volunteer to sell-out, dream of visas and freebees, dump on their own nations and spin one-sided stories the West loves to hear (some even true)...

    Then the project doesn't work and they sober up. Western sponsors break their promises and carry out their threats. There are a few well-connected winners, but the restis nursing the loss - maybe with the 'great appliances' (that AP is hilarious, isn't he?) Many leave permanently not having any other choice psychologically - they committed too far. The rest go back to normal lives and grumble about the whole unfortunate thing - the deep-seated local identities reassert.

    Is that the case in Odessa? We simply don't know. This could be the exception and it's a real sea-shift in the long-term identity because of the bloody nature of the war. But identity is not skin deep, it is hard to discard -and the stories can by spun in so many different ways: who is more guilty and who won.

    The fact that nobody is volunteering to fight in Odessa an d they have to chase them in the streets and forests suggests that I am closer to the truth. We will see in the next few years.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Dmitry

    That’s certainly the hope among Ukie

    It’s not “hope”. It’s reality if you watch the videos the Ukrainians are uploading, they are the “Russian-speaking population”, just with some local culture and sense of humor. I remember in 2014, Moscow was supposed to “rescue” those “Russians”.

    The situation with Ukrainian nationalism changed in 2014. Before 2014, it has more atmosphere of redneck regionalism, directed a lot against the other Ukrainian citizens, who are suspected of “dual-loyalty”. In 2014 at the latest, it becomes directed primarily against an external enemy, Moscow.

    It seems like the Ukrainian identity generally becomes more diverse and mainstream after 2014, as like the famous studies of social psychology, often populations could be becoming at least temporarily more united when they are orientated to an external enemy.

  844. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Mikel
    @Bashibuzuk


    Which brings to the “grand conspiracy theories” that this young Chinese Canadian lays out for his generation in a very straightforward way:
     
    OK, so I listened to the first 5 minutes of this guy's presentation and I got 9/11, The Hydra, Covid, JFKs assassination,...

    What can I say, Bashibuzuk? After the brainy texts you has posted right above I was expecting something... different. Don't you have anything lighter for novices like me?

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    After the brainy texts you has posted right above I was expecting something… different.

    Why do you necessarily need it to be brainy ?

    When the Narodniks went to propagandize the Russian peasants, they were usually not well received because they were too intellectual, educated, didn’t use the vocabulary of the countryside folks and so did not connect to their mentality. That Chinese dude is using exactly the right words to have an impact on the guys of his generation.

    What is important is that a not so educated kid listening to that Chinese dude gets to understand that the system is rigged, that developed countries core populations are dying out, and gets a sneak peek of why it is so. That’s all that matters.

    After that, a more brainy person might find relevant books to read (Anthony Sutton comes to mind), or start researching why it is really going that way and learn about the Calhoun’s mice utopia experiments. A really committed person would get into the structure of ownership of the major investment funds and TNCs and overall learn about the real “owners of the World”. Then lastly a truly committed thinker might want to see how far it is projecting into the past, how and when it all started. But first and foremost, kids must realize that they are getting screwed big time and that it doesn’t necessarily need to be that way.

    Truth is, both of us are getting closer to be called old farts Mikel, we’re not the future but the present and slowly fading into the past, our brainy readings and discussions didn’t prevent these kids from getting shafted and getting into a situation where many of them around the developed World are finding it harder to have a hope for a decent future that was more or less normal for anyone who exerted a decent effort in our generation.

    If one day they get full Red Khmer or ISIS against our and our parents generations, I wouldn’t even blame them. Would you blame them if they come and tell you in your face: “listen uncle, your belief in democracy allowed a parasitic elite to privatize the World, bankrupt the civilization and vacate us from the future.” ? I sure wouldn’t. We had all the information needed to prevent this from happening, we did little except perhaps voting in elections that don’t change much really.

    And some among us still keep voting in these Kabuki elections that really are just a distraction.

    Old habits die hard…

    🙂

    • Replies: @Mikel
    @Bashibuzuk


    And some among us still keep voting in these Kabuki elections that really are just a distraction.
     
    Compared with armed struggle and revolution, casting your vote is insignificant, certainly. But wasn't it you who said here recently that you weren't in favor of revolutions because they usually make things even worse?

    Many things are very difficult to change because there are powerful forces interested in keeping them as they are and, as discussed, they know how to use the Gramscian tactics in their favor. But let's not give up on the system of one man - one vote so naively. There is a big difference between sending to Congress a man like Massie who will stand up to the neocons or a man like Johnson, who will cave in to them. It doesn't matter to me at all whether you believe it or not. These types of decisions are still taken in elections that are as fair as in any other Western country, so yes, I am going to keep taking part in that "kabuki theater".

    And regardless of the Gramscian forces at play, the US also gives people the possibility of using their votes for things like electing school board members who will prevent our children from being fed woke propaganda. I have actually witnessed how woke school board members were kicked out though popular votes and replaced by new representatives who campaigned on anti-woke platforms. Let us not forget that eventually, the Gramscians lost the battle and they didn't manage to impose Marxism on any Western country. Election after election, humble vote after humble vote, ordinary people managed to retain an economic and political system that after 1990 everybody recognized was better than the alternatives. Wokism hasn't won the battle yet either.

    Most importantly perhaps, you are asking me to give up voting and focus on the Jew cabals and the 1 percenters (last time I checked Trump was a distinguished member of 0.1 percenters and his daughter is a Jew convert). No thanks. The Dems and the Rinos ate NOT going to follow your advice and give up voting, so neither should any of us. Asking people to focus on the Jews, the election Kraken, Quanon and all that stuff while our opponents laugh and keep sending their representatives to Washington is the worst possible advice, especially at a time when the specter of nuclear war has returned and there is actually a healthy reaction in the US of new candidates who stand against all of this.

    Finally, let's be honest. I have a comfortable life and so do my children in the US and in Europe. I don't often agree with Dmitry but he has a point when he says that most people in the West have never lived a better life. At least let's admit that most if not all of us here are privileged compared to most people in the world and any past epoch. I may dislike a lot of things that I see happening in the world but there's only so much I am willing to sacrifice to change them. I don't have any personal political ambitions so yes, voting and debating online is about as far as I'm willing to go.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @A123, @utu

  845. @AP
    @Beckow


    Never trust bitter exiles, they never tell the truth…
     
    And yet you base your opinion of what Ukrainians think, on the draft dodgers in your country (and those who left before the war began).

    Replies: @Beckow

    …Never trust bitter exiles

    That was aimed at you, a bitter exile offspring…

    on the draft dodgers in your country and those who left before the war began

    I prefer gender that doesn’t get drafted…:)

    A simple rule when listening to exiles: if they show a deep dislike for their people they are probably lying about other things back home. It holds for both Ukies and Latins.

    If a Venezuelan woman tells me that life was “great” before the thieves Chavez-Maduro took over with help from the negrito underclass – “you know they are like animals, non-European!” – or that when the better people (her family and friends) come back into power it will be great again, I know she is lying…

  846. @Bashibuzuk
    @Dmitry


    There is Niletto
     
    Sigh…

    Ну и х** с ним…

    https://cs10.pikabu.ru/post_img/2018/09/26/10/153798107511467954.jpg

    It’s an extremely interesting historical period, when you can see the whole World steadily losing its acquired level of knowledge, culture, decency. Basically going to shit. That’s what’s amazing about our times. And you waste time on some tattooed Russian (?) jock…

    https://youtu.be/-6G6AW7oApA?si=Z2U35cGOc9YYFkmy

    How much of your time do you spend on thinking about the fall of the Roman Empire ?

    Because you should think about it…

    https://fortune.com/2023/09/30/men-cant-stop-thinking-about-the-roman-empire-masculinity-polycrisis-culture/

    Listen to this Chinese Canadian dude telling it straight to you and your generation:

    https://youtu.be/VwbE7DHjkHY?si=fCKuSyvNx9T3eprw

    Listen to this high IQ Asian and dump that Niletto pidor to the historical dumpster he rightfully belongs to.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Dmitry

    much of your time do you spend on thinking about the fall of the Roman Empire ?

    Isn’t this a meme which is promoted by Musk?

    The cause of the culture strangeness and dislocation as we move through the stages of history, is technology changes.

    Elon is an investor in technology, so in some way he’s working in the engine carriage for the locomotive of history. One of the themes of his investment, is increasing automation.

    If you know in 1848 Marx and Engels, have written about some of this process and what the result feels like.

    Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere. The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Dmitry

    Yes, technocapitalism and civilizational disruption are intertwined. And this is why Nick Land, who started as a neo-Marxist researcher studying the impact of the technological change on cultural trends, ended up a neo-Reactionary promoting accelerationism and declaring that “nothing human comes out alive from the near future”.

    Did you listen to the video adaptation of his Meldown short story?

    https://youtu.be/fiaWsgtJrNI?si=7q6MBkIo9zerBVCd

    BTW, I just saw on YouTube that someone modeled Nick using AI and made a Meltdown adaptation entirely based on AI algorithmic modeling, including an annoying experimental music that is shaped by the contents of the text. It was too hardcore even for my rugged dark humour sense, I decided that I’ve done enough accelerationist online actionism for today and refrained from posting this horror. 🙂

    Replies: @Dmitry

  847. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Bashibuzuk

    We could move to Galt's Gulch or to Ruritania and be our own feudal lords. Right?

    Have you ever been to Nome Alaska?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nome,_Alaska

    As far as I know they don't have any cannibals. Cannibal Eskimos are only characters in that anime porn for weirdos.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    Can we live a van life there and have nice fishing trips ?

    If the answer is yes, I’m in.

    🙂

  848. @Bashibuzuk
    @Beckow


    Is that the case in Odessa? We simply don’t know.
     
    Been there in late 2018. My last conversation was on the way to the airport with the taxi driver, a man probably a few years older than me, when asked how does he feel about it all, he answered: “All I know is, it cannot continue like that. It has to end. And better a horrible end, than an endless horror”. It has been nearly 6 years ago, I guess the guy is still driving his taxi cab. There is no end in sight…

    Replies: @Beckow

    Odessa taxi:All I know is, it cannot continue like that. It has to end. And better a horrible end, than an endless horror

    That suggests that he will take any decisive outcome. People tend to get tired of endless ambiguity and uncertainty. Any ‘power’ ending it will be welcomed.

    The reality is that political views-ideology always follow the actual situation people live in. We humans are made that way – we adapt. The ones who don’t leave or don’t make it, they are “dead-enders”…there are always plenty of them around and they are vocal. But they are not the society.

    But no matter what happens there will a residual memory of the ‘heroic’ war among all people in Ukraine. So they will have that to contend with for generations.

  849. Great video on Russia’s upward transformation since NATO’s proxy war on the territory of the former Ukrainian SSR:

    As the Kiev regime continues to stumble:

    A cogent follow-up on the recent Western mass media coverage dubiously portraying innocent Westies traded for criminal Russians. A key component to the deal was the Russian in Germany, accused of killing a Chechen terrorist. (A BBC segment aired on NPR, referenced Sarah Rainsford, simply saying a Russian who killed someone in Germany. Rainsford’s anti-Russian and pro-Kiev regime biases, is evidenced by her reporting over the years in Russia and Ukraine.)

    It’s no paranoid conspiracy theory to note that CIA/CIA connected folks have worked in key media positions involving strategically important areas of the world. A Russian version of Philip Agee exposing KGB and/or FSB links is treated differently in Western neocon-neolib circles.

    Some sources have suggested that the Biden administration and/or US Intel might’ve compromising info on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, thereby explaining his weak manner. Regardless, the Biden administration likely leaned on Germany to release the aforementioned Russian at issue with Trump in mind. Said Russian is known to be a key component for Russia to agree to a trade of prisoners. This recent swap of prisoners serves to boost Biden’s image. Germany/EU is apprehensive about a Trump presidency. Biden’s “statesmanlike” posturing over this deal serves to boost him and his VP.

    Among other things, an interesting theory on the recent assassination attempt against Trump.

    Among other things, an interesting theory on the recent assassination attempt against Trump.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Mikhail


    Regardless, the Biden administration likely leaned on Germany to release the aforementioned Russian at issue with Trump in mind.
     
    The German recently sentenced to death in Belarus is part of the exchanged prisoners, seems like a more likely explanation than any concern over Biden's image (strange idea that such an exchange would boost it, could easily be interpreted as weakness, giving in to Russian blackmail etc.).

    Replies: @Mikhail

  850. AP says:
    @Beckow
    @AP


    ...ignore the equally brutal ones from the East. Muscovy/Russia, Ottoman Empire/Turkey, and even their little brother Hungary.
     
    My point was that the West had endlessly supported the Ottomans in their murderous attacks: France always, Germans opportunistically, England enthusiastically in the last 150 years of the Ottoman collapse. Did you miss that?

    Magyars came 1100 years ago - it doesn't matter. Magyar DNA studies show they are 2-4% Asiatic (more in the puszta), the rest Germanic, Slav, Latins-Celts. The original Magyars were mostly destroyed by Tatars and Ottomans. It is like hallucinating about Huns in France (there are some) or Moors in Spain (there are a lot).

    Russia is Europe - we know you deny it, but you a moron.


    rule from Vienna was easily preferable than rule from Moscow
     
    Remote rule is always worse. Your idealization of Habsburgs is silly and uninformed. Stop watching those Hollywood flicks - how about that 'Sound of Music'? A total white-wash of the worst Nazi enthusiasts with historically retarded lies...but that's what they fed you, so you believe it.

    Replies: @AP

    Magyars came 1100 years ago – it doesn’t matter. Magyar DNA studies show they are 2-4% Asiatic (more in the puszta), the rest Germanic, Slav, Latins-Celts. The original Magyars were mostly destroyed by Tatars and Ottomans

    They retained the language and attitudes towards the Slavs whom they enslaved. They speak a Eurasian language.

    Russia is Europe – we know you deny it

    Much of Russia is in Europe. As are Kalmykia and Chechnya.

    Russians themselves usually deny they are Europeans. There’s a famous Russian poem about that. My Russian wife has never considered herself to be a European, despite having one Polish parent (or perhaps because – it involves less ignorance of Europe). But nevermind writers and anecdotes. Here is Levada:

    https://www.levada.ru/en/2021/03/22/russia-and-europe/

    29% of Russians consider Russia to be a European country, 64% – a non-European. Back in 2019, these numbers were 37% and 55%, respectively. Overall, since 2008 the number of those who believe that Russia is a European country has decreased by almost half: from 52% to 29%.

    So once, about half of Russians had considered theirs to be a European country but this has declined. With more familiarity with Europe.

    Russians consider themselves to be Eurasians, not Europeans. You are ignorant as usual. Did the socialist teachers at your inferior schools teach you that Russians are Europeans? Lol.

    rule from Vienna was easily preferable than rule from Moscow

    Remote rule is always worse

    Is remoteness your excuse? Krakow and Lviv are much further from Vienna than Slovakia from Budapest. Or Bulgaria from Istanbul. Whose rule was better?

    And Novgorod, destroyed by the Muscovites, wasn’t too far from Moscow.

    Answer the question: who had it better, those ruled from Vienna, Moscow, Budapest, or Istanbul?

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @AP


    ...'Magyars' speak a Eurasian language.
     
    So do Finns and Estonians. Are they also 'Asian'? In the past the feudal lords of very mixed origin lorded over peasants of all nationalities, including a huge majority of Magyars who were peasants. You are 'hollywooding' again...moron will be a moron...

    Russia is Europe – we know you deny it

    Much of Russia is in Europe.
     

    Get a map. Historical Russia is in Europe, it is on the f...ing map! It expanded eastward to Siberia, Pacific, etc...The stated views of people in "polls" can't change what one sees on a map. Do you do polls to ascertain that the sun will rise tomorrow? (Your hapless, confused half-Polish wife is probably just trying to avoid having an argument with an autistic simpleton, she has my sympathy...)

    who had it better, those ruled from Vienna, Moscow, Budapest, or Istanbul
     
    I would pick Prague. But they all had it pretty bad, there is not much point in relative 'badness'...it was sh..t before we kicked them out at the end of WW1...and again in 1945.

    Replies: @AP

    , @Mr. XYZ
    @AP

    Interesting that even in 2008, while a bare majority of Russians considered Russia to be a European country, a bare majority of Russians also did not consider themselves to be European:

    https://www.levada.ru/cp/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/gsm0i-generally-do-you-consider-russia-a-european-country--1024x382.png

    https://www.levada.ru/cp/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/WJtjf-do-you-consider-yourself-a-european-nbsp--1024x386.png

    Younger Russians feel less European than older Russians do, and also view their country as being less European than older Russians view it:

    https://www.levada.ru/cp/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/MW0p6-generally-do-you-consider-russia-a-european-country-br--1024x421.png

    https://www.levada.ru/cp/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/E6D8N-do-you-consider-yourself-a-european-nbsp--1024x365.png

    Replies: @LondonBob

  851. German_reader says:
    @Mikhail
    Great video on Russia's upward transformation since NATO's proxy war on the territory of the former Ukrainian SSR:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol3f4ipb9hs

    As the Kiev regime continues to stumble:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij5YSPBnbwI

    A cogent follow-up on the recent Western mass media coverage dubiously portraying innocent Westies traded for criminal Russians. A key component to the deal was the Russian in Germany, accused of killing a Chechen terrorist. (A BBC segment aired on NPR, referenced Sarah Rainsford, simply saying a Russian who killed someone in Germany. Rainsford's anti-Russian and pro-Kiev regime biases, is evidenced by her reporting over the years in Russia and Ukraine.)

    It's no paranoid conspiracy theory to note that CIA/CIA connected folks have worked in key media positions involving strategically important areas of the world. A Russian version of Philip Agee exposing KGB and/or FSB links is treated differently in Western neocon-neolib circles.

    Some sources have suggested that the Biden administration and/or US Intel might've compromising info on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, thereby explaining his weak manner. Regardless, the Biden administration likely leaned on Germany to release the aforementioned Russian at issue with Trump in mind. Said Russian is known to be a key component for Russia to agree to a trade of prisoners. This recent swap of prisoners serves to boost Biden's image. Germany/EU is apprehensive about a Trump presidency. Biden's "statesmanlike" posturing over this deal serves to boost him and his VP.

    Among other things, an interesting theory on the recent assassination attempt against Trump.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ws9H5FiWoo

    Among other things, an interesting theory on the recent assassination attempt against Trump.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AQkbmmLLkE

    Replies: @German_reader

    Regardless, the Biden administration likely leaned on Germany to release the aforementioned Russian at issue with Trump in mind.

    The German recently sentenced to death in Belarus is part of the exchanged prisoners, seems like a more likely explanation than any concern over Biden’s image (strange idea that such an exchange would boost it, could easily be interpreted as weakness, giving in to Russian blackmail etc.).

    • Replies: @Mikhail
    @German_reader


    The German recently sentenced to death in Belarus is part of the exchanged prisoners, seems like a more likely explanation than any concern over Biden’s image (strange idea that such an exchange would boost it, could easily be interpreted as weakness, giving in to Russian blackmail etc.).
     
    Point taken. I understand that German sentenced in Belarus isn't an especially sympathetic figure. There's also the matter of seeking to diminish Trump's chance to win the presidency. US mass media (MSNBC, CNN, NPR, NYT, WaPo, et al) and the DNC is spinning such which I said concerning Brandon. This sticks with a good number (certainly not all) of voting Americans.

    Replies: @German_reader

  852. @Bashibuzuk
    @Dmitry


    There is Niletto
     
    Sigh…

    Ну и х** с ним…

    https://cs10.pikabu.ru/post_img/2018/09/26/10/153798107511467954.jpg

    It’s an extremely interesting historical period, when you can see the whole World steadily losing its acquired level of knowledge, culture, decency. Basically going to shit. That’s what’s amazing about our times. And you waste time on some tattooed Russian (?) jock…

    https://youtu.be/-6G6AW7oApA?si=Z2U35cGOc9YYFkmy

    How much of your time do you spend on thinking about the fall of the Roman Empire ?

    Because you should think about it…

    https://fortune.com/2023/09/30/men-cant-stop-thinking-about-the-roman-empire-masculinity-polycrisis-culture/

    Listen to this Chinese Canadian dude telling it straight to you and your generation:

    https://youtu.be/VwbE7DHjkHY?si=fCKuSyvNx9T3eprw

    Listen to this high IQ Asian and dump that Niletto pidor to the historical dumpster he rightfully belongs to.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Dmitry

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6G6AW7oApA

    I posted this song from Minsk and we discussed some years ago. Few years ago, we were discussing a lot about the popularity in the West of this general theme of the postsoviet trashcan of history.

    It’s the general theme that there can be more beauty in the trashcan of history than in the manicured gardens of successful countries.

    This music is English though and it is copying from the famous English bands like Joy Division, while I think their audience is mainly in the West, and Western audiences are particularly obsessed with the theme of postsoviet decay.

    There is Niletto

    Sigh…

    Ну и х** с ним…

    Niletto isn’t Russian music and it’s overall just American dancing origin. Still, he’s not unlikeable.

    He is at least a talented dancing person, his dancing filmed without cuts and adding short moments of gopnik bodylanguage and local dances.

    E.g. 1:30 there are some short moments of real gopnik dances

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Dmitry


    real gopnik dances
     
    LOL.

    There were never any gopnik dance styles. It was all a Muscovite hipster joke. Gopniks were about stealing, drinking and beating people up for fun. That what was all they did.

    You misunderstood my video clip from Pripyat’. It’s not that FUSSR was a trash can of history, it’s that the Soviet project was a failed attempt at a turbocharged technological and social development that ended up in societal wreckage.

    Soviets are a cautionary tale, but as Aristovich and Latynina have recently noted, the West is repeating the worst Soviet mistakes in an even more stupid manner. The Soviet project was supposed to lead humanity beyond its boundaries and into a universal expansion. It failed miserably because we are mostly territorial and hierarchical primates and most people are fine with that.

    Alright another attempt at making you understand what we deal with here:

    https://youtu.be/pymcyprdS1s?si=YyxnJ1VQse25OhWL

    In the Stalker novel, the main character ends up declaring that he wants “free happiness for all”. That’s what the Soviet project was about. It failed. The West is also failing right in front of our eyes. Nobody knows what will come next.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  853. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk


    much of your time do you spend on thinking about the fall of the Roman Empire ?
     
    Isn't this a meme which is promoted by Musk?

    The cause of the culture strangeness and dislocation as we move through the stages of history, is technology changes.

    Elon is an investor in technology, so in some way he's working in the engine carriage for the locomotive of history. One of the themes of his investment, is increasing automation.


    -

    If you know in 1848 Marx and Engels, have written about some of this process and what the result feels like.


    Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere. The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property.
     

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    Yes, technocapitalism and civilizational disruption are intertwined. And this is why Nick Land, who started as a neo-Marxist researcher studying the impact of the technological change on cultural trends, ended up a neo-Reactionary promoting accelerationism and declaring that “nothing human comes out alive from the near future”.

    Did you listen to the video adaptation of his Meldown short story?

    BTW, I just saw on YouTube that someone modeled Nick using AI and made a Meltdown adaptation entirely based on AI algorithmic modeling, including an annoying experimental music that is shaped by the contents of the text. It was too hardcore even for my rugged dark humour sense, I decided that I’ve done enough accelerationist online actionism for today and refrained from posting this horror. 🙂

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk

    Thanks I will look later I never heard about Nick Land, .


    -

    A question, is why the Soviet spirit be relatively stable culturally with even some features of 19th century European culture, while using a religion of technology development.

    From the view of Marx/Engels writing in 1848, some features of the late Soviet epoch, would be opposite to the "chagrin of Reactionists". For example, "feet of industry", had a "national ground on which it stood".

    -

    The main tourist feature of Volgodonsk, was the monument for the atom. While the culture of 1982, the culture situation relatively "fixed" and "ossified" (in 1848 Marxist language).


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_wRPGVNxro

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Coconuts

  854. @German_reader
    @Mikhail


    Regardless, the Biden administration likely leaned on Germany to release the aforementioned Russian at issue with Trump in mind.
     
    The German recently sentenced to death in Belarus is part of the exchanged prisoners, seems like a more likely explanation than any concern over Biden's image (strange idea that such an exchange would boost it, could easily be interpreted as weakness, giving in to Russian blackmail etc.).

    Replies: @Mikhail

    The German recently sentenced to death in Belarus is part of the exchanged prisoners, seems like a more likely explanation than any concern over Biden’s image (strange idea that such an exchange would boost it, could easily be interpreted as weakness, giving in to Russian blackmail etc.).

    Point taken. I understand that German sentenced in Belarus isn’t an especially sympathetic figure. There’s also the matter of seeking to diminish Trump’s chance to win the presidency. US mass media (MSNBC, CNN, NPR, NYT, WaPo, et al) and the DNC is spinning such which I said concerning Brandon. This sticks with a good number (certainly not all) of voting Americans.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Mikhail


    I understand that German sentenced in Belarus isn’t an especially sympathetic figure.
     
    Given that there's only very limited information about him available, you can't really know that.
    My guess would be he's an idiot who got into pro-Ukrainian activism (so the charges against him may not have been totally made up) and was lured into Belarus by Belarussian/Russian intelligence with the specific intention of having someone to exchange for the Tiergarten assassin. But essentially it's all speculation.

    Replies: @Mikhail

  855. Battle of the Nations
    Poland Slovakia

    [MORE]

    Also: the nation who cannot be named and the players who don’t get to fly their flag and play their fight song beat Spain in the women’s doubles semi finals.

  856. German_reader says:
    @Mikhail
    @German_reader


    The German recently sentenced to death in Belarus is part of the exchanged prisoners, seems like a more likely explanation than any concern over Biden’s image (strange idea that such an exchange would boost it, could easily be interpreted as weakness, giving in to Russian blackmail etc.).
     
    Point taken. I understand that German sentenced in Belarus isn't an especially sympathetic figure. There's also the matter of seeking to diminish Trump's chance to win the presidency. US mass media (MSNBC, CNN, NPR, NYT, WaPo, et al) and the DNC is spinning such which I said concerning Brandon. This sticks with a good number (certainly not all) of voting Americans.

    Replies: @German_reader

    I understand that German sentenced in Belarus isn’t an especially sympathetic figure.

    Given that there’s only very limited information about him available, you can’t really know that.
    My guess would be he’s an idiot who got into pro-Ukrainian activism (so the charges against him may not have been totally made up) and was lured into Belarus by Belarussian/Russian intelligence with the specific intention of having someone to exchange for the Tiergarten assassin. But essentially it’s all speculation.

    • Replies: @Mikhail
    @German_reader


    Given that there’s only very limited information about him available, you can’t really know that.
    My guess would be he’s an idiot who got into pro-Ukrainian activism (so the charges against him may not have been totally made up) and was lured into Belarus by Belarussian/Russian intelligence with the specific intention of having someone to exchange for the Tiergarten assassin. But essentially it’s all speculation.
     
    Could be. Another possibility, he went on his own only to get used as you suggest. Likewise, part of the German motivation is wanting to increase Biden's image with the idea that it'll work against Trump.
  857. Russia and the rest of Europe

    Some Russians see themselves as European, with others emphasizing a Eurasian background which doesn’t completely disassociate Russia from Europe. The majority of Russia’s population is situated in Europe. In overall manner, I don’t think it can be reasonably said that Russians are more Asian than European.

    Interesting change at this UK based news gathering venue:

    https://www.newsnow.co.uk/h/World+News/Asia/Russia

    At this site, the above link used to have Europe in place of Asia regarding Russia. Appears like a propaganda effort to try to keep Russia more distant from Europe. Along the lines of the juvenile attempts to woo countries away from interacting with Russia.

  858. @A123
    @Mikel


    Like everything in the US, details vary from state to state and sometimes even from county to county, but the mail-in voting system used here has several layers of security
     
    This is the exact point several of us have been trying to make for some time.

    In Utah "the mail-in voting system used here" is not representative of the country. Details vary from state to state and sometimes even from county to county, but the mail-in voting system across the U.S. is quite poor.

    Your advocacy for anti-MAGA balloting methodology is both noted and unsurprising.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Mikel

    Details vary from state to state and sometimes even from county to county, but the mail-in voting system across the U.S. is quite poor.

    As I said, I have not checked what exact systems they use everywhere. Perhaps they are as bad as you say in Fulton or inner Detroit and Philadelphia. I’m sure that information is easy to find but please feel free to show me how exactly their systems are much less secure than what I have described if you really know for a fact that they are. Perhaps the Republican party is making people waste their time asking them to volunteer when they could instead run constant campaign ads explaining how rigged the system is in those districts.

    I am all ears, don’t skip details please.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Mikel

    I provided detail on how the courts had to intervene in signature validation here:

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-255/#comment-6690717

    And, about Fulton voting irregularities here:

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-255/#comment-6679852
    ___

    Bashi provided details on how the dead are voting here:

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-255/#comment-6690523

    And other forms of vote fraud here:

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-255/#comment-6690132
    ____

    The ball is in your court. Please explain how all of these proven problems could not possibly have altered past results. And, cannot impact future election outcomes.

    We are all ears, don’t skip details please.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  859. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6G6AW7oApA
     
    I posted this song from Minsk and we discussed some years ago. Few years ago, we were discussing a lot about the popularity in the West of this general theme of the postsoviet trashcan of history.

    It's the general theme that there can be more beauty in the trashcan of history than in the manicured gardens of successful countries.

    This music is English though and it is copying from the famous English bands like Joy Division, while I think their audience is mainly in the West, and Western audiences are particularly obsessed with the theme of postsoviet decay.



    There is Niletto

     

    Sigh…

    Ну и х** с ним…
     

    Niletto isn't Russian music and it's overall just American dancing origin. Still, he's not unlikeable.

    He is at least a talented dancing person, his dancing filmed without cuts and adding short moments of gopnik bodylanguage and local dances.

    E.g. 1:30 there are some short moments of real gopnik dances
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCn92IKdU8s

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    real gopnik dances

    LOL.

    There were never any gopnik dance styles. It was all a Muscovite hipster joke. Gopniks were about stealing, drinking and beating people up for fun. That what was all they did.

    You misunderstood my video clip from Pripyat’. It’s not that FUSSR was a trash can of history, it’s that the Soviet project was a failed attempt at a turbocharged technological and social development that ended up in societal wreckage.

    Soviets are a cautionary tale, but as Aristovich and Latynina have recently noted, the West is repeating the worst Soviet mistakes in an even more stupid manner. The Soviet project was supposed to lead humanity beyond its boundaries and into a universal expansion. It failed miserably because we are mostly territorial and hierarchical primates and most people are fine with that.

    Alright another attempt at making you understand what we deal with here:

    In the Stalker novel, the main character ends up declaring that he wants “free happiness for all”. That’s what the Soviet project was about. It failed. The West is also failing right in front of our eyes. Nobody knows what will come next.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk


    gopnik dance styles. It was all a Muscovite hipster joke. Gopniks were about stealing, drinking and beating people up for fun. That what was all they did
     
    Local hooligans are not the most nice people in the world.

    But "not nice people", still had an authentic local bodylanguage and dancing, however you want to call them.

    "Gopnik" nowadays is a joke which describes how the section of society looked in the 1990s. But if you call them now "offniki", they have still have a local bodylanguage, they also dance in a local way.


    it’s that the Soviet project was a failed attempt at a turbocharged technological and social development that ended up in societal wreckage.
     
    It was mostly "turbocharged social development" of the peasants to the level of the late 19th century urban middle class.

    Late Soviet family structure and social norms, transformed peasants, to the social norms of the urban middle class of the late Russian empire. And a lot of the effect societal wreckage in 21st century Russia, is feeling more like returning to a culture of the old 18th century village again.


    -

    Some of the 21st century devolution, is like parody of old village culture, from the late 19th century middle class culture which was celebrated in the Brezhnev epoch.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zlk7vMYsSw


    Soviets are a cautionary tale, but as Aristovich and Latynina have recently noted, the West is repeating the worst Soviet mistakes in an even more stupid manner. The Soviet project was supposed to lead humanity beyond its boundaries and into a universal expansion. It failed miserably because we are mostly territorial and hierarchical primates and most people are fine with that.

     

    I know your view, just don't think what happens in the West, however it is, is similar to the late Soviet history.

    The ruins of a more advanced civilization, is stronger contrast because the late Soviet epoch, in some ways was unrealistically "elevated", while the view of Western culture today is usually complaining about the opposite problem.


    https://i.imgur.com/6eqT2wG.jpeg

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  860. @Bashibuzuk
    @Dmitry

    Yes, technocapitalism and civilizational disruption are intertwined. And this is why Nick Land, who started as a neo-Marxist researcher studying the impact of the technological change on cultural trends, ended up a neo-Reactionary promoting accelerationism and declaring that “nothing human comes out alive from the near future”.

    Did you listen to the video adaptation of his Meldown short story?

    https://youtu.be/fiaWsgtJrNI?si=7q6MBkIo9zerBVCd

    BTW, I just saw on YouTube that someone modeled Nick using AI and made a Meltdown adaptation entirely based on AI algorithmic modeling, including an annoying experimental music that is shaped by the contents of the text. It was too hardcore even for my rugged dark humour sense, I decided that I’ve done enough accelerationist online actionism for today and refrained from posting this horror. 🙂

    Replies: @Dmitry

    Thanks I will look later I never heard about Nick Land, .

    A question, is why the Soviet spirit be relatively stable culturally with even some features of 19th century European culture, while using a religion of technology development.

    From the view of Marx/Engels writing in 1848, some features of the late Soviet epoch, would be opposite to the “chagrin of Reactionists”. For example, “feet of industry”, had a “national ground on which it stood”.

    The main tourist feature of Volgodonsk, was the monument for the atom. While the culture of 1982, the culture situation relatively “fixed” and “ossified” (in 1848 Marxist language).

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Dmitry

    Accelerationism. An internet fad from ~'98- ~'08.

    Land was the original number two accelerationist. Mark Fisher was the original number one. He suicided. They have great quips. This one is not their invention, but they are the ones who made it popular:

    https://www.reddit.com/r/zizek/comments/w0u7ca/who_actually_said_its_easier_to_imagine_the_end/

    , @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    A question, is why the Soviet spirit be relatively stable culturally with even some features of 19th century European culture, while using a religion of technology development.
     
    I have been reading a lot of Marcel Gauchet lately, he argues that the underlying social and political structure of the Soviet regime remained closer to a traditional one. Usually these were rooted in religion but during the 19th century the first secular variants of the older religious structuring started to appear (in the systems of Hegel and Comte, for example, also Marx).

    In these the source and model of the social structure is not God, a divine natural law or a legendary past beyond the current reality but has been made immanent and then moved into the future, expressed through ideas like objective Progress, History, the dialectic etc. These remain an objective normative source above and beyond the lives of the individuals making up the society. The default model of a unified sacred community also remains, as is the case in religious societies.

    He argues that in Western Europe both the older religious views and the 'ideocratic' secular extensions of them began to break down sooner, moving towards the model of a fully autonomous or self-created society (which is now in a crisis of its own).

  861. Powerful reason to vote for Trudeau.

    • LOL: Bashibuzuk
    • Replies: @Torna atrás
    @Sher Singh

    https://twitter.com/MazMHussain/status/1815165139269894390

    Two way street.

    Replies: @Sher Singh

  862. @Bashibuzuk
    @Dmitry


    real gopnik dances
     
    LOL.

    There were never any gopnik dance styles. It was all a Muscovite hipster joke. Gopniks were about stealing, drinking and beating people up for fun. That what was all they did.

    You misunderstood my video clip from Pripyat’. It’s not that FUSSR was a trash can of history, it’s that the Soviet project was a failed attempt at a turbocharged technological and social development that ended up in societal wreckage.

    Soviets are a cautionary tale, but as Aristovich and Latynina have recently noted, the West is repeating the worst Soviet mistakes in an even more stupid manner. The Soviet project was supposed to lead humanity beyond its boundaries and into a universal expansion. It failed miserably because we are mostly territorial and hierarchical primates and most people are fine with that.

    Alright another attempt at making you understand what we deal with here:

    https://youtu.be/pymcyprdS1s?si=YyxnJ1VQse25OhWL

    In the Stalker novel, the main character ends up declaring that he wants “free happiness for all”. That’s what the Soviet project was about. It failed. The West is also failing right in front of our eyes. Nobody knows what will come next.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    gopnik dance styles. It was all a Muscovite hipster joke. Gopniks were about stealing, drinking and beating people up for fun. That what was all they did

    Local hooligans are not the most nice people in the world.

    But “not nice people”, still had an authentic local bodylanguage and dancing, however you want to call them.

    “Gopnik” nowadays is a joke which describes how the section of society looked in the 1990s. But if you call them now “offniki”, they have still have a local bodylanguage, they also dance in a local way.

    it’s that the Soviet project was a failed attempt at a turbocharged technological and social development that ended up in societal wreckage.

    It was mostly “turbocharged social development” of the peasants to the level of the late 19th century urban middle class.

    Late Soviet family structure and social norms, transformed peasants, to the social norms of the urban middle class of the late Russian empire. And a lot of the effect societal wreckage in 21st century Russia, is feeling more like returning to a culture of the old 18th century village again.

    Some of the 21st century devolution, is like parody of old village culture, from the late 19th century middle class culture which was celebrated in the Brezhnev epoch.

    Soviets are a cautionary tale, but as Aristovich and Latynina have recently noted, the West is repeating the worst Soviet mistakes in an even more stupid manner. The Soviet project was supposed to lead humanity beyond its boundaries and into a universal expansion. It failed miserably because we are mostly territorial and hierarchical primates and most people are fine with that.

    I know your view, just don’t think what happens in the West, however it is, is similar to the late Soviet history.

    The ruins of a more advanced civilization, is stronger contrast because the late Soviet epoch, in some ways was unrealistically “elevated”, while the view of Western culture today is usually complaining about the opposite problem.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Dmitry

    Our current level of technology is not compatible with our primate brains. The Soviets were simply впереди планеты всей. So they fell the first into the cliff. Perhaps if we accelerate the downfall of our corrupt system, something better might eventually emerge from the ruins of our civilization.

    https://youtu.be/2k9_bSqQQH8?si=EXYauCKKjGrWP9P0

  863. @QCIC
    @Sean

    We cannot read the minds of the people involved. If only ten of the Russian R-16's made it through and worked properly (highly likely) as a "counter-value strike", that leaves a 3 or 6 megaton warhead each for Boston, Washington, NYC, Houston, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle and Philadelphia. In other words, no more USA. USSR is even worse, with such a dense population and resource concentration in Moscow, St. Pete, Kiev and a few other places. The complications of the nuclear triad, counterforce strikes, missile defense and germ warfare do not change the fact that all of this was evil and retarded.

    The USA dropping away from the USSR-USA WMD security framework after 1990 was even more evil. Everyone who made this happen should be burned at the stake.

    Replies: @Sean

    On normal duty the missiles were stored in hangars, and it took one to three hours to roll them out, fuel them, and reach launch readiness. The missiles could remain fueled for only a few days due to the corrosive nature of the nitric acid. After this, the fuel would have to be removed and the missile sent back to the factory for rebuilding. Even when fueled and in an alert posture, the Soviet missiles still needed to wait up to twenty minutes to spin up the gyroscopes in their guidance systems before launch was possible

    The Soviets did not have a counter deterrent until 1972.

  864. @AP
    @Beckow


    Magyars came 1100 years ago – it doesn’t matter. Magyar DNA studies show they are 2-4% Asiatic (more in the puszta), the rest Germanic, Slav, Latins-Celts. The original Magyars were mostly destroyed by Tatars and Ottomans
     
    They retained the language and attitudes towards the Slavs whom they enslaved. They speak a Eurasian language.

    Russia is Europe – we know you deny it
     
    Much of Russia is in Europe. As are Kalmykia and Chechnya.

    Russians themselves usually deny they are Europeans. There’s a famous Russian poem about that. My Russian wife has never considered herself to be a European, despite having one Polish parent (or perhaps because - it involves less ignorance of Europe). But nevermind writers and anecdotes. Here is Levada:

    https://www.levada.ru/en/2021/03/22/russia-and-europe/

    29% of Russians consider Russia to be a European country, 64% – a non-European. Back in 2019, these numbers were 37% and 55%, respectively. Overall, since 2008 the number of those who believe that Russia is a European country has decreased by almost half: from 52% to 29%.

    So once, about half of Russians had considered theirs to be a European country but this has declined. With more familiarity with Europe.

    Russians consider themselves to be Eurasians, not Europeans. You are ignorant as usual. Did the socialist teachers at your inferior schools teach you that Russians are Europeans? Lol.

    rule from Vienna was easily preferable than rule from Moscow

    Remote rule is always worse

     

    Is remoteness your excuse? Krakow and Lviv are much further from Vienna than Slovakia from Budapest. Or Bulgaria from Istanbul. Whose rule was better?

    And Novgorod, destroyed by the Muscovites, wasn’t too far from Moscow.

    Answer the question: who had it better, those ruled from Vienna, Moscow, Budapest, or Istanbul?

    Replies: @Beckow, @Mr. XYZ

    …’Magyars’ speak a Eurasian language.

    So do Finns and Estonians. Are they also ‘Asian’? In the past the feudal lords of very mixed origin lorded over peasants of all nationalities, including a huge majority of Magyars who were peasants. You are ‘hollywooding‘ again…moron will be a moron…

    Russia is Europe – we know you deny it

    Much of Russia is in Europe.

    Get a map. Historical Russia is in Europe, it is on the f…ing map! It expanded eastward to Siberia, Pacific, etc…The stated views of people in “polls” can’t change what one sees on a map. Do you do polls to ascertain that the sun will rise tomorrow? (Your hapless, confused half-Polish wife is probably just trying to avoid having an argument with an autistic simpleton, she has my sympathy…)

    who had it better, those ruled from Vienna, Moscow, Budapest, or Istanbul

    I would pick Prague. But they all had it pretty bad, there is not much point in relative ‘badness‘…it was sh..t before we kicked them out at the end of WW1…and again in 1945.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Beckow


    Magyars’ speak a Eurasian language.

    So do Finns and Estonians. Are they also ‘Asian’?
     
    Finnic is indigenous to Europe. Uralic or Ugric is not. Like Indo-European, but reversed.

    Magyars came from the Urals in the 9th century. They enslaved and assimilated various peoples, including Slavs. This legacy has been proposed as a reason for the Magyar elite's particular cruelty towards their peasants.

    You are ‘hollywooding‘ again
     
    You seem to be obsessed with Hollywood. Did it address the Magyar migration?

    Get a map. Historical Russia is in Europe
     
    So are Chechnya and Kalmykia. Are Chechens Europeans? Kalmyks?

    Russians ethnogenesis begins with Asian influence, and Russia grew by absorbing both European and Asian lands and peoples. It is neither European nor Asian.

    The stated views of people in “polls” can’t change what one sees on a map. Do you do polls to ascertain that the sun will rise tomorrow? (Your hapless, confused half-Polish wife
     
    Putin's colleague Vladimir Yakunin "Russia is not between Europe and Asia. Europe and Asia are to the left and right of Russia. We are not a bridge between them but a separate civilisational space, where Russia unites the civilisational communities of East and West"

    Beckow thinks that Yakunin is confused but he, Beckow is right because as a midwit he sure knows how to read a map. Putting that 110 IQ to good use.

    Large majority of Russians state that they are not Europeans.

    You think you know more about Russians, than Russians do themselves?

    There are two possibilities:

    1. Russians know whether or not they are Europeans. Most say they are not. Those like Beckow who think they know better are proud fools who blindly believe something they were told differently.

    2. A Slovak midwit knows more about what Russians are, than Russians do themselves.

    Which is more likely?

    who had it better, those ruled from Vienna, Moscow, Budapest, or Istanbul

    I would pick Prague.
     
    Amazing, something so obvious even you can't deny it.

    But they all had it pretty bad,
     
    Were you taught that in the same schools that taught you that Russians are definitely Europeans?

    Accounting for stuff like lack of modern medicines and luxuries, Prague was fine in 1910. Czech culture was flourishing, it was a beautiful and wealthy place.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ, @Beckow

  865. @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk

    Thanks I will look later I never heard about Nick Land, .


    -

    A question, is why the Soviet spirit be relatively stable culturally with even some features of 19th century European culture, while using a religion of technology development.

    From the view of Marx/Engels writing in 1848, some features of the late Soviet epoch, would be opposite to the "chagrin of Reactionists". For example, "feet of industry", had a "national ground on which it stood".

    -

    The main tourist feature of Volgodonsk, was the monument for the atom. While the culture of 1982, the culture situation relatively "fixed" and "ossified" (in 1848 Marxist language).


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_wRPGVNxro

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Coconuts

    Accelerationism. An internet fad from ~’98- ~’08.

    Land was the original number two accelerationist. Mark Fisher was the original number one. He suicided. They have great quips. This one is not their invention, but they are the ones who made it popular:

    Who actually said "It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism"?
    byu/ljubljanarchist inzizek

    • Agree: Bashibuzuk
  866. @Beckow
    @Mikel


    ...a penchant for defending lost causes.
     
    I like to defend the underdog - people usually lie more about the weaker side, they pile on. You do it too.

    ...mathematically impossible results
     
    Really? That's your 'proof'? Those numbers games are easily debunked - people round up numbers, make mistakes, ignore digits, etc...you can play that game everywhere. But it is entirely possible that there was fraud and adding of votes - but I also don't believe the Western sponsored "polls" (how would they do it in Venezuela?) or that the opposition won 70-80%. That's an over-reach - Maduro still has substantial support. If both sides lie why do you only focus on one?

    The same happened with Lukashenka, the opposition went too far in their claims and it was easily seen as two sides fighting by any means - how is one to choose? Usually the inside party (government) prevails.

    My point is that it looks weird that you defend the 100% accuracy in US and believe any far-fetched nonsense about 'enemy' countries. Do you work for the US State Department? Was the Russian election this year also fake? If so, who would have won?


    expect from people who have turned an oil-rich country into a hellhole
     
    Venezuela was a hell-hole for the majority of its population for years. But the Miami exiles - or previously the shoppers and the cute babes wouldn't tell you that. So it goes on, this time with different winners and losers.

    My wife has several Venezuelan escapee friends.
     
    No kidding, that's where you get your info? I am assuming she was previously a 'chavista' but now she knows...:) Never trust bitter exiles, they never tell the truth...

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @AP, @Mikel

    Those numbers games are easily debunked

    Fair enough. Go ahead and debunk it for me please.

    But I fear you didn’t understand the mathematical problem. My explanation was very clumsy. Let me explain it again. If you understand some Spanish, you may be able to hear this primate give 3 exact numbers for the results of the elections in this video. If not, you’ll just have to trust me or do some research online:

    He is saying that the results were these:

    Maduro: 5.150.092 (51.1%)
    Gonzalez: 4.445.978 (44.2%)
    Others: 432,704 (4.6%)

    So far, so good. But if you add those 3 numbers, you get a total number of votes of 10,058,774. Check it out. So now you do the math to see what percentage of this total each candidate got and you get this:

    Maduro: 51.20000%
    Gonzalez 44.2000%
    Others: 4.60000%

    You get 4 zeros after the first decimal place (or put differently, the percentages these clowns came up with were exact to the sixth decimal place).

    The probabilities of getting 4 consecutive zeros in a random percentage are exactly 1 in 10,000. And the probabilities of getting 4 consecutive zeros in all 3 percentages are exactly 1 in 100,000,000.

    So we’re literally talking about a Caribbean miracle. As I said above, lots of people in that part of the world do believe in miracles. But I don’t. Not sure where you stand.

    Was the Russian election this year also fake?

    Probably. But not in the same way at all and you’re not doing Russia any favor by comparing them to Venezuela. Please let’s have some sense of proportionality. Russians are known to mess up badly sometimes but not in this particular way.

    you defend the 100% accuracy in US

    You just made this up for no good reason. I’ve said this several times but let’s do it again: compared to most other civilized countries (and even some 2rd World ones like Chile and Argentina), the US election system is a disaster. Where everybody gets their final results the night of the election, in the US there are always some counties still counting a week or several weeks later (in Utah too, btw).

    My wife has several Venezuelan escapee friends.

    No kidding, that’s where you get your info?

    Yes, unfortunately she keeps inviting them and I have to hear, against my will, the same old stories from the loudest people I have ever met. But who hasn’t met lots of Venezuelans these days? I’m 100% sure that you have a community in Slovakia too. Something like a quarter of them (perhaps half but there’s no need to exaggerate) have fled their country to all corners of the world. And a good percentage of those who still remain live off their remittances. It’s not easy to f-ck up a country with the largest oil reserves in the world (~18% of the total) but Maduro has achieved that impressive goal.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Mikel


    the US election system is a disaster.
     
    So why do you defend it?

    If it’s shit, let’s call it shit and not pretend it’s candy.

    Like for RF for example, I wholeheartedly agree that elections are rigged and most Russians probably feel the same (patriotic Babushkas excepted). RF “democracy” is a sham, nobody thinks otherwise. It’s a kleptocratic pseudo-republic, no doubt about it.

    Why don’t most people recognize that US democracy also has deep problems and is on a downward trajectory?
    , @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Mikel

    Those are not oil reserves where you can raise money on the New York Stock Exchange using them as collateral. The bulk of it is in tar sand and oil shale which is different from the kind you can flow out into a pipeline and sell it to anybody.

    But it is a resource rich country nevertheless. You are sort of correct, just greatly exaggerating.

    , @QCIC
    @Mikel

    Very interesting. I asked myself why they would pick these percentages. There may be some gematria here, better call Greasy. I think numerology is his department.

    Maduro: 51.2
    Gonzalez 44.2
    Others: 4.6

    Digit sum

    512 = 8
    442 = 10
    46 = 10

    Aces and eight?

    512 + 442 = 954, digit sum is 18, aces and eight.

    442 + 46 = 488, digit sum 20, but double 8.

    512 + 46 = 558, digit sum 18, aces and eight.

    L'Chaim!

    , @QCIC
    @Mikel

    Venezuela is a great example why IQ matters, both in terms of getting things done and also in terms of social stability. Fortunately the locals are not so aggressive so things simply don't work very well, otherwise I think they would have continuous war.

    Chavez chased out the smart fraction who kept the country alive. They should have found a way to control or get rid of the parasitic elites while keeping and supporting the smart fraction (upper middle class?), but they were probably too dumb, greedy and resentful to try this. I suspect Chavez had a genuine mandate based on the crooks who came before him, but apparently none of these people understood their own country.

    Most of the huge Venezuelan oil reserves are difficult to extract, process and sell. The West (Koch brothers?) put PDVSA on a short leash once they figured out what was happening.

    One notion I have is that the US doesn't mind that Venezuela is not selling much oil. Once we run out, it will be easy to swoop down, fix a few things and get 5 million barrels a day for a long time.

    Venezuela could be a self-sufficient paradise. It is a good reminder that people matter more than geography, though the locale does shape the people.

    , @Beckow
    @Mikel


    get 4 zeros after the first decimal place (or put differently, the percentages these clowns came up with were exact to the sixth decimal place)
     
    The percentages were assigned first and then the votes calculated - stupid and the TV guy looks Philipino (my theory is all that mankind in 100 years will look Philipino). Don't these people attend the US 'democracy' training? Or in Cuba? Simple rule: when manipulating do mostly odd numbers, the randomness works out better. (Even AP knows that.)

    What now? One side mishandled the central "count" and the other made up fake polls. My guess is the side with more guns locally will prevail. Unless US and maybe Argentina invade. (My sources tell me that the Colombians are out, they are currently run by a former guerilla - now a profesore - something to do with the previous support by Chavez.) Another pointless war? Why not.


    unfortunately she keeps inviting them and I have to hear, against my will, the same old stories from the loudest people I have ever met.
     
    They are better one on one, I mean the chicas. Still too loud and opinionated (one gifted me an "Ayn Rand" book) but change the topic to what colors go with olive skin or has the Lululemon peaked and they will drop Maduro in a second. Or drink a lot, is that now legal in Utah?

    Replies: @Mikel

    , @Dmitry
    @Mikel

    That's nothing new or special for Venezuela. In the postsoviet space, it's part of the famous stereotype of every postsoviet election since 1991.

    For example, in the 2014 referendum in Crimea.
    For the city of Sevastopol

    Are you for the reunification of Crimea with Russia as a region of the Russian Federation? 262041 95,6%
    Are you for the restoration of the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Crimea and for the status of Crimea as part of Ukraine? 9250 3,37%
    Valid votes 271291 98,97%
    Invalid votes 2810 1,03%
    Total votes 274101 100%
    Total number of registered voters 306258
    Turnout 89,5%

    How many voted - 274101/306258 = 0,895000
    "for" - 262041/274101 = 0,95600

    -

    But that's not an interesting or important topic, to waste time looking at.

    The interesting question is why they do this? They could remove those decimal places with maybe 10 minutes of work, using a $5 calculator.

    So, why not? In the postsoviet society, maybe because lack of electoral transparency is a flex.

    -

    Imagine in a school, where the teachers ask the students what to do, instead of the teacher choosing? What would be the effect for the authority of the teachers? The authority of the teachers would start to erode. The students could become arrogant and believe they should be the teacher.

    Imagine in a circus, the staff try to give control to the preferences of the circus animals. How soon before there will be chaos and the animals will try to take control of the zoo?

    In the postsoviet society, the government usually has a lot more power than it pretends. If they present too much about "electoral transparency", this is an indicator of weakness to the population, as it looks like they are asking the population for consent.

  867. A123 says: • Website
    @Mikel
    @A123


    Details vary from state to state and sometimes even from county to county, but the mail-in voting system across the U.S. is quite poor.
     
    As I said, I have not checked what exact systems they use everywhere. Perhaps they are as bad as you say in Fulton or inner Detroit and Philadelphia. I'm sure that information is easy to find but please feel free to show me how exactly their systems are much less secure than what I have described if you really know for a fact that they are. Perhaps the Republican party is making people waste their time asking them to volunteer when they could instead run constant campaign ads explaining how rigged the system is in those districts.

    I am all ears, don't skip details please.

    Replies: @A123

    I provided detail on how the courts had to intervene in signature validation here:

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-255/#comment-6690717

    And, about Fulton voting irregularities here:

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-255/#comment-6679852
    ___

    Bashi provided details on how the dead are voting here:

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-255/#comment-6690523

    And other forms of vote fraud here:

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-255/#comment-6690132
    ____

    The ball is in your court. Please explain how all of these proven problems could not possibly have altered past results. And, cannot impact future election outcomes.

    We are all ears, don’t skip details please.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @A123

    Actually, I want someone, anyone, to explain me how it is even possible that this kind of thing happens in the most important democracy in the World.

    How is it possible that the supposedly most technologically advanced society on this planet has a risk of election fraud?

    How is it possible that it is easier to validate the election results in Maghreb than in United States of America?

    It could be technically and legally fixed in a single presidential term. But it isn’t. Why ?

    Replies: @A123

  868. @Mikel
    @Bashibuzuk


    Undercover footage reported by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project from Muckracker.com reveals that 14% of illegal immigrants in a single apartment complex in Georgia admitted to being registered to vote.
     
    It's nice to see that people on my side of the political divide are not like the normies and the lefties. They are highly critical of everything they read, even if it comes from their preferred sources and aligns with their preconceived ideas.

    I'm sure everybody here took the time to listen to the actual clips of the conversations this journalist had with these illegals, that I presume were cherry-picked for maximum effect. I wasn't particularly impressed, to be honest. I have spent years of my life surrounded by people similar to these Central Americans and I know them very well. If you asked these people if they have ever witnessed a miracle, I know for a fact that 75% or more would reply "yes". These are the people who take those IQ tests psychologists use to try to compare country averages and get results in the 60s or lower (Honduras 62, Guatemala 47!, Lynn/Becker).

    So the dialogues they posted went like this: "Have you already registered?" "Yes, I have".

    We must therefore all believe that they understood what the exact question was and gave a perfectly reliable answer. Of course, all of these people have a perfect understanding of the US electoral system, can immediately discern in which context the work "register" is being used and whatever they chose to answer is as truthful as the time on my watch lol.

    So, exactly as you would expect (I could have told them from the beginning), when the Heritage Foundation guys went to verify if any of these 14% in ONE apartment complex in Georgia had actually registered to vote, they couldn't find any. It was just part of the magical realism they live in.

    But what does the Heritage Foundation conclude from all this? That they did register! How could these people possibly misunderstand the question or give a false answer? But they must have done it under some mysterious different name and address that nobody can now trace. 14% of all illegals in Georgia are registered to vote. It's been proven beyond doubt and now we all know what the reason will be if Kamala gets more votes than Trump in Georgia, because we are all so different from the normies...

    Replies: @QCIC

    Yes, but we can see that bringing in the illegals is part of a long-term plan to change the demographics of the country. This is evident from the ongoing support for illegal immigration at the highest levels for decades. It is natural that NGO’s would get many of these people to register to vote. We know there is a major incentive for the bogus votes, they admit to it and the downside is probably low, so quibbling over the number misses the point. This illegal/inappropriate registration is partly to get the votes, but also to create political leverage to change the system. It can also be used to claim the illegals want to be American citizens in good standing.

  869. Bashibuzuk says:
    @A123
    @Mikel

    I provided detail on how the courts had to intervene in signature validation here:

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-255/#comment-6690717

    And, about Fulton voting irregularities here:

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-255/#comment-6679852
    ___

    Bashi provided details on how the dead are voting here:

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-255/#comment-6690523

    And other forms of vote fraud here:

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-255/#comment-6690132
    ____

    The ball is in your court. Please explain how all of these proven problems could not possibly have altered past results. And, cannot impact future election outcomes.

    We are all ears, don’t skip details please.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    Actually, I want someone, anyone, to explain me how it is even possible that this kind of thing happens in the most important democracy in the World.

    How is it possible that the supposedly most technologically advanced society on this planet has a risk of election fraud?

    How is it possible that it is easier to validate the election results in Maghreb than in United States of America?

    It could be technically and legally fixed in a single presidential term. But it isn’t. Why ?

    • Replies: @A123
    @Bashibuzuk


    How is it possible that the supposedly most technologically advanced society on this planet has a risk of election fraud?

    How is it possible that it is easier to validate the election results in Maghreb than in United States of America?
     

    Most of it is that both the population and elected leaders have made bad decisions, often in the name of convenience.

    • Proof of citizenship is not required to register.
    • Motor Voter will often register you when you get driver's license unless you deselect the box to actively opt out. This is a huge problem with non-citizens eligible for documentation but not voting.
    • Change of address between states is not coordinated. The new registration does not automatically void the prior.
    • Mail in and drop off voting has exploded. This requires lengthy periods to handle the overhead with these methods.
    • Picture ID is not required in some states

    Another issue is that multiple elections are lumped together on a single day. The typical Presidential/federal election uses a ballot shared with state, county, and municipal elections. There are sometimes special district elections too.

    Many locations allow direct democracy via ballot initiatives. California often has 10-20 propositions and state constitution amendments on top of individual elections. Ballots can be pages long.
    ____

    The places with the fastest and easiest counts do one thing at a time. Federal elections are separate from all other offices. Many countries use slates where one vote covers the entire party rather than having separate choices for each office.

    The #1 thing the U.S. could do is end "no excuse" mail in voting. If essentially all votes are cast in person matched to mandatory photo ID, many of the opportunities for fraud would go away.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  870. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Mikel
    @Beckow


    Those numbers games are easily debunked
     
    Fair enough. Go ahead and debunk it for me please.

    But I fear you didn't understand the mathematical problem. My explanation was very clumsy. Let me explain it again. If you understand some Spanish, you may be able to hear this primate give 3 exact numbers for the results of the elections in this video. If not, you'll just have to trust me or do some research online:

    https://youtu.be/pB7g4y4M4s8

    He is saying that the results were these:

    Maduro: 5.150.092 (51.1%)
    Gonzalez: 4.445.978 (44.2%)
    Others: 432,704 (4.6%)

    So far, so good. But if you add those 3 numbers, you get a total number of votes of 10,058,774. Check it out. So now you do the math to see what percentage of this total each candidate got and you get this:

    Maduro: 51.20000%
    Gonzalez 44.2000%
    Others: 4.60000%

    You get 4 zeros after the first decimal place (or put differently, the percentages these clowns came up with were exact to the sixth decimal place).

    The probabilities of getting 4 consecutive zeros in a random percentage are exactly 1 in 10,000. And the probabilities of getting 4 consecutive zeros in all 3 percentages are exactly 1 in 100,000,000.

    So we're literally talking about a Caribbean miracle. As I said above, lots of people in that part of the world do believe in miracles. But I don't. Not sure where you stand.

    Was the Russian election this year also fake?
     
    Probably. But not in the same way at all and you're not doing Russia any favor by comparing them to Venezuela. Please let's have some sense of proportionality. Russians are known to mess up badly sometimes but not in this particular way.

    you defend the 100% accuracy in US
     
    You just made this up for no good reason. I've said this several times but let's do it again: compared to most other civilized countries (and even some 2rd World ones like Chile and Argentina), the US election system is a disaster. Where everybody gets their final results the night of the election, in the US there are always some counties still counting a week or several weeks later (in Utah too, btw).

    My wife has several Venezuelan escapee friends.

    No kidding, that’s where you get your info?
     
    Yes, unfortunately she keeps inviting them and I have to hear, against my will, the same old stories from the loudest people I have ever met. But who hasn't met lots of Venezuelans these days? I'm 100% sure that you have a community in Slovakia too. Something like a quarter of them (perhaps half but there's no need to exaggerate) have fled their country to all corners of the world. And a good percentage of those who still remain live off their remittances. It's not easy to f-ck up a country with the largest oil reserves in the world (~18% of the total) but Maduro has achieved that impressive goal.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Emil Nikola Richard, @QCIC, @QCIC, @Beckow, @Dmitry

    the US election system is a disaster.

    So why do you defend it?

    If it’s shit, let’s call it shit and not pretend it’s candy.

    Like for RF for example, I wholeheartedly agree that elections are rigged and most Russians probably feel the same (patriotic Babushkas excepted). RF “democracy” is a sham, nobody thinks otherwise. It’s a kleptocratic pseudo-republic, no doubt about it.

    Why don’t most people recognize that US democracy also has deep problems and is on a downward trajectory?

  871. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk


    gopnik dance styles. It was all a Muscovite hipster joke. Gopniks were about stealing, drinking and beating people up for fun. That what was all they did
     
    Local hooligans are not the most nice people in the world.

    But "not nice people", still had an authentic local bodylanguage and dancing, however you want to call them.

    "Gopnik" nowadays is a joke which describes how the section of society looked in the 1990s. But if you call them now "offniki", they have still have a local bodylanguage, they also dance in a local way.


    it’s that the Soviet project was a failed attempt at a turbocharged technological and social development that ended up in societal wreckage.
     
    It was mostly "turbocharged social development" of the peasants to the level of the late 19th century urban middle class.

    Late Soviet family structure and social norms, transformed peasants, to the social norms of the urban middle class of the late Russian empire. And a lot of the effect societal wreckage in 21st century Russia, is feeling more like returning to a culture of the old 18th century village again.


    -

    Some of the 21st century devolution, is like parody of old village culture, from the late 19th century middle class culture which was celebrated in the Brezhnev epoch.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zlk7vMYsSw


    Soviets are a cautionary tale, but as Aristovich and Latynina have recently noted, the West is repeating the worst Soviet mistakes in an even more stupid manner. The Soviet project was supposed to lead humanity beyond its boundaries and into a universal expansion. It failed miserably because we are mostly territorial and hierarchical primates and most people are fine with that.

     

    I know your view, just don't think what happens in the West, however it is, is similar to the late Soviet history.

    The ruins of a more advanced civilization, is stronger contrast because the late Soviet epoch, in some ways was unrealistically "elevated", while the view of Western culture today is usually complaining about the opposite problem.


    https://i.imgur.com/6eqT2wG.jpeg

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    Our current level of technology is not compatible with our primate brains. The Soviets were simply впереди планеты всей. So they fell the first into the cliff. Perhaps if we accelerate the downfall of our corrupt system, something better might eventually emerge from the ruins of our civilization.

  872. @Sher Singh
    https://twitter.com/truckdriverpleb/status/1819016706947215611

    Powerful reason to vote for Trudeau.

    Replies: @Torna atrás

    • Replies: @Sher Singh
    @Torna atrás

    I guess, but it's w/e
    As long as Turban man is dominant rest falls in place.

    Killing people isn't against Sikhi.
    Hookah Halal Haram Hajamat is.

    ਅਕਾਲ

  873. A123 says: • Website
    @Bashibuzuk
    @A123

    Actually, I want someone, anyone, to explain me how it is even possible that this kind of thing happens in the most important democracy in the World.

    How is it possible that the supposedly most technologically advanced society on this planet has a risk of election fraud?

    How is it possible that it is easier to validate the election results in Maghreb than in United States of America?

    It could be technically and legally fixed in a single presidential term. But it isn’t. Why ?

    Replies: @A123

    How is it possible that the supposedly most technologically advanced society on this planet has a risk of election fraud?

    How is it possible that it is easier to validate the election results in Maghreb than in United States of America?

    Most of it is that both the population and elected leaders have made bad decisions, often in the name of convenience.

    • Proof of citizenship is not required to register.
    • Motor Voter will often register you when you get driver’s license unless you deselect the box to actively opt out. This is a huge problem with non-citizens eligible for documentation but not voting.
    • Change of address between states is not coordinated. The new registration does not automatically void the prior.
    • Mail in and drop off voting has exploded. This requires lengthy periods to handle the overhead with these methods.
    • Picture ID is not required in some states

    Another issue is that multiple elections are lumped together on a single day. The typical Presidential/federal election uses a ballot shared with state, county, and municipal elections. There are sometimes special district elections too.

    Many locations allow direct democracy via ballot initiatives. California often has 10-20 propositions and state constitution amendments on top of individual elections. Ballots can be pages long.
    ____

    The places with the fastest and easiest counts do one thing at a time. Federal elections are separate from all other offices. Many countries use slates where one vote covers the entire party rather than having separate choices for each office.

    The #1 thing the U.S. could do is end “no excuse” mail in voting. If essentially all votes are cast in person matched to mandatory photo ID, many of the opportunities for fraud would go away.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @A123


    The #1 thing the U.S. could do is end “no excuse” mail in voting. If essentially all votes are cast in person matched to mandatory photo ID, many of the opportunities for fraud would go away.
     
    So why haven’t it been done?

    Replies: @A123

  874. @Mikel
    @Beckow


    Those numbers games are easily debunked
     
    Fair enough. Go ahead and debunk it for me please.

    But I fear you didn't understand the mathematical problem. My explanation was very clumsy. Let me explain it again. If you understand some Spanish, you may be able to hear this primate give 3 exact numbers for the results of the elections in this video. If not, you'll just have to trust me or do some research online:

    https://youtu.be/pB7g4y4M4s8

    He is saying that the results were these:

    Maduro: 5.150.092 (51.1%)
    Gonzalez: 4.445.978 (44.2%)
    Others: 432,704 (4.6%)

    So far, so good. But if you add those 3 numbers, you get a total number of votes of 10,058,774. Check it out. So now you do the math to see what percentage of this total each candidate got and you get this:

    Maduro: 51.20000%
    Gonzalez 44.2000%
    Others: 4.60000%

    You get 4 zeros after the first decimal place (or put differently, the percentages these clowns came up with were exact to the sixth decimal place).

    The probabilities of getting 4 consecutive zeros in a random percentage are exactly 1 in 10,000. And the probabilities of getting 4 consecutive zeros in all 3 percentages are exactly 1 in 100,000,000.

    So we're literally talking about a Caribbean miracle. As I said above, lots of people in that part of the world do believe in miracles. But I don't. Not sure where you stand.

    Was the Russian election this year also fake?
     
    Probably. But not in the same way at all and you're not doing Russia any favor by comparing them to Venezuela. Please let's have some sense of proportionality. Russians are known to mess up badly sometimes but not in this particular way.

    you defend the 100% accuracy in US
     
    You just made this up for no good reason. I've said this several times but let's do it again: compared to most other civilized countries (and even some 2rd World ones like Chile and Argentina), the US election system is a disaster. Where everybody gets their final results the night of the election, in the US there are always some counties still counting a week or several weeks later (in Utah too, btw).

    My wife has several Venezuelan escapee friends.

    No kidding, that’s where you get your info?
     
    Yes, unfortunately she keeps inviting them and I have to hear, against my will, the same old stories from the loudest people I have ever met. But who hasn't met lots of Venezuelans these days? I'm 100% sure that you have a community in Slovakia too. Something like a quarter of them (perhaps half but there's no need to exaggerate) have fled their country to all corners of the world. And a good percentage of those who still remain live off their remittances. It's not easy to f-ck up a country with the largest oil reserves in the world (~18% of the total) but Maduro has achieved that impressive goal.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Emil Nikola Richard, @QCIC, @QCIC, @Beckow, @Dmitry

    Those are not oil reserves where you can raise money on the New York Stock Exchange using them as collateral. The bulk of it is in tar sand and oil shale which is different from the kind you can flow out into a pipeline and sell it to anybody.

    But it is a resource rich country nevertheless. You are sort of correct, just greatly exaggerating.

  875. @Mikel
    @Beckow


    Those numbers games are easily debunked
     
    Fair enough. Go ahead and debunk it for me please.

    But I fear you didn't understand the mathematical problem. My explanation was very clumsy. Let me explain it again. If you understand some Spanish, you may be able to hear this primate give 3 exact numbers for the results of the elections in this video. If not, you'll just have to trust me or do some research online:

    https://youtu.be/pB7g4y4M4s8

    He is saying that the results were these:

    Maduro: 5.150.092 (51.1%)
    Gonzalez: 4.445.978 (44.2%)
    Others: 432,704 (4.6%)

    So far, so good. But if you add those 3 numbers, you get a total number of votes of 10,058,774. Check it out. So now you do the math to see what percentage of this total each candidate got and you get this:

    Maduro: 51.20000%
    Gonzalez 44.2000%
    Others: 4.60000%

    You get 4 zeros after the first decimal place (or put differently, the percentages these clowns came up with were exact to the sixth decimal place).

    The probabilities of getting 4 consecutive zeros in a random percentage are exactly 1 in 10,000. And the probabilities of getting 4 consecutive zeros in all 3 percentages are exactly 1 in 100,000,000.

    So we're literally talking about a Caribbean miracle. As I said above, lots of people in that part of the world do believe in miracles. But I don't. Not sure where you stand.

    Was the Russian election this year also fake?
     
    Probably. But not in the same way at all and you're not doing Russia any favor by comparing them to Venezuela. Please let's have some sense of proportionality. Russians are known to mess up badly sometimes but not in this particular way.

    you defend the 100% accuracy in US
     
    You just made this up for no good reason. I've said this several times but let's do it again: compared to most other civilized countries (and even some 2rd World ones like Chile and Argentina), the US election system is a disaster. Where everybody gets their final results the night of the election, in the US there are always some counties still counting a week or several weeks later (in Utah too, btw).

    My wife has several Venezuelan escapee friends.

    No kidding, that’s where you get your info?
     
    Yes, unfortunately she keeps inviting them and I have to hear, against my will, the same old stories from the loudest people I have ever met. But who hasn't met lots of Venezuelans these days? I'm 100% sure that you have a community in Slovakia too. Something like a quarter of them (perhaps half but there's no need to exaggerate) have fled their country to all corners of the world. And a good percentage of those who still remain live off their remittances. It's not easy to f-ck up a country with the largest oil reserves in the world (~18% of the total) but Maduro has achieved that impressive goal.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Emil Nikola Richard, @QCIC, @QCIC, @Beckow, @Dmitry

    Very interesting. I asked myself why they would pick these percentages. There may be some gematria here, better call Greasy. I think numerology is his department.

    Maduro: 51.2
    Gonzalez 44.2
    Others: 4.6

    Digit sum

    512 = 8
    442 = 10
    46 = 10

    Aces and eight?

    512 + 442 = 954, digit sum is 18, aces and eight.

    442 + 46 = 488, digit sum 20, but double 8.

    512 + 46 = 558, digit sum 18, aces and eight.

    L’Chaim!

  876. @Mikel
    @Beckow


    Those numbers games are easily debunked
     
    Fair enough. Go ahead and debunk it for me please.

    But I fear you didn't understand the mathematical problem. My explanation was very clumsy. Let me explain it again. If you understand some Spanish, you may be able to hear this primate give 3 exact numbers for the results of the elections in this video. If not, you'll just have to trust me or do some research online:

    https://youtu.be/pB7g4y4M4s8

    He is saying that the results were these:

    Maduro: 5.150.092 (51.1%)
    Gonzalez: 4.445.978 (44.2%)
    Others: 432,704 (4.6%)

    So far, so good. But if you add those 3 numbers, you get a total number of votes of 10,058,774. Check it out. So now you do the math to see what percentage of this total each candidate got and you get this:

    Maduro: 51.20000%
    Gonzalez 44.2000%
    Others: 4.60000%

    You get 4 zeros after the first decimal place (or put differently, the percentages these clowns came up with were exact to the sixth decimal place).

    The probabilities of getting 4 consecutive zeros in a random percentage are exactly 1 in 10,000. And the probabilities of getting 4 consecutive zeros in all 3 percentages are exactly 1 in 100,000,000.

    So we're literally talking about a Caribbean miracle. As I said above, lots of people in that part of the world do believe in miracles. But I don't. Not sure where you stand.

    Was the Russian election this year also fake?
     
    Probably. But not in the same way at all and you're not doing Russia any favor by comparing them to Venezuela. Please let's have some sense of proportionality. Russians are known to mess up badly sometimes but not in this particular way.

    you defend the 100% accuracy in US
     
    You just made this up for no good reason. I've said this several times but let's do it again: compared to most other civilized countries (and even some 2rd World ones like Chile and Argentina), the US election system is a disaster. Where everybody gets their final results the night of the election, in the US there are always some counties still counting a week or several weeks later (in Utah too, btw).

    My wife has several Venezuelan escapee friends.

    No kidding, that’s where you get your info?
     
    Yes, unfortunately she keeps inviting them and I have to hear, against my will, the same old stories from the loudest people I have ever met. But who hasn't met lots of Venezuelans these days? I'm 100% sure that you have a community in Slovakia too. Something like a quarter of them (perhaps half but there's no need to exaggerate) have fled their country to all corners of the world. And a good percentage of those who still remain live off their remittances. It's not easy to f-ck up a country with the largest oil reserves in the world (~18% of the total) but Maduro has achieved that impressive goal.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Emil Nikola Richard, @QCIC, @QCIC, @Beckow, @Dmitry

    Venezuela is a great example why IQ matters, both in terms of getting things done and also in terms of social stability. Fortunately the locals are not so aggressive so things simply don’t work very well, otherwise I think they would have continuous war.

    Chavez chased out the smart fraction who kept the country alive. They should have found a way to control or get rid of the parasitic elites while keeping and supporting the smart fraction (upper middle class?), but they were probably too dumb, greedy and resentful to try this. I suspect Chavez had a genuine mandate based on the crooks who came before him, but apparently none of these people understood their own country.

    Most of the huge Venezuelan oil reserves are difficult to extract, process and sell. The West (Koch brothers?) put PDVSA on a short leash once they figured out what was happening.

    One notion I have is that the US doesn’t mind that Venezuela is not selling much oil. Once we run out, it will be easy to swoop down, fix a few things and get 5 million barrels a day for a long time.

    Venezuela could be a self-sufficient paradise. It is a good reminder that people matter more than geography, though the locale does shape the people.

    • Agree: Mikel
  877. @A123
    @Bashibuzuk


    How is it possible that the supposedly most technologically advanced society on this planet has a risk of election fraud?

    How is it possible that it is easier to validate the election results in Maghreb than in United States of America?
     

    Most of it is that both the population and elected leaders have made bad decisions, often in the name of convenience.

    • Proof of citizenship is not required to register.
    • Motor Voter will often register you when you get driver's license unless you deselect the box to actively opt out. This is a huge problem with non-citizens eligible for documentation but not voting.
    • Change of address between states is not coordinated. The new registration does not automatically void the prior.
    • Mail in and drop off voting has exploded. This requires lengthy periods to handle the overhead with these methods.
    • Picture ID is not required in some states

    Another issue is that multiple elections are lumped together on a single day. The typical Presidential/federal election uses a ballot shared with state, county, and municipal elections. There are sometimes special district elections too.

    Many locations allow direct democracy via ballot initiatives. California often has 10-20 propositions and state constitution amendments on top of individual elections. Ballots can be pages long.
    ____

    The places with the fastest and easiest counts do one thing at a time. Federal elections are separate from all other offices. Many countries use slates where one vote covers the entire party rather than having separate choices for each office.

    The #1 thing the U.S. could do is end "no excuse" mail in voting. If essentially all votes are cast in person matched to mandatory photo ID, many of the opportunities for fraud would go away.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    The #1 thing the U.S. could do is end “no excuse” mail in voting. If essentially all votes are cast in person matched to mandatory photo ID, many of the opportunities for fraud would go away.

    So why haven’t it been done?

    • Replies: @A123
    @Bashibuzuk


    So why haven’t it been done?
     
    Somehow photo ID has been turned into a "race issue".

    PEACE 😇

  878. “We are Russians, God is with us.”

    Have you people seen the latest RuMOD video?

    It is the most serious military ad I have ever seen. I don’t know what it says but I get the idea.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @QCIC


    I don’t know what it says but I get the idea.
     
    It cites a list of ethnic groups that can be found in RF, including those who have their own independent post-Soviet states, sums them all up as Russians and then declares that God is on their side. Then it suggests signing a contract to join the army and fight in the SMO by using a Russian play of words between the SMO and Our [people]: СВО - Свои [люди]. The list of ethnic groups includes Ukrainians, which is right as there are many ethnic Ukrainians living in RF and fighting in the RF army, but it completely excludes Jews as a religious and ethnic group, which makes the whole thing antisemitic. BTW, С нами Бог translated into German language becomes Gott mit uns. It’s quite cringe overall. I think we better leave God out of our petty tribal rivalries.

    Replies: @QCIC

    , @LondonBob
    @QCIC

    Karlin must hate that video, Russians explicitly fighting the rainbow flag.

  879. Will Emil listen to Lex’s new 9 hr. Podcast on neuralink?

    That is like three Indian movies. (Which Mr. Hack studiously avoids.)

    Don’t expect them to address this question but I wonder if some future version of the technology could be used to cure gays.

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @songbird

    Why would the Lex podcast cure gays?

    Replies: @songbird

  880. Some Ukrainian humour from a Ukrainian blogger.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Bashibuzuk

    Is it really any more humorous than say a Russian who spends a lot of his free time conversing on an English language blogsite, who probably spends the bulk of his time talking to his close family members in french? :-)

  881. @Bashibuzuk
    @A123


    The #1 thing the U.S. could do is end “no excuse” mail in voting. If essentially all votes are cast in person matched to mandatory photo ID, many of the opportunities for fraud would go away.
     
    So why haven’t it been done?

    Replies: @A123

    So why haven’t it been done?

    Somehow photo ID has been turned into a “race issue”.

    PEACE 😇

  882. Bashibuzuk says:
    @QCIC
    "We are Russians, God is with us."

    Have you people seen the latest RuMOD video?

    It is the most serious military ad I have ever seen. I don't know what it says but I get the idea. https://vk.com/video-219162595_456239576

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @LondonBob

    I don’t know what it says but I get the idea.

    It cites a list of ethnic groups that can be found in RF, including those who have their own independent post-Soviet states, sums them all up as Russians and then declares that God is on their side. Then it suggests signing a contract to join the army and fight in the SMO by using a Russian play of words between the SMO and Our [people]: СВОСвои [люди]. The list of ethnic groups includes Ukrainians, which is right as there are many ethnic Ukrainians living in RF and fighting in the RF army, but it completely excludes Jews as a religious and ethnic group, which makes the whole thing antisemitic. BTW, С нами Бог translated into German language becomes Gott mit uns. It’s quite cringe overall. I think we better leave God out of our petty tribal rivalries.

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Bashibuzuk

    Do you think it will be effective with the target young male audience or is it too heavy handed?

    Or is it actually directed at the reluctant parents and grieving families more than the troops?

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

  883. Simone Biles (4’8″) is not much taller than a Pygmy woman. I believe she is the height of a Pygmy man.

    [MORE]

    Was there ever a shorter Olympic gymnast?

    Yes, Kerri Strug, who famously vaulted with the bad ankle in ’96. She was 4’7″. Only an inch taller than a Pygmy woman.

    Could pygmies sweep the Olympic gymnast competition, with the proper training? Or would the steatopygia interfere?

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    Nobody has mentioned that she skipped the Tokyo olympics because they banned her performance drug.

    The women's 5Km 1st heat is worth watching. They show more than half of the 15:00 in the NBC youtube highlight. The crazy Latvian chick had a 300 m lead halfway through the race. She ended up finishing behind 3 negroes but made it into the final. Also she is now the only Latvian besides Porzingis almost everybody on the planet recognizes her name.

  884. @Bashibuzuk
    https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/kondratio/17680138/155170/155170_600.jpg

    Some Ukrainian humour from a Ukrainian blogger.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    Is it really any more humorous than say a Russian who spends a lot of his free time conversing on an English language blogsite, who probably spends the bulk of his time talking to his close family members in french? 🙂

    • Agree: Bashibuzuk
  885. @Mikel
    @Beckow


    and the collection of nonsense about Trump peeing on carpets and that 10k in Facebook ads swayed the 2016 election (how stupid does one have to be to take that seriously?)
     
    AK had a most interesting post some years ago, when he wasn't afflicted by the SMO PTSD, that showed how unintelligent most people are by posting the actual questions of the PISA tests and the percentages that got them wrong.

    The MSM BS people put up with is indeed staggering. But it's actually worse than that because a good percentage of the people who realize they're being had opt to believe equal or worse nonsense coming from the alternative sources they resort to. What good is it to stop believing what you read in the NYT and the CNN if you're going to believe uncritically what you hear at Alex Jones, Quanon or Breitbart/Zerohedge for that matter? That's what you are promoting: Westerners should stop believing the stupid stuff published by their MSM but should pay attention to idiotic stories coming from equally unreliable sources, like the Skripal fables or the "gestures of good will" to explain military retreats.

    And it's not even necessary to believe the Kremlin nonsense to support Russia. AK was an ardent Putin supporter at the time and so is Israel Shamir. They both admitted when the Kremlin was full of crap (eg Skripal). Same goes for lots of Russian TG commentators.

    Replies: @Beckow, @Gerard1234

    Skripal fables

    You pretend to be skeptical of western propaganda while being the biggest supporter and cocksucker of it. On literally everything.The worst type of antirussian. Stop acting like a butch lesbian ,Mikel. I hate having to repeat myself, while showing Nobel Peace award deserving tolerance.

    1. Anyone with a brain knows that the death of the homeless woman in no logical way could have been done by Russian agents ” throwing away perfume bottle”. That you could arrogantly stick with your original nonsense is indicative. Clearly the west are lying about the homeless woman- which should then give severe doubt to ALL their comments about the Skripal stuff.

    2. Salisbury must be one of the most spy-attracting places on the planet you dummy. Major UK army base, main chemical weapons facility. Any non thick person would accept the strong possibility of a western intelligence setup , and that Petrov/Chepiga could have been there for reasons not connected to Skripal. Espionage not murder.

    3. Any non- brainwashed idiot would think about what Skripals daughter being there indicates. If she flew direct from Moscow, how likely are they to have decided, of all times, to assassinate Skripal then? Zero in my view. Possibility Skripal with immobile mother in her 90s and daughter engaged, was looking at some deal with Russian authorities to see her. His daughter is the only intermediary for this…. and MI6 child molestors decided taking them out or some scam would be funny response.

    The ability to not think a significant chance this Skripal thing was a western operation, or to be highly untrusting of what west have claimed happened to Skripals, is a disgrace. A dead guy who isn’t dead with no sight of him, and you claim “fables”?

    MH17

    Its only bias, lazy western BS propaganda made bias making you arrogantly claim ” Russia did it”. BTW did Boeing ever make claim against Russian government in American or international court? As with that other Malaysian plane that disappeared – governments lie and play dumb about what they know. Western lies about there being no Su-25’s in the area is one thing among others, the only other thing is an issue of trust. I trust my country, and you trust western cartel of countries on MH17. OK- but don’t be claiming its anything more than that

    ” Gestures of goodwill”/non intention to take Kiev

    FFS. 1000s of Russian heroes after slaughtering masses of ukronazis and completing clearly significant action at Chernobyl……leave with zero resistance through Belarus/ northern Russia to redeploy to the Donbass. What dimwit thinks this happens with ukronazis in dominant position in Kiev?

    Again, anyone with a brain knows that taking Kiev ( and with it compelling to take northern and much central 404 too) would be too much of a financial pressure to be an initiative then.

    You and my great pal German re-rapist are both of the same 2-headed snake. Poseurs faking “neutrality” or “anti neoconservative” as if to give “credibility” to your antirussian filth.

    As now is German re-rapist bothered about his country allowing in Chechen terrorists ? Of course not!

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Gerard1234


    As now is German re-rapist bothered about his country allowing in Chechen terrorists ?
     
    I wouldn't have allowed him in and don't think his death was a great loss, but still, Russia's methods are pretty gangster-like (not just or even primarily the assassination - which was also carried out very incompetently, the assassin was caught in flagranti -, but definitely the arrest of foreigners on dubious or made-up charges for an exchange).
    That Adidas track suit and baseball cap the assassin wore when received by Putin was also incredibly low-class, but I suppose that's meant to be some sort of populist imagery, Putin as leader of the patriotic proles, it's like one of those memes about tough guy gopniks (or whatever the term is) squatting around in their track suits. Do you wear something like that yourself?

    Replies: @Mikhail

    , @Mikel
    @Gerard1234


    Any non thick person would accept the strong possibility of a western intelligence setup , and that Petrov/Chepiga could have been there for reasons not connected to Skripal.
     
    Look, in the spirit of friendship and tolerance, I would be willing to concede all your points on Skripal, MH17, the Little Green Men, abandoning Snake Island as a gesture of good will and all of that. But we have a much bigger problem: the "food safety" excuse with the Ecuadorian bananas. Those bananas are a bridge too far for me to cross. Either you admit that Russia engaged in a pointless and totally moronic dissimulation with those bananas or I reject any deal on the rest. This is my final word.

    Replies: @Gerard1234

  886. @Bashibuzuk
    @Mr. Hack


    Why didn’t he continue shaking in his boots, when the collective West applied all sorts of sanctions and froze all sorts of Klept assets in the West as retribution for his brazen Ukrainian invasion?
     
    Because they had 8 years to adapt and move money around. After the invasion they got hundreds of billions of dollars seized but it would have been much worse in 2014. BTW, that’s an indirect proof of the fact that the RF Klept are not necessarily adversarial to the the Western Klept, they actually heavily invested in the West for nearly a generation, and the Western Klept (1%-ers) have also invested in RF during that time, and there were joint ventures developed. But the Klept world is a dog eat dog mob world where the real question is “who whom”. And the Western Klept being the top dog for a couple of generations was looking down on the RF Klept and wanted to boss them over. RF Klept want just to be treated as equals by the Western Klept. Putin and his circle are not into Empire building, but they want to be « respected in their hood ». It’s a turf war between two Klept cliques, the Western well established one and the Russian Noviop newcomers.

    Again, none has shown it better and in a more humorous manner than Pelevin in his Generation P novel, of which Victor Ginzburg made an excellent movie:

    https://youtu.be/r5BcWKcn84Y?si=5LM3F_GtCVlWUtHL

    Written nearly 30 years ago, still very much relevant today.

    BTW, the sequel to the Victor Ginzburg Generation P movie - Empire V (which reads as a close anagram to Vampire), and is a satire of the parasitic Globalist Elite by Pelevin, was filmed many years ago, but is yet to be released worldwide.

    https://youtu.be/6k4rdbhFOI8?si=282XcJZmfoYFYUKr

    English subtitles. The funniest sentence of the trailer is at the end, if one enjoys dark comedy… 🙂

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    Putin and his circle are not into Empire building, but they want to be « respected in their hood ». It’s a turf war between two Klept cliques, the Western well established one and the Russian Noviop newcomers.

    Yet, I think it’s not inaccurate to paint Putler as an empire builder, as do so many of his moderna day analysts. He’s on record stating that the loss of Ukraine was one of the greatest losses of the 20th century. His greatest Russian hero is Peter the Great, with whom he probably wants to have himself compared to favorably.

    Also, it’s well known that the Ukrainian klepts, although not averse to dealing with the Russian mob on business deals, do not want them to win or take over there own turf franchises, and are vociferously averse to them poaching on their own territories. Some like Kolomoisky and Pinchuk have openly sided with the Ukrainian side, as has of course Poroshenko. Akhmetov remains an enigma, at least to me?…

  887. @songbird
    Simone Biles (4'8") is not much taller than a Pygmy woman. I believe she is the height of a Pygmy man.
    https://twitter.com/Mr_Andrew_Fox/status/1819265966473113737

    Was there ever a shorter Olympic gymnast?

    Yes, Kerri Strug, who famously vaulted with the bad ankle in '96. She was 4'7". Only an inch taller than a Pygmy woman.

    Could pygmies sweep the Olympic gymnast competition, with the proper training? Or would the steatopygia interfere?

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    Nobody has mentioned that she skipped the Tokyo olympics because they banned her performance drug.

    The women’s 5Km 1st heat is worth watching. They show more than half of the 15:00 in the NBC youtube highlight. The crazy Latvian chick had a 300 m lead halfway through the race. She ended up finishing behind 3 negroes but made it into the final. Also she is now the only Latvian besides Porzingis almost everybody on the planet recognizes her name.

    • Thanks: songbird
  888. German_reader says:
    @Gerard1234
    @Mikel


    Skripal fables
     
    You pretend to be skeptical of western propaganda while being the biggest supporter and cocksucker of it. On literally everything.The worst type of antirussian. Stop acting like a butch lesbian ,Mikel. I hate having to repeat myself, while showing Nobel Peace award deserving tolerance.

    1. Anyone with a brain knows that the death of the homeless woman in no logical way could have been done by Russian agents " throwing away perfume bottle". That you could arrogantly stick with your original nonsense is indicative. Clearly the west are lying about the homeless woman- which should then give severe doubt to ALL their comments about the Skripal stuff.

    2. Salisbury must be one of the most spy-attracting places on the planet you dummy. Major UK army base, main chemical weapons facility. Any non thick person would accept the strong possibility of a western intelligence setup , and that Petrov/Chepiga could have been there for reasons not connected to Skripal. Espionage not murder.

    3. Any non- brainwashed idiot would think about what Skripals daughter being there indicates. If she flew direct from Moscow, how likely are they to have decided, of all times, to assassinate Skripal then? Zero in my view. Possibility Skripal with immobile mother in her 90s and daughter engaged, was looking at some deal with Russian authorities to see her. His daughter is the only intermediary for this.... and MI6 child molestors decided taking them out or some scam would be funny response.

    The ability to not think a significant chance this Skripal thing was a western operation, or to be highly untrusting of what west have claimed happened to Skripals, is a disgrace. A dead guy who isn't dead with no sight of him, and you claim "fables"?

    MH17
     
    Its only bias, lazy western BS propaganda made bias making you arrogantly claim " Russia did it". BTW did Boeing ever make claim against Russian government in American or international court? As with that other Malaysian plane that disappeared - governments lie and play dumb about what they know. Western lies about there being no Su-25's in the area is one thing among others, the only other thing is an issue of trust. I trust my country, and you trust western cartel of countries on MH17. OK- but don't be claiming its anything more than that

    " Gestures of goodwill"/non intention to take Kiev
     
    FFS. 1000s of Russian heroes after slaughtering masses of ukronazis and completing clearly significant action at Chernobyl......leave with zero resistance through Belarus/ northern Russia to redeploy to the Donbass. What dimwit thinks this happens with ukronazis in dominant position in Kiev?

    Again, anyone with a brain knows that taking Kiev ( and with it compelling to take northern and much central 404 too) would be too much of a financial pressure to be an initiative then.

    You and my great pal German re-rapist are both of the same 2-headed snake. Poseurs faking "neutrality" or "anti neoconservative" as if to give "credibility" to your antirussian filth.

    As now is German re-rapist bothered about his country allowing in Chechen terrorists ? Of course not!

    Replies: @German_reader, @Mikel

    As now is German re-rapist bothered about his country allowing in Chechen terrorists ?

    I wouldn’t have allowed him in and don’t think his death was a great loss, but still, Russia’s methods are pretty gangster-like (not just or even primarily the assassination – which was also carried out very incompetently, the assassin was caught in flagranti -, but definitely the arrest of foreigners on dubious or made-up charges for an exchange).
    That Adidas track suit and baseball cap the assassin wore when received by Putin was also incredibly low-class, but I suppose that’s meant to be some sort of populist imagery, Putin as leader of the patriotic proles, it’s like one of those memes about tough guy gopniks (or whatever the term is) squatting around in their track suits. Do you wear something like that yourself?

    • Replies: @Mikhail
    @German_reader

    Has it been firmly established that the released Russian from Germany wasn't a free lancer? Interesting how free lancing is seemingly (at least in some circles) given more credibility when a Westy is involved regarding Trump, Fico, Kennedys et al.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

  889. Bashibuzuk says:

    The Empire building is just a propaganda trope. They know perfectly well that not only they can’t build an Empire, but they’ll be lucky to keep RF intact in the next two generations. By that point, ethnic Slavs would be probably around 30-40% less numerous and their population would be much older on average, while Muslims (including those of Central Asian migrant descent) would probably be at least twice more numerous and significantly younger on average. Not a good combination. Спасибо Путину за это.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Bashibuzuk

    So, you really believe that Putler's biggest role is the destruction of Russia? He's just taking orders from Klaus Schwab or somebody similar that is intent on seeing Russia destroyed to the point that it will just be another large segment of the NWO? Why is he going along with such a monstrous scenario? He already seems to have amassed riches for himself beyond belief, perhaps they're blackmailing him with some crimes that he's committed from the past? Although, I can't imagine anything worse than what he's recently done in Ukraine or in Russia.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  890. @Bashibuzuk
    @Mikel


    After the brainy texts you has posted right above I was expecting something… different.
     
    Why do you necessarily need it to be brainy ?

    https://youtu.be/yxmZ6VmvaLY?si=d4bCRfmJMOslbCFWL

    When the Narodniks went to propagandize the Russian peasants, they were usually not well received because they were too intellectual, educated, didn’t use the vocabulary of the countryside folks and so did not connect to their mentality. That Chinese dude is using exactly the right words to have an impact on the guys of his generation.

    What is important is that a not so educated kid listening to that Chinese dude gets to understand that the system is rigged, that developed countries core populations are dying out, and gets a sneak peek of why it is so. That’s all that matters.

    After that, a more brainy person might find relevant books to read (Anthony Sutton comes to mind), or start researching why it is really going that way and learn about the Calhoun’s mice utopia experiments. A really committed person would get into the structure of ownership of the major investment funds and TNCs and overall learn about the real “owners of the World”. Then lastly a truly committed thinker might want to see how far it is projecting into the past, how and when it all started. But first and foremost, kids must realize that they are getting screwed big time and that it doesn’t necessarily need to be that way.

    Truth is, both of us are getting closer to be called old farts Mikel, we’re not the future but the present and slowly fading into the past, our brainy readings and discussions didn’t prevent these kids from getting shafted and getting into a situation where many of them around the developed World are finding it harder to have a hope for a decent future that was more or less normal for anyone who exerted a decent effort in our generation.

    If one day they get full Red Khmer or ISIS against our and our parents generations, I wouldn’t even blame them. Would you blame them if they come and tell you in your face: “listen uncle, your belief in democracy allowed a parasitic elite to privatize the World, bankrupt the civilization and vacate us from the future.” ? I sure wouldn’t. We had all the information needed to prevent this from happening, we did little except perhaps voting in elections that don’t change much really.

    And some among us still keep voting in these Kabuki elections that really are just a distraction.

    Old habits die hard…

    🙂

    Replies: @Mikel

    And some among us still keep voting in these Kabuki elections that really are just a distraction.

    Compared with armed struggle and revolution, casting your vote is insignificant, certainly. But wasn’t it you who said here recently that you weren’t in favor of revolutions because they usually make things even worse?

    Many things are very difficult to change because there are powerful forces interested in keeping them as they are and, as discussed, they know how to use the Gramscian tactics in their favor. But let’s not give up on the system of one man – one vote so naively. There is a big difference between sending to Congress a man like Massie who will stand up to the neocons or a man like Johnson, who will cave in to them. It doesn’t matter to me at all whether you believe it or not. These types of decisions are still taken in elections that are as fair as in any other Western country, so yes, I am going to keep taking part in that “kabuki theater”.

    And regardless of the Gramscian forces at play, the US also gives people the possibility of using their votes for things like electing school board members who will prevent our children from being fed woke propaganda. I have actually witnessed how woke school board members were kicked out though popular votes and replaced by new representatives who campaigned on anti-woke platforms. Let us not forget that eventually, the Gramscians lost the battle and they didn’t manage to impose Marxism on any Western country. Election after election, humble vote after humble vote, ordinary people managed to retain an economic and political system that after 1990 everybody recognized was better than the alternatives. Wokism hasn’t won the battle yet either.

    Most importantly perhaps, you are asking me to give up voting and focus on the Jew cabals and the 1 percenters (last time I checked Trump was a distinguished member of 0.1 percenters and his daughter is a Jew convert). No thanks. The Dems and the Rinos ate NOT going to follow your advice and give up voting, so neither should any of us. Asking people to focus on the Jews, the election Kraken, Quanon and all that stuff while our opponents laugh and keep sending their representatives to Washington is the worst possible advice, especially at a time when the specter of nuclear war has returned and there is actually a healthy reaction in the US of new candidates who stand against all of this.

    Finally, let’s be honest. I have a comfortable life and so do my children in the US and in Europe. I don’t often agree with Dmitry but he has a point when he says that most people in the West have never lived a better life. At least let’s admit that most if not all of us here are privileged compared to most people in the world and any past epoch. I may dislike a lot of things that I see happening in the world but there’s only so much I am willing to sacrifice to change them. I don’t have any personal political ambitions so yes, voting and debating online is about as far as I’m willing to go.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Mikel

    I actually would just want more direct democracy and the use of technology (smart contract and blockchain) in the voting process to avoid fraud and assign responsibility to both the voters and the elected candidates. Added with a true freedom of speech, neutral judiciary and honest journalism would probably be enough to maintain democracy in a functional state.

    I am not a Q Anon fan and I never was, have no idea what the election Kraken is. I am not advocating for Trump either for the exact reasons that you mentioned. I actually found it quite funny in 2016 when most Alt Rightists described him as the God Emperor Trump who would save America from the (((Joos))). Used to troll them with Jared and Ivanka. The Jewish banker conspiracies are not conspiracies but historical facts. They really did provide funding for the Bolshevik revolution.

    https://youtu.be/pd9B3cilgHY?si=3mxUjHUkQSfYBq69

    Globalist onslaught against nations and nuclear families is here for everyone to witness on a daily basis. Latest aggravation being the Olympic Games opening ceremony scandal. Not really a conspiracy theory either.

    But yeah, I enjoy some good conspiracy theories as some people enjoy a great wine. My favourite one is the Kalergi Plan.


    In the turbulent period following the First World War, the young Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi founded the Pan-European Union, offering a vision of peaceful, democratic unity for Europe with no borders, a common currency and a single passport.

    His political congresses in Vienna, Berlin, and Basel attracted thousands from the intelligentsia and the cultural elite, including Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann and Sigmund Freud, who wanted a United States of Europe brought together by consent. The Count’s commitment to this ideal infuriated Adolf Hitler who referred to him as a ‘cosmopolitan bastard’ in Mein Kampf.
     
    https://www.chathamhouse.org/events/all/members-event/eus-forgotten-grandfather-richard-coudenhove-kalergi

    https://www.europarl.europa.eu/100books/en/detail/18/pan-europe

    https://www.coe.int/en/web/documents-records-archives-information/count-richard-n.-coudenhove-kalergi-and-the-council-of-europe

    😉

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mikel, @A123, @S1

    , @A123
    @Mikel

    Here is yet another example of Fraud The Vote: (1)


    Alabama Democrat Arrested For Allegedly Casting 7 Fraudulent Absentee Ballots

     

    “Heflin falsified an application to vote absentee for Jamey Ware, who was not a resident of District 5, and/or voted for Jamey Ware by absentee ballot in the March 5, 2024, District 5, Democratic Primary Election in Clay County,” the indictment continues.

    There are six additional counts against Heflin alleging he voted on behalf of three Alabamans six additional times. The Attorney General’s Special Prosecutions Division is prosecuting the case.
     
    If it happens small scale, it can happen large scale.

    Would you fully explain how your "ProtectTheVote and nothing else" advocacy will fix this problem? We are all ears, don’t skip details please.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://thefederalist.com/2024/08/02/alabama-democrat-arrested-for-allegedly-casting-7-fraudulent-absentee-ballots/

    Replies: @Mikel

    , @utu
    @Mikel

    On elections in America (Dec 12, 2020) for Bashi and Mixtel the twat.


    https://www.unz.com/isteve/supreme-court-turns-down-texas-suit/#comment-4338022

    Most Americans, when they let themselves to think about it, believe that improprieties in the election process are common. Yet they believe in an unwritten law that the integrity of election should not be challenged and should not even be talked about. The myth of democracy should not be undermined. They also believe that the adversarial process between two parties will keep impropriates in check and will even them out over long time period. You won with a little help of stealing now but next time we will win by doing what you did but better. So neither party is interested in an honest election process and is doing nothing to improve the integrity of election. Instead they are engaged in self serving shenanigans like gerrymandering, fighting against mandatory ID… Stealing elections is as American as an apple pie. Trump supporters are not morally outraged that the election was stolen from Trump but they are angry with Trump that he let it happened, that he lost in the arm race of election stealing. The Supreme Court decision was expected and will not upset too many. The majority does not want anybody rocking the boat. The country, the corrupt, which is pretty much everybody, is kept in balance by the doctrine of the mutually assured corruption.

    https://www.unz.com/isteve/supreme-court-turns-down-texas-suit/#comment-4340060

    But you are right it is possible that at some point the level of corruption is so high that the pipes of democracy get plugged completely and the only way to get it back on track seems to be by calling Mr. Roto-Rooter. But the risk that Mr. Roto-Rooter won’t leave after doing his job is very high. There was only one Cincinnatus.

    There is a problem of scale. Gaddafi would agree that in smaller countries participatory democracy can work better. And then even better when the small country is a confederacy like Switzerland where the central government is weak and collects much lower amount of revenue than the sum of all cantons. Though this may lead to local corruptions on canton level and putting up with quirkiness of local traditions like denying women vote in Appenzell or virtual servitude by children of poor families in villages still happening in 1950s.
     
    It can't be proven or disproven but I am inclied to believe that the 2020 election was stollen. It was won by Biden by extremally narrow margin in few state where it mattered. I am also inclined to believe that 2016 election could have beenstolen but in 2020 the Dems out cheated the Republicans by heavy vote harvesting facilitated by mail in voting due to covid.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Bashibuzuk, @A123

  891. Bashibuzuk says:

    The story of the war of Slavs against the Avar and Byzantine Empire coalition. Narrated in reconstructed proto-Slavic. It sounds somewhat Baltic to my ears. We have previously discussed that Dacian / Illyrian might have been quite close to the ancient Balto-Slavic language. Wonder if ancient Baltic, proto-Slavic and Dacian / Illyrian might’ve been mutually comprehensible. English subs available.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Bashibuzuk

    Pretty dumb video, when one thinks of relations between Byzantium, Avars and Slavs, usually the first thing that comes to mind is Slavs taking part in the siege of Constantinople in 626...as subjects/vassals of the Avars. There's something pathetic about nationalists still resorting to such simple-minded heroes' tales (usually set in some dim prehistory, when the peoples in question didn't even produce written sources of their own).
    iirc I once stated that everybody with an active Twitter account should be executed. On balance, I still think that would be a good idea, but it seems the programme would also have to be extended to many of the people uploading Youtube videos.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Dmitry

  892. @Gerard1234
    @Mikel


    Skripal fables
     
    You pretend to be skeptical of western propaganda while being the biggest supporter and cocksucker of it. On literally everything.The worst type of antirussian. Stop acting like a butch lesbian ,Mikel. I hate having to repeat myself, while showing Nobel Peace award deserving tolerance.

    1. Anyone with a brain knows that the death of the homeless woman in no logical way could have been done by Russian agents " throwing away perfume bottle". That you could arrogantly stick with your original nonsense is indicative. Clearly the west are lying about the homeless woman- which should then give severe doubt to ALL their comments about the Skripal stuff.

    2. Salisbury must be one of the most spy-attracting places on the planet you dummy. Major UK army base, main chemical weapons facility. Any non thick person would accept the strong possibility of a western intelligence setup , and that Petrov/Chepiga could have been there for reasons not connected to Skripal. Espionage not murder.

    3. Any non- brainwashed idiot would think about what Skripals daughter being there indicates. If she flew direct from Moscow, how likely are they to have decided, of all times, to assassinate Skripal then? Zero in my view. Possibility Skripal with immobile mother in her 90s and daughter engaged, was looking at some deal with Russian authorities to see her. His daughter is the only intermediary for this.... and MI6 child molestors decided taking them out or some scam would be funny response.

    The ability to not think a significant chance this Skripal thing was a western operation, or to be highly untrusting of what west have claimed happened to Skripals, is a disgrace. A dead guy who isn't dead with no sight of him, and you claim "fables"?

    MH17
     
    Its only bias, lazy western BS propaganda made bias making you arrogantly claim " Russia did it". BTW did Boeing ever make claim against Russian government in American or international court? As with that other Malaysian plane that disappeared - governments lie and play dumb about what they know. Western lies about there being no Su-25's in the area is one thing among others, the only other thing is an issue of trust. I trust my country, and you trust western cartel of countries on MH17. OK- but don't be claiming its anything more than that

    " Gestures of goodwill"/non intention to take Kiev
     
    FFS. 1000s of Russian heroes after slaughtering masses of ukronazis and completing clearly significant action at Chernobyl......leave with zero resistance through Belarus/ northern Russia to redeploy to the Donbass. What dimwit thinks this happens with ukronazis in dominant position in Kiev?

    Again, anyone with a brain knows that taking Kiev ( and with it compelling to take northern and much central 404 too) would be too much of a financial pressure to be an initiative then.

    You and my great pal German re-rapist are both of the same 2-headed snake. Poseurs faking "neutrality" or "anti neoconservative" as if to give "credibility" to your antirussian filth.

    As now is German re-rapist bothered about his country allowing in Chechen terrorists ? Of course not!

    Replies: @German_reader, @Mikel

    Any non thick person would accept the strong possibility of a western intelligence setup , and that Petrov/Chepiga could have been there for reasons not connected to Skripal.

    Look, in the spirit of friendship and tolerance, I would be willing to concede all your points on Skripal, MH17, the Little Green Men, abandoning Snake Island as a gesture of good will and all of that. But we have a much bigger problem: the “food safety” excuse with the Ecuadorian bananas. Those bananas are a bridge too far for me to cross. Either you admit that Russia engaged in a pointless and totally moronic dissimulation with those bananas or I reject any deal on the rest. This is my final word.

    • Replies: @Gerard1234
    @Mikel

    Well its not moronic or pointless as the pretext for all this was Ecuador giving to 404 Igla's and whatever Soviet tanks,artillery and helicopters they have ( blackmailed by the US).
    As soon as the ban happened then very quickly the situation resolved, with Ecuador doing the correct thing and making clear they were not giving to Ukraine the SAM's.

    Ecuadorian bananas are coming into Russia, coming into Kazan en masse - although as I understand Ecuador is having big political/ civil problems that could effect supply chain.

    Banana exports a big part of Ecuador economy, so our actions were appropriate, never a full ban as majority of producers were still allowed in

    Replies: @Mikel

  893. German_reader says:
    @Bashibuzuk
    The story of the war of Slavs against the Avar and Byzantine Empire coalition. Narrated in reconstructed proto-Slavic. It sounds somewhat Baltic to my ears. We have previously discussed that Dacian / Illyrian might have been quite close to the ancient Balto-Slavic language. Wonder if ancient Baltic, proto-Slavic and Dacian / Illyrian might’ve been mutually comprehensible. English subs available.

    https://youtu.be/zRjWdIKY4co?si=CcCc4gfrZ34r8WW8

    Replies: @German_reader

    Pretty dumb video, when one thinks of relations between Byzantium, Avars and Slavs, usually the first thing that comes to mind is Slavs taking part in the siege of Constantinople in 626…as subjects/vassals of the Avars. There’s something pathetic about nationalists still resorting to such simple-minded heroes’ tales (usually set in some dim prehistory, when the peoples in question didn’t even produce written sources of their own).
    iirc I once stated that everybody with an active Twitter account should be executed. On balance, I still think that would be a good idea, but it seems the programme would also have to be extended to many of the people uploading Youtube videos.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @German_reader

    Pretty dumb video, when one thinks of relations between Byzantium, Avars and Slavs, usually the first thing that comes to mind is Slavs taking part in the siege of Constantinople in 626…as subjects/vassals of the Avars.


    Tiberius II Constantine came to rule the Eastern Roman Empire in 574 AD as Caesar and then in 578 AD as Augustus. The relations between the Avars and the empire increased and intensified during his reign. Contrary to the policy of his predecessor, Tiberius II contemplated using diplomacy as a Byzantine tradition due to his experiences with the Avars. However, the extensive invasion of the Slavs and the beginning of their settlements in the Balkans also had occurred for the first time during this period. This was an important event in a historical context. Large crowds had entered the Balkans, started invading the entire region including Thrace and setting up new settlements, and also devastated Greece. The Empire could not sufficiently respond to this invasion due to other problems the empire was experiencing, such as the Sassanian wars in the east and a lack of military forces. Therefore, Emperor Tiberius II Constantine asked the famous leader of the Avars, Bayan Khagan, for help. Khagan accepted and organized attacks on Slavic tribes, entering the territory of the empire. This seems to have been the right method for the empire and was successful. The Slavs had been defeated, and the Avars had acted as allies in this situation.
     
    https://iupress.istanbul.edu.tr/en/journal/jses/article/imparator-tiberios-konstantinos-doneminde-balkanlarda-dogu-roma-avar-iliskileri-572-582

    Looks like you have managed to learn something new today.

    Glad I could help.

    🙂

    Replies: @German_reader

    , @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    Lol, this is a kind of multi-level bullying of Bashibuzuk.

    He posted this video to escape about a distant world of prehistory, after QCIC is bullying him tricking him watch to the army's marketing video of Islamicized patriotism. (Although sometimes it seems Bashibuzuk really wants Islamicization).


    -


    We need some happy place videos of his hometown in the lost summers of ancient history. Even watching these videos produced by the forgotten ancient civilizations makes me happy.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KJkgI_xxHY


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAThhB1-j5U

    There to the zone of AP's wife family, where the first MacDonald will open in 1990.

  894. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Mikel
    @Bashibuzuk


    And some among us still keep voting in these Kabuki elections that really are just a distraction.
     
    Compared with armed struggle and revolution, casting your vote is insignificant, certainly. But wasn't it you who said here recently that you weren't in favor of revolutions because they usually make things even worse?

    Many things are very difficult to change because there are powerful forces interested in keeping them as they are and, as discussed, they know how to use the Gramscian tactics in their favor. But let's not give up on the system of one man - one vote so naively. There is a big difference between sending to Congress a man like Massie who will stand up to the neocons or a man like Johnson, who will cave in to them. It doesn't matter to me at all whether you believe it or not. These types of decisions are still taken in elections that are as fair as in any other Western country, so yes, I am going to keep taking part in that "kabuki theater".

    And regardless of the Gramscian forces at play, the US also gives people the possibility of using their votes for things like electing school board members who will prevent our children from being fed woke propaganda. I have actually witnessed how woke school board members were kicked out though popular votes and replaced by new representatives who campaigned on anti-woke platforms. Let us not forget that eventually, the Gramscians lost the battle and they didn't manage to impose Marxism on any Western country. Election after election, humble vote after humble vote, ordinary people managed to retain an economic and political system that after 1990 everybody recognized was better than the alternatives. Wokism hasn't won the battle yet either.

    Most importantly perhaps, you are asking me to give up voting and focus on the Jew cabals and the 1 percenters (last time I checked Trump was a distinguished member of 0.1 percenters and his daughter is a Jew convert). No thanks. The Dems and the Rinos ate NOT going to follow your advice and give up voting, so neither should any of us. Asking people to focus on the Jews, the election Kraken, Quanon and all that stuff while our opponents laugh and keep sending their representatives to Washington is the worst possible advice, especially at a time when the specter of nuclear war has returned and there is actually a healthy reaction in the US of new candidates who stand against all of this.

    Finally, let's be honest. I have a comfortable life and so do my children in the US and in Europe. I don't often agree with Dmitry but he has a point when he says that most people in the West have never lived a better life. At least let's admit that most if not all of us here are privileged compared to most people in the world and any past epoch. I may dislike a lot of things that I see happening in the world but there's only so much I am willing to sacrifice to change them. I don't have any personal political ambitions so yes, voting and debating online is about as far as I'm willing to go.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @A123, @utu

    I actually would just want more direct democracy and the use of technology (smart contract and blockchain) in the voting process to avoid fraud and assign responsibility to both the voters and the elected candidates. Added with a true freedom of speech, neutral judiciary and honest journalism would probably be enough to maintain democracy in a functional state.

    I am not a Q Anon fan and I never was, have no idea what the election Kraken is. I am not advocating for Trump either for the exact reasons that you mentioned. I actually found it quite funny in 2016 when most Alt Rightists described him as the God Emperor Trump who would save America from the (((Joos))). Used to troll them with Jared and Ivanka. The Jewish banker conspiracies are not conspiracies but historical facts. They really did provide funding for the Bolshevik revolution.

    Globalist onslaught against nations and nuclear families is here for everyone to witness on a daily basis. Latest aggravation being the Olympic Games opening ceremony scandal. Not really a conspiracy theory either.

    But yeah, I enjoy some good conspiracy theories as some people enjoy a great wine. My favourite one is the Kalergi Plan.

    In the turbulent period following the First World War, the young Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi founded the Pan-European Union, offering a vision of peaceful, democratic unity for Europe with no borders, a common currency and a single passport.

    His political congresses in Vienna, Berlin, and Basel attracted thousands from the intelligentsia and the cultural elite, including Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann and Sigmund Freud, who wanted a United States of Europe brought together by consent. The Count’s commitment to this ideal infuriated Adolf Hitler who referred to him as a ‘cosmopolitan bastard’ in Mein Kampf.

    https://www.chathamhouse.org/events/all/members-event/eus-forgotten-grandfather-richard-coudenhove-kalergi

    https://www.europarl.europa.eu/100books/en/detail/18/pan-europe

    https://www.coe.int/en/web/documents-records-archives-information/count-richard-n.-coudenhove-kalergi-and-the-council-of-europe

    😉

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Bashibuzuk

    1. they actually aren't jews but atheists. When they do metaphysics it's at private parties as part of their S&M sex adventures. Very rare. When they are serious and not playing they are dogmatic materialists. Big Bang. Monkees begat man. That's it.

    2. the ability to borrow money from the future with an expanding economy is such a luscious temptation that if it wasn't them it sure as hell would be somebody else.

    3. as long as the economy expands there isn't any problem!

    : )

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    , @Mikel
    @Bashibuzuk


    I actually would just want more direct democracy and the use of technology (smart contract and blockchain) in the voting process to avoid fraud and assign responsibility to both the voters and the elected candidates.
     
    That would be good and we'll probably get there eventually in the West. But it won't solve the biggest problem: that lots of people will continue to vote with their asses.

    I don't know why you have such a big problem believing that a majority of Americans are capable of voting Democrat when people in all the rest of Western countries vote the same way. Saying that the Democrats can only win the elections in the US rigging the counting process is like saying that Trudeau, Macron, Scholz, Starmer, Sanchez,... also cheated to win the elections. Unfortunately, these people win elections because they do convince lots of people to vote for them.

    And no, there isn't anybody conspiring from smoked-filled rooms to destroy the institutions of nation and family in order to keep their wealth. Too complicated. You must necessarily know lots of leftist and normie people. We all do, they're everywhere around us. They do believe that it's OK to let millions of aliens come to their countries and to have 50 different genders. Or at least they're not opposed enough to it to vote for the candidates that are against it. People just go with the flow. And the flow right now is that it's cool to be inclusive and accept all races and sexual orientations. We were very bigoted in the past, we caused a lot of suffering to the weak and the minorities and now we're building a more humane and better world. Like it or not, this is what most people in the West truly believe, even if they probably have their doubts about certain aspects of this whole paradigm, but they're OK with the general trend. Just like you and I think that we are right and virtuous, so they do too. Perhaps even more.

    There are some people with a lot of power in the Beltway, the big media organizations, the Fed and all those strategic places. They possibly have their gatherings and "conspire" sometimes to try to change things the way they want but it is naive to think that they are superhumans with a perfect understanding of the IQ and behavioral differences between races and that they have the ability to make many thousands of people around the world believe that they were assigned the wrong gender, all of it as grand conspiracy to keep the structure of wealth intact. These are humans like the rest of us, with their biases and uncertainties on all these issues, and subject to the same taboos. If Gates is part of this cabal, as the guy in your video claimed, why is Elon (even richer) not? How come these people actually have very different ideologies and work for opposite sides in the political arena? Is it even rational to think that such a disparate group of people from different countries can all have the same ideologies and coordinate perfidiously in secret to destroy the societies where they live?

    The 2020 election was a peculiar case. New voting systems had recently been introduced due to Covid (under Trump's watch), the results changed quite dramatically as the counting process advanced and there were cases of alleged fraud that didn't seem to be properly investigated (although those of us paying attention later found that at least some of them were bogus). It's logical for people to have doubts about what happened that day and the Democrats and their media didn't help to dispel those doubts at all.

    But dismissing the whole election process in the US and thinking that voting in this country no longer counts is a very lousy strategy. Very wrong battle to choose. There are much more important battles that can actually be won at the workplace, at school, in online debates, in comments to the news and most definitely on election days too. But of course it's a difficult struggle with the left controlling the narratives in most places that matter (not all), as they always have. It's much easier to give up and think that there's nothing we can do against those secret cabals that control everything.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mr. XYZ

    , @A123
    @Bashibuzuk


    I actually would just want more direct democracy
     
    Direct democracy has a huge defect. It is easy to pass measures that spend money. It is much harder to increase taxes.

    Perhaps in small groups everyone will pull together to make rational choices where collections = spending. After all, Home Owners Associations [HOA] are known to be places of comity and civility. These direct democracy groups are cherished and respected in America.

    Hmmmm.... HTML really needs sarcasm tags (sarc) (/sarc).

    PEACE 😇

     
    https://img.ifunny.co/images/33c19b101dcf6d4e65a0e17988898679df544997d69fa7f2cebcb93c54d56362_1.jpg

    Replies: @Derer

    , @S1
    @Bashibuzuk

    Even a bolder than most radical progressive, socialist, and in time Communist (a leader of the CPUSA and member of the Comintern) editorial cartoonist such as Robert Minor have noted the seemingly odd association of high finance Capitalism with Communism. [See Minor's 1911 cartoon below.]

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

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2b/Robert-Minor-Dee-Lighted-1911.png/339px-Robert-Minor-Dee-Lighted-1911.png

    However, though they should, and as bold as he may have been, neither true believers in Communism such as Minor eventually became, nor the many true believers in Capitalism, nor the 'Cold War' warriors of either closely paralleling ideology, generally have cared to take the journey down the rabbit hole much further than that (if they even get that far, and most don't) as the likely implications drawn could very well shatter their long held cherished beliefs and world view.

    This is simply how the power of the 'Big Lie' works.

    For instance, how many know the well established fact that the Communist Manifesto was first published in 1848, in the very heart of Capitalist world finance, ie London, specifically the City of London, just shortly before the 1848 European revolutions really gained steam?

    Of course, not dissimilarly, and perhaps a bit less surprisingly, the defacto Capitalist manifesto, ie Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was also first published in London in the Spring of 1776, shortly before the proto-Capitalist 1776 American Revolution (you know, the revolution whose first symbol, the 'Grand Union' flag, is for all practical purposes 'just coincidentally' identical to the flag of the multi-national corporation British East India Company) really gained traction with it's Declaration of Independence.

    But then, Capitalism, and it's ultimately complimentary sister ideology, Communism, have been closely intertwined with each other since their late 18th century very beginnings, ie since the time of the proto-Capitalist 1776 American and 1789 proto-Communist French revolutions.

    Some of the heaviest hitters of the 1776 American Revolution, ie Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, probably Ben Franklin, and an honorable mention for Lafayette, were intimately involved with the 1789 French Revolution.

    Thomas Paine, whose powerful pen alone (paraphrasing) was said to be 'worth an entire division of men', wrote a high selling book in support of the 1789 French Revolution and served in it's early revolutionary government.

    It was none other than Thomas Jefferson, author of the 1776 American Declaration of Independence, who assisted the 'hero of both worlds', Lafayette, and one other, in the writing of that 'foundational document of the French Revolution', the 1789 'Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.'

    What!! They didn't teach about these ties between Capitalism, Communism, and the modern center of world finance, London, in school?

    Why not?

    Better stop there...for now. :-)

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

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

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

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

  895. @Bashibuzuk
    @Mikel

    I actually would just want more direct democracy and the use of technology (smart contract and blockchain) in the voting process to avoid fraud and assign responsibility to both the voters and the elected candidates. Added with a true freedom of speech, neutral judiciary and honest journalism would probably be enough to maintain democracy in a functional state.

    I am not a Q Anon fan and I never was, have no idea what the election Kraken is. I am not advocating for Trump either for the exact reasons that you mentioned. I actually found it quite funny in 2016 when most Alt Rightists described him as the God Emperor Trump who would save America from the (((Joos))). Used to troll them with Jared and Ivanka. The Jewish banker conspiracies are not conspiracies but historical facts. They really did provide funding for the Bolshevik revolution.

    https://youtu.be/pd9B3cilgHY?si=3mxUjHUkQSfYBq69

    Globalist onslaught against nations and nuclear families is here for everyone to witness on a daily basis. Latest aggravation being the Olympic Games opening ceremony scandal. Not really a conspiracy theory either.

    But yeah, I enjoy some good conspiracy theories as some people enjoy a great wine. My favourite one is the Kalergi Plan.


    In the turbulent period following the First World War, the young Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi founded the Pan-European Union, offering a vision of peaceful, democratic unity for Europe with no borders, a common currency and a single passport.

    His political congresses in Vienna, Berlin, and Basel attracted thousands from the intelligentsia and the cultural elite, including Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann and Sigmund Freud, who wanted a United States of Europe brought together by consent. The Count’s commitment to this ideal infuriated Adolf Hitler who referred to him as a ‘cosmopolitan bastard’ in Mein Kampf.
     
    https://www.chathamhouse.org/events/all/members-event/eus-forgotten-grandfather-richard-coudenhove-kalergi

    https://www.europarl.europa.eu/100books/en/detail/18/pan-europe

    https://www.coe.int/en/web/documents-records-archives-information/count-richard-n.-coudenhove-kalergi-and-the-council-of-europe

    😉

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mikel, @A123, @S1

    1. they actually aren’t jews but atheists. When they do metaphysics it’s at private parties as part of their S&M sex adventures. Very rare. When they are serious and not playing they are dogmatic materialists. Big Bang. Monkees begat man. That’s it.

    2. the ability to borrow money from the future with an expanding economy is such a luscious temptation that if it wasn’t them it sure as hell would be somebody else.

    3. as long as the economy expands there isn’t any problem!

    : )

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    In 1917, Kuhn, Loeb & Co executives were religious and ethnic Jews.


    Famous partners of the firm included Otto Kahn, Paul Warburg, Felix Warburg, Mortimer Schiff, Benjamin Buttenwieser, Abraham Wolff, Lewis Strauss, and Sigmund Warburg, founder of S.G. Warburg.

     

    Reads like a synagogue attendance chart…

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuhn,_Loeb_%26_Co.

    An yeah, IIRC these guys have also helped with the financing of the Japanese war effort against the Tsarist Empire in 1905. And they threw in some financing for the first Russian revolution, also in 1905. In both cases they joined the efforts of the British Empire directed at destabilizing the Russian Empire in the Great Game competition framework.

    These Jewish Bankers strongly and vocally opposed the Russian government restricting ethnic Jewish populations to the Pale of Settlement. Even though, any Jew could live anywhere in the Empire if they would have completed university degrees, become a successful businessman (a 1st Guild Merchant) or simply converted to Christianity as did Lenin’s maternal grandfather.

    So basically when they financed Trotsky they invested in setting scores with the hated Nikolashka (as Jews called the Tsar). They also invested in an ethnic Jewish political activist who would become the Comissar of War in the Bolshevik government and the real founder of the professional Red Army. I have read somewhere many years ago that later Trotsky immediately after the end of the Civil War, helped to send Soviet weapons to the Left Wing Jewish settlers in the British mandate Palestine.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Emil Nikola Richard, @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

  896. Bashibuzuk says:
    @German_reader
    @Bashibuzuk

    Pretty dumb video, when one thinks of relations between Byzantium, Avars and Slavs, usually the first thing that comes to mind is Slavs taking part in the siege of Constantinople in 626...as subjects/vassals of the Avars. There's something pathetic about nationalists still resorting to such simple-minded heroes' tales (usually set in some dim prehistory, when the peoples in question didn't even produce written sources of their own).
    iirc I once stated that everybody with an active Twitter account should be executed. On balance, I still think that would be a good idea, but it seems the programme would also have to be extended to many of the people uploading Youtube videos.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Dmitry

    Pretty dumb video, when one thinks of relations between Byzantium, Avars and Slavs, usually the first thing that comes to mind is Slavs taking part in the siege of Constantinople in 626…as subjects/vassals of the Avars.

    Tiberius II Constantine came to rule the Eastern Roman Empire in 574 AD as Caesar and then in 578 AD as Augustus. The relations between the Avars and the empire increased and intensified during his reign. Contrary to the policy of his predecessor, Tiberius II contemplated using diplomacy as a Byzantine tradition due to his experiences with the Avars. However, the extensive invasion of the Slavs and the beginning of their settlements in the Balkans also had occurred for the first time during this period. This was an important event in a historical context. Large crowds had entered the Balkans, started invading the entire region including Thrace and setting up new settlements, and also devastated Greece. The Empire could not sufficiently respond to this invasion due to other problems the empire was experiencing, such as the Sassanian wars in the east and a lack of military forces. Therefore, Emperor Tiberius II Constantine asked the famous leader of the Avars, Bayan Khagan, for help. Khagan accepted and organized attacks on Slavic tribes, entering the territory of the empire. This seems to have been the right method for the empire and was successful. The Slavs had been defeated, and the Avars had acted as allies in this situation.

    https://iupress.istanbul.edu.tr/en/journal/jses/article/imparator-tiberios-konstantinos-doneminde-balkanlarda-dogu-roma-avar-iliskileri-572-582

    Looks like you have managed to learn something new today.

    Glad I could help.

    🙂

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Bashibuzuk


    Looks like you have managed to learn something new today.
     
    No, I haven't, but if at your age you still derive joy from nonsensical myth-making videos with captions like "Slavic hero Dobreta", there probably isn't much point to arguing about it.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

  897. @Bashibuzuk
    The Empire building is just a propaganda trope. They know perfectly well that not only they can’t build an Empire, but they’ll be lucky to keep RF intact in the next two generations. By that point, ethnic Slavs would be probably around 30-40% less numerous and their population would be much older on average, while Muslims (including those of Central Asian migrant descent) would probably be at least twice more numerous and significantly younger on average. Not a good combination. Спасибо Путину за это.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    So, you really believe that Putler’s biggest role is the destruction of Russia? He’s just taking orders from Klaus Schwab or somebody similar that is intent on seeing Russia destroyed to the point that it will just be another large segment of the NWO? Why is he going along with such a monstrous scenario? He already seems to have amassed riches for himself beyond belief, perhaps they’re blackmailing him with some crimes that he’s committed from the past? Although, I can’t imagine anything worse than what he’s recently done in Ukraine or in Russia.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Mr. Hack

    No response, Bashi? That's the problem with "conspiracy theories", they most often fall apart somewhere in the chain of events that lead to their conclusion. Incredible stories with no basis in fact?...

    Essentially:

    Putler is on Klaus Schwab's payroll assigned to destroy Russia in order to subdue its sovereignty to the New World Order. A sleeper agent that infiltrated the KGB. Sounds like a great plot for a comic book story. Or did I miss something?

    https://dailystormer.in/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-28-at-5.16.34-AM.png
    Andrew Anglin has already reviewed the comic book nature of Klaus Schwab (right here at UNZ), but failed to uncover Schwab's role as Putler's handler? Good photo of Darth Vader Schwab, handing out more ceremonial maces (bulava in Ukrainian) to loyal henchmen of the New World Order.

    https://www.unz.com/aanglin/why-is-klaus-schwab-a-comic-book-supervillain/

  898. @Mikel
    @Bashibuzuk


    And some among us still keep voting in these Kabuki elections that really are just a distraction.
     
    Compared with armed struggle and revolution, casting your vote is insignificant, certainly. But wasn't it you who said here recently that you weren't in favor of revolutions because they usually make things even worse?

    Many things are very difficult to change because there are powerful forces interested in keeping them as they are and, as discussed, they know how to use the Gramscian tactics in their favor. But let's not give up on the system of one man - one vote so naively. There is a big difference between sending to Congress a man like Massie who will stand up to the neocons or a man like Johnson, who will cave in to them. It doesn't matter to me at all whether you believe it or not. These types of decisions are still taken in elections that are as fair as in any other Western country, so yes, I am going to keep taking part in that "kabuki theater".

    And regardless of the Gramscian forces at play, the US also gives people the possibility of using their votes for things like electing school board members who will prevent our children from being fed woke propaganda. I have actually witnessed how woke school board members were kicked out though popular votes and replaced by new representatives who campaigned on anti-woke platforms. Let us not forget that eventually, the Gramscians lost the battle and they didn't manage to impose Marxism on any Western country. Election after election, humble vote after humble vote, ordinary people managed to retain an economic and political system that after 1990 everybody recognized was better than the alternatives. Wokism hasn't won the battle yet either.

    Most importantly perhaps, you are asking me to give up voting and focus on the Jew cabals and the 1 percenters (last time I checked Trump was a distinguished member of 0.1 percenters and his daughter is a Jew convert). No thanks. The Dems and the Rinos ate NOT going to follow your advice and give up voting, so neither should any of us. Asking people to focus on the Jews, the election Kraken, Quanon and all that stuff while our opponents laugh and keep sending their representatives to Washington is the worst possible advice, especially at a time when the specter of nuclear war has returned and there is actually a healthy reaction in the US of new candidates who stand against all of this.

    Finally, let's be honest. I have a comfortable life and so do my children in the US and in Europe. I don't often agree with Dmitry but he has a point when he says that most people in the West have never lived a better life. At least let's admit that most if not all of us here are privileged compared to most people in the world and any past epoch. I may dislike a lot of things that I see happening in the world but there's only so much I am willing to sacrifice to change them. I don't have any personal political ambitions so yes, voting and debating online is about as far as I'm willing to go.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @A123, @utu

    Here is yet another example of Fraud The Vote: (1)

    Alabama Democrat Arrested For Allegedly Casting 7 Fraudulent Absentee Ballots

    “Heflin falsified an application to vote absentee for Jamey Ware, who was not a resident of District 5, and/or voted for Jamey Ware by absentee ballot in the March 5, 2024, District 5, Democratic Primary Election in Clay County,” the indictment continues.

    There are six additional counts against Heflin alleging he voted on behalf of three Alabamans six additional times. The Attorney General’s Special Prosecutions Division is prosecuting the case.

    If it happens small scale, it can happen large scale.

    Would you fully explain how your “ProtectTheVote and nothing else” advocacy will fix this problem? We are all ears, don’t skip details please.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://thefederalist.com/2024/08/02/alabama-democrat-arrested-for-allegedly-casting-7-fraudulent-absentee-ballots/

    • Replies: @Mikel
    @A123

    I suspected I wouldn't get much in the way of specific details about your assertion that "the mail-in voting system across the U.S. is quite poor". Not that I necessarily dispute it but I was hoping to learn how exactly it differs in other places from the pretty secure system I know in Utah. Instead of that, you just posted links to comments that have already been addressed in past discussions, one of them by myself today (the illegals in Georgia).

    This post is even worse though. You turn what looks like a success of the system by catching an alleged fraudster into a proof that the system doesn't work, as if the efficacy of a security system consisted in the absence of any threat. And then you go on to declare that "If it happens small scale, it can happen large scale". Well, no. If even a small scale crook can be detected, a large scale conspiracy should be easier to detect, not more difficult.

    Replies: @A123

  899. @Torna atrás
    @Sher Singh

    https://twitter.com/MazMHussain/status/1815165139269894390

    Two way street.

    Replies: @Sher Singh

    I guess, but it’s w/e
    As long as Turban man is dominant rest falls in place.

    Killing people isn’t against Sikhi.
    Hookah Halal Haram Hajamat is.

    ਅਕਾਲ

  900. @Bashibuzuk
    @German_reader

    Pretty dumb video, when one thinks of relations between Byzantium, Avars and Slavs, usually the first thing that comes to mind is Slavs taking part in the siege of Constantinople in 626…as subjects/vassals of the Avars.


    Tiberius II Constantine came to rule the Eastern Roman Empire in 574 AD as Caesar and then in 578 AD as Augustus. The relations between the Avars and the empire increased and intensified during his reign. Contrary to the policy of his predecessor, Tiberius II contemplated using diplomacy as a Byzantine tradition due to his experiences with the Avars. However, the extensive invasion of the Slavs and the beginning of their settlements in the Balkans also had occurred for the first time during this period. This was an important event in a historical context. Large crowds had entered the Balkans, started invading the entire region including Thrace and setting up new settlements, and also devastated Greece. The Empire could not sufficiently respond to this invasion due to other problems the empire was experiencing, such as the Sassanian wars in the east and a lack of military forces. Therefore, Emperor Tiberius II Constantine asked the famous leader of the Avars, Bayan Khagan, for help. Khagan accepted and organized attacks on Slavic tribes, entering the territory of the empire. This seems to have been the right method for the empire and was successful. The Slavs had been defeated, and the Avars had acted as allies in this situation.
     
    https://iupress.istanbul.edu.tr/en/journal/jses/article/imparator-tiberios-konstantinos-doneminde-balkanlarda-dogu-roma-avar-iliskileri-572-582

    Looks like you have managed to learn something new today.

    Glad I could help.

    🙂

    Replies: @German_reader

    Looks like you have managed to learn something new today.

    No, I haven’t, but if at your age you still derive joy from nonsensical myth-making videos with captions like “Slavic hero Dobreta”, there probably isn’t much point to arguing about it.

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @German_reader


    No, I haven’t
     
    You wrote:

    when one thinks of relations between Byzantium, Avars and Slavs, usually the first thing that comes to mind is Slavs taking part in the siege of Constantinople in 626… as subjects/vassals of the Avars

    However, more than a generation before that, Avars helped the Byzantines crush the Slavs who encroached on the Eastern Roman Empire territories. It’s in that article that I linked above. The Avars and the Byzantines were therefore allied against the Slavs exactly as the author of the YouTube video reported.

    Therefore you either ignored that Avars and the Byzantines allied against the Slavs prior to the Avars subjugating Slavs, or you you knew this but willingly obfuscated the fact that there was some truth to what the author of the video says. Which is it?

    Now, about mythical heroes, you probably know that Odin has been described as Turkic in the Younger Edda. And recent archeological discoveries might indeed link some elite Scandinavian warriors to the Great Steppe during the Hun era.

    https://nex24.news/2024/01/foundings-in-denmark-was-germanic-god-odin-a-turk/

    Perhaps you might want to learn more about the Great Steppe history after all…

    🙂

    , @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @German_reader

    You make blatant mistakes, all the time, from perspective of a serious scholar. German-Japanese alliance was not anti-Anglo, it was anti-Soviet.


    On 25 November, Germany signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan. Britain, China, Italy, and Poland were also invited to join the Anti-Comintern Pact, but only Italy signed in 1937.
     
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler

    What makes you so confident about your knowledge about pre-historical Slavs?

    Replies: @German_reader

  901. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Bashibuzuk

    1. they actually aren't jews but atheists. When they do metaphysics it's at private parties as part of their S&M sex adventures. Very rare. When they are serious and not playing they are dogmatic materialists. Big Bang. Monkees begat man. That's it.

    2. the ability to borrow money from the future with an expanding economy is such a luscious temptation that if it wasn't them it sure as hell would be somebody else.

    3. as long as the economy expands there isn't any problem!

    : )

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    In 1917, Kuhn, Loeb & Co executives were religious and ethnic Jews.

    Famous partners of the firm included Otto Kahn, Paul Warburg, Felix Warburg, Mortimer Schiff, Benjamin Buttenwieser, Abraham Wolff, Lewis Strauss, and Sigmund Warburg, founder of S.G. Warburg.

    Reads like a synagogue attendance chart…

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuhn,_Loeb_%26_Co.

    An yeah, IIRC these guys have also helped with the financing of the Japanese war effort against the Tsarist Empire in 1905. And they threw in some financing for the first Russian revolution, also in 1905. In both cases they joined the efforts of the British Empire directed at destabilizing the Russian Empire in the Great Game competition framework.

    These Jewish Bankers strongly and vocally opposed the Russian government restricting ethnic Jewish populations to the Pale of Settlement. Even though, any Jew could live anywhere in the Empire if they would have completed university degrees, become a successful businessman (a 1st Guild Merchant) or simply converted to Christianity as did Lenin’s maternal grandfather.

    So basically when they financed Trotsky they invested in setting scores with the hated Nikolashka (as Jews called the Tsar). They also invested in an ethnic Jewish political activist who would become the Comissar of War in the Bolshevik government and the real founder of the professional Red Army. I have read somewhere many years ago that later Trotsky immediately after the end of the Civil War, helped to send Soviet weapons to the Left Wing Jewish settlers in the British mandate Palestine.

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Bashibuzuk

    Is there any interesting and active legacy of the old Guild system in today's Russia?

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    , @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Bashibuzuk

    Maybe those men were in charge. Maybe they were actors. Maybe total cut-outs.

    Who knows?

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    , @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @Bashibuzuk

    This is memory-holed but an equally great upset-- before Japan defeated Russia in 1905, Japan defeated China in 1895.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Sino-Japanese_War

    And yes, great-great-grandfather of David Cameron was Japan's financier:


    Sir Ewen Cameron KCMG FRGS (23 June 1841 – 10 December 1908) was a Scottish merchant banker and chartered accountant of the late 19th century, who rose to be chairman of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation in London.

    He played a key role in arranging loans from the Rothschild family to the Empire of Japan during the Russo-Japanese War.[1] [2]
     

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewen_Cameron_(banker)

    Japan scored a huge indemnity from China in 1895, but not from Russia. It was in debt to Anglo-Jew bankers for decades.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ

  902. @songbird
    Will Emil listen to Lex's new 9 hr. Podcast on neuralink?

    That is like three Indian movies. (Which Mr. Hack studiously avoids.)

    Don't expect them to address this question but I wonder if some future version of the technology could be used to cure gays.

    Replies: @QCIC

    Why would the Lex podcast cure gays?

    • Replies: @songbird
    @QCIC

    For someone with a training routine, Lex does seem suprisingly effeminate.

    Maybe, he doesn't lift.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mikhail

  903. Bashibuzuk says:
    @German_reader
    @Bashibuzuk


    Looks like you have managed to learn something new today.
     
    No, I haven't, but if at your age you still derive joy from nonsensical myth-making videos with captions like "Slavic hero Dobreta", there probably isn't much point to arguing about it.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    No, I haven’t

    You wrote:

    when one thinks of relations between Byzantium, Avars and Slavs, usually the first thing that comes to mind is Slavs taking part in the siege of Constantinople in 626… as subjects/vassals of the Avars

    However, more than a generation before that, Avars helped the Byzantines crush the Slavs who encroached on the Eastern Roman Empire territories. It’s in that article that I linked above. The Avars and the Byzantines were therefore allied against the Slavs exactly as the author of the YouTube video reported.

    Therefore you either ignored that Avars and the Byzantines allied against the Slavs prior to the Avars subjugating Slavs, or you you knew this but willingly obfuscated the fact that there was some truth to what the author of the video says. Which is it?

    Now, about mythical heroes, you probably know that Odin has been described as Turkic in the Younger Edda. And recent archeological discoveries might indeed link some elite Scandinavian warriors to the Great Steppe during the Hun era.

    https://nex24.news/2024/01/foundings-in-denmark-was-germanic-god-odin-a-turk/

    Perhaps you might want to learn more about the Great Steppe history after all…

    🙂

  904. @Bashibuzuk
    @QCIC


    I don’t know what it says but I get the idea.
     
    It cites a list of ethnic groups that can be found in RF, including those who have their own independent post-Soviet states, sums them all up as Russians and then declares that God is on their side. Then it suggests signing a contract to join the army and fight in the SMO by using a Russian play of words between the SMO and Our [people]: СВО - Свои [люди]. The list of ethnic groups includes Ukrainians, which is right as there are many ethnic Ukrainians living in RF and fighting in the RF army, but it completely excludes Jews as a religious and ethnic group, which makes the whole thing antisemitic. BTW, С нами Бог translated into German language becomes Gott mit uns. It’s quite cringe overall. I think we better leave God out of our petty tribal rivalries.

    Replies: @QCIC

    Do you think it will be effective with the target young male audience or is it too heavy handed?

    Or is it actually directed at the reluctant parents and grieving families more than the troops?

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @QCIC

    People who join the military in RF are supposed to be well paid nowadays. And their life insurance, paid to the family if killed in a combat situation is quite high. There were Russians I know that were joking about the wives of some Russian men in the poor hinterland oblast’ pushing them to become a contractual soldier to get more money for the family and then hoped for them to get killed in Ukraine to buy a car or a house. If you ask whether most RF contract soldiers join because of patriotism, then I think the answer would be probably not.

  905. @A123
    @Mikel

    Here is yet another example of Fraud The Vote: (1)


    Alabama Democrat Arrested For Allegedly Casting 7 Fraudulent Absentee Ballots

     

    “Heflin falsified an application to vote absentee for Jamey Ware, who was not a resident of District 5, and/or voted for Jamey Ware by absentee ballot in the March 5, 2024, District 5, Democratic Primary Election in Clay County,” the indictment continues.

    There are six additional counts against Heflin alleging he voted on behalf of three Alabamans six additional times. The Attorney General’s Special Prosecutions Division is prosecuting the case.
     
    If it happens small scale, it can happen large scale.

    Would you fully explain how your "ProtectTheVote and nothing else" advocacy will fix this problem? We are all ears, don’t skip details please.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://thefederalist.com/2024/08/02/alabama-democrat-arrested-for-allegedly-casting-7-fraudulent-absentee-ballots/

    Replies: @Mikel

    I suspected I wouldn’t get much in the way of specific details about your assertion that “the mail-in voting system across the U.S. is quite poor”. Not that I necessarily dispute it but I was hoping to learn how exactly it differs in other places from the pretty secure system I know in Utah. Instead of that, you just posted links to comments that have already been addressed in past discussions, one of them by myself today (the illegals in Georgia).

    This post is even worse though. You turn what looks like a success of the system by catching an alleged fraudster into a proof that the system doesn’t work, as if the efficacy of a security system consisted in the absence of any threat. And then you go on to declare that “If it happens small scale, it can happen large scale”. Well, no. If even a small scale crook can be detected, a large scale conspiracy should be easier to detect, not more difficult.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Mikel

    Everyone expects very little from you, but your inattention to non citizen registration is striking.

    Ohio makes limited progress, but who knows how many cases they did not catch:(1)


    Ohio has removed hundreds of noncitizens from its voting rolls as the state conducts an audit of registered voters ahead of the November presidential election.

    On Thursday, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced county boards of elections are being directed to remove 499 noncitizen registrations from the state’s voter rolls.

     

    If you want to defend this as "the system working", the burden of proof is yours. Provide evidence that irrefutably demonstrates there were only 499 non citizens registered Ohio.
    ____

    This is even worse. The 9th Circuit is actively clearing the way for non citizens to register: (2)


    It seems like the Democrats' rule of thumb is: if you can't win, cheat.

    On Thursday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed itself and will now allow Arizonans to register to vote in federal races without having to prove citizenship.

    "It's another dizzying swerve in the legal battle over a 2022 law that aims ultimately to reverse a portion of the National Voter Registration Act and require all Arizona voters to show proof of citizenship to register to vote," reports USA Today. "The order reopens a path for potential voters who just two weeks ago were barred from using the state voter registration form to sign up to vote unless they could produce proof of U.S. citizenship. It comes with two months left before the Oct. 7 registration deadline for the high-stakes presidential election."


    The order means people can again use the state-issued voter registration form even if they don't produce proof of citizenship. Instead, they attest under penalty of perjury that they are citizens, and are limited to voting in federal races only.

    In the first 10 days after the July 18 ruling that required the documentary proof, the Maricopa County Recorder's Office said it had rejected 200 voter applications.

     


     
    Why do you believe this is not a problem?

    Please provide details on how your "ProtectTheVote and nothing else" strategy will make registration issues better. Is this not a perfect example of lawyers being more necessary than poll watchers?

    Admitting there are issues does not make voting useless. However, those who refuse to acknowledge problems and thus do not fix outcome changing flaws damage the system. Both Bashi and you are stuck in extreme endpoint positions. The truth is in the middle.

    Solutions are possible, but urgent. Another stolen election could irretrievably break everything.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/state/3108410/ohio-removes-hundreds-more-illegal-immigrants-voter-rolls/

    (2) https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2024/08/02/appeals-court-paves-the-way-for-illegals-to-steal-election-in-arizona-n4931300

  906. Bashibuzuk says:
    @QCIC
    @Bashibuzuk

    Do you think it will be effective with the target young male audience or is it too heavy handed?

    Or is it actually directed at the reluctant parents and grieving families more than the troops?

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    People who join the military in RF are supposed to be well paid nowadays. And their life insurance, paid to the family if killed in a combat situation is quite high. There were Russians I know that were joking about the wives of some Russian men in the poor hinterland oblast’ pushing them to become a contractual soldier to get more money for the family and then hoped for them to get killed in Ukraine to buy a car or a house. If you ask whether most RF contract soldiers join because of patriotism, then I think the answer would be probably not.

    • Thanks: QCIC
  907. @Bashibuzuk
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    In 1917, Kuhn, Loeb & Co executives were religious and ethnic Jews.


    Famous partners of the firm included Otto Kahn, Paul Warburg, Felix Warburg, Mortimer Schiff, Benjamin Buttenwieser, Abraham Wolff, Lewis Strauss, and Sigmund Warburg, founder of S.G. Warburg.

     

    Reads like a synagogue attendance chart…

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuhn,_Loeb_%26_Co.

    An yeah, IIRC these guys have also helped with the financing of the Japanese war effort against the Tsarist Empire in 1905. And they threw in some financing for the first Russian revolution, also in 1905. In both cases they joined the efforts of the British Empire directed at destabilizing the Russian Empire in the Great Game competition framework.

    These Jewish Bankers strongly and vocally opposed the Russian government restricting ethnic Jewish populations to the Pale of Settlement. Even though, any Jew could live anywhere in the Empire if they would have completed university degrees, become a successful businessman (a 1st Guild Merchant) or simply converted to Christianity as did Lenin’s maternal grandfather.

    So basically when they financed Trotsky they invested in setting scores with the hated Nikolashka (as Jews called the Tsar). They also invested in an ethnic Jewish political activist who would become the Comissar of War in the Bolshevik government and the real founder of the professional Red Army. I have read somewhere many years ago that later Trotsky immediately after the end of the Civil War, helped to send Soviet weapons to the Left Wing Jewish settlers in the British mandate Palestine.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Emil Nikola Richard, @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Is there any interesting and active legacy of the old Guild system in today’s Russia?

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @QCIC

    Not to my knowledge. Being of a 1st Guild Merchant descent would have been enough to lead one to serious trouble in early Soviet times. People of the higher strata of the Tsarist society were targeted with different restrictions, like for example the interdiction of higher education. That is why the only family of 1st Guild Merchant descent that I have personally known and who did well under the Soviets were Jews. Their ancestor settled in Saint Petersburg well before the Revolution and the Civil War. They weren’t bothered at all by the Bolshevik, were evacuated to Central Asia during the Leningrad blockade. However, they didn’t like the Communist regime and weren’t fond of the beyond the Pale of Settlement Jewish newcomers. They weren’t Israel supporters either and stayed in RF after the fall of the Soviets. They had some achievements in academic science and overall kept to Leningrad’s intelligentsia circle. Close friends of my parents, very nice people.

    Replies: @QCIC

  908. @Bashibuzuk
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    In 1917, Kuhn, Loeb & Co executives were religious and ethnic Jews.


    Famous partners of the firm included Otto Kahn, Paul Warburg, Felix Warburg, Mortimer Schiff, Benjamin Buttenwieser, Abraham Wolff, Lewis Strauss, and Sigmund Warburg, founder of S.G. Warburg.

     

    Reads like a synagogue attendance chart…

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuhn,_Loeb_%26_Co.

    An yeah, IIRC these guys have also helped with the financing of the Japanese war effort against the Tsarist Empire in 1905. And they threw in some financing for the first Russian revolution, also in 1905. In both cases they joined the efforts of the British Empire directed at destabilizing the Russian Empire in the Great Game competition framework.

    These Jewish Bankers strongly and vocally opposed the Russian government restricting ethnic Jewish populations to the Pale of Settlement. Even though, any Jew could live anywhere in the Empire if they would have completed university degrees, become a successful businessman (a 1st Guild Merchant) or simply converted to Christianity as did Lenin’s maternal grandfather.

    So basically when they financed Trotsky they invested in setting scores with the hated Nikolashka (as Jews called the Tsar). They also invested in an ethnic Jewish political activist who would become the Comissar of War in the Bolshevik government and the real founder of the professional Red Army. I have read somewhere many years ago that later Trotsky immediately after the end of the Civil War, helped to send Soviet weapons to the Left Wing Jewish settlers in the British mandate Palestine.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Emil Nikola Richard, @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Maybe those men were in charge. Maybe they were actors. Maybe total cut-outs.

    Who knows?

    • Replies: @Bashibuzuk
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    Maybe total cut-outs.
     

    Shortly after the Civil War; a young immigrant, who called himself Jacob H. Schiff, arrived in New York. Jacob was a young man with a mission for the House of Rothschild. Jacob was the son of a Rabbi who was born in one of the Rothschild's houses in Frankfurt, Germany.

    I will go deeply into his background. The important point was that Rothschild recognized in him, not only a potential money wizard; but more important, he also saw the latent Machiavellian qualities in Jacob, that could, as it did, make him an invaluable functionary in the great one-world conspiracy.

    After a comparatively brief training-period in the Rothschild's London Bank; Jacob left for America with instructions to buy into a banking-house which was to be the springboard to acquire control of the money-system of the United States. Actually; Jacob came here to carry out four specific assignments.
     
    https://www.heritage-history.com/index.php?c=read&author=fagan&book=illuminati&story=part3

    When Forbes recently reprinted its first list of the richest Americans, for its 100th Anniversary Issue, Jacob Schiff's name stood out as one that seems to be forgotten.

    That list for 1918, headed by John D. Rockefeller, consisted of well-known captains of industry or their heirs. Schiff was tied for 23rd with a net worth of $50 million (equivalent to $875 million today), alongside tobacco tycoon James Duke, photography pioneer George Eastman, Sears & Roebuck founder Julius Rosenwald, and Pierre S. Du Pont, who created the chemicals empire.

    Schiff was one of Wall Street's leading investment bankers from 1880 to 1920, with his Kuhn, Loeb & Co. enabling railroads to reach every corner of the continent, helping insurance companies grow, and lending Japan the money it needed to defeat Russia in their 1904-05 war (his revenge for the czar's pogroms against the Jews).
     
    https://www.investors.com/news/management/leaders-and-success/americas-railroad-titans-banked-on-jacob-schiff/

    The Japanese success in securing loans in Western financial markets during the Russo-Japanese War is considered to be a substantial factor in Japan’s victory.1 A key role in this success was played by Jacob H. Schiff, the senior partner of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., who was at the time the most powerful American-Jewish financier and community leader.2 Schiff helped the Japanese to overcome the difficulties they had been facing in their negotiations with bankers in New York and London, difficulties that nearly thwarted their initial efforts to raise the sums they needed.
    As the loans were being negotiated, Schiff explained his involvement in the deal as a reprisal for the brutal suppression of Russian Jewry by the antisemitic tsarist regime.3 A military defeat, he argued, would hasten the downfall of tsarism and bring about its replacement with a more enlight- ened regime that would reform the Russian government and improve its attitude toward the Jews. This reasoning, which was reiterated over the years by Schiff’s relatives and associates,4 was in line with his call before the war for Jewish bankers in Europe to deny the Russians any access to Western money markets and with his command to his heirs to continue this financial embargo as long as the Russians did not change their anti- semitic conduct.
     
    https://brill.com/previewpdf/display/book/edcoll/9789004213432/Bej.9781905246038.i-516_012.xml

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

  909. @Mikel
    @Gerard1234


    Any non thick person would accept the strong possibility of a western intelligence setup , and that Petrov/Chepiga could have been there for reasons not connected to Skripal.
     
    Look, in the spirit of friendship and tolerance, I would be willing to concede all your points on Skripal, MH17, the Little Green Men, abandoning Snake Island as a gesture of good will and all of that. But we have a much bigger problem: the "food safety" excuse with the Ecuadorian bananas. Those bananas are a bridge too far for me to cross. Either you admit that Russia engaged in a pointless and totally moronic dissimulation with those bananas or I reject any deal on the rest. This is my final word.

    Replies: @Gerard1234

    Well its not moronic or pointless as the pretext for all this was Ecuador giving to 404 Igla’s and whatever Soviet tanks,artillery and helicopters they have ( blackmailed by the US).
    As soon as the ban happened then very quickly the situation resolved, with Ecuador doing the correct thing and making clear they were not giving to Ukraine the SAM’s.

    Ecuadorian bananas are coming into Russia, coming into Kazan en masse – although as I understand Ecuador is having big political/ civil problems that could effect supply chain.

    Banana exports a big part of Ecuador economy, so our actions were appropriate, never a full ban as majority of producers were still allowed in

    • Replies: @Mikel
    @Gerard1234


    Well its not moronic or pointless as the pretext for all this was Ecuador giving to 404 Igla’s and whatever Soviet tanks,artillery and helicopters they have
     
    You see? Right there is the problem. You know what happened exactly but you are yourself unable to understand what I'm pointing out. Suspending banana imports because a banana republic is sending arms to your enemy is alright, at least it's what strong countries do. But not saying clearly what and why you are doing what you are doing and inventing "food safety" pretexts is gay and dishonorable. It's like the US sanctioning palm date exports from Djibouti because they are helping the Houthis but not having the courage to explain their action and inventing a palm date toxicity concern instead. Laughable.

    It is obvious that people who lie on small details like these lie as a matter of course, it's just their habit and cannot be relied to tell the truth ever, on anything. I suspend all negotiations with you with immediate effect. Mishkin and Chepiga did try to poison Skripal, botched their job, were caught on camera escaping hurriedly to Moscow the same evening of the events, lied on camera again when they were punished to humiliate themselves for their messed up mission and further humiliated Russia and their boss Putin when the whole world learned that they were indeed GRU agents unable to keep their personal lives secret. They were possibly faggots too.

    Replies: @Gerard1234

  910. @German_reader
    @Bashibuzuk


    Looks like you have managed to learn something new today.
     
    No, I haven't, but if at your age you still derive joy from nonsensical myth-making videos with captions like "Slavic hero Dobreta", there probably isn't much point to arguing about it.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    You make blatant mistakes, all the time, from perspective of a serious scholar. German-Japanese alliance was not anti-Anglo, it was anti-Soviet.

    On 25 November, Germany signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan. Britain, China, Italy, and Poland were also invited to join the Anti-Comintern Pact, but only Italy signed in 1937.

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

    What makes you so confident about your knowledge about pre-historical Slavs?

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Not sure when I'm supposed to have commented about the German-Japanese alliance, must have been a long time ago. Not sure either who you are, some grievance-mongering Japanese nationalist still dreaming about the Co-Prosperity sphere? In any case, I don't care about your opinion. Go fuck yourself.

    Replies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

  911. @Bashibuzuk
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    In 1917, Kuhn, Loeb & Co executives were religious and ethnic Jews.


    Famous partners of the firm included Otto Kahn, Paul Warburg, Felix Warburg, Mortimer Schiff, Benjamin Buttenwieser, Abraham Wolff, Lewis Strauss, and Sigmund Warburg, founder of S.G. Warburg.

     

    Reads like a synagogue attendance chart…

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuhn,_Loeb_%26_Co.

    An yeah, IIRC these guys have also helped with the financing of the Japanese war effort against the Tsarist Empire in 1905. And they threw in some financing for the first Russian revolution, also in 1905. In both cases they joined the efforts of the British Empire directed at destabilizing the Russian Empire in the Great Game competition framework.

    These Jewish Bankers strongly and vocally opposed the Russian government restricting ethnic Jewish populations to the Pale of Settlement. Even though, any Jew could live anywhere in the Empire if they would have completed university degrees, become a successful businessman (a 1st Guild Merchant) or simply converted to Christianity as did Lenin’s maternal grandfather.

    So basically when they financed Trotsky they invested in setting scores with the hated Nikolashka (as Jews called the Tsar). They also invested in an ethnic Jewish political activist who would become the Comissar of War in the Bolshevik government and the real founder of the professional Red Army. I have read somewhere many years ago that later Trotsky immediately after the end of the Civil War, helped to send Soviet weapons to the Left Wing Jewish settlers in the British mandate Palestine.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Emil Nikola Richard, @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    This is memory-holed but an equally great upset– before Japan defeated Russia in 1905, Japan defeated China in 1895.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Sino-Japanese_War

    And yes, great-great-grandfather of David Cameron was Japan’s financier:

    Sir Ewen Cameron KCMG FRGS (23 June 1841 – 10 December 1908) was a Scottish merchant banker and chartered accountant of the late 19th century, who rose to be chairman of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation in London.

    He played a key role in arranging loans from the Rothschild family to the Empire of Japan during the Russo-Japanese War.[1] [2]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewen_Cameron_(banker)

    Japan scored a huge indemnity from China in 1895, but not from Russia. It was in debt to Anglo-Jew bankers for decades.

    • Thanks: Bashibuzuk
    • Replies: @Mr. XYZ
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Why didn't Japan go to war against Spain when the Filipinos were rebelling against Spain?

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

    They had 1.5 years to do this before the start of the Spanish-American War.

    Replies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

  912. @AP
    @Beckow


    It is beyond religion: European solidarity. The attempted destruction of the eastern Europe: Balkans, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, has been the leitmotif of the Euro-history. In almost every case the French, Germans, Anglos, Vatican, sided against the local populations
     
    You focus on threats from the West but ignore the equally brutal ones from the East. Muscovy/Russia, Ottoman Empire/Turkey, and even their little brother Hungary. Magyars came from Eurasia to the heart of Europe, enslaving and assimilating others (especially Slavs) along the way. Unlike the Avars who disappeared or the Bulgars who were assimilated, the Magyars retained their Eurasian language and identity, unnecessary intruders squatting in the heart of Europe, separating Slovenes and Croats from their northern brothers. Predictably, on the side of the Slav-killers - whether they be Germans or Muscovites. And they even have ridiculous pet lackeys among the Slavs - their Slovak servants who follow them.

    It’s hard to explain. A combination of the fear of Euro alternative that is not ‘fully-Western’, greed for resources, personal dislike of the Eastern Euros

     

    If forced to choose, rule from Vienna was easily preferable than rule from Moscow, Istanbul or Budapest. Berlin slightly so (Poles could compare Vienna, Moscow, and Berlin).

    Replies: @Beckow, @Mr. XYZ, @Mr. XYZ

    My impression is that the Galician Poles under Austria had it much better than the Posen Poles under Prussia, no? Prussia was notoriously Polonophobic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, unlike Austria.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Mr. XYZ

    Austria was a lot better than Prussia because it was much less oppressive. But Prussia was not terribly poor. Russia combined oppression with poverty and backwardness. It was the worst of the 3 countries that had divided Poland.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ

  913. @AP
    @Beckow


    Magyars came 1100 years ago – it doesn’t matter. Magyar DNA studies show they are 2-4% Asiatic (more in the puszta), the rest Germanic, Slav, Latins-Celts. The original Magyars were mostly destroyed by Tatars and Ottomans
     
    They retained the language and attitudes towards the Slavs whom they enslaved. They speak a Eurasian language.

    Russia is Europe – we know you deny it
     
    Much of Russia is in Europe. As are Kalmykia and Chechnya.

    Russians themselves usually deny they are Europeans. There’s a famous Russian poem about that. My Russian wife has never considered herself to be a European, despite having one Polish parent (or perhaps because - it involves less ignorance of Europe). But nevermind writers and anecdotes. Here is Levada:

    https://www.levada.ru/en/2021/03/22/russia-and-europe/

    29% of Russians consider Russia to be a European country, 64% – a non-European. Back in 2019, these numbers were 37% and 55%, respectively. Overall, since 2008 the number of those who believe that Russia is a European country has decreased by almost half: from 52% to 29%.

    So once, about half of Russians had considered theirs to be a European country but this has declined. With more familiarity with Europe.

    Russians consider themselves to be Eurasians, not Europeans. You are ignorant as usual. Did the socialist teachers at your inferior schools teach you that Russians are Europeans? Lol.

    rule from Vienna was easily preferable than rule from Moscow

    Remote rule is always worse

     

    Is remoteness your excuse? Krakow and Lviv are much further from Vienna than Slovakia from Budapest. Or Bulgaria from Istanbul. Whose rule was better?

    And Novgorod, destroyed by the Muscovites, wasn’t too far from Moscow.

    Answer the question: who had it better, those ruled from Vienna, Moscow, Budapest, or Istanbul?

    Replies: @Beckow, @Mr. XYZ

    Interesting that even in 2008, while a bare majority of Russians considered Russia to be a European country, a bare majority of Russians also did not consider themselves to be European:

    Younger Russians feel less European than older Russians do, and also view their country as being less European than older Russians view it:

    • Replies: @LondonBob
    @Mr. XYZ

    No different from British people seeing ourselves as at a distance from continental Europe, Europe is over there, or Scandinavians who have a similar outlook as well, Russia is no different.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ

  914. @AP
    @Beckow


    It is beyond religion: European solidarity. The attempted destruction of the eastern Europe: Balkans, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, has been the leitmotif of the Euro-history. In almost every case the French, Germans, Anglos, Vatican, sided against the local populations
     
    You focus on threats from the West but ignore the equally brutal ones from the East. Muscovy/Russia, Ottoman Empire/Turkey, and even their little brother Hungary. Magyars came from Eurasia to the heart of Europe, enslaving and assimilating others (especially Slavs) along the way. Unlike the Avars who disappeared or the Bulgars who were assimilated, the Magyars retained their Eurasian language and identity, unnecessary intruders squatting in the heart of Europe, separating Slovenes and Croats from their northern brothers. Predictably, on the side of the Slav-killers - whether they be Germans or Muscovites. And they even have ridiculous pet lackeys among the Slavs - their Slovak servants who follow them.

    It’s hard to explain. A combination of the fear of Euro alternative that is not ‘fully-Western’, greed for resources, personal dislike of the Eastern Euros

     

    If forced to choose, rule from Vienna was easily preferable than rule from Moscow, Istanbul or Budapest. Berlin slightly so (Poles could compare Vienna, Moscow, and Berlin).

    Replies: @Beckow, @Mr. XYZ, @Mr. XYZ

    the Magyars retained their Eurasian language and identity, unnecessary intruders squatting in the heart of Europe,

    More like natives who LARP as intruders and adopt their culture, no? Since Magyars are less than 10% Asian by ancestry, no? Not very much.

  915. AP says:
    @Beckow
    @AP


    ...'Magyars' speak a Eurasian language.
     
    So do Finns and Estonians. Are they also 'Asian'? In the past the feudal lords of very mixed origin lorded over peasants of all nationalities, including a huge majority of Magyars who were peasants. You are 'hollywooding' again...moron will be a moron...

    Russia is Europe – we know you deny it

    Much of Russia is in Europe.
     

    Get a map. Historical Russia is in Europe, it is on the f...ing map! It expanded eastward to Siberia, Pacific, etc...The stated views of people in "polls" can't change what one sees on a map. Do you do polls to ascertain that the sun will rise tomorrow? (Your hapless, confused half-Polish wife is probably just trying to avoid having an argument with an autistic simpleton, she has my sympathy...)

    who had it better, those ruled from Vienna, Moscow, Budapest, or Istanbul
     
    I would pick Prague. But they all had it pretty bad, there is not much point in relative 'badness'...it was sh..t before we kicked them out at the end of WW1...and again in 1945.

    Replies: @AP

    Magyars’ speak a Eurasian language.

    So do Finns and Estonians. Are they also ‘Asian’?

    Finnic is indigenous to Europe. Uralic or Ugric is not. Like Indo-European, but reversed.

    Magyars came from the Urals in the 9th century. They enslaved and assimilated various peoples, including Slavs. This legacy has been proposed as a reason for the Magyar elite’s particular cruelty towards their peasants.

    You are ‘hollywooding‘ again

    You seem to be obsessed with Hollywood. Did it address the Magyar migration?

    Get a map. Historical Russia is in Europe

    So are Chechnya and Kalmykia. Are Chechens Europeans? Kalmyks?

    Russians ethnogenesis begins with Asian influence, and Russia grew by absorbing both European and Asian lands and peoples. It is neither European nor Asian.

    The stated views of people in “polls” can’t change what one sees on a map. Do you do polls to ascertain that the sun will rise tomorrow? (Your hapless, confused half-Polish wife

    Putin’s colleague Vladimir Yakunin “Russia is not between Europe and Asia. Europe and Asia are to the left and right of Russia. We are not a bridge between them but a separate civilisational space, where Russia unites the civilisational communities of East and West”

    Beckow thinks that Yakunin is confused but he, Beckow is right because as a midwit he sure knows how to read a map. Putting that 110 IQ to good use.

    Large majority of Russians state that they are not Europeans.

    You think you know more about Russians, than Russians do themselves?

    There are two possibilities:

    1. Russians know whether or not they are Europeans. Most say they are not. Those like Beckow who think they know better are proud fools who blindly believe something they were told differently.

    2. A Slovak midwit knows more about what Russians are, than Russians do themselves.

    Which is more likely?

    who had it better, those ruled from Vienna, Moscow, Budapest, or Istanbul

    I would pick Prague.

    Amazing, something so obvious even you can’t deny it.

    But they all had it pretty bad,

    Were you taught that in the same schools that taught you that Russians are definitely Europeans?

    Accounting for stuff like lack of modern medicines and luxuries, Prague was fine in 1910. Czech culture was flourishing, it was a beautiful and wealthy place.

    • Replies: @Mr. XYZ
    @AP


    Accounting for stuff like lack of modern medicines and luxuries, Prague was fine in 1910. Czech culture was flourishing, it was a beautiful and wealthy place.

     

    Austria, Czechia, Slovenia, Tyrol, Istria, and central Hungary were the wealthiest parts of Austria-Hungary back in 1910:

    https://preview.redd.it/the-map-of-wealth-in-the-austro-hungarian-empire-v0-4797q8dkj64a1.jpg?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=ad7e14e0427de9470c53f0c6670cf4514c2ae753

    Replies: @AP

    , @Beckow
    @AP


    ...Finnic is indigenous to Europe.
     
    No, it's not. It is originally east-Siberian (or Asian) and half of the Finns test with the east Asian DNA - it is heavily diluted, but you can spot it. That druggie PM lady they had until recently looked quite non-European, maybe she was spending too much time in a those hot ovens drinking piss (they do that in Finland, I have seen it).

    obsessed with Hollywood. Did it address the Magyar migration?
     
    They created a fake medieval past with 'knights' and 'warriors'. The reality was more prosaic. The Magyars mostly died out shortly after arrival, as did Huns previously (not related). They were replaced with local nobility and hard working peasants - it is all in the data. Magyar language was only saved by the Ottoman 200-year rule: the isolation, similarity to Turkic, Ottomans supported Magyars as being 'more like them'. Then Habsburgs saved them - the Habs feared and hated Slavs and Magyars were useful. Nazis tried the same trick and Magyars again paid a big price. They seemed to have learned from it.

    But I like culture, movies, myths. Hollywood Anglo-Jewish Wakanda has lately instead become fully Negro-LGBTQ-weirdos...isn't progress just great?


    Large majority of Russians state that they are not Europeans.
     
    I doubt it. Some today do out of spite, it won't last. Send them a map.

    Prague was fine in 1910. Czech culture was flourishing, it was a beautiful and wealthy place.
     
    It still is. But never forget that the Czechs hated the Habsurgs with a passion, they knew Habs were weasel-has beens with silly dreams of grandeur. And medieval brutality right under the surface. But they are your 'kin' so celebrate them if you must - nobody else does.

    Replies: @AP

  916. @Mr. XYZ
    @AP

    My impression is that the Galician Poles under Austria had it much better than the Posen Poles under Prussia, no? Prussia was notoriously Polonophobic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, unlike Austria.

    Replies: @AP

    Austria was a lot better than Prussia because it was much less oppressive. But Prussia was not terribly poor. Russia combined oppression with poverty and backwardness. It was the worst of the 3 countries that had divided Poland.

    • Replies: @Mr. XYZ
    @AP

    The main benefit of living under Prussia for the Poles was that they could migrate to the Ruhr and earn more money there:

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

    You can see them in the 1900 German census, in the northwest:

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Sprachen_Deutsches_Reich_1900.png

    And of course the fact that Polish literacy under Prussia was comparable to, if not even slightly higher, than Polish literacy under Austria was.

    The problem with Prussia is that they could never view their Poles as being fully loyal to Prussia and always worried about their Poles scheming in order to recreate a Polish state, including from Prussian territory, at an opportune moment. To be fair, their fears and worries weren't completely groundless in regards to this:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Poland_uprising_(1918%E2%80%931919)

    And this one 70 years earlier (unsuccessful, unlike the 1918-1919 uprising):

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Poland_Uprising_(1848)

  917. @German_reader
    @Gerard1234


    As now is German re-rapist bothered about his country allowing in Chechen terrorists ?
     
    I wouldn't have allowed him in and don't think his death was a great loss, but still, Russia's methods are pretty gangster-like (not just or even primarily the assassination - which was also carried out very incompetently, the assassin was caught in flagranti -, but definitely the arrest of foreigners on dubious or made-up charges for an exchange).
    That Adidas track suit and baseball cap the assassin wore when received by Putin was also incredibly low-class, but I suppose that's meant to be some sort of populist imagery, Putin as leader of the patriotic proles, it's like one of those memes about tough guy gopniks (or whatever the term is) squatting around in their track suits. Do you wear something like that yourself?

    Replies: @Mikhail

    Has it been firmly established that the released Russian from Germany wasn’t a free lancer? Interesting how free lancing is seemingly (at least in some circles) given more credibility when a Westy is involved regarding Trump, Fico, Kennedys et al.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Mikhail

    Nobody, including the people making the claim, thought Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, and the latest patsy from Pittsburg were lone nuts or freelancers or independent.

    https://nypost.com/2024/08/02/us-news/donald-rowe-cut-secret-service-threat-assessment-teams-before-trump-shooting-hawley/

    https://www.wmbfnews.com/2024/08/02/law-enforcement-officials-accuse-secret-service-misleading-comments-about-trump-rally-shooting/

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13700087/secret-service-whistleblower-trump-shooting-claims-agents-warned.html

    The guys in the assassination business have a playbook. Pick and roll. Post pattern. It actually is kind of tedious to see how unimaginative they are.

    Replies: @Mikhail

  918. @German_reader
    @Mikhail


    I understand that German sentenced in Belarus isn’t an especially sympathetic figure.
     
    Given that there's only very limited information about him available, you can't really know that.
    My guess would be he's an idiot who got into pro-Ukrainian activism (so the charges against him may not have been totally made up) and was lured into Belarus by Belarussian/Russian intelligence with the specific intention of having someone to exchange for the Tiergarten assassin. But essentially it's all speculation.

    Replies: @Mikhail

    Given that there’s only very limited information about him available, you can’t really know that.
    My guess would be he’s an idiot who got into pro-Ukrainian activism (so the charges against him may not have been totally made up) and was lured into Belarus by Belarussian/Russian intelligence with the specific intention of having someone to exchange for the Tiergarten assassin. But essentially it’s all speculation.

    Could be. Another possibility, he went on his own only to get used as you suggest. Likewise, part of the German motivation is wanting to increase Biden’s image with the idea that it’ll work against Trump.

  919. • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Mikhail

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2024/08/01/track-and-field-medal-predictions-2024-paris-olympics/74296708007/

    They are picking Benjamin to win the 400 m hurdles.

    As for the scientists and the biochemists and whatnot. What is to be done? Parents ought to know better than to let their kids do this. But people ought to know better than to have trusted Moderna and Pfizer and Doctor Mengele-Fauci.

  920. @Mikhail
    Of possible interest to some:

    https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/tech-makes-track-world-records-unfair/

    https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/norwegian-endurance-training/

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2024/08/01/track-and-field-medal-predictions-2024-paris-olympics/74296708007/

    They are picking Benjamin to win the 400 m hurdles.

    As for the scientists and the biochemists and whatnot. What is to be done? Parents ought to know better than to let their kids do this. But people ought to know better than to have trusted Moderna and Pfizer and Doctor Mengele-Fauci.

    • Thanks: Mikhail
  921. @Mikhail
    @German_reader

    Has it been firmly established that the released Russian from Germany wasn't a free lancer? Interesting how free lancing is seemingly (at least in some circles) given more credibility when a Westy is involved regarding Trump, Fico, Kennedys et al.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    Nobody, including the people making the claim, thought Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, and the latest patsy from Pittsburg were lone nuts or freelancers or independent.

    https://nypost.com/2024/08/02/us-news/donald-rowe-cut-secret-service-threat-assessment-teams-before-trump-shooting-hawley/

    https://www.wmbfnews.com/2024/08/02/law-enforcement-officials-accuse-secret-service-misleading-comments-about-trump-rally-shooting/

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13700087/secret-service-whistleblower-trump-shooting-claims-agents-warned.html

    The guys in the assassination business have a playbook. Pick and roll. Post pattern. It actually is kind of tedious to see how unimaginative they are.

    • Disagree: Mikhail
    • Replies: @Mikhail
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Comparatively speaking in overall terms, the benefit of doubt of lone activism has been given in those instances, whereas there's greater Western acceptance that the recently released Russian from Germany was with little or any doubt, a Russian government for hire hit man.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

  922. @AP
    @Mr. XYZ

    Austria was a lot better than Prussia because it was much less oppressive. But Prussia was not terribly poor. Russia combined oppression with poverty and backwardness. It was the worst of the 3 countries that had divided Poland.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ

    The main benefit of living under Prussia for the Poles was that they could migrate to the Ruhr and earn more money there:

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

    You can see them in the 1900 German census, in the northwest:

    And of course the fact that Polish literacy under Prussia was comparable to, if not even slightly higher, than Polish literacy under Austria was.

    The problem with Prussia is that they could never view their Poles as being fully loyal to Prussia and always worried about their Poles scheming in order to recreate a Polish state, including from Prussian territory, at an opportune moment. To be fair, their fears and worries weren’t completely groundless in regards to this:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Poland_uprising_(1918%E2%80%931919)

    And this one 70 years earlier (unsuccessful, unlike the 1918-1919 uprising):

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Poland_Uprising_(1848)

  923. @AP
    @Beckow


    Magyars’ speak a Eurasian language.

    So do Finns and Estonians. Are they also ‘Asian’?
     
    Finnic is indigenous to Europe. Uralic or Ugric is not. Like Indo-European, but reversed.

    Magyars came from the Urals in the 9th century. They enslaved and assimilated various peoples, including Slavs. This legacy has been proposed as a reason for the Magyar elite's particular cruelty towards their peasants.

    You are ‘hollywooding‘ again
     
    You seem to be obsessed with Hollywood. Did it address the Magyar migration?

    Get a map. Historical Russia is in Europe
     
    So are Chechnya and Kalmykia. Are Chechens Europeans? Kalmyks?

    Russians ethnogenesis begins with Asian influence, and Russia grew by absorbing both European and Asian lands and peoples. It is neither European nor Asian.

    The stated views of people in “polls” can’t change what one sees on a map. Do you do polls to ascertain that the sun will rise tomorrow? (Your hapless, confused half-Polish wife
     
    Putin's colleague Vladimir Yakunin "Russia is not between Europe and Asia. Europe and Asia are to the left and right of Russia. We are not a bridge between them but a separate civilisational space, where Russia unites the civilisational communities of East and West"

    Beckow thinks that Yakunin is confused but he, Beckow is right because as a midwit he sure knows how to read a map. Putting that 110 IQ to good use.

    Large majority of Russians state that they are not Europeans.

    You think you know more about Russians, than Russians do themselves?

    There are two possibilities:

    1. Russians know whether or not they are Europeans. Most say they are not. Those like Beckow who think they know better are proud fools who blindly believe something they were told differently.

    2. A Slovak midwit knows more about what Russians are, than Russians do themselves.

    Which is more likely?

    who had it better, those ruled from Vienna, Moscow, Budapest, or Istanbul

    I would pick Prague.
     
    Amazing, something so obvious even you can't deny it.

    But they all had it pretty bad,
     
    Were you taught that in the same schools that taught you that Russians are definitely Europeans?

    Accounting for stuff like lack of modern medicines and luxuries, Prague was fine in 1910. Czech culture was flourishing, it was a beautiful and wealthy place.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ, @Beckow

    Accounting for stuff like lack of modern medicines and luxuries, Prague was fine in 1910. Czech culture was flourishing, it was a beautiful and wealthy place.

    Austria, Czechia, Slovenia, Tyrol, Istria, and central Hungary were the wealthiest parts of Austria-Hungary back in 1910:

    • Replies: @AP
    @Mr. XYZ

    What a great catch!

    I had data from 1890 showing that Galicia was equal to Dalmatia and richer than parts of Hungary. But by 1910 all of Hungary had surpassed Galicia, while Galicia had moved significantly ahead of Dalmatia which had become the poorest part of Austria-Hungary.

    Still, Galicia's 1910 per capita GDP of $2,499 in 2021 dollars exceeded the per capita GDP of Ukraine from 1993-2005 (it got as low as $1,506 in 1998).

    Only in 2006, did Ukraine surpass the per capita GDP of Galicia in 1910.

    https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?locations=UA

    (I used inflation calculator to convert the Worldbank''s 2015 dollars to 2021 dollars, to match the map)

    The comparison with other places is interesting. In 1910, Galicia had about 40% of the per capita GDP of Czechia (Bohemia + Moravia). In 2021, Ukraine had only 12% of the Czech Republic's per capita GDP. If Galicia still had 40% of Czechia's per capita GDP as it did in 1910, it would have a per capita of GDP of $8,034 in 2021 - midway between Russia ($10,200) and Belarus ($6,400). Slightly higher than Serbia ($7,125).

    (Of course all of these can be adjusted for cost of living - Ukrainians weren't 10x poorer than Czechs in 2021 - adjusted for PPP they were between 2.5-3x poorer than Czechs)

    :::::::::

    This is a reason why many Galicians have sentimental feelings for Austria.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Mr. XYZ

  924. @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @Bashibuzuk

    This is memory-holed but an equally great upset-- before Japan defeated Russia in 1905, Japan defeated China in 1895.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Sino-Japanese_War

    And yes, great-great-grandfather of David Cameron was Japan's financier:


    Sir Ewen Cameron KCMG FRGS (23 June 1841 – 10 December 1908) was a Scottish merchant banker and chartered accountant of the late 19th century, who rose to be chairman of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation in London.

    He played a key role in arranging loans from the Rothschild family to the Empire of Japan during the Russo-Japanese War.[1] [2]
     

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewen_Cameron_(banker)

    Japan scored a huge indemnity from China in 1895, but not from Russia. It was in debt to Anglo-Jew bankers for decades.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ

    Why didn’t Japan go to war against Spain when the Filipinos were rebelling against Spain?

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

    They had 1.5 years to do this before the start of the Spanish-American War.

    • Replies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @Mr. XYZ

    You ask good questions, but no more perversion posting or I won't reply.

    Korea is to Japan what Ukraine is to Russia. No one's ever invaded Japan from Philippines. The Mongols invaded Japan from Korea.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Mongol_invasions_of_Japan_1274%2C_1281.jpg

    Japan had a handshake agreement with America in 1905 agreeing to split Korea and Philippines.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft–Katsura_agreement

    Korea was Chinese tributary in 1894 but it was internally very unstable like Ukraine in 2004, there were factions who favored going over to Russia. Which was not acceptable to Japan.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Une-Partie-De-Peche-Rus-Jpn-Qing-Dispute-Korea-Feb-15-1887.png

    In addition Qing China had modernized with some of the most modern German-made battleships, and was behaving aggressively towards Japan. So war broke out in 1894.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ

  925. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Mikhail

    Nobody, including the people making the claim, thought Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, and the latest patsy from Pittsburg were lone nuts or freelancers or independent.

    https://nypost.com/2024/08/02/us-news/donald-rowe-cut-secret-service-threat-assessment-teams-before-trump-shooting-hawley/

    https://www.wmbfnews.com/2024/08/02/law-enforcement-officials-accuse-secret-service-misleading-comments-about-trump-rally-shooting/

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13700087/secret-service-whistleblower-trump-shooting-claims-agents-warned.html

    The guys in the assassination business have a playbook. Pick and roll. Post pattern. It actually is kind of tedious to see how unimaginative they are.

    Replies: @Mikhail

    Comparatively speaking in overall terms, the benefit of doubt of lone activism has been given in those instances, whereas there’s greater Western acceptance that the recently released Russian from Germany was with little or any doubt, a Russian government for hire hit man.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Mikhail

    > benefit of doubt

    Nobody gives these lying pieces of poop the benefit of doubt.

    SECRET SERVICE AND FBI STILL NOT TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT WHO SHOT CROOKS

    https://sonar21.com/secret-service-and-fbi-still-not-telling-the-truth-about-who-shot-crooks/

    There were a hundred citizens on the ground with cell phones, photos, and video and they still think they can lie. The people backing this project have immense power.

    This is the sort of thing you get before they haul out guillotines. We won't get any guillotines this time. : (

    Replies: @Mikhail

  926. @Dmitry
    @Coconuts

    Her manager (brother) is aide for Democrat Mayor Steven Fulop.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Fulop They are research assistant for CNN's historian. Timothy Naftali.


    -
    I guess they were not organic, but they are successful in making clickbait, but not managing too well, as they could go too far to be compatible to Fox/Republican/Musk.

    In January/February, her videos on X only have 50-100 views.* By June, her videos have hundreds of thousands of views.

    In August, her video from yesterday already has almost 20 million views.
    https://twitter.com/ValentinaForSOS/status/1819116948862783995.

    The X platform says about her video new "Visibility Limited. This Post may violate X’s rules against Hateful Conduct."

    They are talented at producing popular clickbait videos. But there's trade-off between what is popular for clickbait and what is compatible for employers.

    The new Republican Party could possibly be moving to more socially liberal in the absolute sense. Paypal investors like Elon, Sacks and Thiel will still be a kind of liberals.**

    -

    *Most of the views on X are only impressions, not real views. So, these are overestimating compared to YouTube views.

    A high proportion of the views on these platforms are not from the USA and not even from the developed countries.

    **They all have some origin in the 1970s-1980s South African society, which was a kind of minoritarian democracy, with liberal economic and social features, including the free speech in principle although sometimes not reality (as there was often emergency provisions).

    While they wouldn't accept this, I wonder how many of their political views correlate to popular concepts in 1970s/1980s South Africa.

    For example, Musk is very pro-Israel. Some journalists write, this is related to his investments in Israel. But it could also be the mainstream view of a general Protestant society and culture of his youth?

    I don't know the topic, but I wonder if anyone here knows what the political views of educated upper class/upper middle class in 1980s South African culture was actually like?

    Replies: @Coconuts

    The X platform says about her video new “Visibility Limited. This Post may violate X’s rules against Hateful Conduct.”

    It sounds too confrontational for the US mainstream, but may be okay in some other places outside the US.

    The new Republican Party could possibly be moving to more socially liberal in the absolute sense. Paypal investors like Elon, Sacks and Thiel will still be a kind of liberals.

    I have seen these trends being called ‘right-wing progressivism’ or some new form of futurism. It involves tech billionaires, is anti-egalitarian and has some Nietzschean influences, at the same time it is more socially liberal and less religious than the current conservative right. It does seem possible this tendency will be more significant in the future.

    I don’t know the topic, but I wonder if anyone here knows what the political views of educated upper class/upper middle class in 1980s South African culture was actually like?

    It would be interesting if anyone is familiar with this.

    There seems to be ongoing interest in SA and Zimbabwe/Rhodesia, partly as a warning about a possible future for other parts of the world with current white majorities and maybe because it is one of the last parts of the world where a frontier type culture still exists among Western Europeans. I noticed that the latest issue of the French magazine Livre Noir is all about the white population of SA for example, with a focus on the poorer ones.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Coconuts


    seems to be ongoing interest in SA and Zimbabwe/Rhodesia
     
    Foreigners' views are not very interesting, especially from different historical times, except as relating to themselves perhaps in an interesting way.

    For example, when Westerners even write about Russia, whether in support or against the authorities.

    They misunderstand and misinterpret basic aspects in a way which can't be explained as lack of information, but because of active projection of their own internal conflicts and political agendas.

    -

    So, our understanding of South Africa is probably very strange and confused.

    Part of the difficulty of understanding, is because South Africa was a conflict zone of the Cold War. It is a quite important part of the Western bloc in Africa. As part of the Western bloc, viewed as an ideological and politicized symbol, including internally in the West as a symbol of the negative part of the bloc and a cause of self-doubt.

    When the Cold War begins to end, South Africa are immediately not needed by the West and the old regime is abandoned by the West as a result of the collapsing Soviet Union and ending Cold War. The apartheid government doesn't even survive to the end of the first half of the 1990s.


    secular extensions of them began to break down sooner,

     

    Yes there are religious aspects inside the 19th century ideology, aside from this being Soviet was also like being part of a Christian cult, partly because of the geopolitical situation in the Cold War.

    In the Cold War conflict, Soviet society is supposed to be the role, of the antonym to the greed and materialism of the American capitalist society. So, some showing various secularized intepretations of Christian virtues and self-sacrifice are part of the self-image of the Soviet Union.

    But, it's also, having external enemies. The warm feeling inside the cult, is created by the perception of external enemies.

    During the Cold Warm, in each time tensions are reduced with the West and the enemies seem to become less hostile, the Soviet ideology is weakening internally.

    In the Cold War, the strongest times for Soviet ideology are often when there is a lot of conflict with the USA and high levels of militarism. Without an external enemy, the ideology isn't seeming very stable, it wasn't exactly based on just on providing good housing or employment rates like some Swedish social model.

  927. @Dmitry
    @Bashibuzuk

    Thanks I will look later I never heard about Nick Land, .


    -

    A question, is why the Soviet spirit be relatively stable culturally with even some features of 19th century European culture, while using a religion of technology development.

    From the view of Marx/Engels writing in 1848, some features of the late Soviet epoch, would be opposite to the "chagrin of Reactionists". For example, "feet of industry", had a "national ground on which it stood".

    -

    The main tourist feature of Volgodonsk, was the monument for the atom. While the culture of 1982, the culture situation relatively "fixed" and "ossified" (in 1848 Marxist language).


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_wRPGVNxro

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Coconuts

    A question, is why the Soviet spirit be relatively stable culturally with even some features of 19th century European culture, while using a religion of technology development.

    I have been reading a lot of Marcel Gauchet lately, he argues that the underlying social and political structure of the Soviet regime remained closer to a traditional one. Usually these were rooted in religion but during the 19th century the first secular variants of the older religious structuring started to appear (in the systems of Hegel and Comte, for example, also Marx).

    In these the source and model of the social structure is not God, a divine natural law or a legendary past beyond the current reality but has been made immanent and then moved into the future, expressed through ideas like objective Progress, History, the dialectic etc. These remain an objective normative source above and beyond the lives of the individuals making up the society. The default model of a unified sacred community also remains, as is the case in religious societies.

    He argues that in Western Europe both the older religious views and the ‘ideocratic’ secular extensions of them began to break down sooner, moving towards the model of a fully autonomous or self-created society (which is now in a crisis of its own).

    • Thanks: Bashibuzuk
  928. @sudden death
    Another potential reason why AnonfromTN wisely decided to run out in advance when he previously enthusiastically touted the alleged illegitimacy of UA political power since 2024 May as some serious obstacle for Kremlin?;)

    Legal nuances regarding the legitimacy of the Ukrainian authorities cannot be an obstacle to the start of serious negotiations, Peskov said.
     
    https://t.me/rusbrief/255306

    Replies: @Gerard1234

    AnonFronTN wisely decides to run

    LMFAO – maybe AnonFromTN left to go to France because Russia, despite being banned, is about to go ahead of the useless, midget-head, suicidal,alcoholic shithole Lithuania in the Olympics Medal table!
    Gold or Silver guaranteed in Olympics tennis. Surely nonentity nations as the Baltics shouldn’t be allowed to compete?

    As for Peskov’s statement – the same nothing, ambiguous ,diplomatic statement he makes nearly every day you thick shithead. Maybe being part of a dying,alcoholic,suicidal Nazi worthless, nonexistent at Olympics shithole has got your inferiority complex shitbag self assuming that boorish, attention-whoring khamstvo is the default method for all political figures, or their assistants to speak in.

    Literally ,is Litva banned from the Olympics too? The ukroreich very close to the same accusation. LOL

    It’s still a fact that from legal point of view the clown drug-addict isn’t the President of 404 you thick retard – the protoplasm-Nazi who is speaker at V. Rada is. AnonFromTN is of course correct – its entirely the western powers dictating what 404 will and will not do and sign.

    • Replies: @sudden death
    @Gerard1234

    haha, Lithuania so far has more medals than RF citizens in Paris:


    Gold medallist Karolien Florijn of Netherlands celebrates on the podium after winning with silver medallist Emma Twigg of New Zealand and bronze medallist Viktorija Senkute of Lithuania.
     
    https://images.deccanherald.com/deccanherald%2F2024-08%2F514ed42e-c243-48cc-8116-e4076ff42b27%2F2024-08-03T091150Z_396752360_UP1EK830PJPAK_RTRMADP_5_OLYMPICS-2024-ROWING.JPG

    Still waiting for your condemnation of Soviet satanists in Stalingrad;)

    Replies: @Derer, @Gerard1234

  929. @sudden death
    @sudden death

    Another one, this time Michigan looks quite unrealistic though:

    https://i.postimg.cc/9FD33MP8/ETBn-Ac-E9s4719k5-WPVk-NVw-FIi8i632c-Ut5oq-Ea-Ub-CXHw4-TO4-FQ48j-Svr-Mvwx2-SNzalj0-Hy4q-Gx-GXRt33-Fv-TGn-U7r-ME-h6np-Ypr7.jpg

    Replies: @QCIC, @Gerard1234

    Interesting that your retard self, even for the most basic Pindostan news.. ..is using Russian sources. Strange, even for you.

    But I suppose one connection we both have is that neither of us are interested in what the suicidereikh, Lithuania, has to say .

    And if you are following the world from Russian sites, then why are you writing such stupid sh*t here all the tine?

  930. @Gerard1234
    @sudden death


    AnonFronTN wisely decides to run
     
    LMFAO - maybe AnonFromTN left to go to France because Russia, despite being banned, is about to go ahead of the useless, midget-head, suicidal,alcoholic shithole Lithuania in the Olympics Medal table!
    Gold or Silver guaranteed in Olympics tennis. Surely nonentity nations as the Baltics shouldn't be allowed to compete?

    As for Peskov's statement - the same nothing, ambiguous ,diplomatic statement he makes nearly every day you thick shithead. Maybe being part of a dying,alcoholic,suicidal Nazi worthless, nonexistent at Olympics shithole has got your inferiority complex shitbag self assuming that boorish, attention-whoring khamstvo is the default method for all political figures, or their assistants to speak in.

    Literally ,is Litva banned from the Olympics too? The ukroreich very close to the same accusation. LOL

    It's still a fact that from legal point of view the clown drug-addict isn't the President of 404 you thick retard - the protoplasm-Nazi who is speaker at V. Rada is. AnonFromTN is of course correct - its entirely the western powers dictating what 404 will and will not do and sign.

    Replies: @sudden death

    haha, Lithuania so far has more medals than RF citizens in Paris:

    Gold medallist Karolien Florijn of Netherlands celebrates on the podium after winning with silver medallist Emma Twigg of New Zealand and bronze medallist Viktorija Senkute of Lithuania.

    Still waiting for your condemnation of Soviet satanists in Stalingrad;)

    • Replies: @Derer
    @sudden death

    Hahaha, those are Lithuanians only on paper but in reality success correlates with prevalence of Russian DNA.

    , @Gerard1234
    @sudden death


    haha, Lithuania so far has more medals than RF in Paris



    WHAT "haha" you fuckwit, except on my side?

    Russia, having reached the final of the tennis doubles guaranteed a gold or silver ( unfortunately lossed to probably drugged up Italians)....is above the useless irrelevant shithole of Lithuania DESPITE the fact we have been banned! Since when is Gold or silver ahead of one bronze ( competing with Chad or San Marino) you imbecile? You are that pathetic you are reduced to only counting when the medal is officially hung around the neck.

    The most embarrassing thing for Proebaltica and Poland is that we are competing against Belarus more than them for more medals.

    So its not even Baltards losing to banned Russia - its Baltards losing to Belarus ( with Sabalenka not even doing the tennis)!

    Belarus, despite being unfairly banned.....is infinitely ahead of the entire Baltic shitheads, and equal or ahead of the disastrous Banderastan team....who only have the Gold in fencing because it was fixed , and of course because Russia ( the masters of Fencing) were Satanically banned you thick POS.

    Still waiting for your condemnation if Soviet satanists in Stalingrad
     
    Because its too stupid and misleading and exhaustatively easy to disprove comparison you cretin .

    Its why American pigs were "warning" at the start of the SMO about Russia to "not use chemical weapons"- a signal not about Russia, but of the pussy tactics and intention to have as much of the Donbass destroyed as possible for the Ukronazis/NATO.
     

    Replies: @Derer

  931. @QCIC
    "We are Russians, God is with us."

    Have you people seen the latest RuMOD video?

    It is the most serious military ad I have ever seen. I don't know what it says but I get the idea. https://vk.com/video-219162595_456239576

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @LondonBob

    Karlin must hate that video, Russians explicitly fighting the rainbow flag.

  932. @Mr. XYZ
    @AP

    Interesting that even in 2008, while a bare majority of Russians considered Russia to be a European country, a bare majority of Russians also did not consider themselves to be European:

    https://www.levada.ru/cp/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/gsm0i-generally-do-you-consider-russia-a-european-country--1024x382.png

    https://www.levada.ru/cp/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/WJtjf-do-you-consider-yourself-a-european-nbsp--1024x386.png

    Younger Russians feel less European than older Russians do, and also view their country as being less European than older Russians view it:

    https://www.levada.ru/cp/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/MW0p6-generally-do-you-consider-russia-a-european-country-br--1024x421.png

    https://www.levada.ru/cp/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/E6D8N-do-you-consider-yourself-a-european-nbsp--1024x365.png

    Replies: @LondonBob

    No different from British people seeing ourselves as at a distance from continental Europe, Europe is over there, or Scandinavians who have a similar outlook as well, Russia is no different.

    • Replies: @Mr. XYZ
    @LondonBob

    Scandinavians are mostly EU members, though, unlike both the Brits and Russians nowadays.

  933. Bashibuzuk says:
    @QCIC
    @Bashibuzuk

    Is there any interesting and active legacy of the old Guild system in today's Russia?

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    Not to my knowledge. Being of a 1st Guild Merchant descent would have been enough to lead one to serious trouble in early Soviet times. People of the higher strata of the Tsarist society were targeted with different restrictions, like for example the interdiction of higher education. That is why the only family of 1st Guild Merchant descent that I have personally known and who did well under the Soviets were Jews. Their ancestor settled in Saint Petersburg well before the Revolution and the Civil War. They weren’t bothered at all by the Bolshevik, were evacuated to Central Asia during the Leningrad blockade. However, they didn’t like the Communist regime and weren’t fond of the beyond the Pale of Settlement Jewish newcomers. They weren’t Israel supporters either and stayed in RF after the fall of the Soviets. They had some achievements in academic science and overall kept to Leningrad’s intelligentsia circle. Close friends of my parents, very nice people.

    • Thanks: QCIC, Torna atrás
    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Bashibuzuk

    Did many of the post-Soviet oligarchs rise from this pool of people?

  934. @QCIC
    @songbird

    Why would the Lex podcast cure gays?

    Replies: @songbird

    For someone with a training routine, Lex does seem suprisingly effeminate.

    Maybe, he doesn’t lift.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    1. famous
    2. no chicks

    It is conceivable he isn't a faggot. The possibility exists he is in the set with {Scott Alexander, Scott Aaronson, . . .} where he is autistic and they gave him a bunch of psycho meds before his puberty and his sex drive got pasted.

    It is unlikely.

    , @Mikhail
    @songbird

    Dresses like a funeral director, whose biases are shown in his segments with Plokhii and Kotkin. Wondering how he is on Israel? Plenty of better stuff on YouTube IMO.

    Replies: @songbird

  935. @songbird
    @QCIC

    For someone with a training routine, Lex does seem suprisingly effeminate.

    Maybe, he doesn't lift.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mikhail

    1. famous
    2. no chicks

    It is conceivable he isn’t a faggot. The possibility exists he is in the set with {Scott Alexander, Scott Aaronson, . . .} where he is autistic and they gave him a bunch of psycho meds before his puberty and his sex drive got pasted.

    It is unlikely.

    • LOL: songbird
  936. NOW THIS IS EXCITING

    https://www.watchathletics.com/page/5821/men-s-decathlon-results-paris-olympic-games-2024-athletics

    The world’s greatest athlete is injured and out at the decathlon.

    Germany is leading with javenlin pole vault and 1500 m still to be performed. Canada and Norway are both within spitting distance.

  937. @Mikhail
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Comparatively speaking in overall terms, the benefit of doubt of lone activism has been given in those instances, whereas there's greater Western acceptance that the recently released Russian from Germany was with little or any doubt, a Russian government for hire hit man.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    > benefit of doubt

    Nobody gives these lying pieces of poop the benefit of doubt.

    SECRET SERVICE AND FBI STILL NOT TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT WHO SHOT CROOKS

    https://sonar21.com/secret-service-and-fbi-still-not-telling-the-truth-about-who-shot-crooks/

    There were a hundred citizens on the ground with cell phones, photos, and video and they still think they can lie. The people backing this project have immense power.

    This is the sort of thing you get before they haul out guillotines. We won’t get any guillotines this time. : (

    • Replies: @Mikhail
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Among us yes. I'm referring to among the establishment spin. No great calls for full disclosure.

  938. @Mr. XYZ
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Why didn't Japan go to war against Spain when the Filipinos were rebelling against Spain?

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

    They had 1.5 years to do this before the start of the Spanish-American War.

    Replies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    You ask good questions, but no more perversion posting or I won’t reply.

    Korea is to Japan what Ukraine is to Russia. No one’s ever invaded Japan from Philippines. The Mongols invaded Japan from Korea.

    Japan had a handshake agreement with America in 1905 agreeing to split Korea and Philippines.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft–Katsura_agreement

    Korea was Chinese tributary in 1894 but it was internally very unstable like Ukraine in 2004, there were factions who favored going over to Russia. Which was not acceptable to Japan.

    In addition Qing China had modernized with some of the most modern German-made battleships, and was behaving aggressively towards Japan. So war broke out in 1894.

    • Replies: @Mr. XYZ
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Sure, Korea is much more important for Japan relative to the Philippines. However, couldn't Japan have still acquired valuable resources by helping the Philippines acquire independence and also obtained a valuable strategic naval base at Manila as well? And increased its own prestige throughout the Asian world by fighting European colonialism and imperialism?

    Replies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

  939. A123 says: • Website
    @Mikel
    @A123

    I suspected I wouldn't get much in the way of specific details about your assertion that "the mail-in voting system across the U.S. is quite poor". Not that I necessarily dispute it but I was hoping to learn how exactly it differs in other places from the pretty secure system I know in Utah. Instead of that, you just posted links to comments that have already been addressed in past discussions, one of them by myself today (the illegals in Georgia).

    This post is even worse though. You turn what looks like a success of the system by catching an alleged fraudster into a proof that the system doesn't work, as if the efficacy of a security system consisted in the absence of any threat. And then you go on to declare that "If it happens small scale, it can happen large scale". Well, no. If even a small scale crook can be detected, a large scale conspiracy should be easier to detect, not more difficult.

    Replies: @A123

    Everyone expects very little from you, but your inattention to non citizen registration is striking.

    Ohio makes limited progress, but who knows how many cases they did not catch:(1)

    Ohio has removed hundreds of noncitizens from its voting rolls as the state conducts an audit of registered voters ahead of the November presidential election.

    On Thursday, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced county boards of elections are being directed to remove 499 noncitizen registrations from the state’s voter rolls.

    If you want to defend this as “the system working”, the burden of proof is yours. Provide evidence that irrefutably demonstrates there were only 499 non citizens registered Ohio.
    ____

    This is even worse. The 9th Circuit is actively clearing the way for non citizens to register: (2)

    It seems like the Democrats’ rule of thumb is: if you can’t win, cheat.

    On Thursday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed itself and will now allow Arizonans to register to vote in federal races without having to prove citizenship.

    “It’s another dizzying swerve in the legal battle over a 2022 law that aims ultimately to reverse a portion of the National Voter Registration Act and require all Arizona voters to show proof of citizenship to register to vote,” reports USA Today. “The order reopens a path for potential voters who just two weeks ago were barred from using the state voter registration form to sign up to vote unless they could produce proof of U.S. citizenship. It comes with two months left before the Oct. 7 registration deadline for the high-stakes presidential election.”

    The order means people can again use the state-issued voter registration form even if they don’t produce proof of citizenship. Instead, they attest under penalty of perjury that they are citizens, and are limited to voting in federal races only.

    In the first 10 days after the July 18 ruling that required the documentary proof, the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office said it had rejected 200 voter applications.

    Why do you believe this is not a problem?

    Please provide details on how your “ProtectTheVote and nothing else” strategy will make registration issues better. Is this not a perfect example of lawyers being more necessary than poll watchers?

    Admitting there are issues does not make voting useless. However, those who refuse to acknowledge problems and thus do not fix outcome changing flaws damage the system. Both Bashi and you are stuck in extreme endpoint positions. The truth is in the middle.

    Solutions are possible, but urgent. Another stolen election could irretrievably break everything.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/state/3108410/ohio-removes-hundreds-more-illegal-immigrants-voter-rolls/

    (2) https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2024/08/02/appeals-court-paves-the-way-for-illegals-to-steal-election-in-arizona-n4931300

  940. @Mr. Hack
    @Bashibuzuk

    So, you really believe that Putler's biggest role is the destruction of Russia? He's just taking orders from Klaus Schwab or somebody similar that is intent on seeing Russia destroyed to the point that it will just be another large segment of the NWO? Why is he going along with such a monstrous scenario? He already seems to have amassed riches for himself beyond belief, perhaps they're blackmailing him with some crimes that he's committed from the past? Although, I can't imagine anything worse than what he's recently done in Ukraine or in Russia.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    No response, Bashi? That’s the problem with “conspiracy theories”, they most often fall apart somewhere in the chain of events that lead to their conclusion. Incredible stories with no basis in fact?…

    Essentially:

    Putler is on Klaus Schwab’s payroll assigned to destroy Russia in order to subdue its sovereignty to the New World Order. A sleeper agent that infiltrated the KGB. Sounds like a great plot for a comic book story. Or did I miss something?
    Andrew Anglin has already reviewed the comic book nature of Klaus Schwab (right here at UNZ), but failed to uncover Schwab’s role as Putler’s handler? Good photo of Darth Vader Schwab, handing out more ceremonial maces (bulava in Ukrainian) to loyal henchmen of the New World Order.

    https://www.unz.com/aanglin/why-is-klaus-schwab-a-comic-book-supervillain/

  941. Bashibuzuk says:
    @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Bashibuzuk

    Maybe those men were in charge. Maybe they were actors. Maybe total cut-outs.

    Who knows?

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk

    Maybe total cut-outs.

    Shortly after the Civil War; a young immigrant, who called himself Jacob H. Schiff, arrived in New York. Jacob was a young man with a mission for the House of Rothschild. Jacob was the son of a Rabbi who was born in one of the Rothschild’s houses in Frankfurt, Germany.

    I will go deeply into his background. The important point was that Rothschild recognized in him, not only a potential money wizard; but more important, he also saw the latent Machiavellian qualities in Jacob, that could, as it did, make him an invaluable functionary in the great one-world conspiracy.

    After a comparatively brief training-period in the Rothschild’s London Bank; Jacob left for America with instructions to buy into a banking-house which was to be the springboard to acquire control of the money-system of the United States. Actually; Jacob came here to carry out four specific assignments.

    https://www.heritage-history.com/index.php?c=read&author=fagan&book=illuminati&story=part3

    When Forbes recently reprinted its first list of the richest Americans, for its 100th Anniversary Issue, Jacob Schiff’s name stood out as one that seems to be forgotten.

    That list for 1918, headed by John D. Rockefeller, consisted of well-known captains of industry or their heirs. Schiff was tied for 23rd with a net worth of $50 million (equivalent to $875 million today), alongside tobacco tycoon James Duke, photography pioneer George Eastman, Sears & Roebuck founder Julius Rosenwald, and Pierre S. Du Pont, who created the chemicals empire.

    Schiff was one of Wall Street’s leading investment bankers from 1880 to 1920, with his Kuhn, Loeb & Co. enabling railroads to reach every corner of the continent, helping insurance companies grow, and lending Japan the money it needed to defeat Russia in their 1904-05 war (his revenge for the czar’s pogroms against the Jews).

    https://www.investors.com/news/management/leaders-and-success/americas-railroad-titans-banked-on-jacob-schiff/

    The Japanese success in securing loans in Western financial markets during the Russo-Japanese War is considered to be a substantial factor in Japan’s victory.1 A key role in this success was played by Jacob H. Schiff, the senior partner of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., who was at the time the most powerful American-Jewish financier and community leader.2 Schiff helped the Japanese to overcome the difficulties they had been facing in their negotiations with bankers in New York and London, difficulties that nearly thwarted their initial efforts to raise the sums they needed.
    As the loans were being negotiated, Schiff explained his involvement in the deal as a reprisal for the brutal suppression of Russian Jewry by the antisemitic tsarist regime.3 A military defeat, he argued, would hasten the downfall of tsarism and bring about its replacement with a more enlight- ened regime that would reform the Russian government and improve its attitude toward the Jews. This reasoning, which was reiterated over the years by Schiff’s relatives and associates,4 was in line with his call before the war for Jewish bankers in Europe to deny the Russians any access to Western money markets and with his command to his heirs to continue this financial embargo as long as the Russians did not change their anti- semitic conduct.

    https://brill.com/previewpdf/display/book/edcoll/9789004213432/Bej.9781905246038.i-516_012.xml

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Bashibuzuk

    There is a non-zero possibility the Rothschilds are a front for an alliance of families with much more power that goes back to before the year 0. It's small but it is not zero.

  942. AP says:
    @Mr. XYZ
    @AP


    Accounting for stuff like lack of modern medicines and luxuries, Prague was fine in 1910. Czech culture was flourishing, it was a beautiful and wealthy place.

     

    Austria, Czechia, Slovenia, Tyrol, Istria, and central Hungary were the wealthiest parts of Austria-Hungary back in 1910:

    https://preview.redd.it/the-map-of-wealth-in-the-austro-hungarian-empire-v0-4797q8dkj64a1.jpg?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=ad7e14e0427de9470c53f0c6670cf4514c2ae753

    Replies: @AP

    What a great catch!

    I had data from 1890 showing that Galicia was equal to Dalmatia and richer than parts of Hungary. But by 1910 all of Hungary had surpassed Galicia, while Galicia had moved significantly ahead of Dalmatia which had become the poorest part of Austria-Hungary.

    Still, Galicia’s 1910 per capita GDP of $2,499 in 2021 dollars exceeded the per capita GDP of Ukraine from 1993-2005 (it got as low as $1,506 in 1998).

    Only in 2006, did Ukraine surpass the per capita GDP of Galicia in 1910.

    https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?locations=UA

    (I used inflation calculator to convert the Worldbank”s 2015 dollars to 2021 dollars, to match the map)

    The comparison with other places is interesting. In 1910, Galicia had about 40% of the per capita GDP of Czechia (Bohemia + Moravia). In 2021, Ukraine had only 12% of the Czech Republic’s per capita GDP. If Galicia still had 40% of Czechia’s per capita GDP as it did in 1910, it would have a per capita of GDP of $8,034 in 2021 – midway between Russia ($10,200) and Belarus ($6,400). Slightly higher than Serbia ($7,125).

    (Of course all of these can be adjusted for cost of living – Ukrainians weren’t 10x poorer than Czechs in 2021 – adjusted for PPP they were between 2.5-3x poorer than Czechs)

    :::::::::

    This is a reason why many Galicians have sentimental feelings for Austria.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @AP

    It wasn't only the economic benefits that they enjoyed, but the political balancing act that Vienna pursued that evened out the power structure between the heavy handed Poles and their weakened "brotherly" Ukrainians within the province. I would even go as far to say that in the minds of many Ukrainians, it was the assistance from the center with the strengthening the Ukrainian hand (and concomitant weakening of the Polish dominance) that loomed most important.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ

    , @Mr. XYZ
    @AP

    TBF, I don't think that Galicia would have fared all that badly had some more liberal Russian regime survived in Russia until the end of WWI. Then Galicia could have been a beacon of a Ukrainian National Renaissance spreading into the rest of Ukraine. And such a Russia would have hopefully avoided lunatic and totalitarian Bolshevik policies. But with the Bolsheviks coming to power, the best move for the Galicians would have probably been to try getting Poland to support the creation of the West Ukrainian People's Republic, even at the expense of giving up Lviv to Poland:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Ukrainian_People%27s_Republic

    Poland destroying this independent West Ukrainian state was a huge mistake, IMHO. It built up a lot of Galician resentment towards Poland in the interwar era. Might be well keep it around as a Polish puppet/satellite state rather than do direct annexation. And TBF, both sides should have been less stubborn about Lviv, not just the Ukrainians.

    Had the Second Polish Republic survived and Galicia would have remained Polish and eventually gotten autonomy, though, then I think that present-day Galicia would have also fared pretty well both socially and economically. This would have boded poorly for the rest of Ukraine, though, which would have likely remained under the Russian thumb up to the present-day in such a scenario.

  943. @Gerard1234
    @Mikel

    Well its not moronic or pointless as the pretext for all this was Ecuador giving to 404 Igla's and whatever Soviet tanks,artillery and helicopters they have ( blackmailed by the US).
    As soon as the ban happened then very quickly the situation resolved, with Ecuador doing the correct thing and making clear they were not giving to Ukraine the SAM's.

    Ecuadorian bananas are coming into Russia, coming into Kazan en masse - although as I understand Ecuador is having big political/ civil problems that could effect supply chain.

    Banana exports a big part of Ecuador economy, so our actions were appropriate, never a full ban as majority of producers were still allowed in

    Replies: @Mikel

    Well its not moronic or pointless as the pretext for all this was Ecuador giving to 404 Igla’s and whatever Soviet tanks,artillery and helicopters they have

    You see? Right there is the problem. You know what happened exactly but you are yourself unable to understand what I’m pointing out. Suspending banana imports because a banana republic is sending arms to your enemy is alright, at least it’s what strong countries do. But not saying clearly what and why you are doing what you are doing and inventing “food safety” pretexts is gay and dishonorable. It’s like the US sanctioning palm date exports from Djibouti because they are helping the Houthis but not having the courage to explain their action and inventing a palm date toxicity concern instead. Laughable.

    It is obvious that people who lie on small details like these lie as a matter of course, it’s just their habit and cannot be relied to tell the truth ever, on anything. I suspend all negotiations with you with immediate effect. Mishkin and Chepiga did try to poison Skripal, botched their job, were caught on camera escaping hurriedly to Moscow the same evening of the events, lied on camera again when they were punished to humiliate themselves for their messed up mission and further humiliated Russia and their boss Putin when the whole world learned that they were indeed GRU agents unable to keep their personal lives secret. They were possibly faggots too.

    • Replies: @Gerard1234
    @Mikel

    Bizarre- if you accept both sides lie, then why only not believe Russia side when both sides are claiming something different on the same issue? Especially if the west is doing much of it to prop up the most corrupt, criminal, bandit ,liar country on the planet in Ukraine? Especially if we are talking about western intelligence agencies?

    One side isn't doing something fair ( reexporting weapons in violition of agreement) , Russia punishes them . Then immediately removes punishment if the other side at least compromises.

    US/NATO blackmails, forces countries to be its puppets on something that isn't at all fair -and doesn't even have much connection to the security or financial prosperity of Pindostan.
    So the 2 sides can't be compared.

    As for Djibouti- BLM considerations why US are announcing "food safety* issues with dates? Openly bullying another poor African country, again, not very good image.

    Presumably its some WTO violation to ban the product if announced as openly political decision....and a formal, legal sanction requires wasting time by making Duma,Senate,President have to create legislation. Its just easier doing it like this.

    They can lie about being GRU, and why they were there.....and it still have ZERO connection to the Skripal non-death poisonings and even less to the homeless woman. They can't exactly say " I couldn't have poisoned them because I was busy spying on the Porton Downs facility "!

    MI6 could have known and tracked their visit, and planned some stunt timed to coincide with this. All plausible if Chepiga/Petrov can't be proven to have met the Skripals or gone to the house or placed near it . The entirely inconsistent story of how and where they " poisoned" the Skripals, didn't kill them, and somehow got killed some random people nowhere near there can't be explained away with some BS of " incompetance" or "barbarity" or whatever nonsense. I have no idea of the chemistry of the substance, but how does it happen that of all the ways to do it they are supposed to have impractically & recklessly placed novichok on front door (!!!)...but the Skripals ( of very different ages and body masses) have been found some distance away, together at same spot, in a park or shopping area?

    Didn't British intelligence infamously know Soviets were spying on the Concorde project,and instead of stopping the operation decided to pump them with false information on the technical designs for several months...which then lead to Soviet plane crash?

    As for the faggot theory - very plausible. But the "punishment" aspect to do the interview? Maybe if they are faggots, but reaction in Russia to the interview very different to western propaganda misdirected reaction of their population. Common Runet viral image circulation to any bad events in the west is of Chepega/ Petrov together as a joke - the implication being nearly everyone thinks its a blatant lie about Russia poisoning the Skripals, with the joke being the west will comically blame Chepiga/Petrov for anything, like an avalanche or roof collapsing. That's of course still with nobody believing they are nutrition bar salesmen

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

  944. @AP
    @Mr. XYZ

    What a great catch!

    I had data from 1890 showing that Galicia was equal to Dalmatia and richer than parts of Hungary. But by 1910 all of Hungary had surpassed Galicia, while Galicia had moved significantly ahead of Dalmatia which had become the poorest part of Austria-Hungary.

    Still, Galicia's 1910 per capita GDP of $2,499 in 2021 dollars exceeded the per capita GDP of Ukraine from 1993-2005 (it got as low as $1,506 in 1998).

    Only in 2006, did Ukraine surpass the per capita GDP of Galicia in 1910.

    https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?locations=UA

    (I used inflation calculator to convert the Worldbank''s 2015 dollars to 2021 dollars, to match the map)

    The comparison with other places is interesting. In 1910, Galicia had about 40% of the per capita GDP of Czechia (Bohemia + Moravia). In 2021, Ukraine had only 12% of the Czech Republic's per capita GDP. If Galicia still had 40% of Czechia's per capita GDP as it did in 1910, it would have a per capita of GDP of $8,034 in 2021 - midway between Russia ($10,200) and Belarus ($6,400). Slightly higher than Serbia ($7,125).

    (Of course all of these can be adjusted for cost of living - Ukrainians weren't 10x poorer than Czechs in 2021 - adjusted for PPP they were between 2.5-3x poorer than Czechs)

    :::::::::

    This is a reason why many Galicians have sentimental feelings for Austria.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Mr. XYZ

    It wasn’t only the economic benefits that they enjoyed, but the political balancing act that Vienna pursued that evened out the power structure between the heavy handed Poles and their weakened “brotherly” Ukrainians within the province. I would even go as far to say that in the minds of many Ukrainians, it was the assistance from the center with the strengthening the Ukrainian hand (and concomitant weakening of the Polish dominance) that loomed most important.

    • Replies: @Mr. XYZ
    @Mr. Hack

    The best move for Austria-Hungary would have been to split Galicia in two. Create a separate East Galicia for Ukrainians and a separate West Galicia for Poles. That would have made life easier for Ukrainians in dealing with Polish oppression!

  945. @German_reader
    @Bashibuzuk

    Pretty dumb video, when one thinks of relations between Byzantium, Avars and Slavs, usually the first thing that comes to mind is Slavs taking part in the siege of Constantinople in 626...as subjects/vassals of the Avars. There's something pathetic about nationalists still resorting to such simple-minded heroes' tales (usually set in some dim prehistory, when the peoples in question didn't even produce written sources of their own).
    iirc I once stated that everybody with an active Twitter account should be executed. On balance, I still think that would be a good idea, but it seems the programme would also have to be extended to many of the people uploading Youtube videos.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Dmitry

    Lol, this is a kind of multi-level bullying of Bashibuzuk.

    He posted this video to escape about a distant world of prehistory, after QCIC is bullying him tricking him watch to the army’s marketing video of Islamicized patriotism. (Although sometimes it seems Bashibuzuk really wants Islamicization).

    We need some happy place videos of his hometown in the lost summers of ancient history. Even watching these videos produced by the forgotten ancient civilizations makes me happy.

    There to the zone of AP’s wife family, where the first MacDonald will open in 1990.

    • LOL: Bashibuzuk
  946. @Bashibuzuk
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    Maybe total cut-outs.
     

    Shortly after the Civil War; a young immigrant, who called himself Jacob H. Schiff, arrived in New York. Jacob was a young man with a mission for the House of Rothschild. Jacob was the son of a Rabbi who was born in one of the Rothschild's houses in Frankfurt, Germany.

    I will go deeply into his background. The important point was that Rothschild recognized in him, not only a potential money wizard; but more important, he also saw the latent Machiavellian qualities in Jacob, that could, as it did, make him an invaluable functionary in the great one-world conspiracy.

    After a comparatively brief training-period in the Rothschild's London Bank; Jacob left for America with instructions to buy into a banking-house which was to be the springboard to acquire control of the money-system of the United States. Actually; Jacob came here to carry out four specific assignments.
     
    https://www.heritage-history.com/index.php?c=read&author=fagan&book=illuminati&story=part3

    When Forbes recently reprinted its first list of the richest Americans, for its 100th Anniversary Issue, Jacob Schiff's name stood out as one that seems to be forgotten.

    That list for 1918, headed by John D. Rockefeller, consisted of well-known captains of industry or their heirs. Schiff was tied for 23rd with a net worth of $50 million (equivalent to $875 million today), alongside tobacco tycoon James Duke, photography pioneer George Eastman, Sears & Roebuck founder Julius Rosenwald, and Pierre S. Du Pont, who created the chemicals empire.

    Schiff was one of Wall Street's leading investment bankers from 1880 to 1920, with his Kuhn, Loeb & Co. enabling railroads to reach every corner of the continent, helping insurance companies grow, and lending Japan the money it needed to defeat Russia in their 1904-05 war (his revenge for the czar's pogroms against the Jews).
     
    https://www.investors.com/news/management/leaders-and-success/americas-railroad-titans-banked-on-jacob-schiff/

    The Japanese success in securing loans in Western financial markets during the Russo-Japanese War is considered to be a substantial factor in Japan’s victory.1 A key role in this success was played by Jacob H. Schiff, the senior partner of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., who was at the time the most powerful American-Jewish financier and community leader.2 Schiff helped the Japanese to overcome the difficulties they had been facing in their negotiations with bankers in New York and London, difficulties that nearly thwarted their initial efforts to raise the sums they needed.
    As the loans were being negotiated, Schiff explained his involvement in the deal as a reprisal for the brutal suppression of Russian Jewry by the antisemitic tsarist regime.3 A military defeat, he argued, would hasten the downfall of tsarism and bring about its replacement with a more enlight- ened regime that would reform the Russian government and improve its attitude toward the Jews. This reasoning, which was reiterated over the years by Schiff’s relatives and associates,4 was in line with his call before the war for Jewish bankers in Europe to deny the Russians any access to Western money markets and with his command to his heirs to continue this financial embargo as long as the Russians did not change their anti- semitic conduct.
     
    https://brill.com/previewpdf/display/book/edcoll/9789004213432/Bej.9781905246038.i-516_012.xml

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    There is a non-zero possibility the Rothschilds are a front for an alliance of families with much more power that goes back to before the year 0. It’s small but it is not zero.

    • Agree: Bashibuzuk
  947. @songbird
    @QCIC

    For someone with a training routine, Lex does seem suprisingly effeminate.

    Maybe, he doesn't lift.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mikhail

    Dresses like a funeral director, whose biases are shown in his segments with Plokhii and Kotkin. Wondering how he is on Israel? Plenty of better stuff on YouTube IMO.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Mikhail


    Wondering how he is on Israel?
     
    What I recall is that he had Bibi on as well as the very homo Muhammad el-Kurd.

    Now, frankly I don't pay much attention to the conflict, but I feel like like el-Kurd, as some kind of homo expat, might not perfectly represent the opinions of the locals.
  948. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Mikhail

    > benefit of doubt

    Nobody gives these lying pieces of poop the benefit of doubt.

    SECRET SERVICE AND FBI STILL NOT TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT WHO SHOT CROOKS

    https://sonar21.com/secret-service-and-fbi-still-not-telling-the-truth-about-who-shot-crooks/

    There were a hundred citizens on the ground with cell phones, photos, and video and they still think they can lie. The people backing this project have immense power.

    This is the sort of thing you get before they haul out guillotines. We won't get any guillotines this time. : (

    Replies: @Mikhail

    Among us yes. I’m referring to among the establishment spin. No great calls for full disclosure.

  949. @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    The X platform says about her video new “Visibility Limited. This Post may violate X’s rules against Hateful Conduct.”
     
    It sounds too confrontational for the US mainstream, but may be okay in some other places outside the US.

    The new Republican Party could possibly be moving to more socially liberal in the absolute sense. Paypal investors like Elon, Sacks and Thiel will still be a kind of liberals.
     
    I have seen these trends being called 'right-wing progressivism' or some new form of futurism. It involves tech billionaires, is anti-egalitarian and has some Nietzschean influences, at the same time it is more socially liberal and less religious than the current conservative right. It does seem possible this tendency will be more significant in the future.

    I don’t know the topic, but I wonder if anyone here knows what the political views of educated upper class/upper middle class in 1980s South African culture was actually like?
     
    It would be interesting if anyone is familiar with this.

    There seems to be ongoing interest in SA and Zimbabwe/Rhodesia, partly as a warning about a possible future for other parts of the world with current white majorities and maybe because it is one of the last parts of the world where a frontier type culture still exists among Western Europeans. I noticed that the latest issue of the French magazine Livre Noir is all about the white population of SA for example, with a focus on the poorer ones.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    seems to be ongoing interest in SA and Zimbabwe/Rhodesia

    Foreigners’ views are not very interesting, especially from different historical times, except as relating to themselves perhaps in an interesting way.

    For example, when Westerners even write about Russia, whether in support or against the authorities.

    They misunderstand and misinterpret basic aspects in a way which can’t be explained as lack of information, but because of active projection of their own internal conflicts and political agendas.

    So, our understanding of South Africa is probably very strange and confused.

    Part of the difficulty of understanding, is because South Africa was a conflict zone of the Cold War. It is a quite important part of the Western bloc in Africa. As part of the Western bloc, viewed as an ideological and politicized symbol, including internally in the West as a symbol of the negative part of the bloc and a cause of self-doubt.

    When the Cold War begins to end, South Africa are immediately not needed by the West and the old regime is abandoned by the West as a result of the collapsing Soviet Union and ending Cold War. The apartheid government doesn’t even survive to the end of the first half of the 1990s.

    secular extensions of them began to break down sooner,

    Yes there are religious aspects inside the 19th century ideology, aside from this being Soviet was also like being part of a Christian cult, partly because of the geopolitical situation in the Cold War.

    In the Cold War conflict, Soviet society is supposed to be the role, of the antonym to the greed and materialism of the American capitalist society. So, some showing various secularized intepretations of Christian virtues and self-sacrifice are part of the self-image of the Soviet Union.

    But, it’s also, having external enemies. The warm feeling inside the cult, is created by the perception of external enemies.

    During the Cold Warm, in each time tensions are reduced with the West and the enemies seem to become less hostile, the Soviet ideology is weakening internally.

    In the Cold War, the strongest times for Soviet ideology are often when there is a lot of conflict with the USA and high levels of militarism. Without an external enemy, the ideology isn’t seeming very stable, it wasn’t exactly based on just on providing good housing or employment rates like some Swedish social model.

  950. @Mikhail
    @songbird

    Dresses like a funeral director, whose biases are shown in his segments with Plokhii and Kotkin. Wondering how he is on Israel? Plenty of better stuff on YouTube IMO.

    Replies: @songbird

    Wondering how he is on Israel?

    What I recall is that he had Bibi on as well as the very homo Muhammad el-Kurd.

    Now, frankly I don’t pay much attention to the conflict, but I feel like like el-Kurd, as some kind of homo expat, might not perfectly represent the opinions of the locals.

  951. @Bashibuzuk
    @Mikel

    I actually would just want more direct democracy and the use of technology (smart contract and blockchain) in the voting process to avoid fraud and assign responsibility to both the voters and the elected candidates. Added with a true freedom of speech, neutral judiciary and honest journalism would probably be enough to maintain democracy in a functional state.

    I am not a Q Anon fan and I never was, have no idea what the election Kraken is. I am not advocating for Trump either for the exact reasons that you mentioned. I actually found it quite funny in 2016 when most Alt Rightists described him as the God Emperor Trump who would save America from the (((Joos))). Used to troll them with Jared and Ivanka. The Jewish banker conspiracies are not conspiracies but historical facts. They really did provide funding for the Bolshevik revolution.

    https://youtu.be/pd9B3cilgHY?si=3mxUjHUkQSfYBq69

    Globalist onslaught against nations and nuclear families is here for everyone to witness on a daily basis. Latest aggravation being the Olympic Games opening ceremony scandal. Not really a conspiracy theory either.

    But yeah, I enjoy some good conspiracy theories as some people enjoy a great wine. My favourite one is the Kalergi Plan.


    In the turbulent period following the First World War, the young Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi founded the Pan-European Union, offering a vision of peaceful, democratic unity for Europe with no borders, a common currency and a single passport.

    His political congresses in Vienna, Berlin, and Basel attracted thousands from the intelligentsia and the cultural elite, including Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann and Sigmund Freud, who wanted a United States of Europe brought together by consent. The Count’s commitment to this ideal infuriated Adolf Hitler who referred to him as a ‘cosmopolitan bastard’ in Mein Kampf.
     
    https://www.chathamhouse.org/events/all/members-event/eus-forgotten-grandfather-richard-coudenhove-kalergi

    https://www.europarl.europa.eu/100books/en/detail/18/pan-europe

    https://www.coe.int/en/web/documents-records-archives-information/count-richard-n.-coudenhove-kalergi-and-the-council-of-europe

    😉

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mikel, @A123, @S1

    I actually would just want more direct democracy and the use of technology (smart contract and blockchain) in the voting process to avoid fraud and assign responsibility to both the voters and the elected candidates.

    That would be good and we’ll probably get there eventually in the West. But it won’t solve the biggest problem: that lots of people will continue to vote with their asses.

    I don’t know why you have such a big problem believing that a majority of Americans are capable of voting Democrat when people in all the rest of Western countries vote the same way. Saying that the Democrats can only win the elections in the US rigging the counting process is like saying that Trudeau, Macron, Scholz, Starmer, Sanchez,… also cheated to win the elections. Unfortunately, these people win elections because they do convince lots of people to vote for them.

    And no, there isn’t anybody conspiring from smoked-filled rooms to destroy the institutions of nation and family in order to keep their wealth. Too complicated. You must necessarily know lots of leftist and normie people. We all do, they’re everywhere around us. They do believe that it’s OK to let millions of aliens come to their countries and to have 50 different genders. Or at least they’re not opposed enough to it to vote for the candidates that are against it. People just go with the flow. And the flow right now is that it’s cool to be inclusive and accept all races and sexual orientations. We were very bigoted in the past, we caused a lot of suffering to the weak and the minorities and now we’re building a more humane and better world. Like it or not, this is what most people in the West truly believe, even if they probably have their doubts about certain aspects of this whole paradigm, but they’re OK with the general trend. Just like you and I think that we are right and virtuous, so they do too. Perhaps even more.

    There are some people with a lot of power in the Beltway, the big media organizations, the Fed and all those strategic places. They possibly have their gatherings and “conspire” sometimes to try to change things the way they want but it is naive to think that they are superhumans with a perfect understanding of the IQ and behavioral differences between races and that they have the ability to make many thousands of people around the world believe that they were assigned the wrong gender, all of it as grand conspiracy to keep the structure of wealth intact. These are humans like the rest of us, with their biases and uncertainties on all these issues, and subject to the same taboos. If Gates is part of this cabal, as the guy in your video claimed, why is Elon (even richer) not? How come these people actually have very different ideologies and work for opposite sides in the political arena? Is it even rational to think that such a disparate group of people from different countries can all have the same ideologies and coordinate perfidiously in secret to destroy the societies where they live?

    The 2020 election was a peculiar case. New voting systems had recently been introduced due to Covid (under Trump’s watch), the results changed quite dramatically as the counting process advanced and there were cases of alleged fraud that didn’t seem to be properly investigated (although those of us paying attention later found that at least some of them were bogus). It’s logical for people to have doubts about what happened that day and the Democrats and their media didn’t help to dispel those doubts at all.

    But dismissing the whole election process in the US and thinking that voting in this country no longer counts is a very lousy strategy. Very wrong battle to choose. There are much more important battles that can actually be won at the workplace, at school, in online debates, in comments to the news and most definitely on election days too. But of course it’s a difficult struggle with the left controlling the narratives in most places that matter (not all), as they always have. It’s much easier to give up and think that there’s nothing we can do against those secret cabals that control everything.

    • Thanks: Mr. Hack
    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Mikel

    We in our bubbles do not have a great grasp on how the voters are evolving. I forget the guy's name but he was big in Trump's justice department. He might have been the attorney general. And I saw a video clip of the guy and I thought he was a total faggot. And I made a comment in some Unz thread when his name came up.

    Another commenter corrected me. He said that's how a lot of normal men talk now. He called it mewling which I have no idea WTF that even means.

    Also the first time I heard Karlin on a podcast I was wondering how come he talks like a faggot. Well it turns out . . .

    Does Richard Spencer sound like a faggot to you? That man sounds like 100% faggot to me. For all I know half of the people reading this comment talk like that.

    Replies: @QCIC

    , @Mr. XYZ
    @Mikel


    the results changed quite dramatically as the counting process advanced
     
    Weren't Democrats much more likely to vote absentee in 2020 because Trump discouraged the GOP from voting absentee that year?

    BTW, the 2020 election results in Georgia closely mirrored what they were in the Georgia January 2021 US Senate elections.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ

  952. @Mikel
    @Bashibuzuk


    I actually would just want more direct democracy and the use of technology (smart contract and blockchain) in the voting process to avoid fraud and assign responsibility to both the voters and the elected candidates.
     
    That would be good and we'll probably get there eventually in the West. But it won't solve the biggest problem: that lots of people will continue to vote with their asses.

    I don't know why you have such a big problem believing that a majority of Americans are capable of voting Democrat when people in all the rest of Western countries vote the same way. Saying that the Democrats can only win the elections in the US rigging the counting process is like saying that Trudeau, Macron, Scholz, Starmer, Sanchez,... also cheated to win the elections. Unfortunately, these people win elections because they do convince lots of people to vote for them.

    And no, there isn't anybody conspiring from smoked-filled rooms to destroy the institutions of nation and family in order to keep their wealth. Too complicated. You must necessarily know lots of leftist and normie people. We all do, they're everywhere around us. They do believe that it's OK to let millions of aliens come to their countries and to have 50 different genders. Or at least they're not opposed enough to it to vote for the candidates that are against it. People just go with the flow. And the flow right now is that it's cool to be inclusive and accept all races and sexual orientations. We were very bigoted in the past, we caused a lot of suffering to the weak and the minorities and now we're building a more humane and better world. Like it or not, this is what most people in the West truly believe, even if they probably have their doubts about certain aspects of this whole paradigm, but they're OK with the general trend. Just like you and I think that we are right and virtuous, so they do too. Perhaps even more.

    There are some people with a lot of power in the Beltway, the big media organizations, the Fed and all those strategic places. They possibly have their gatherings and "conspire" sometimes to try to change things the way they want but it is naive to think that they are superhumans with a perfect understanding of the IQ and behavioral differences between races and that they have the ability to make many thousands of people around the world believe that they were assigned the wrong gender, all of it as grand conspiracy to keep the structure of wealth intact. These are humans like the rest of us, with their biases and uncertainties on all these issues, and subject to the same taboos. If Gates is part of this cabal, as the guy in your video claimed, why is Elon (even richer) not? How come these people actually have very different ideologies and work for opposite sides in the political arena? Is it even rational to think that such a disparate group of people from different countries can all have the same ideologies and coordinate perfidiously in secret to destroy the societies where they live?

    The 2020 election was a peculiar case. New voting systems had recently been introduced due to Covid (under Trump's watch), the results changed quite dramatically as the counting process advanced and there were cases of alleged fraud that didn't seem to be properly investigated (although those of us paying attention later found that at least some of them were bogus). It's logical for people to have doubts about what happened that day and the Democrats and their media didn't help to dispel those doubts at all.

    But dismissing the whole election process in the US and thinking that voting in this country no longer counts is a very lousy strategy. Very wrong battle to choose. There are much more important battles that can actually be won at the workplace, at school, in online debates, in comments to the news and most definitely on election days too. But of course it's a difficult struggle with the left controlling the narratives in most places that matter (not all), as they always have. It's much easier to give up and think that there's nothing we can do against those secret cabals that control everything.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mr. XYZ

    We in our bubbles do not have a great grasp on how the voters are evolving. I forget the guy’s name but he was big in Trump’s justice department. He might have been the attorney general. And I saw a video clip of the guy and I thought he was a total faggot. And I made a comment in some Unz thread when his name came up.

    Another commenter corrected me. He said that’s how a lot of normal men talk now. He called it mewling which I have no idea WTF that even means.

    Also the first time I heard Karlin on a podcast I was wondering how come he talks like a faggot. Well it turns out . . .

    Does Richard Spencer sound like a faggot to you? That man sounds like 100% faggot to me. For all I know half of the people reading this comment talk like that.

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Loki uses the phrase "mewling quim" in the first Avengers movie. I never expected to hear the word quim in a mainstream American movie. The phrase fits the scene.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

  953. @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @German_reader

    You make blatant mistakes, all the time, from perspective of a serious scholar. German-Japanese alliance was not anti-Anglo, it was anti-Soviet.


    On 25 November, Germany signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan. Britain, China, Italy, and Poland were also invited to join the Anti-Comintern Pact, but only Italy signed in 1937.
     
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler

    What makes you so confident about your knowledge about pre-historical Slavs?

    Replies: @German_reader

    Not sure when I’m supposed to have commented about the German-Japanese alliance, must have been a long time ago. Not sure either who you are, some grievance-mongering Japanese nationalist still dreaming about the Co-Prosperity sphere? In any case, I don’t care about your opinion. Go fuck yourself.

    • Replies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @German_reader

    You are a wanna-be-Nazi who can't even read the original German sources about your former ally. If you were in the Wehrmacht you would only be useful for clearing mines.

    Unlike Lebensraum although influenced by it, Co-Prosperity Sphere was a post hoc slogan in 1940, after Japan had conquered large parts of China and was consolidating into a economic bloc with Korea and Manchukuo-- like the Eurozone.

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

    It's effectively the blueprint for OBOR plus RCEP, except Japan as a junior partner to China, and Russia is included.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/RCEP.png

    Japan fucked up by provoking the Anglos. It wasn't FDR's fault.

    FDR didn't trick Japan into refusing a reasonable armstice with China mediated by Germans in 1938.

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

    FDR didn't trick Japan into entering the Tripartite Pact with Germany in 1940. It was Tojo's faction that insisted on it.

    The navy and other factions in the army were against it. Hirohito personally didn't like Hitler.

    Replies: @YetAnotherAnon, @Torna atrás, @Dmitry

  954. S1 says:

    The Republican senators are now saying they have been told by local law enforcement that a Secret Service sniper had a photo of Trump’s would be assassin (Crooks), and were told of his location, twenty-six minutes before the attempt was made, yet they still can’t get critical information from the Secret Service about what happened.

    The Republicans just don’t get it in this slow moving train wreck, or, are afraid to admit it aloud, that they are powerless. Being too afraid, too cowed, to exercise power, or lacking the courage of their convictions, is also powerlessness.

    It’s been this way for well over a decade now, with the various Obama/Biden officials simply refusing to answer legitimate questions, and experiencing no legal repercussions for what had historically been seen as simple punishable law breaking. That, and the openly stolen 2020 election, with a militarily guarded inauguration, which was the real coup and ‘insurrection’ in the presently inverted reality of an increasingly lawless so called ‘progressive’ United States.

    Why the Secret Service chief resigned, when the other Biden/Obama officials have simply sucessfully stonewalled upon hard questioning, as she initially tried to do herself, I can only think was due to it being seen as a bridge too far at this juncture. If her resignation wasn’t offered as a sop, this obvious example of stochastic terrorism (ie the assassination attempt on Trump and the incompetent Secret Service response, combined with the years long complete dehumanization of opposition by the modern so called ‘progressives’) might just have kicked off an impending US Roman/Russian style civil war a bit too early, before everything was quite in place.

    I think the final chess piece move before the likely coming cataclysm will almost certainly involve Trump, the New Rome’s Crassus, in some major way.

    As things stand at the moment, the New Rome, aka the United States, stands upon the precipice:

    • Thanks: Mr. Hack
    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @S1

    It's top secret man.

    , @Greasy William
    @S1

    I don't think anyone at this point disputes that it was an inside job

    Replies: @QCIC

  955. @S1
    The Republican senators are now saying they have been told by local law enforcement that a Secret Service sniper had a photo of Trump's would be assassin (Crooks), and were told of his location, twenty-six minutes before the attempt was made, yet they still can't get critical information from the Secret Service about what happened.

    https://youtu.be/5Me4plfrkmg?si=78e4tpWjqpzrNyPn

    The Republicans just don't get it in this slow moving train wreck, or, are afraid to admit it aloud, that they are powerless. Being too afraid, too cowed, to exercise power, or lacking the courage of their convictions, is also powerlessness.

    It's been this way for well over a decade now, with the various Obama/Biden officials simply refusing to answer legitimate questions, and experiencing no legal repercussions for what had historically been seen as simple punishable law breaking. That, and the openly stolen 2020 election, with a militarily guarded inauguration, which was the real coup and 'insurrection' in the presently inverted reality of an increasingly lawless so called 'progressive' United States.

    Why the Secret Service chief resigned, when the other Biden/Obama officials have simply sucessfully stonewalled upon hard questioning, as she initially tried to do herself, I can only think was due to it being seen as a bridge too far at this juncture. If her resignation wasn't offered as a sop, this obvious example of stochastic terrorism (ie the assassination attempt on Trump and the incompetent Secret Service response, combined with the years long complete dehumanization of opposition by the modern so called 'progressives') might just have kicked off an impending US Roman/Russian style civil war a bit too early, before everything was quite in place.

    I think the final chess piece move before the likely coming cataclysm will almost certainly involve Trump, the New Rome's Crassus, in some major way.

    As things stand at the moment, the New Rome, aka the United States, stands upon the precipice:

    https://youtu.be/PbMKc17EtGI?si=XR2rVFsHIU42x0OW

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Greasy William

    It’s top secret man.

    • LOL: S1
  956. The YouTube algorithm offered up this dozy for my viewing pleasure.

    [MORE]

    I think it’s time to clear my cookies.

    • LOL: QCIC
    • Replies: @songbird
    @Torna atrás

    Lol. Was too afraid to hit play.

    But I feel like if there was some way to filter these things, by pattern recognition, you could be triply sure of not seeing that, if you also filtered the tattooed woman, and whoever is in the background with blue hair.

  957. @Mikel
    @Beckow


    Those numbers games are easily debunked
     
    Fair enough. Go ahead and debunk it for me please.

    But I fear you didn't understand the mathematical problem. My explanation was very clumsy. Let me explain it again. If you understand some Spanish, you may be able to hear this primate give 3 exact numbers for the results of the elections in this video. If not, you'll just have to trust me or do some research online:

    https://youtu.be/pB7g4y4M4s8

    He is saying that the results were these:

    Maduro: 5.150.092 (51.1%)
    Gonzalez: 4.445.978 (44.2%)
    Others: 432,704 (4.6%)

    So far, so good. But if you add those 3 numbers, you get a total number of votes of 10,058,774. Check it out. So now you do the math to see what percentage of this total each candidate got and you get this:

    Maduro: 51.20000%
    Gonzalez 44.2000%
    Others: 4.60000%

    You get 4 zeros after the first decimal place (or put differently, the percentages these clowns came up with were exact to the sixth decimal place).

    The probabilities of getting 4 consecutive zeros in a random percentage are exactly 1 in 10,000. And the probabilities of getting 4 consecutive zeros in all 3 percentages are exactly 1 in 100,000,000.

    So we're literally talking about a Caribbean miracle. As I said above, lots of people in that part of the world do believe in miracles. But I don't. Not sure where you stand.

    Was the Russian election this year also fake?
     
    Probably. But not in the same way at all and you're not doing Russia any favor by comparing them to Venezuela. Please let's have some sense of proportionality. Russians are known to mess up badly sometimes but not in this particular way.

    you defend the 100% accuracy in US
     
    You just made this up for no good reason. I've said this several times but let's do it again: compared to most other civilized countries (and even some 2rd World ones like Chile and Argentina), the US election system is a disaster. Where everybody gets their final results the night of the election, in the US there are always some counties still counting a week or several weeks later (in Utah too, btw).

    My wife has several Venezuelan escapee friends.

    No kidding, that’s where you get your info?
     
    Yes, unfortunately she keeps inviting them and I have to hear, against my will, the same old stories from the loudest people I have ever met. But who hasn't met lots of Venezuelans these days? I'm 100% sure that you have a community in Slovakia too. Something like a quarter of them (perhaps half but there's no need to exaggerate) have fled their country to all corners of the world. And a good percentage of those who still remain live off their remittances. It's not easy to f-ck up a country with the largest oil reserves in the world (~18% of the total) but Maduro has achieved that impressive goal.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Emil Nikola Richard, @QCIC, @QCIC, @Beckow, @Dmitry

    get 4 zeros after the first decimal place (or put differently, the percentages these clowns came up with were exact to the sixth decimal place)

    The percentages were assigned first and then the votes calculated – stupid and the TV guy looks Philipino (my theory is all that mankind in 100 years will look Philipino). Don’t these people attend the US ‘democracy‘ training? Or in Cuba? Simple rule: when manipulating do mostly odd numbers, the randomness works out better. (Even AP knows that.)

    What now? One side mishandled the central “count” and the other made up fake polls. My guess is the side with more guns locally will prevail. Unless US and maybe Argentina invade. (My sources tell me that the Colombians are out, they are currently run by a former guerilla – now a profesore – something to do with the previous support by Chavez.) Another pointless war? Why not.

    unfortunately she keeps inviting them and I have to hear, against my will, the same old stories from the loudest people I have ever met.

    They are better one on one, I mean the chicas. Still too loud and opinionated (one gifted me an “Ayn Rand” book) but change the topic to what colors go with olive skin or has the Lululemon peaked and they will drop Maduro in a second. Or drink a lot, is that now legal in Utah?

    • Replies: @Mikel
    @Beckow


    Simple rule: when manipulating do mostly odd numbers, the randomness works out better.
     
    That's how I would do it. Excel actually has a "random" function to make the lives of banana republic election manipulators easier. But we're talking about a very-very low level of manipulators here. There's more than the impossible numbers they came up with but it's not worth wasting too much space with cases like this. It's a pity that most people don't understand Spanish and can't assess what level of intelligence we're dealing with here by just hearing this gorilla (or Maduro) talk. You were actually right that those at the bottom are now on top in Venezuela. With predictable consequences. It's not the first time it happens in Latin America.

    Replies: @Beckow, @Derer, @QCIC

  958. @AP
    @Beckow


    Magyars’ speak a Eurasian language.

    So do Finns and Estonians. Are they also ‘Asian’?
     
    Finnic is indigenous to Europe. Uralic or Ugric is not. Like Indo-European, but reversed.

    Magyars came from the Urals in the 9th century. They enslaved and assimilated various peoples, including Slavs. This legacy has been proposed as a reason for the Magyar elite's particular cruelty towards their peasants.

    You are ‘hollywooding‘ again
     
    You seem to be obsessed with Hollywood. Did it address the Magyar migration?

    Get a map. Historical Russia is in Europe
     
    So are Chechnya and Kalmykia. Are Chechens Europeans? Kalmyks?

    Russians ethnogenesis begins with Asian influence, and Russia grew by absorbing both European and Asian lands and peoples. It is neither European nor Asian.

    The stated views of people in “polls” can’t change what one sees on a map. Do you do polls to ascertain that the sun will rise tomorrow? (Your hapless, confused half-Polish wife
     
    Putin's colleague Vladimir Yakunin "Russia is not between Europe and Asia. Europe and Asia are to the left and right of Russia. We are not a bridge between them but a separate civilisational space, where Russia unites the civilisational communities of East and West"

    Beckow thinks that Yakunin is confused but he, Beckow is right because as a midwit he sure knows how to read a map. Putting that 110 IQ to good use.

    Large majority of Russians state that they are not Europeans.

    You think you know more about Russians, than Russians do themselves?

    There are two possibilities:

    1. Russians know whether or not they are Europeans. Most say they are not. Those like Beckow who think they know better are proud fools who blindly believe something they were told differently.

    2. A Slovak midwit knows more about what Russians are, than Russians do themselves.

    Which is more likely?

    who had it better, those ruled from Vienna, Moscow, Budapest, or Istanbul

    I would pick Prague.
     
    Amazing, something so obvious even you can't deny it.

    But they all had it pretty bad,
     
    Were you taught that in the same schools that taught you that Russians are definitely Europeans?

    Accounting for stuff like lack of modern medicines and luxuries, Prague was fine in 1910. Czech culture was flourishing, it was a beautiful and wealthy place.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ, @Beckow

    …Finnic is indigenous to Europe.

    No, it’s not. It is originally east-Siberian (or Asian) and half of the Finns test with the east Asian DNA – it is heavily diluted, but you can spot it. That druggie PM lady they had until recently looked quite non-European, maybe she was spending too much time in a those hot ovens drinking piss (they do that in Finland, I have seen it).

    obsessed with Hollywood. Did it address the Magyar migration?

    They created a fake medieval past with ‘knights’ and ‘warriors’. The reality was more prosaic. The Magyars mostly died out shortly after arrival, as did Huns previously (not related). They were replaced with local nobility and hard working peasants – it is all in the data. Magyar language was only saved by the Ottoman 200-year rule: the isolation, similarity to Turkic, Ottomans supported Magyars as being ‘more like them’. Then Habsburgs saved them – the Habs feared and hated Slavs and Magyars were useful. Nazis tried the same trick and Magyars again paid a big price. They seemed to have learned from it.

    But I like culture, movies, myths. Hollywood Anglo-Jewish Wakanda has lately instead become fully Negro-LGBTQ-weirdos…isn’t progress just great?

    Large majority of Russians state that they are not Europeans.

    I doubt it. Some today do out of spite, it won’t last. Send them a map.

    Prague was fine in 1910. Czech culture was flourishing, it was a beautiful and wealthy place.

    It still is. But never forget that the Czechs hated the Habsurgs with a passion, they knew Habs were weasel-has beens with silly dreams of grandeur. And medieval brutality right under the surface. But they are your ‘kin’ so celebrate them if you must – nobody else does.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Beckow


    …Finnic is indigenous to Europe.

    No, it’s not. It is originally east-Siberian (or Asian) and half of the Finns test with the east Asian DNA
     
    Indo-Europeans once came from Asia too..thousands of years ago. The Finnic peoples came from the Volga region to the area around Estonia around 3,000 years ago and to Finland a couple of thousand years later. he original homeland of these peoples was from the Volga to the Urals and western Siberia. Finns came from the western parts.

    But the ancestors of the Magyars were in Asia. The Magyars emerged from the Urals when they invaded Europe in the 9th century. The Finnic peoples had already been living in their lands.

    obsessed with Hollywood. Did it address the Magyar migration?

    They created a fake medieval past with ‘knights’ and ‘warriors’.
     
    Hollywood was anti-elitist and seems to have portrayed the nobles badly. Like you do. It makes sense - many Hollywood people were closet communists. They were your friends. And of curse America rebelled against the King and nobles.

    I think Robin Hood was the most popular Hollywood genre set in the Middle Ages. Braveheart came later. Mel Gibson is of course no Communist, but he is an anti-elitist, like you.

    Large majority of Russians state that they are not Europeans.

    I doubt it. Some today do out of spite, it won’t last.
     
    They do, and have done so for decades.

    Including smart ones, not merely midwits who can dutifully look at maps.

    https://www.levada.ru/cp/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/WJtjf-do-you-consider-yourself-a-european-nbsp--1024x386.png

    In 2008, only 35% of Russians considered themselves to be Europeans.

    In 2021 it was down to 27%.

    You can read maps though.
  959. After pole vault and javelin Norway has taken the lead over Germany. Granada is now in 3rd place. Germany and Grenada are negroes and Norway is not. Last event is the 1500 m. With four minutes to go in the game I wonder what the Norwegians are watching on their television sets.

  960. Sher Singh says:

    Old knife broke randomly – stainless EDC for cutting, lifting, shower
    Got new one that’s sick as fk & can be worn to court, school, US Federal Buildings etc.

    :100:

    [MORE]

  961. A123 says: • Website
    @Bashibuzuk
    @Mikel

    I actually would just want more direct democracy and the use of technology (smart contract and blockchain) in the voting process to avoid fraud and assign responsibility to both the voters and the elected candidates. Added with a true freedom of speech, neutral judiciary and honest journalism would probably be enough to maintain democracy in a functional state.

    I am not a Q Anon fan and I never was, have no idea what the election Kraken is. I am not advocating for Trump either for the exact reasons that you mentioned. I actually found it quite funny in 2016 when most Alt Rightists described him as the God Emperor Trump who would save America from the (((Joos))). Used to troll them with Jared and Ivanka. The Jewish banker conspiracies are not conspiracies but historical facts. They really did provide funding for the Bolshevik revolution.

    https://youtu.be/pd9B3cilgHY?si=3mxUjHUkQSfYBq69

    Globalist onslaught against nations and nuclear families is here for everyone to witness on a daily basis. Latest aggravation being the Olympic Games opening ceremony scandal. Not really a conspiracy theory either.

    But yeah, I enjoy some good conspiracy theories as some people enjoy a great wine. My favourite one is the Kalergi Plan.


    In the turbulent period following the First World War, the young Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi founded the Pan-European Union, offering a vision of peaceful, democratic unity for Europe with no borders, a common currency and a single passport.

    His political congresses in Vienna, Berlin, and Basel attracted thousands from the intelligentsia and the cultural elite, including Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann and Sigmund Freud, who wanted a United States of Europe brought together by consent. The Count’s commitment to this ideal infuriated Adolf Hitler who referred to him as a ‘cosmopolitan bastard’ in Mein Kampf.
     
    https://www.chathamhouse.org/events/all/members-event/eus-forgotten-grandfather-richard-coudenhove-kalergi

    https://www.europarl.europa.eu/100books/en/detail/18/pan-europe

    https://www.coe.int/en/web/documents-records-archives-information/count-richard-n.-coudenhove-kalergi-and-the-council-of-europe

    😉

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mikel, @A123, @S1

    I actually would just want more direct democracy

    Direct democracy has a huge defect. It is easy to pass measures that spend money. It is much harder to increase taxes.

    Perhaps in small groups everyone will pull together to make rational choices where collections = spending. After all, Home Owners Associations [HOA] are known to be places of comity and civility. These direct democracy groups are cherished and respected in America.

    Hmmmm…. HTML really needs sarcasm tags (sarc) (/sarc).

    PEACE 😇

     

    • Replies: @Derer
    @A123


    Direct democracy has a huge defect. It is easy to pass measures that spend money. It is much harder to increase taxes.
     
    Disagree. Even 15 year old knows the spending means higher taxes and thus your "easy" vote is not so easy anymore.

    We have technology to implement direct voting on issues (Saturdays are voting days). Do you want abortion yes or no? Do you want Iraq war yes or no?

    The system of sending people (crooks) to Washington representing us was created under completely different conditions. Transportation and communication industries were in diapers. People travelled 50 miles farthest by horses and were not that educated. Now voters are smarter than people they are sending to represent them.

    What is eliminated by direct voting is the influence by the special interest groups or minorities and influence of money. Do you want to send arms to Israel, yes or no? The direct voting would reduce the Congress proxies to debating the issues but not deciding on rejection or approval.

    Replies: @A123

  962. @Torna atrás
    The YouTube algorithm offered up this dozy for my viewing pleasure.



    https://youtu.be/i3P-9wSdseU?si=N4-XHSZQKvyZaJPe

    I think it's time to clear my cookies.

    Replies: @songbird

    Lol. Was too afraid to hit play.

    But I feel like if there was some way to filter these things, by pattern recognition, you could be triply sure of not seeing that, if you also filtered the tattooed woman, and whoever is in the background with blue hair.

  963. @Beckow
    @Mikel


    get 4 zeros after the first decimal place (or put differently, the percentages these clowns came up with were exact to the sixth decimal place)
     
    The percentages were assigned first and then the votes calculated - stupid and the TV guy looks Philipino (my theory is all that mankind in 100 years will look Philipino). Don't these people attend the US 'democracy' training? Or in Cuba? Simple rule: when manipulating do mostly odd numbers, the randomness works out better. (Even AP knows that.)

    What now? One side mishandled the central "count" and the other made up fake polls. My guess is the side with more guns locally will prevail. Unless US and maybe Argentina invade. (My sources tell me that the Colombians are out, they are currently run by a former guerilla - now a profesore - something to do with the previous support by Chavez.) Another pointless war? Why not.


    unfortunately she keeps inviting them and I have to hear, against my will, the same old stories from the loudest people I have ever met.
     
    They are better one on one, I mean the chicas. Still too loud and opinionated (one gifted me an "Ayn Rand" book) but change the topic to what colors go with olive skin or has the Lululemon peaked and they will drop Maduro in a second. Or drink a lot, is that now legal in Utah?

    Replies: @Mikel

    Simple rule: when manipulating do mostly odd numbers, the randomness works out better.

    That’s how I would do it. Excel actually has a “random” function to make the lives of banana republic election manipulators easier. But we’re talking about a very-very low level of manipulators here. There’s more than the impossible numbers they came up with but it’s not worth wasting too much space with cases like this. It’s a pity that most people don’t understand Spanish and can’t assess what level of intelligence we’re dealing with here by just hearing this gorilla (or Maduro) talk. You were actually right that those at the bottom are now on top in Venezuela. With predictable consequences. It’s not the first time it happens in Latin America.

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @Mikel


    hearing this gorilla (or Maduro) talk.
     
    Let's not be snobbish. Before failing intermediate math Maduro was a bus driver, I assume he could change an oversized tire in 100 degree heat. I can't do that.

    The top world is full of different gorillas. For all their refinement, Macron, Biden, Kamala, Starmer, Trudeau are also monkey-like - just watch them. Maduro has heft and can't be too corrupt - where would he take his riches? I can't see him shopping in Miami or Harrods.


    You were actually right that those at the bottom are now on top in Venezuela. With predictable consequences.
     
    Flipping society every few generations has very valuable educational consequences. After Maria Antoinette the royals behaved a lot better and nothing was as useful at raising the living standards of 90% of people as the fear of commies, socialism, radicals, or disorder.

    We have not had that for a while so we get Indian moguls spending half a billion on a wedding and Musk dreaming of overthrowing governments. A little street justice scares the sh..t out of the posh people. Their poshness is stupid and only stupid blunt methods can cure a society of it. (Maybe that's why the Latina chicas are so loud...it's the anticipation.)

    , @Derer
    @Mikel

    Maduro is a product of Washington stupid, evil policies towards the leaders that refuse their countries to be exploited and pillaged by the foreign sharks. Why can others organize their life differently from the world warmonger?

    Venezuela has largest oil reserved in the world and is located at the US backyard but Washington pinheads starving Venezuelans with sanctions and buying oil from a despotic Kingdom. They tolerate communists ideology in China and picking on Venezuela or Cuba, cowards.

    , @QCIC
    @Mikel

    What is the story on Gonzalez? Was he real opposition? Was he aligned with the West? Was he a semi-made up candidate like Guaido?

  964. @S1
    The Republican senators are now saying they have been told by local law enforcement that a Secret Service sniper had a photo of Trump's would be assassin (Crooks), and were told of his location, twenty-six minutes before the attempt was made, yet they still can't get critical information from the Secret Service about what happened.

    https://youtu.be/5Me4plfrkmg?si=78e4tpWjqpzrNyPn

    The Republicans just don't get it in this slow moving train wreck, or, are afraid to admit it aloud, that they are powerless. Being too afraid, too cowed, to exercise power, or lacking the courage of their convictions, is also powerlessness.

    It's been this way for well over a decade now, with the various Obama/Biden officials simply refusing to answer legitimate questions, and experiencing no legal repercussions for what had historically been seen as simple punishable law breaking. That, and the openly stolen 2020 election, with a militarily guarded inauguration, which was the real coup and 'insurrection' in the presently inverted reality of an increasingly lawless so called 'progressive' United States.

    Why the Secret Service chief resigned, when the other Biden/Obama officials have simply sucessfully stonewalled upon hard questioning, as she initially tried to do herself, I can only think was due to it being seen as a bridge too far at this juncture. If her resignation wasn't offered as a sop, this obvious example of stochastic terrorism (ie the assassination attempt on Trump and the incompetent Secret Service response, combined with the years long complete dehumanization of opposition by the modern so called 'progressives') might just have kicked off an impending US Roman/Russian style civil war a bit too early, before everything was quite in place.

    I think the final chess piece move before the likely coming cataclysm will almost certainly involve Trump, the New Rome's Crassus, in some major way.

    As things stand at the moment, the New Rome, aka the United States, stands upon the precipice:

    https://youtu.be/PbMKc17EtGI?si=XR2rVFsHIU42x0OW

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Greasy William

    I don’t think anyone at this point disputes that it was an inside job

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Greasy William

    So why hasn't anyone been apprehended, hopefully going out in a blaze of glory? If we accept this is real and recognize that nothing has happened, then it seems likely that Team Trump will allow Harris to win.

  965. @QCIC
    What do you make of the US-Russia prisoner swap?

    Replies: @sudden death

    Leaving it for the checkup in next 3 months:

    Swap and peace in Ukraine – in a few months a peace treaty in Ukraine may be signed. The logic here is very simple.
    1. Peace in Ukraine is possible in the event of a concession from the US.
    2. The swap showed that before the elections the US is ready to make concessions in the interests of Harris’s victory.
    3. Therefore, in the fall, the US, in order to show Harris as a candidate for peace, may make concessions to Russia on Ukraine, as they have already made concessions on the exchange.
    4. Therefore, in September-October a peace treaty on Ukraine may be signed.
    We can be prepared.

    https://t.me/logikamarkova/13232

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @sudden death

    You omit the part where the Azov Battalion takes out that traitor Zelinsky.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Leo_Neugebauer_Budapest_2023.jpg

    This is Leo Neugebauer, the German man who took silver in decathlon. I wonder if German Reader was rooting for him to beat the Norwegian who is not a negro, but is for now the world's greatest athlete officially. The last time I looked at it was a couple months ago and then the titleist was a non-negro French man but he was injured this week.

    Replies: @songbird, @Mr. XYZ, @Derer, @sudden death

  966. @sudden death
    @QCIC

    Leaving it for the checkup in next 3 months:


    Swap and peace in Ukraine - in a few months a peace treaty in Ukraine may be signed. The logic here is very simple.
    1. Peace in Ukraine is possible in the event of a concession from the US.
    2. The swap showed that before the elections the US is ready to make concessions in the interests of Harris's victory.
    3. Therefore, in the fall, the US, in order to show Harris as a candidate for peace, may make concessions to Russia on Ukraine, as they have already made concessions on the exchange.
    4. Therefore, in September-October a peace treaty on Ukraine may be signed.
    We can be prepared.
     
    https://t.me/logikamarkova/13232

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    You omit the part where the Azov Battalion takes out that traitor Zelinsky.

    This is Leo Neugebauer, the German man who took silver in decathlon. I wonder if German Reader was rooting for him to beat the Norwegian who is not a negro, but is for now the world’s greatest athlete officially. The last time I looked at it was a couple months ago and then the titleist was a non-negro French man but he was injured this week.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    This is Leo Neugebauer,
     
    Wonder what year they started introducing surnames into Kamerun. Wasn't a German colony for very long, at all.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    , @Mr. XYZ
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    The Germans can turn anyone into an Ubermensch!

    , @Derer
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Hitler is turning in his grave.

    , @sudden death
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    omit the part where the Azov Battalion takes out that traitor Zelinsky
     
    The devil regarding Zelensky lies in the details - if he really gets back some territories in the south by exchanging something in the east and then announces new presidential election, the odds of potential anwarsadating may be lower.

    Also previously ommited the funniest part when various A12345's will become biggest Ukrainian patriots in split second and will start blaming Demonrats for betraying the resistance against the Orcs lol

  967. @LondonBob
    @Mr. XYZ

    No different from British people seeing ourselves as at a distance from continental Europe, Europe is over there, or Scandinavians who have a similar outlook as well, Russia is no different.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ

    Scandinavians are mostly EU members, though, unlike both the Brits and Russians nowadays.

  968. @AP
    @Mr. XYZ

    What a great catch!

    I had data from 1890 showing that Galicia was equal to Dalmatia and richer than parts of Hungary. But by 1910 all of Hungary had surpassed Galicia, while Galicia had moved significantly ahead of Dalmatia which had become the poorest part of Austria-Hungary.

    Still, Galicia's 1910 per capita GDP of $2,499 in 2021 dollars exceeded the per capita GDP of Ukraine from 1993-2005 (it got as low as $1,506 in 1998).

    Only in 2006, did Ukraine surpass the per capita GDP of Galicia in 1910.

    https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?locations=UA

    (I used inflation calculator to convert the Worldbank''s 2015 dollars to 2021 dollars, to match the map)

    The comparison with other places is interesting. In 1910, Galicia had about 40% of the per capita GDP of Czechia (Bohemia + Moravia). In 2021, Ukraine had only 12% of the Czech Republic's per capita GDP. If Galicia still had 40% of Czechia's per capita GDP as it did in 1910, it would have a per capita of GDP of $8,034 in 2021 - midway between Russia ($10,200) and Belarus ($6,400). Slightly higher than Serbia ($7,125).

    (Of course all of these can be adjusted for cost of living - Ukrainians weren't 10x poorer than Czechs in 2021 - adjusted for PPP they were between 2.5-3x poorer than Czechs)

    :::::::::

    This is a reason why many Galicians have sentimental feelings for Austria.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Mr. XYZ

    TBF, I don’t think that Galicia would have fared all that badly had some more liberal Russian regime survived in Russia until the end of WWI. Then Galicia could have been a beacon of a Ukrainian National Renaissance spreading into the rest of Ukraine. And such a Russia would have hopefully avoided lunatic and totalitarian Bolshevik policies. But with the Bolsheviks coming to power, the best move for the Galicians would have probably been to try getting Poland to support the creation of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic, even at the expense of giving up Lviv to Poland:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Ukrainian_People%27s_Republic

    Poland destroying this independent West Ukrainian state was a huge mistake, IMHO. It built up a lot of Galician resentment towards Poland in the interwar era. Might be well keep it around as a Polish puppet/satellite state rather than do direct annexation. And TBF, both sides should have been less stubborn about Lviv, not just the Ukrainians.

    Had the Second Polish Republic survived and Galicia would have remained Polish and eventually gotten autonomy, though, then I think that present-day Galicia would have also fared pretty well both socially and economically. This would have boded poorly for the rest of Ukraine, though, which would have likely remained under the Russian thumb up to the present-day in such a scenario.

  969. @Mr. Hack
    @AP

    It wasn't only the economic benefits that they enjoyed, but the political balancing act that Vienna pursued that evened out the power structure between the heavy handed Poles and their weakened "brotherly" Ukrainians within the province. I would even go as far to say that in the minds of many Ukrainians, it was the assistance from the center with the strengthening the Ukrainian hand (and concomitant weakening of the Polish dominance) that loomed most important.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ

    The best move for Austria-Hungary would have been to split Galicia in two. Create a separate East Galicia for Ukrainians and a separate West Galicia for Poles. That would have made life easier for Ukrainians in dealing with Polish oppression!

  970. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @sudden death

    You omit the part where the Azov Battalion takes out that traitor Zelinsky.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Leo_Neugebauer_Budapest_2023.jpg

    This is Leo Neugebauer, the German man who took silver in decathlon. I wonder if German Reader was rooting for him to beat the Norwegian who is not a negro, but is for now the world's greatest athlete officially. The last time I looked at it was a couple months ago and then the titleist was a non-negro French man but he was injured this week.

    Replies: @songbird, @Mr. XYZ, @Derer, @sudden death

    This is Leo Neugebauer,

    Wonder what year they started introducing surnames into Kamerun. Wasn’t a German colony for very long, at all.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    I thought Cameroon was French and presumed his mud shark mama's maiden name is Neugebauer but it's not in the wikipedia article.

    Maybe German Reader knows!

    Replies: @songbird

  971. @songbird
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    This is Leo Neugebauer,
     
    Wonder what year they started introducing surnames into Kamerun. Wasn't a German colony for very long, at all.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    I thought Cameroon was French and presumed his mud shark mama’s maiden name is Neugebauer but it’s not in the wikipedia article.

    Maybe German Reader knows!

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    You are probably right - he is a half-breed.

    At first I thought he was too African-looking, but his mother was a German mudshark.

    https://texaslonghorns.com/news/2024/4/9/track-field-cross-country-with-2023-behind-him-leo-neugebauer-sets-his-sights-on-the-present.aspx

    Replies: @songbird

  972. @Mikel
    @Beckow


    Simple rule: when manipulating do mostly odd numbers, the randomness works out better.
     
    That's how I would do it. Excel actually has a "random" function to make the lives of banana republic election manipulators easier. But we're talking about a very-very low level of manipulators here. There's more than the impossible numbers they came up with but it's not worth wasting too much space with cases like this. It's a pity that most people don't understand Spanish and can't assess what level of intelligence we're dealing with here by just hearing this gorilla (or Maduro) talk. You were actually right that those at the bottom are now on top in Venezuela. With predictable consequences. It's not the first time it happens in Latin America.

    Replies: @Beckow, @Derer, @QCIC

    hearing this gorilla (or Maduro) talk.

    Let’s not be snobbish. Before failing intermediate math Maduro was a bus driver, I assume he could change an oversized tire in 100 degree heat. I can’t do that.

    The top world is full of different gorillas. For all their refinement, Macron, Biden, Kamala, Starmer, Trudeau are also monkey-like – just watch them. Maduro has heft and can’t be too corrupt – where would he take his riches? I can’t see him shopping in Miami or Harrods.

    You were actually right that those at the bottom are now on top in Venezuela. With predictable consequences.

    Flipping society every few generations has very valuable educational consequences. After Maria Antoinette the royals behaved a lot better and nothing was as useful at raising the living standards of 90% of people as the fear of commies, socialism, radicals, or disorder.

    We have not had that for a while so we get Indian moguls spending half a billion on a wedding and Musk dreaming of overthrowing governments. A little street justice scares the sh..t out of the posh people. Their poshness is stupid and only stupid blunt methods can cure a society of it. (Maybe that’s why the Latina chicas are so loud…it’s the anticipation.)

  973. @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @Mr. XYZ

    You ask good questions, but no more perversion posting or I won't reply.

    Korea is to Japan what Ukraine is to Russia. No one's ever invaded Japan from Philippines. The Mongols invaded Japan from Korea.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Mongol_invasions_of_Japan_1274%2C_1281.jpg

    Japan had a handshake agreement with America in 1905 agreeing to split Korea and Philippines.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft–Katsura_agreement

    Korea was Chinese tributary in 1894 but it was internally very unstable like Ukraine in 2004, there were factions who favored going over to Russia. Which was not acceptable to Japan.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Une-Partie-De-Peche-Rus-Jpn-Qing-Dispute-Korea-Feb-15-1887.png

    In addition Qing China had modernized with some of the most modern German-made battleships, and was behaving aggressively towards Japan. So war broke out in 1894.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ

    Sure, Korea is much more important for Japan relative to the Philippines. However, couldn’t Japan have still acquired valuable resources by helping the Philippines acquire independence and also obtained a valuable strategic naval base at Manila as well? And increased its own prestige throughout the Asian world by fighting European colonialism and imperialism?

    • Replies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @Mr. XYZ

    Some Japanese ultras did support Philippines against the American invasion

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine–American_War

    But not even China during this period had "independence", the West and Russia completely dominated Asia

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/KCRC_China_spheres_of_influence.jpg

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/China_imperialism_cartoon.jpg

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


    increased its own prestige throughout the Asian world by fighting European colonialism and imperialism?
     
    Yes, the Russo-Japanese War.

    But the Japanese were not saints and began building their own empire-- they annexed Okinawa in 1872 and Taiwan in 1895, both were in the Chinese sphere.

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

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_invasion_of_Taiwan_(1895)

  974. @sudden death
    @Gerard1234

    haha, Lithuania so far has more medals than RF citizens in Paris:


    Gold medallist Karolien Florijn of Netherlands celebrates on the podium after winning with silver medallist Emma Twigg of New Zealand and bronze medallist Viktorija Senkute of Lithuania.
     
    https://images.deccanherald.com/deccanherald%2F2024-08%2F514ed42e-c243-48cc-8116-e4076ff42b27%2F2024-08-03T091150Z_396752360_UP1EK830PJPAK_RTRMADP_5_OLYMPICS-2024-ROWING.JPG

    Still waiting for your condemnation of Soviet satanists in Stalingrad;)

    Replies: @Derer, @Gerard1234

    Hahaha, those are Lithuanians only on paper but in reality success correlates with prevalence of Russian DNA.

  975. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @sudden death

    You omit the part where the Azov Battalion takes out that traitor Zelinsky.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Leo_Neugebauer_Budapest_2023.jpg

    This is Leo Neugebauer, the German man who took silver in decathlon. I wonder if German Reader was rooting for him to beat the Norwegian who is not a negro, but is for now the world's greatest athlete officially. The last time I looked at it was a couple months ago and then the titleist was a non-negro French man but he was injured this week.

    Replies: @songbird, @Mr. XYZ, @Derer, @sudden death

    The Germans can turn anyone into an Ubermensch!

  976. @Mikel
    @Bashibuzuk


    I actually would just want more direct democracy and the use of technology (smart contract and blockchain) in the voting process to avoid fraud and assign responsibility to both the voters and the elected candidates.
     
    That would be good and we'll probably get there eventually in the West. But it won't solve the biggest problem: that lots of people will continue to vote with their asses.

    I don't know why you have such a big problem believing that a majority of Americans are capable of voting Democrat when people in all the rest of Western countries vote the same way. Saying that the Democrats can only win the elections in the US rigging the counting process is like saying that Trudeau, Macron, Scholz, Starmer, Sanchez,... also cheated to win the elections. Unfortunately, these people win elections because they do convince lots of people to vote for them.

    And no, there isn't anybody conspiring from smoked-filled rooms to destroy the institutions of nation and family in order to keep their wealth. Too complicated. You must necessarily know lots of leftist and normie people. We all do, they're everywhere around us. They do believe that it's OK to let millions of aliens come to their countries and to have 50 different genders. Or at least they're not opposed enough to it to vote for the candidates that are against it. People just go with the flow. And the flow right now is that it's cool to be inclusive and accept all races and sexual orientations. We were very bigoted in the past, we caused a lot of suffering to the weak and the minorities and now we're building a more humane and better world. Like it or not, this is what most people in the West truly believe, even if they probably have their doubts about certain aspects of this whole paradigm, but they're OK with the general trend. Just like you and I think that we are right and virtuous, so they do too. Perhaps even more.

    There are some people with a lot of power in the Beltway, the big media organizations, the Fed and all those strategic places. They possibly have their gatherings and "conspire" sometimes to try to change things the way they want but it is naive to think that they are superhumans with a perfect understanding of the IQ and behavioral differences between races and that they have the ability to make many thousands of people around the world believe that they were assigned the wrong gender, all of it as grand conspiracy to keep the structure of wealth intact. These are humans like the rest of us, with their biases and uncertainties on all these issues, and subject to the same taboos. If Gates is part of this cabal, as the guy in your video claimed, why is Elon (even richer) not? How come these people actually have very different ideologies and work for opposite sides in the political arena? Is it even rational to think that such a disparate group of people from different countries can all have the same ideologies and coordinate perfidiously in secret to destroy the societies where they live?

    The 2020 election was a peculiar case. New voting systems had recently been introduced due to Covid (under Trump's watch), the results changed quite dramatically as the counting process advanced and there were cases of alleged fraud that didn't seem to be properly investigated (although those of us paying attention later found that at least some of them were bogus). It's logical for people to have doubts about what happened that day and the Democrats and their media didn't help to dispel those doubts at all.

    But dismissing the whole election process in the US and thinking that voting in this country no longer counts is a very lousy strategy. Very wrong battle to choose. There are much more important battles that can actually be won at the workplace, at school, in online debates, in comments to the news and most definitely on election days too. But of course it's a difficult struggle with the left controlling the narratives in most places that matter (not all), as they always have. It's much easier to give up and think that there's nothing we can do against those secret cabals that control everything.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mr. XYZ

    the results changed quite dramatically as the counting process advanced

    Weren’t Democrats much more likely to vote absentee in 2020 because Trump discouraged the GOP from voting absentee that year?

    BTW, the 2020 election results in Georgia closely mirrored what they were in the Georgia January 2021 US Senate elections.

    • Replies: @Mr. XYZ
    @Mr. XYZ

    The red mirage was predicted ahead of time at least a couple of months before the election, BTW:

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/01/politics/2020-election-count-red-mirage-blue-shift/index.html

  977. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @sudden death

    You omit the part where the Azov Battalion takes out that traitor Zelinsky.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Leo_Neugebauer_Budapest_2023.jpg

    This is Leo Neugebauer, the German man who took silver in decathlon. I wonder if German Reader was rooting for him to beat the Norwegian who is not a negro, but is for now the world's greatest athlete officially. The last time I looked at it was a couple months ago and then the titleist was a non-negro French man but he was injured this week.

    Replies: @songbird, @Mr. XYZ, @Derer, @sudden death

    Hitler is turning in his grave.

  978. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    I thought Cameroon was French and presumed his mud shark mama's maiden name is Neugebauer but it's not in the wikipedia article.

    Maybe German Reader knows!

    Replies: @songbird

    You are probably right – he is a half-breed.

    At first I thought he was too African-looking, but his mother was a German mudshark.

    https://texaslonghorns.com/news/2024/4/9/track-field-cross-country-with-2023-behind-him-leo-neugebauer-sets-his-sights-on-the-present.aspx

    • Replies: @songbird
    @songbird


    At first I thought he was too African-looking

     

    Come to think about it: if he is roughly 50:50, then the average American mulatto must be at least 40:60, but possibly even more skewed, assuming there is an advantage in admixture.
  979. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Mikel

    We in our bubbles do not have a great grasp on how the voters are evolving. I forget the guy's name but he was big in Trump's justice department. He might have been the attorney general. And I saw a video clip of the guy and I thought he was a total faggot. And I made a comment in some Unz thread when his name came up.

    Another commenter corrected me. He said that's how a lot of normal men talk now. He called it mewling which I have no idea WTF that even means.

    Also the first time I heard Karlin on a podcast I was wondering how come he talks like a faggot. Well it turns out . . .

    Does Richard Spencer sound like a faggot to you? That man sounds like 100% faggot to me. For all I know half of the people reading this comment talk like that.

    Replies: @QCIC

    Loki uses the phrase “mewling quim” in the first Avengers movie. I never expected to hear the word quim in a mainstream American movie. The phrase fits the scene.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @QCIC


    Synonyms for MEWLING: whimpering, crying, sobbing, bleating, moaning, puling, whining, weeping

     

    Apparently the commenter meant some kind of anti-macho posture so as not to offend the hypersensitive with some hypothetical toxic masculinity.

    That is a guess. I still have no idea what that fellow was telling me. If I can keep my aggressions micro I should be applauded for being on my good behavior.
  980. @QCIC
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Loki uses the phrase "mewling quim" in the first Avengers movie. I never expected to hear the word quim in a mainstream American movie. The phrase fits the scene.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    Synonyms for MEWLING: whimpering, crying, sobbing, bleating, moaning, puling, whining, weeping

    Apparently the commenter meant some kind of anti-macho posture so as not to offend the hypersensitive with some hypothetical toxic masculinity.

    That is a guess. I still have no idea what that fellow was telling me. If I can keep my aggressions micro I should be applauded for being on my good behavior.

  981. @Mikel
    @Beckow


    Simple rule: when manipulating do mostly odd numbers, the randomness works out better.
     
    That's how I would do it. Excel actually has a "random" function to make the lives of banana republic election manipulators easier. But we're talking about a very-very low level of manipulators here. There's more than the impossible numbers they came up with but it's not worth wasting too much space with cases like this. It's a pity that most people don't understand Spanish and can't assess what level of intelligence we're dealing with here by just hearing this gorilla (or Maduro) talk. You were actually right that those at the bottom are now on top in Venezuela. With predictable consequences. It's not the first time it happens in Latin America.

    Replies: @Beckow, @Derer, @QCIC

    Maduro is a product of Washington stupid, evil policies towards the leaders that refuse their countries to be exploited and pillaged by the foreign sharks. Why can others organize their life differently from the world warmonger?

    Venezuela has largest oil reserved in the world and is located at the US backyard but Washington pinheads starving Venezuelans with sanctions and buying oil from a despotic Kingdom. They tolerate communists ideology in China and picking on Venezuela or Cuba, cowards.

  982. @Greasy William
    @S1

    I don't think anyone at this point disputes that it was an inside job

    Replies: @QCIC

    So why hasn’t anyone been apprehended, hopefully going out in a blaze of glory? If we accept this is real and recognize that nothing has happened, then it seems likely that Team Trump will allow Harris to win.

  983. @Mikel
    @Beckow


    Simple rule: when manipulating do mostly odd numbers, the randomness works out better.
     
    That's how I would do it. Excel actually has a "random" function to make the lives of banana republic election manipulators easier. But we're talking about a very-very low level of manipulators here. There's more than the impossible numbers they came up with but it's not worth wasting too much space with cases like this. It's a pity that most people don't understand Spanish and can't assess what level of intelligence we're dealing with here by just hearing this gorilla (or Maduro) talk. You were actually right that those at the bottom are now on top in Venezuela. With predictable consequences. It's not the first time it happens in Latin America.

    Replies: @Beckow, @Derer, @QCIC

    What is the story on Gonzalez? Was he real opposition? Was he aligned with the West? Was he a semi-made up candidate like Guaido?

  984. @Mr. XYZ
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Sure, Korea is much more important for Japan relative to the Philippines. However, couldn't Japan have still acquired valuable resources by helping the Philippines acquire independence and also obtained a valuable strategic naval base at Manila as well? And increased its own prestige throughout the Asian world by fighting European colonialism and imperialism?

    Replies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Some Japanese ultras did support Philippines against the American invasion

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine–American_War

    But not even China during this period had “independence”, the West and Russia completely dominated Asia

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

    increased its own prestige throughout the Asian world by fighting European colonialism and imperialism?

    Yes, the Russo-Japanese War.

    But the Japanese were not saints and began building their own empire– they annexed Okinawa in 1872 and Taiwan in 1895, both were in the Chinese sphere.

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

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_invasion_of_Taiwan_(1895)

  985. Attempts to fake polls for Harris are already failing. What do voters actually believe…

     

     

    SJW Globalist CNN’s attempt to leap into the fray is…. Ummmmmm…. Helpful? Well probably not.

    PEACE 😇

  986. @Mikel
    @Bashibuzuk


    And some among us still keep voting in these Kabuki elections that really are just a distraction.
     
    Compared with armed struggle and revolution, casting your vote is insignificant, certainly. But wasn't it you who said here recently that you weren't in favor of revolutions because they usually make things even worse?

    Many things are very difficult to change because there are powerful forces interested in keeping them as they are and, as discussed, they know how to use the Gramscian tactics in their favor. But let's not give up on the system of one man - one vote so naively. There is a big difference between sending to Congress a man like Massie who will stand up to the neocons or a man like Johnson, who will cave in to them. It doesn't matter to me at all whether you believe it or not. These types of decisions are still taken in elections that are as fair as in any other Western country, so yes, I am going to keep taking part in that "kabuki theater".

    And regardless of the Gramscian forces at play, the US also gives people the possibility of using their votes for things like electing school board members who will prevent our children from being fed woke propaganda. I have actually witnessed how woke school board members were kicked out though popular votes and replaced by new representatives who campaigned on anti-woke platforms. Let us not forget that eventually, the Gramscians lost the battle and they didn't manage to impose Marxism on any Western country. Election after election, humble vote after humble vote, ordinary people managed to retain an economic and political system that after 1990 everybody recognized was better than the alternatives. Wokism hasn't won the battle yet either.

    Most importantly perhaps, you are asking me to give up voting and focus on the Jew cabals and the 1 percenters (last time I checked Trump was a distinguished member of 0.1 percenters and his daughter is a Jew convert). No thanks. The Dems and the Rinos ate NOT going to follow your advice and give up voting, so neither should any of us. Asking people to focus on the Jews, the election Kraken, Quanon and all that stuff while our opponents laugh and keep sending their representatives to Washington is the worst possible advice, especially at a time when the specter of nuclear war has returned and there is actually a healthy reaction in the US of new candidates who stand against all of this.

    Finally, let's be honest. I have a comfortable life and so do my children in the US and in Europe. I don't often agree with Dmitry but he has a point when he says that most people in the West have never lived a better life. At least let's admit that most if not all of us here are privileged compared to most people in the world and any past epoch. I may dislike a lot of things that I see happening in the world but there's only so much I am willing to sacrifice to change them. I don't have any personal political ambitions so yes, voting and debating online is about as far as I'm willing to go.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @A123, @utu

    On elections in America (Dec 12, 2020) for Bashi and Mixtel the twat.

    https://www.unz.com/isteve/supreme-court-turns-down-texas-suit/#comment-4338022

    Most Americans, when they let themselves to think about it, believe that improprieties in the election process are common. Yet they believe in an unwritten law that the integrity of election should not be challenged and should not even be talked about. The myth of democracy should not be undermined. They also believe that the adversarial process between two parties will keep impropriates in check and will even them out over long time period. You won with a little help of stealing now but next time we will win by doing what you did but better. So neither party is interested in an honest election process and is doing nothing to improve the integrity of election. Instead they are engaged in self serving shenanigans like gerrymandering, fighting against mandatory ID… Stealing elections is as American as an apple pie. Trump supporters are not morally outraged that the election was stolen from Trump but they are angry with Trump that he let it happened, that he lost in the arm race of election stealing. The Supreme Court decision was expected and will not upset too many. The majority does not want anybody rocking the boat. The country, the corrupt, which is pretty much everybody, is kept in balance by the doctrine of the mutually assured corruption.

    https://www.unz.com/isteve/supreme-court-turns-down-texas-suit/#comment-4340060

    But you are right it is possible that at some point the level of corruption is so high that the pipes of democracy get plugged completely and the only way to get it back on track seems to be by calling Mr. Roto-Rooter. But the risk that Mr. Roto-Rooter won’t leave after doing his job is very high. There was only one Cincinnatus.

    There is a problem of scale. Gaddafi would agree that in smaller countries participatory democracy can work better. And then even better when the small country is a confederacy like Switzerland where the central government is weak and collects much lower amount of revenue than the sum of all cantons. Though this may lead to local corruptions on canton level and putting up with quirkiness of local traditions like denying women vote in Appenzell or virtual servitude by children of poor families in villages still happening in 1950s.

    It can’t be proven or disproven but I am inclied to believe that the 2020 election was stollen. It was won by Biden by extremally narrow margin in few state where it mattered. I am also inclined to believe that 2016 election could have beenstolen but in 2020 the Dems out cheated the Republicans by heavy vote harvesting facilitated by mail in voting due to covid.

    • Thanks: Bashibuzuk, A123
    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @utu

    There was a bunch of excitement in map porn today.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1eiyokh/armenians_in_the_borders_of_modern_turkey/

    , @Bashibuzuk
    @utu

    Very well put. Good reading you again. Welcome back.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    , @A123
    @utu


    It can’t be proven or disproven but I am inclied to believe that the 2020 election was stollen. It was won by Biden by extremally narrow margin in few state where it mattered.
     
    Once the inauguration passed, there was no way to continue in court as no remedy was available. What could SCOTUS do? Remove a sitting president? Thus, due to process (not facts) there is no vehicle that will "prove" the fraud to Anti-MAGA extremists.

    However, everyone paying attention knows that it happened. For example, I have posted the Fulton double counting video several times. A certain closed minded commenter here has yet to refute it. There were significant irregularities in all of the swing states exceeding the margin between the candidates.


    Trump supporters are not morally outraged that the election was stolen from Trump
     
    I disagree.

    At the time, in 2020, a better description would be shocked or stunned. It takes time for that to become anger. If 2024 is stolen, the reaction will be moral outrage and cold anger.


    they are angry with Trump that he let it happened, that he lost in the arm race of election stealing.
     
    A better word choice is frustration (not anger). The unprecedented magnitude of the steal left the 2020 campaign flat rooted. There was no way to -- Hire the right people, perform the necessary research, file the cases, and have them heard before time ran out.

    Trump learned from this and the 2024 campaign is much better prepared. A cadre of lawyers is on retainer in each of the swing states. Research has been done and much of the paperwork citing relevant laws and regulations is on hot standby. Merging this with facts of specific incidents would be considerably faster than starting from scratch. Thus, leaving more time to fight the case in court.
    ___

    Of course, the DNC can only cheat if they get close. Voting thus remains important. If enough swing states have large margins, a steal becomes effectively impossible.

    Right now the contest is between Trump and a relative unknown to the general public (including DNC "base" constituencies). As they learn more about Harris, they will like her less: (1)


    Truth to power, and not from Trump's mouth—it's from a Black woman embedded in the Black community. "The first step in destroying the Black community is dismantling the Black family." What does record inflation, unemployment, and financial woes do to any marriage or family, whether they are white, Black, or green?
     
    There is a particularly good tweet below [MORE]. I am not going to spoil it. Watch & laugh.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://redstate.com/jenniferoo/2024/08/03/michaela-montgomery-sets-it-off-at-the-atlanta-trump-rally-n2177717

    https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1819835386580848797?s=20

  987. @A123
    @Bashibuzuk


    I actually would just want more direct democracy
     
    Direct democracy has a huge defect. It is easy to pass measures that spend money. It is much harder to increase taxes.

    Perhaps in small groups everyone will pull together to make rational choices where collections = spending. After all, Home Owners Associations [HOA] are known to be places of comity and civility. These direct democracy groups are cherished and respected in America.

    Hmmmm.... HTML really needs sarcasm tags (sarc) (/sarc).

    PEACE 😇

     
    https://img.ifunny.co/images/33c19b101dcf6d4e65a0e17988898679df544997d69fa7f2cebcb93c54d56362_1.jpg

    Replies: @Derer

    Direct democracy has a huge defect. It is easy to pass measures that spend money. It is much harder to increase taxes.

    Disagree. Even 15 year old knows the spending means higher taxes and thus your “easy” vote is not so easy anymore.

    We have technology to implement direct voting on issues (Saturdays are voting days). Do you want abortion yes or no? Do you want Iraq war yes or no?

    The system of sending people (crooks) to Washington representing us was created under completely different conditions. Transportation and communication industries were in diapers. People travelled 50 miles farthest by horses and were not that educated. Now voters are smarter than people they are sending to represent them.

    What is eliminated by direct voting is the influence by the special interest groups or minorities and influence of money. Do you want to send arms to Israel, yes or no? The direct voting would reduce the Congress proxies to debating the issues but not deciding on rejection or approval.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Derer



    Direct democracy has a huge defect. It is easy to pass measures that spend money. It is much harder to increase taxes.

     

    Disagree. Even 15 year old knows the spending means higher taxes and thus your “easy” vote is not so easy anymore.
     
    ROTFL

    Have you spent any time around 15 year olds recently? Specifically American ones?

    They grasp this concept in ways that are immediate. And, even long term personal, such as a car payments.

    Do you want Iraq war yes or no?
     
     
    https://statustown.com/wp-content/uploads/quotesimages/thomas-jefferson-10951.jpg
     

    Before the Iraq war, how much did Americans: believe it was going to cost? Versus, what it actually cost?

    The MIC would likely have an easier time rolling Direct Democracy versus elected officials.

    PEACE 😇
  988. A123 says: • Website
    @Derer
    @A123


    Direct democracy has a huge defect. It is easy to pass measures that spend money. It is much harder to increase taxes.
     
    Disagree. Even 15 year old knows the spending means higher taxes and thus your "easy" vote is not so easy anymore.

    We have technology to implement direct voting on issues (Saturdays are voting days). Do you want abortion yes or no? Do you want Iraq war yes or no?

    The system of sending people (crooks) to Washington representing us was created under completely different conditions. Transportation and communication industries were in diapers. People travelled 50 miles farthest by horses and were not that educated. Now voters are smarter than people they are sending to represent them.

    What is eliminated by direct voting is the influence by the special interest groups or minorities and influence of money. Do you want to send arms to Israel, yes or no? The direct voting would reduce the Congress proxies to debating the issues but not deciding on rejection or approval.

    Replies: @A123

    Direct democracy has a huge defect. It is easy to pass measures that spend money. It is much harder to increase taxes.

    Disagree. Even 15 year old knows the spending means higher taxes and thus your “easy” vote is not so easy anymore.

    ROTFL

    Have you spent any time around 15 year olds recently? Specifically American ones?

    They grasp this concept in ways that are immediate. And, even long term personal, such as a car payments.

    Do you want Iraq war yes or no?

     

     

    Before the Iraq war, how much did Americans: believe it was going to cost? Versus, what it actually cost?

    The MIC would likely have an easier time rolling Direct Democracy versus elected officials.

    PEACE 😇

  989. Is JJ still around? I’ve been killing it with my picks but now it is time for my biggest upset prediction yet: Israil Madrimov +540 over P4P king Terrance Crawford.

    Fight starts in about an hour. Remember who told you

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @Greasy William

    Is JJ still around? I’ve been killing it with my picks but now it is time for my biggest upset prediction yet: Israil Madrimov +540 over P4P king Terrance Crawford.

    Well I hope you didn't put any money on that bet.

    I'm on back to back vacations.

    The other day I was watching two squirrels fight over a walnut in a bird feeder. One had big spots that I named sir spots-a-lot and the other I dubbed as miss fluffybottom.

    At first I thought that sir spots-a-lot would get the nut but then I remembered the position of Jupiter and knew that he would actually lose to fluffybottom. And he lost the walnut as the stars predicted.

    Replies: @Greasy William

  990. @utu
    @Mikel

    On elections in America (Dec 12, 2020) for Bashi and Mixtel the twat.


    https://www.unz.com/isteve/supreme-court-turns-down-texas-suit/#comment-4338022

    Most Americans, when they let themselves to think about it, believe that improprieties in the election process are common. Yet they believe in an unwritten law that the integrity of election should not be challenged and should not even be talked about. The myth of democracy should not be undermined. They also believe that the adversarial process between two parties will keep impropriates in check and will even them out over long time period. You won with a little help of stealing now but next time we will win by doing what you did but better. So neither party is interested in an honest election process and is doing nothing to improve the integrity of election. Instead they are engaged in self serving shenanigans like gerrymandering, fighting against mandatory ID… Stealing elections is as American as an apple pie. Trump supporters are not morally outraged that the election was stolen from Trump but they are angry with Trump that he let it happened, that he lost in the arm race of election stealing. The Supreme Court decision was expected and will not upset too many. The majority does not want anybody rocking the boat. The country, the corrupt, which is pretty much everybody, is kept in balance by the doctrine of the mutually assured corruption.

    https://www.unz.com/isteve/supreme-court-turns-down-texas-suit/#comment-4340060

    But you are right it is possible that at some point the level of corruption is so high that the pipes of democracy get plugged completely and the only way to get it back on track seems to be by calling Mr. Roto-Rooter. But the risk that Mr. Roto-Rooter won’t leave after doing his job is very high. There was only one Cincinnatus.

    There is a problem of scale. Gaddafi would agree that in smaller countries participatory democracy can work better. And then even better when the small country is a confederacy like Switzerland where the central government is weak and collects much lower amount of revenue than the sum of all cantons. Though this may lead to local corruptions on canton level and putting up with quirkiness of local traditions like denying women vote in Appenzell or virtual servitude by children of poor families in villages still happening in 1950s.
     
    It can't be proven or disproven but I am inclied to believe that the 2020 election was stollen. It was won by Biden by extremally narrow margin in few state where it mattered. I am also inclined to believe that 2016 election could have beenstolen but in 2020 the Dems out cheated the Republicans by heavy vote harvesting facilitated by mail in voting due to covid.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Bashibuzuk, @A123

    There was a bunch of excitement in map porn today.

    Armenians in the Borders of Modern Turkey
    byu/bilalselim inMapPorn

  991. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @sudden death

    You omit the part where the Azov Battalion takes out that traitor Zelinsky.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Leo_Neugebauer_Budapest_2023.jpg

    This is Leo Neugebauer, the German man who took silver in decathlon. I wonder if German Reader was rooting for him to beat the Norwegian who is not a negro, but is for now the world's greatest athlete officially. The last time I looked at it was a couple months ago and then the titleist was a non-negro French man but he was injured this week.

    Replies: @songbird, @Mr. XYZ, @Derer, @sudden death

    omit the part where the Azov Battalion takes out that traitor Zelinsky

    The devil regarding Zelensky lies in the details – if he really gets back some territories in the south by exchanging something in the east and then announces new presidential election, the odds of potential anwarsadating may be lower.

    Also previously ommited the funniest part when various A12345’s will become biggest Ukrainian patriots in split second and will start blaming Demonrats for betraying the resistance against the Orcs lol

  992. @songbird
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    You are probably right - he is a half-breed.

    At first I thought he was too African-looking, but his mother was a German mudshark.

    https://texaslonghorns.com/news/2024/4/9/track-field-cross-country-with-2023-behind-him-leo-neugebauer-sets-his-sights-on-the-present.aspx

    Replies: @songbird

    At first I thought he was too African-looking

    Come to think about it: if he is roughly 50:50, then the average American mulatto must be at least 40:60, but possibly even more skewed, assuming there is an advantage in admixture.

  993. @utu
    @Mikel

    On elections in America (Dec 12, 2020) for Bashi and Mixtel the twat.


    https://www.unz.com/isteve/supreme-court-turns-down-texas-suit/#comment-4338022

    Most Americans, when they let themselves to think about it, believe that improprieties in the election process are common. Yet they believe in an unwritten law that the integrity of election should not be challenged and should not even be talked about. The myth of democracy should not be undermined. They also believe that the adversarial process between two parties will keep impropriates in check and will even them out over long time period. You won with a little help of stealing now but next time we will win by doing what you did but better. So neither party is interested in an honest election process and is doing nothing to improve the integrity of election. Instead they are engaged in self serving shenanigans like gerrymandering, fighting against mandatory ID… Stealing elections is as American as an apple pie. Trump supporters are not morally outraged that the election was stolen from Trump but they are angry with Trump that he let it happened, that he lost in the arm race of election stealing. The Supreme Court decision was expected and will not upset too many. The majority does not want anybody rocking the boat. The country, the corrupt, which is pretty much everybody, is kept in balance by the doctrine of the mutually assured corruption.

    https://www.unz.com/isteve/supreme-court-turns-down-texas-suit/#comment-4340060

    But you are right it is possible that at some point the level of corruption is so high that the pipes of democracy get plugged completely and the only way to get it back on track seems to be by calling Mr. Roto-Rooter. But the risk that Mr. Roto-Rooter won’t leave after doing his job is very high. There was only one Cincinnatus.

    There is a problem of scale. Gaddafi would agree that in smaller countries participatory democracy can work better. And then even better when the small country is a confederacy like Switzerland where the central government is weak and collects much lower amount of revenue than the sum of all cantons. Though this may lead to local corruptions on canton level and putting up with quirkiness of local traditions like denying women vote in Appenzell or virtual servitude by children of poor families in villages still happening in 1950s.
     
    It can't be proven or disproven but I am inclied to believe that the 2020 election was stollen. It was won by Biden by extremally narrow margin in few state where it mattered. I am also inclined to believe that 2016 election could have beenstolen but in 2020 the Dems out cheated the Republicans by heavy vote harvesting facilitated by mail in voting due to covid.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Bashibuzuk, @A123

    Very well put. Good reading you again. Welcome back.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Bashibuzuk

    I'm not sure the fellow gets Karlinstan. He might not understand some of the commenters are so deeply disturbed they will assume, absent rigorous counter argumentation, he thinks Patty Duke was the hottest actress in Valley of the Dolls.

    https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Valley_of_the_Dolls_Still_4.jpg

  994. @Mikel
    @Gerard1234


    Well its not moronic or pointless as the pretext for all this was Ecuador giving to 404 Igla’s and whatever Soviet tanks,artillery and helicopters they have
     
    You see? Right there is the problem. You know what happened exactly but you are yourself unable to understand what I'm pointing out. Suspending banana imports because a banana republic is sending arms to your enemy is alright, at least it's what strong countries do. But not saying clearly what and why you are doing what you are doing and inventing "food safety" pretexts is gay and dishonorable. It's like the US sanctioning palm date exports from Djibouti because they are helping the Houthis but not having the courage to explain their action and inventing a palm date toxicity concern instead. Laughable.

    It is obvious that people who lie on small details like these lie as a matter of course, it's just their habit and cannot be relied to tell the truth ever, on anything. I suspend all negotiations with you with immediate effect. Mishkin and Chepiga did try to poison Skripal, botched their job, were caught on camera escaping hurriedly to Moscow the same evening of the events, lied on camera again when they were punished to humiliate themselves for their messed up mission and further humiliated Russia and their boss Putin when the whole world learned that they were indeed GRU agents unable to keep their personal lives secret. They were possibly faggots too.

    Replies: @Gerard1234

    Bizarre- if you accept both sides lie, then why only not believe Russia side when both sides are claiming something different on the same issue? Especially if the west is doing much of it to prop up the most corrupt, criminal, bandit ,liar country on the planet in Ukraine? Especially if we are talking about western intelligence agencies?

    One side isn’t doing something fair ( reexporting weapons in violition of agreement) , Russia punishes them . Then immediately removes punishment if the other side at least compromises.

    US/NATO blackmails, forces countries to be its puppets on something that isn’t at all fair -and doesn’t even have much connection to the security or financial prosperity of Pindostan.
    So the 2 sides can’t be compared.

    As for Djibouti- BLM considerations why US are announcing “food safety* issues with dates? Openly bullying another poor African country, again, not very good image.

    Presumably its some WTO violation to ban the product if announced as openly political decision….and a formal, legal sanction requires wasting time by making Duma,Senate,President have to create legislation. Its just easier doing it like this.

    They can lie about being GRU, and why they were there…..and it still have ZERO connection to the Skripal non-death poisonings and even less to the homeless woman. They can’t exactly say ” I couldn’t have poisoned them because I was busy spying on the Porton Downs facility “!

    MI6 could have known and tracked their visit, and planned some stunt timed to coincide with this. All plausible if Chepiga/Petrov can’t be proven to have met the Skripals or gone to the house or placed near it . The entirely inconsistent story of how and where they ” poisoned” the Skripals, didn’t kill them, and somehow got killed some random people nowhere near there can’t be explained away with some BS of ” incompetance” or “barbarity” or whatever nonsense. I have no idea of the chemistry of the substance, but how does it happen that of all the ways to do it they are supposed to have impractically & recklessly placed novichok on front door (!!!)…but the Skripals ( of very different ages and body masses) have been found some distance away, together at same spot, in a park or shopping area?

    Didn’t British intelligence infamously know Soviets were spying on the Concorde project,and instead of stopping the operation decided to pump them with false information on the technical designs for several months…which then lead to Soviet plane crash?

    As for the faggot theory – very plausible. But the “punishment” aspect to do the interview? Maybe if they are faggots, but reaction in Russia to the interview very different to western propaganda misdirected reaction of their population. Common Runet viral image circulation to any bad events in the west is of Chepega/ Petrov together as a joke – the implication being nearly everyone thinks its a blatant lie about Russia poisoning the Skripals, with the joke being the west will comically blame Chepiga/Petrov for anything, like an avalanche or roof collapsing. That’s of course still with nobody believing they are nutrition bar salesmen

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Gerard1234

    It was an intelligence agency operation. Exactly like the Trump assassination goof. These projects are designed so that nobody ever knows and nobody can ever figure out exactly what happened.

    1. need to know
    2. plausible deniability
    3. information compartments

    Arguing about exactly what happened ain't ever going to arrive at a conclusion. That is part of what they are all about.

    I'm curious if anybody has recently done a close reading of the public opinion gurus--Lippman, Bernays, Ellul--and summarized what the guys had to say, if anything, on the topic of assassination. It's been long enough that I have read them that I completely forgot if they wrote anything.

  995. @Greasy William
    Is JJ still around? I've been killing it with my picks but now it is time for my biggest upset prediction yet: Israil Madrimov +540 over P4P king Terrance Crawford.

    Fight starts in about an hour. Remember who told you

    Replies: @John Johnson

    Is JJ still around? I’ve been killing it with my picks but now it is time for my biggest upset prediction yet: Israil Madrimov +540 over P4P king Terrance Crawford.

    Well I hope you didn’t put any money on that bet.

    I’m on back to back vacations.

    The other day I was watching two squirrels fight over a walnut in a bird feeder. One had big spots that I named sir spots-a-lot and the other I dubbed as miss fluffybottom.

    At first I thought that sir spots-a-lot would get the nut but then I remembered the position of Jupiter and knew that he would actually lose to fluffybottom. And he lost the walnut as the stars predicted.

    • Replies: @Greasy William
    @John Johnson

    I had money on it. Keep in mind that Crawford is considered the best fighter in the world and was supposed to win with an easy knockout, but instead he took a lot of damage and won only with a controversial (if correct) decision. I used two charts for that fight, an horary contest chart and an event chart. Both charts were extremely hard to read as they both featured aspects that I had never seen before so I was flying somewhat blind. The horary chart really seemed to favor Israil except that his signifier in the chart, Jupiter, is currently in Gemini. Not only is that a weak placement for Jupiter, but Crawford's signifier was Mercury who was in his own house of Virgo and also rules Gemini, so Jupiter (Israil) was in Crawford's power. I didn't think that would be enough with so many other testimonies going for Israil but I was wrong.

    You win some, you lose some. I win a lot more than I lose and I learn from all my losses. I actually hit two upsets in soccer yesterday. The only pick I have for today is Paula Badosa -198 to win the WTA Washington, so not particularly impressive even if I win. I may have some more picks later in the day, though

    Replies: @John Johnson

  996. A123 says: • Website
    @utu
    @Mikel

    On elections in America (Dec 12, 2020) for Bashi and Mixtel the twat.


    https://www.unz.com/isteve/supreme-court-turns-down-texas-suit/#comment-4338022

    Most Americans, when they let themselves to think about it, believe that improprieties in the election process are common. Yet they believe in an unwritten law that the integrity of election should not be challenged and should not even be talked about. The myth of democracy should not be undermined. They also believe that the adversarial process between two parties will keep impropriates in check and will even them out over long time period. You won with a little help of stealing now but next time we will win by doing what you did but better. So neither party is interested in an honest election process and is doing nothing to improve the integrity of election. Instead they are engaged in self serving shenanigans like gerrymandering, fighting against mandatory ID… Stealing elections is as American as an apple pie. Trump supporters are not morally outraged that the election was stolen from Trump but they are angry with Trump that he let it happened, that he lost in the arm race of election stealing. The Supreme Court decision was expected and will not upset too many. The majority does not want anybody rocking the boat. The country, the corrupt, which is pretty much everybody, is kept in balance by the doctrine of the mutually assured corruption.

    https://www.unz.com/isteve/supreme-court-turns-down-texas-suit/#comment-4340060

    But you are right it is possible that at some point the level of corruption is so high that the pipes of democracy get plugged completely and the only way to get it back on track seems to be by calling Mr. Roto-Rooter. But the risk that Mr. Roto-Rooter won’t leave after doing his job is very high. There was only one Cincinnatus.

    There is a problem of scale. Gaddafi would agree that in smaller countries participatory democracy can work better. And then even better when the small country is a confederacy like Switzerland where the central government is weak and collects much lower amount of revenue than the sum of all cantons. Though this may lead to local corruptions on canton level and putting up with quirkiness of local traditions like denying women vote in Appenzell or virtual servitude by children of poor families in villages still happening in 1950s.
     
    It can't be proven or disproven but I am inclied to believe that the 2020 election was stollen. It was won by Biden by extremally narrow margin in few state where it mattered. I am also inclined to believe that 2016 election could have beenstolen but in 2020 the Dems out cheated the Republicans by heavy vote harvesting facilitated by mail in voting due to covid.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Bashibuzuk, @A123

    It can’t be proven or disproven but I am inclied to believe that the 2020 election was stollen. It was won by Biden by extremally narrow margin in few state where it mattered.

    Once the inauguration passed, there was no way to continue in court as no remedy was available. What could SCOTUS do? Remove a sitting president? Thus, due to process (not facts) there is no vehicle that will “prove” the fraud to Anti-MAGA extremists.

    However, everyone paying attention knows that it happened. For example, I have posted the Fulton double counting video several times. A certain closed minded commenter here has yet to refute it. There were significant irregularities in all of the swing states exceeding the margin between the candidates.

    Trump supporters are not morally outraged that the election was stolen from Trump

    I disagree.

    At the time, in 2020, a better description would be shocked or stunned. It takes time for that to become anger. If 2024 is stolen, the reaction will be moral outrage and cold anger.

    they are angry with Trump that he let it happened, that he lost in the arm race of election stealing.

    A better word choice is frustration (not anger). The unprecedented magnitude of the steal left the 2020 campaign flat rooted. There was no way to — Hire the right people, perform the necessary research, file the cases, and have them heard before time ran out.

    Trump learned from this and the 2024 campaign is much better prepared. A cadre of lawyers is on retainer in each of the swing states. Research has been done and much of the paperwork citing relevant laws and regulations is on hot standby. Merging this with facts of specific incidents would be considerably faster than starting from scratch. Thus, leaving more time to fight the case in court.
    ___

    Of course, the DNC can only cheat if they get close. Voting thus remains important. If enough swing states have large margins, a steal becomes effectively impossible.

    Right now the contest is between Trump and a relative unknown to the general public (including DNC “base” constituencies). As they learn more about Harris, they will like her less: (1)

    Truth to power, and not from Trump’s mouth—it’s from a Black woman embedded in the Black community. “The first step in destroying the Black community is dismantling the Black family.” What does record inflation, unemployment, and financial woes do to any marriage or family, whether they are white, Black, or green?

    There is a particularly good tweet below [MORE]. I am not going to spoil it. Watch & laugh.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://redstate.com/jenniferoo/2024/08/03/michaela-montgomery-sets-it-off-at-the-atlanta-trump-rally-n2177717

    [MORE]

  997. @Bashibuzuk
    @utu

    Very well put. Good reading you again. Welcome back.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    I’m not sure the fellow gets Karlinstan. He might not understand some of the commenters are so deeply disturbed they will assume, absent rigorous counter argumentation, he thinks Patty Duke was the hottest actress in Valley of the Dolls.

  998. @Gerard1234
    @Mikel

    Bizarre- if you accept both sides lie, then why only not believe Russia side when both sides are claiming something different on the same issue? Especially if the west is doing much of it to prop up the most corrupt, criminal, bandit ,liar country on the planet in Ukraine? Especially if we are talking about western intelligence agencies?

    One side isn't doing something fair ( reexporting weapons in violition of agreement) , Russia punishes them . Then immediately removes punishment if the other side at least compromises.

    US/NATO blackmails, forces countries to be its puppets on something that isn't at all fair -and doesn't even have much connection to the security or financial prosperity of Pindostan.
    So the 2 sides can't be compared.

    As for Djibouti- BLM considerations why US are announcing "food safety* issues with dates? Openly bullying another poor African country, again, not very good image.

    Presumably its some WTO violation to ban the product if announced as openly political decision....and a formal, legal sanction requires wasting time by making Duma,Senate,President have to create legislation. Its just easier doing it like this.

    They can lie about being GRU, and why they were there.....and it still have ZERO connection to the Skripal non-death poisonings and even less to the homeless woman. They can't exactly say " I couldn't have poisoned them because I was busy spying on the Porton Downs facility "!

    MI6 could have known and tracked their visit, and planned some stunt timed to coincide with this. All plausible if Chepiga/Petrov can't be proven to have met the Skripals or gone to the house or placed near it . The entirely inconsistent story of how and where they " poisoned" the Skripals, didn't kill them, and somehow got killed some random people nowhere near there can't be explained away with some BS of " incompetance" or "barbarity" or whatever nonsense. I have no idea of the chemistry of the substance, but how does it happen that of all the ways to do it they are supposed to have impractically & recklessly placed novichok on front door (!!!)...but the Skripals ( of very different ages and body masses) have been found some distance away, together at same spot, in a park or shopping area?

    Didn't British intelligence infamously know Soviets were spying on the Concorde project,and instead of stopping the operation decided to pump them with false information on the technical designs for several months...which then lead to Soviet plane crash?

    As for the faggot theory - very plausible. But the "punishment" aspect to do the interview? Maybe if they are faggots, but reaction in Russia to the interview very different to western propaganda misdirected reaction of their population. Common Runet viral image circulation to any bad events in the west is of Chepega/ Petrov together as a joke - the implication being nearly everyone thinks its a blatant lie about Russia poisoning the Skripals, with the joke being the west will comically blame Chepiga/Petrov for anything, like an avalanche or roof collapsing. That's of course still with nobody believing they are nutrition bar salesmen

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    It was an intelligence agency operation. Exactly like the Trump assassination goof. These projects are designed so that nobody ever knows and nobody can ever figure out exactly what happened.

    1. need to know
    2. plausible deniability
    3. information compartments

    Arguing about exactly what happened ain’t ever going to arrive at a conclusion. That is part of what they are all about.

    I’m curious if anybody has recently done a close reading of the public opinion gurus–Lippman, Bernays, Ellul–and summarized what the guys had to say, if anything, on the topic of assassination. It’s been long enough that I have read them that I completely forgot if they wrote anything.

  999. @Bashibuzuk
    @QCIC

    Not to my knowledge. Being of a 1st Guild Merchant descent would have been enough to lead one to serious trouble in early Soviet times. People of the higher strata of the Tsarist society were targeted with different restrictions, like for example the interdiction of higher education. That is why the only family of 1st Guild Merchant descent that I have personally known and who did well under the Soviets were Jews. Their ancestor settled in Saint Petersburg well before the Revolution and the Civil War. They weren’t bothered at all by the Bolshevik, were evacuated to Central Asia during the Leningrad blockade. However, they didn’t like the Communist regime and weren’t fond of the beyond the Pale of Settlement Jewish newcomers. They weren’t Israel supporters either and stayed in RF after the fall of the Soviets. They had some achievements in academic science and overall kept to Leningrad’s intelligentsia circle. Close friends of my parents, very nice people.

    Replies: @QCIC

    Did many of the post-Soviet oligarchs rise from this pool of people?

  1000. @German_reader
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Not sure when I'm supposed to have commented about the German-Japanese alliance, must have been a long time ago. Not sure either who you are, some grievance-mongering Japanese nationalist still dreaming about the Co-Prosperity sphere? In any case, I don't care about your opinion. Go fuck yourself.

    Replies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    You are a wanna-be-Nazi who can’t even read the original German sources about your former ally. If you were in the Wehrmacht you would only be useful for clearing mines.

    Unlike Lebensraum although influenced by it, Co-Prosperity Sphere was a post hoc slogan in 1940, after Japan had conquered large parts of China and was consolidating into a economic bloc with Korea and Manchukuo– like the Eurozone.

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

    It’s effectively the blueprint for OBOR plus RCEP, except Japan as a junior partner to China, and Russia is included.

    Japan fucked up by provoking the Anglos. It wasn’t FDR’s fault.

    FDR didn’t trick Japan into refusing a reasonable armstice with China mediated by Germans in 1938.

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

    FDR didn’t trick Japan into entering the Tripartite Pact with Germany in 1940. It was Tojo’s faction that insisted on it.

    The navy and other factions in the army were against it. Hirohito personally didn’t like Hitler.

    • Replies: @YetAnotherAnon
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    The Japanese Navy was well aware of its relative inferiority to Western navies, despite what they'd done to the Tsar's fleet in 1905. They were a more cautious lot.

    The army, on the other hand, thought it could deal with any land forces in the area and was generally right.

    Replies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    , @Torna atrás
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    There are two separate issues:

    Political: The US had a strong isolationist streak. Despite the machinations of FDR, real war (total commitment) at that time, IMO, needed real provocation. Something like the Lusitania, to stir up the public. I think the good example would be Germany – Germany was in strategic position to harm the US in much more realistic way than Japan was, being so much closer. But the US did not declare war. The US was pretty resource-independent, at least on the level of the Western hemisphere, and I don’t see why they would have declared war on Japan and not Germany.

    FDR was already a three-term president, and there was a lot of dislike and resistance to him, in part because of it. There were people switching parties and even mainstream Hollywood movies that seemed to tacitly show displeasure. I think he understood there were limits to his power. Not to mention, Congress would not have been corralled. WW2 was the last time the US was totally committed to war on an economic level. Vietnam and Korea were only partial affairs, destructive dabblings.

    Then there is the economic side for Japan: Japan didn’t really need the resources – unless they were fighting the US. There wasn’t any other power that could realistically challenge them at the time. They could have tightened their belts, found alternatives, endured a recession, and shown there was a limit to their territorial ambitions, while making peace overtures, even through a public campaign, which would have made it darn near impossible for war to break out.



    https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSetwu8RJ08yV7QxtHAhLRi1uQOsgRLXtigUC1Mpj9lKQ&s.jpg

    As I understand it, Japanese strategy depended to a large extent on the perception that Germany was winning the war in Europe, which of course turned out to be a serious miscalculation.

    , @Dmitry
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    He's a professional historian from Germany, I think he knows how to read the German sources.

    Replies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

  1001. Holger Wargod, Norway’s and the world’s greatest athlete.

    Ha ha just kidding. His name is Markus Rooth which is almost as good.

    The previous champ is from France. He must have been very sad he was unable to compete in Paris.

    Kevin Mayer.

  1002. @John Johnson
    @Greasy William

    Is JJ still around? I’ve been killing it with my picks but now it is time for my biggest upset prediction yet: Israil Madrimov +540 over P4P king Terrance Crawford.

    Well I hope you didn't put any money on that bet.

    I'm on back to back vacations.

    The other day I was watching two squirrels fight over a walnut in a bird feeder. One had big spots that I named sir spots-a-lot and the other I dubbed as miss fluffybottom.

    At first I thought that sir spots-a-lot would get the nut but then I remembered the position of Jupiter and knew that he would actually lose to fluffybottom. And he lost the walnut as the stars predicted.

    Replies: @Greasy William

    I had money on it. Keep in mind that Crawford is considered the best fighter in the world and was supposed to win with an easy knockout, but instead he took a lot of damage and won only with a controversial (if correct) decision. I used two charts for that fight, an horary contest chart and an event chart. Both charts were extremely hard to read as they both featured aspects that I had never seen before so I was flying somewhat blind. The horary chart really seemed to favor Israil except that his signifier in the chart, Jupiter, is currently in Gemini. Not only is that a weak placement for Jupiter, but Crawford’s signifier was Mercury who was in his own house of Virgo and also rules Gemini, so Jupiter (Israil) was in Crawford’s power. I didn’t think that would be enough with so many other testimonies going for Israil but I was wrong.

    You win some, you lose some. I win a lot more than I lose and I learn from all my losses. I actually hit two upsets in soccer yesterday. The only pick I have for today is Paula Badosa -198 to win the WTA Washington, so not particularly impressive even if I win. I may have some more picks later in the day, though

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @Greasy William

    I think Scott Ritter could use your star charts.

    He told us that Ukraine won't be getting F-16s this year and possibly never.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfBubEmK6hQ

    Replies: @Greasy William

  1003. Karlin BTFO’d by Scott Greer

    [MORE]

  1004. “If you support Ukraine but have Trump Derangement Syndrome: Get a grip. Ukraine is going to be fine”

    This Ukrainian makes a case for a Trump presidency being better for Ukraine. (Starts at 1h17m39 – I can’t get the time stamp to work). I don’t agree with his view reducing Russian self-identity to imperialism or that Putin can’t compromise with Trump, but I think he makes a decent case for Trump being worse for Putin. With Jamie Diamond, Larry Fink, and Mike Pompeo set to be in a Trump cabinet Ukraine is unlikely to be abandoned.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Matra


    Jamie Diamond, Larry Fink, and Mike Pompeo set to be in a Trump cabinet
     
    What supports this bizarre rumor that Pompeo is being considered for Trump's 2nd term cabinet? This is not the first time the idea has been floated, but it never seems to track back to anyone who could have inside knowledge.

    Public information points against it. Pompeo was an overly hawkish Senate ally in Trump's 1st term. He further distanced himself from MAGA objectives in his recent, unrealistic Ukraine policy piece. It read like a wishlist of what warmonger Lindsey Graham wants.

    Richard Grenell could recur in a 2nd term slot. He is much better aligned with MAGA foreign policy goals towards Russia and Ukraine. And, his recent policy article was much more plausible as a rough outline to begin negotiations.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Mikhail

    , @Greasy William
    @Matra

    This is how I feel.

    If Trump was supreme dictator, I would agree that Trump would abandon all of Eastern Europe to Putin. However, domestic political constraints make it impossible for Trump to do so. Instead, Trump wants to "cut a deal". The problem is that there is no deal that Trump could offer that Putin would ever accept.

    Putin is going to turn down Trump's peace offer and Trump is going to escalate in response because Trump is Trump and that's all he knows how to do.

    Replies: @A123

    , @AP
    @Matra

    If Trump had picked Bergum or Rubio it would have been a positive signal, but Vance was a negative one. Probably he will not be, but I would not be surprised if Trump ended up being better for Ukraine than Biden is. I'd give it a 10%-15% chance.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    , @Derer
    @Matra

    Trump was screwed by Ukraine and impeached for them siding with Biden nepotism. He does not forgets his enemies. Furthermore, his priorities are China and domestically immigration. He was betrayed and fooled by RINOs in his first term; he has reason to be vindictive.

  1005. @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @German_reader

    You are a wanna-be-Nazi who can't even read the original German sources about your former ally. If you were in the Wehrmacht you would only be useful for clearing mines.

    Unlike Lebensraum although influenced by it, Co-Prosperity Sphere was a post hoc slogan in 1940, after Japan had conquered large parts of China and was consolidating into a economic bloc with Korea and Manchukuo-- like the Eurozone.

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

    It's effectively the blueprint for OBOR plus RCEP, except Japan as a junior partner to China, and Russia is included.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/RCEP.png

    Japan fucked up by provoking the Anglos. It wasn't FDR's fault.

    FDR didn't trick Japan into refusing a reasonable armstice with China mediated by Germans in 1938.

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

    FDR didn't trick Japan into entering the Tripartite Pact with Germany in 1940. It was Tojo's faction that insisted on it.

    The navy and other factions in the army were against it. Hirohito personally didn't like Hitler.

    Replies: @YetAnotherAnon, @Torna atrás, @Dmitry

    The Japanese Navy was well aware of its relative inferiority to Western navies, despite what they’d done to the Tsar’s fleet in 1905. They were a more cautious lot.

    The army, on the other hand, thought it could deal with any land forces in the area and was generally right.

    • Replies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @YetAnotherAnon

    There was a diplomatic incident here in 1940 off the shores of Japan when Royal Navy boarded a Japanese civilian ship carrying German citizens.


    The British had received intelligence that crewmen from the scuttled German liner Columbus who had escaped to the United States had taken passage on Asama Maru in an attempt to return to Germany.[11]

    In direct violation of Japan's neutrality and international law, the British Government had authorised the Commander-in-Chief, China Station to board, provided that the coast of Japan was not within sight.[12]

    She initially refused to stop, but was forced to do so after Liverpool fired a blank round. An armed boarding party removed 21 of the ship's passengers, all former officers or technicians of Standard Oil tankers, claiming that they were German military personnel[13]
     


    Despite the upsurge in anti-British sentiment in Japan, the government of Prime Minister Mitsumasa Yonai took a more conciliatory approach.

    In return for promising not to offer passage to certain categories of military age Germans in the future, the British agreed to return some of the detained passengers.[14]
     

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Asama_Maru_(1928)

    When Chinese did something similar to Brits in 1856 that was what triggered the Second Opium War.

    But yes, Yōsuke Matsuoka who signed Tripartite Pact, even grew partly in US and should have known better. He thought because Germans were kicking ass in Europe, they were going to be "Too Big to Fail."


    Japanese Navy was well aware of its relative inferiority
     
    IJN was not cost effective, and lost to the Americans even in incidences when they had local advantage.

    IJA in fact beat up a modernized German-trained Chinese army 1937-38. The West just wasn't paying attention.

    Replies: @Torna atrás

  1006. S1 says:
    @Bashibuzuk
    @Mikel

    I actually would just want more direct democracy and the use of technology (smart contract and blockchain) in the voting process to avoid fraud and assign responsibility to both the voters and the elected candidates. Added with a true freedom of speech, neutral judiciary and honest journalism would probably be enough to maintain democracy in a functional state.

    I am not a Q Anon fan and I never was, have no idea what the election Kraken is. I am not advocating for Trump either for the exact reasons that you mentioned. I actually found it quite funny in 2016 when most Alt Rightists described him as the God Emperor Trump who would save America from the (((Joos))). Used to troll them with Jared and Ivanka. The Jewish banker conspiracies are not conspiracies but historical facts. They really did provide funding for the Bolshevik revolution.

    https://youtu.be/pd9B3cilgHY?si=3mxUjHUkQSfYBq69

    Globalist onslaught against nations and nuclear families is here for everyone to witness on a daily basis. Latest aggravation being the Olympic Games opening ceremony scandal. Not really a conspiracy theory either.

    But yeah, I enjoy some good conspiracy theories as some people enjoy a great wine. My favourite one is the Kalergi Plan.


    In the turbulent period following the First World War, the young Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi founded the Pan-European Union, offering a vision of peaceful, democratic unity for Europe with no borders, a common currency and a single passport.

    His political congresses in Vienna, Berlin, and Basel attracted thousands from the intelligentsia and the cultural elite, including Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann and Sigmund Freud, who wanted a United States of Europe brought together by consent. The Count’s commitment to this ideal infuriated Adolf Hitler who referred to him as a ‘cosmopolitan bastard’ in Mein Kampf.
     
    https://www.chathamhouse.org/events/all/members-event/eus-forgotten-grandfather-richard-coudenhove-kalergi

    https://www.europarl.europa.eu/100books/en/detail/18/pan-europe

    https://www.coe.int/en/web/documents-records-archives-information/count-richard-n.-coudenhove-kalergi-and-the-council-of-europe

    😉

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mikel, @A123, @S1

    Even a bolder than most radical progressive, socialist, and in time Communist (a leader of the CPUSA and member of the Comintern) editorial cartoonist such as Robert Minor have noted the seemingly odd association of high finance Capitalism with Communism. [See Minor’s 1911 cartoon below.]

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

    However, though they should, and as bold as he may have been, neither true believers in Communism such as Minor eventually became, nor the many true believers in Capitalism, nor the ‘Cold War’ warriors of either closely paralleling ideology, generally have cared to take the journey down the rabbit hole much further than that (if they even get that far, and most don’t) as the likely implications drawn could very well shatter their long held cherished beliefs and world view.

    This is simply how the power of the ‘Big Lie’ works.

    For instance, how many know the well established fact that the Communist Manifesto was first published in 1848, in the very heart of Capitalist world finance, ie London, specifically the City of London, just shortly before the 1848 European revolutions really gained steam?

    Of course, not dissimilarly, and perhaps a bit less surprisingly, the defacto Capitalist manifesto, ie Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations was also first published in London in the Spring of 1776, shortly before the proto-Capitalist 1776 American Revolution (you know, the revolution whose first symbol, the ‘Grand Union’ flag, is for all practical purposes ‘just coincidentally’ identical to the flag of the multi-national corporation British East India Company) really gained traction with it’s Declaration of Independence.

    But then, Capitalism, and it’s ultimately complimentary sister ideology, Communism, have been closely intertwined with each other since their late 18th century very beginnings, ie since the time of the proto-Capitalist 1776 American and 1789 proto-Communist French revolutions.

    Some of the heaviest hitters of the 1776 American Revolution, ie Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, probably Ben Franklin, and an honorable mention for Lafayette, were intimately involved with the 1789 French Revolution.

    Thomas Paine, whose powerful pen alone (paraphrasing) was said to be ‘worth an entire division of men’, wrote a high selling book in support of the 1789 French Revolution and served in it’s early revolutionary government.

    It was none other than Thomas Jefferson, author of the 1776 American Declaration of Independence, who assisted the ‘hero of both worlds’, Lafayette, and one other, in the writing of that ‘foundational document of the French Revolution’, the 1789 ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.’

    What!! They didn’t teach about these ties between Capitalism, Communism, and the modern center of world finance, London, in school?

    Why not?

    Better stop there…for now. 🙂

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

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

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

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @S1


    Proofs of a Conspiracy: Against All The Religions and Governments Of Europe, Carried On In The Secret Meetings of Freemasons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies.

     

    John Robison

    https://ia600301.us.archive.org/25/items/proofsofconspira00r/proofsofconspira00r_bw.pdf

    Replies: @S1

  1007. @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @German_reader

    You are a wanna-be-Nazi who can't even read the original German sources about your former ally. If you were in the Wehrmacht you would only be useful for clearing mines.

    Unlike Lebensraum although influenced by it, Co-Prosperity Sphere was a post hoc slogan in 1940, after Japan had conquered large parts of China and was consolidating into a economic bloc with Korea and Manchukuo-- like the Eurozone.

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

    It's effectively the blueprint for OBOR plus RCEP, except Japan as a junior partner to China, and Russia is included.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/RCEP.png

    Japan fucked up by provoking the Anglos. It wasn't FDR's fault.

    FDR didn't trick Japan into refusing a reasonable armstice with China mediated by Germans in 1938.

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

    FDR didn't trick Japan into entering the Tripartite Pact with Germany in 1940. It was Tojo's faction that insisted on it.

    The navy and other factions in the army were against it. Hirohito personally didn't like Hitler.

    Replies: @YetAnotherAnon, @Torna atrás, @Dmitry

    There are two separate issues:

    Political: The US had a strong isolationist streak. Despite the machinations of FDR, real war (total commitment) at that time, IMO, needed real provocation. Something like the Lusitania, to stir up the public. I think the good example would be Germany – Germany was in strategic position to harm the US in much more realistic way than Japan was, being so much closer. But the US did not declare war. The US was pretty resource-independent, at least on the level of the Western hemisphere, and I don’t see why they would have declared war on Japan and not Germany.

    FDR was already a three-term president, and there was a lot of dislike and resistance to him, in part because of it. There were people switching parties and even mainstream Hollywood movies that seemed to tacitly show displeasure. I think he understood there were limits to his power. Not to mention, Congress would not have been corralled. WW2 was the last time the US was totally committed to war on an economic level. Vietnam and Korea were only partial affairs, destructive dabblings.

    Then there is the economic side for Japan: Japan didn’t really need the resources – unless they were fighting the US. There wasn’t any other power that could realistically challenge them at the time. They could have tightened their belts, found alternatives, endured a recession, and shown there was a limit to their territorial ambitions, while making peace overtures, even through a public campaign, which would have made it darn near impossible for war to break out.

    [MORE]

    As I understand it, Japanese strategy depended to a large extent on the perception that Germany was winning the war in Europe, which of course turned out to be a serious miscalculation.

  1008. A123 says: • Website
    @Matra
    "If you support Ukraine but have Trump Derangement Syndrome: Get a grip. Ukraine is going to be fine"

    This Ukrainian makes a case for a Trump presidency being better for Ukraine. (Starts at 1h17m39 - I can't get the time stamp to work). I don't agree with his view reducing Russian self-identity to imperialism or that Putin can't compromise with Trump, but I think he makes a decent case for Trump being worse for Putin. With Jamie Diamond, Larry Fink, and Mike Pompeo set to be in a Trump cabinet Ukraine is unlikely to be abandoned.

    Replies: @A123, @Greasy William, @AP, @Derer

    Jamie Diamond, Larry Fink, and Mike Pompeo set to be in a Trump cabinet

    What supports this bizarre rumor that Pompeo is being considered for Trump’s 2nd term cabinet? This is not the first time the idea has been floated, but it never seems to track back to anyone who could have inside knowledge.

    Public information points against it. Pompeo was an overly hawkish Senate ally in Trump’s 1st term. He further distanced himself from MAGA objectives in his recent, unrealistic Ukraine policy piece. It read like a wishlist of what warmonger Lindsey Graham wants.

    Richard Grenell could recur in a 2nd term slot. He is much better aligned with MAGA foreign policy goals towards Russia and Ukraine. And, his recent policy article was much more plausible as a rough outline to begin negotiations.

    PEACE 😇

    • Disagree: Mikhail
    • Replies: @Mikhail
    @A123

    Grenell doesn't c0me across as being so different than Pompeo and Bolton. Offhand, he seems closer to them than Vance.

  1009. S1 says:

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-sends-more-fighter-jets-001400031.html

    US sends more fighter jets and ships to Middle East ahead of possible Iranian retaliation

    The Pentagon will send an additional fighter squadron and more warships to the Middle East to help defend Israel should Iran react militarily to this week’s assassination of Hamas’ top political leader in Tehran that Iran has blamed on Israel.

    The United States will also maintain an aircraft carrier presence in the Middle East as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln to replace the USS Theodore Roosevelt that was on a short-term deployment to the Middle East.

    The deployments follow President Joe Biden’s commitment to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday about “new defensive US military deployments” to the region.

    Austin “ordered adjustments to U.S. military posture designed to improve U.S. force protection, to increase support for the defense of Israel, and to ensure the United States is prepared to respond to various contingencies,” the Pentagon said in a statement issued Friday.

    Austin also ordered the deployment of an additional fighter squadron to the Middle East “reinforcing our defensive air support capability,” the statement said.

    “Additionally, Secretary Austin has ordered additional ballistic missile defense-capable cruisers and destroyers to the U.S. European Command and U.S. Central Command regions,” according to the statement.

    “The Department is also taking steps to increase our readiness to deploy additional land-based ballistic missile defense,” it continued.

  1010. @Matra
    "If you support Ukraine but have Trump Derangement Syndrome: Get a grip. Ukraine is going to be fine"

    This Ukrainian makes a case for a Trump presidency being better for Ukraine. (Starts at 1h17m39 - I can't get the time stamp to work). I don't agree with his view reducing Russian self-identity to imperialism or that Putin can't compromise with Trump, but I think he makes a decent case for Trump being worse for Putin. With Jamie Diamond, Larry Fink, and Mike Pompeo set to be in a Trump cabinet Ukraine is unlikely to be abandoned.

    Replies: @A123, @Greasy William, @AP, @Derer

    This is how I feel.

    If Trump was supreme dictator, I would agree that Trump would abandon all of Eastern Europe to Putin. However, domestic political constraints make it impossible for Trump to do so. Instead, Trump wants to “cut a deal”. The problem is that there is no deal that Trump could offer that Putin would ever accept.

    Putin is going to turn down Trump’s peace offer and Trump is going to escalate in response because Trump is Trump and that’s all he knows how to do.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Greasy William


    The problem is that there is no deal that Trump could offer that Putin would ever accept.
     
    Remember, Trump's 2nd term will not be burdened by the now debunked Russia, Russia, Russia myth and associated impeachment threat. He will almost certainly offer something like this:

    • Current lines as the new border
    • Massive reduction or elimination of U.S. funding for Kiev aggression
    • No NATO (at least during his term)
    • Lifting of some, possibly all, sanctions

    Why would Putin turn down such a fair & reasonable deal?

    Yes, Russia wants "No NATO Ever". However, that is difficult for the U.S. to offer as it would take a Senate ratified treaty to bind future administrations. This Putin objective will be more readily obtained in a bilateral Russia/Ukraine final status deal.
    ___

    The European Empire might want to continue on, but how much can Germany and France afford? And, do they have the military industrial capacity, even if they can find the money?

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @QCIC, @Derer, @Greasy William

  1011. @Mikel
    @Beckow


    Those numbers games are easily debunked
     
    Fair enough. Go ahead and debunk it for me please.

    But I fear you didn't understand the mathematical problem. My explanation was very clumsy. Let me explain it again. If you understand some Spanish, you may be able to hear this primate give 3 exact numbers for the results of the elections in this video. If not, you'll just have to trust me or do some research online:

    https://youtu.be/pB7g4y4M4s8

    He is saying that the results were these:

    Maduro: 5.150.092 (51.1%)
    Gonzalez: 4.445.978 (44.2%)
    Others: 432,704 (4.6%)

    So far, so good. But if you add those 3 numbers, you get a total number of votes of 10,058,774. Check it out. So now you do the math to see what percentage of this total each candidate got and you get this:

    Maduro: 51.20000%
    Gonzalez 44.2000%
    Others: 4.60000%

    You get 4 zeros after the first decimal place (or put differently, the percentages these clowns came up with were exact to the sixth decimal place).

    The probabilities of getting 4 consecutive zeros in a random percentage are exactly 1 in 10,000. And the probabilities of getting 4 consecutive zeros in all 3 percentages are exactly 1 in 100,000,000.

    So we're literally talking about a Caribbean miracle. As I said above, lots of people in that part of the world do believe in miracles. But I don't. Not sure where you stand.

    Was the Russian election this year also fake?
     
    Probably. But not in the same way at all and you're not doing Russia any favor by comparing them to Venezuela. Please let's have some sense of proportionality. Russians are known to mess up badly sometimes but not in this particular way.

    you defend the 100% accuracy in US
     
    You just made this up for no good reason. I've said this several times but let's do it again: compared to most other civilized countries (and even some 2rd World ones like Chile and Argentina), the US election system is a disaster. Where everybody gets their final results the night of the election, in the US there are always some counties still counting a week or several weeks later (in Utah too, btw).

    My wife has several Venezuelan escapee friends.

    No kidding, that’s where you get your info?
     
    Yes, unfortunately she keeps inviting them and I have to hear, against my will, the same old stories from the loudest people I have ever met. But who hasn't met lots of Venezuelans these days? I'm 100% sure that you have a community in Slovakia too. Something like a quarter of them (perhaps half but there's no need to exaggerate) have fled their country to all corners of the world. And a good percentage of those who still remain live off their remittances. It's not easy to f-ck up a country with the largest oil reserves in the world (~18% of the total) but Maduro has achieved that impressive goal.

    Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Emil Nikola Richard, @QCIC, @QCIC, @Beckow, @Dmitry

    That’s nothing new or special for Venezuela. In the postsoviet space, it’s part of the famous stereotype of every postsoviet election since 1991.

    For example, in the 2014 referendum in Crimea.
    For the city of Sevastopol

    Are you for the reunification of Crimea with Russia as a region of the Russian Federation? 262041 95,6%
    Are you for the restoration of the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Crimea and for the status of Crimea as part of Ukraine? 9250 3,37%
    Valid votes 271291 98,97%
    Invalid votes 2810 1,03%
    Total votes 274101 100%
    Total number of registered voters 306258
    Turnout 89,5%

    How many voted – 274101/306258 = 0,895000
    “for” – 262041/274101 = 0,95600

    But that’s not an interesting or important topic, to waste time looking at.

    The interesting question is why they do this? They could remove those decimal places with maybe 10 minutes of work, using a $5 calculator.

    So, why not? In the postsoviet society, maybe because lack of electoral transparency is a flex.

    Imagine in a school, where the teachers ask the students what to do, instead of the teacher choosing? What would be the effect for the authority of the teachers? The authority of the teachers would start to erode. The students could become arrogant and believe they should be the teacher.

    Imagine in a circus, the staff try to give control to the preferences of the circus animals. How soon before there will be chaos and the animals will try to take control of the zoo?

    In the postsoviet society, the government usually has a lot more power than it pretends. If they present too much about “electoral transparency”, this is an indicator of weakness to the population, as it looks like they are asking the population for consent.

  1012. @S1
    @Bashibuzuk

    Even a bolder than most radical progressive, socialist, and in time Communist (a leader of the CPUSA and member of the Comintern) editorial cartoonist such as Robert Minor have noted the seemingly odd association of high finance Capitalism with Communism. [See Minor's 1911 cartoon below.]

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

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2b/Robert-Minor-Dee-Lighted-1911.png/339px-Robert-Minor-Dee-Lighted-1911.png

    However, though they should, and as bold as he may have been, neither true believers in Communism such as Minor eventually became, nor the many true believers in Capitalism, nor the 'Cold War' warriors of either closely paralleling ideology, generally have cared to take the journey down the rabbit hole much further than that (if they even get that far, and most don't) as the likely implications drawn could very well shatter their long held cherished beliefs and world view.

    This is simply how the power of the 'Big Lie' works.

    For instance, how many know the well established fact that the Communist Manifesto was first published in 1848, in the very heart of Capitalist world finance, ie London, specifically the City of London, just shortly before the 1848 European revolutions really gained steam?

    Of course, not dissimilarly, and perhaps a bit less surprisingly, the defacto Capitalist manifesto, ie Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was also first published in London in the Spring of 1776, shortly before the proto-Capitalist 1776 American Revolution (you know, the revolution whose first symbol, the 'Grand Union' flag, is for all practical purposes 'just coincidentally' identical to the flag of the multi-national corporation British East India Company) really gained traction with it's Declaration of Independence.

    But then, Capitalism, and it's ultimately complimentary sister ideology, Communism, have been closely intertwined with each other since their late 18th century very beginnings, ie since the time of the proto-Capitalist 1776 American and 1789 proto-Communist French revolutions.

    Some of the heaviest hitters of the 1776 American Revolution, ie Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, probably Ben Franklin, and an honorable mention for Lafayette, were intimately involved with the 1789 French Revolution.

    Thomas Paine, whose powerful pen alone (paraphrasing) was said to be 'worth an entire division of men', wrote a high selling book in support of the 1789 French Revolution and served in it's early revolutionary government.

    It was none other than Thomas Jefferson, author of the 1776 American Declaration of Independence, who assisted the 'hero of both worlds', Lafayette, and one other, in the writing of that 'foundational document of the French Revolution', the 1789 'Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.'

    What!! They didn't teach about these ties between Capitalism, Communism, and the modern center of world finance, London, in school?

    Why not?

    Better stop there...for now. :-)

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

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

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

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    Proofs of a Conspiracy: Against All The Religions and Governments Of Europe, Carried On In The Secret Meetings of Freemasons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies.

    John Robison

    https://ia600301.us.archive.org/25/items/proofsofconspira00r/proofsofconspira00r_bw.pdf

    • Replies: @S1
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Even George Washington himself in the last years of his life expressed shock and concern about what John Robinson had to say.

    The thrust of Robinson's book title you've posted was more or less probably correct, though why today people go on about 'the Illuminati' I don't know, as from my own reading on the subject of that very real organization was that it was pretty much rooted out and destroyed in the latter 18th century by the various European kingdoms they were active amongst, and hasn't been around since.



    Apologists for the secret societies, namely the Freemasons, when on the rare occasions they address the subject, say there was no other way to enact social change than to secretly conspire behind the veil of these organizations, otherwise they would have been crushed.

    And there were indeed (and are) severe social problems, between peoples, between the sexes, between individuals, and to a certain degree, the apologists may have had a point about the need to conspire.

    But, that's only up to a certain degree.

    The British already were changing for the better by 1776, slower than some may have liked, but they were changing. Same with the Russians prior to 1917 and the war. Can't speak for the French, but it wouldn't surprise me if prior to 1789 they too were changing for the better.

    My big problem with these revolutionaries is the Pandora's Box they open up when they engage in wanton mass murder, shed much innocent blood, and how this bloodlust ultimately turns upon the revolutionaries themselves, as many a guillotined French revolutionary and executed Old Bolshevik could attest.

    Make no mistake, these crude modern woke so called 'progressives' have murder in their heart and are perfectly capable of committing mass murder, something these would be 'revolutionaries' are probably planning upon.

    There has to be better, more humanitarian ways of going about things...and there are.

  1013. @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @German_reader

    You are a wanna-be-Nazi who can't even read the original German sources about your former ally. If you were in the Wehrmacht you would only be useful for clearing mines.

    Unlike Lebensraum although influenced by it, Co-Prosperity Sphere was a post hoc slogan in 1940, after Japan had conquered large parts of China and was consolidating into a economic bloc with Korea and Manchukuo-- like the Eurozone.

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

    It's effectively the blueprint for OBOR plus RCEP, except Japan as a junior partner to China, and Russia is included.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/RCEP.png

    Japan fucked up by provoking the Anglos. It wasn't FDR's fault.

    FDR didn't trick Japan into refusing a reasonable armstice with China mediated by Germans in 1938.

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

    FDR didn't trick Japan into entering the Tripartite Pact with Germany in 1940. It was Tojo's faction that insisted on it.

    The navy and other factions in the army were against it. Hirohito personally didn't like Hitler.

    Replies: @YetAnotherAnon, @Torna atrás, @Dmitry

    He’s a professional historian from Germany, I think he knows how to read the German sources.

    • Replies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @Dmitry

    Well I'm fluent in German. I feel like I care about Germany's future more than most Germans.

    This is not Völkerwanderung when the barbarians took over the Roman military by martial merit. They are just putting up with the barbarians taking over with whimper.

    What's his deal belittling people here as "weird" "unpleasant"? The Denker und Dichter that his country known for having drip are totally "not weird" "pleasant"

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/RichardWagner.jpg

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Arthur_Schopenhauer_by_J_Sch%C3%A4fer%2C_1859b.jpg

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Immanuel_Kant_portrait_c1790.jpg

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Torna atrás, @Dmitry

  1014. A123 says: • Website
    @Greasy William
    @Matra

    This is how I feel.

    If Trump was supreme dictator, I would agree that Trump would abandon all of Eastern Europe to Putin. However, domestic political constraints make it impossible for Trump to do so. Instead, Trump wants to "cut a deal". The problem is that there is no deal that Trump could offer that Putin would ever accept.

    Putin is going to turn down Trump's peace offer and Trump is going to escalate in response because Trump is Trump and that's all he knows how to do.

    Replies: @A123

    The problem is that there is no deal that Trump could offer that Putin would ever accept.

    Remember, Trump’s 2nd term will not be burdened by the now debunked Russia, Russia, Russia myth and associated impeachment threat. He will almost certainly offer something like this:

    • Current lines as the new border
    • Massive reduction or elimination of U.S. funding for Kiev aggression
    • No NATO (at least during his term)
    • Lifting of some, possibly all, sanctions

    Why would Putin turn down such a fair & reasonable deal?

    Yes, Russia wants “No NATO Ever”. However, that is difficult for the U.S. to offer as it would take a Senate ratified treaty to bind future administrations. This Putin objective will be more readily obtained in a bilateral Russia/Ukraine final status deal.
    ___

    The European Empire might want to continue on, but how much can Germany and France afford? And, do they have the military industrial capacity, even if they can find the money?

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @A123

    I think Russia also needs de facto control over Odessa and a land bridge to Transnistria. I doubt Ukraine and the West are ready for that, but who knows after the winter?

    Replies: @A123, @John Johnson

    , @Derer
    @A123

    Trump's priority is controlling China and Islam it is the unfinished agenda from his 1st term and he seek Putin help in that effort.

    , @Greasy William
    @A123


    Current lines as the new border
     
    Completely unacceptable to Putin

    Massive reduction or elimination of U.S. funding for Kiev aggression
     
    Trump is in no position to offer this. Congress would NEVER allow it

    No NATO (at least during his term)
     
    Red herring. Putin doesn't care about NATO. Especially since NATO is likely to lose Turkey in the next several years, a much more geopolitically important state than is Ukraine

    Lifting of some, possibly all, sanctions
     
    Putin doesn't care about the sanctions. Russia isn't Nazi Germany, it's self sufficient in food and materials and it is able to get any technology it needs from abroad from China. Attempts to economically strangle Russia have been a total failure, only making Russia more self sufficient, confident and belligerent.
  1015. @sudden death
    @Gerard1234

    haha, Lithuania so far has more medals than RF citizens in Paris:


    Gold medallist Karolien Florijn of Netherlands celebrates on the podium after winning with silver medallist Emma Twigg of New Zealand and bronze medallist Viktorija Senkute of Lithuania.
     
    https://images.deccanherald.com/deccanherald%2F2024-08%2F514ed42e-c243-48cc-8116-e4076ff42b27%2F2024-08-03T091150Z_396752360_UP1EK830PJPAK_RTRMADP_5_OLYMPICS-2024-ROWING.JPG

    Still waiting for your condemnation of Soviet satanists in Stalingrad;)

    Replies: @Derer, @Gerard1234

    haha, Lithuania so far has more medals than RF in Paris

    WHAT “haha” you fuckwit, except on my side?

    Russia, having reached the final of the tennis doubles guaranteed a gold or silver ( unfortunately lossed to probably drugged up Italians)….is above the useless irrelevant shithole of Lithuania DESPITE the fact we have been banned! Since when is Gold or silver ahead of one bronze ( competing with Chad or San Marino) you imbecile? You are that pathetic you are reduced to only counting when the medal is officially hung around the neck.

    The most embarrassing thing for Proebaltica and Poland is that we are competing against Belarus more than them for more medals.

    So its not even Baltards losing to banned Russia – its Baltards losing to Belarus ( with Sabalenka not even doing the tennis)!

    Belarus, despite being unfairly banned…..is infinitely ahead of the entire Baltic shitheads, and equal or ahead of the disastrous Banderastan team….who only have the Gold in fencing because it was fixed , and of course because Russia ( the masters of Fencing) were Satanically banned you thick POS.

    Still waiting for your condemnation if Soviet satanists in Stalingrad

    Because its too stupid and misleading and exhaustatively easy to disprove comparison you cretin .

    Its why American pigs were “warning” at the start of the SMO about Russia to “not use chemical weapons”- a signal not about Russia, but of the pussy tactics and intention to have as much of the Donbass destroyed as possible for the Ukronazis/NATO.

    • Replies: @Derer
    @Gerard1234


    Its why American pigs were “warning” at the start of the SMO about Russia to “not use chemical weapons”- a signal not about Russia, but of the pussy tactics and intention to have as much of the Donbass destroyed as possible for the Ukronazis/NATO.
     
    What makes me puke is banning Russian athletes, initiated and, coerced others to support, by who else but the sinister players in Washington. Those actions reveal nothing else but pathological hate of everything Russian from the decaying self-appointed world policeman.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

  1016. When did swivel chairs become primarily plastic and was it related to women in the workforce? (Maybe the metal chairs being considered too heavy for them to lift?)

  1017. @A123
    @Greasy William


    The problem is that there is no deal that Trump could offer that Putin would ever accept.
     
    Remember, Trump's 2nd term will not be burdened by the now debunked Russia, Russia, Russia myth and associated impeachment threat. He will almost certainly offer something like this:

    • Current lines as the new border
    • Massive reduction or elimination of U.S. funding for Kiev aggression
    • No NATO (at least during his term)
    • Lifting of some, possibly all, sanctions

    Why would Putin turn down such a fair & reasonable deal?

    Yes, Russia wants "No NATO Ever". However, that is difficult for the U.S. to offer as it would take a Senate ratified treaty to bind future administrations. This Putin objective will be more readily obtained in a bilateral Russia/Ukraine final status deal.
    ___

    The European Empire might want to continue on, but how much can Germany and France afford? And, do they have the military industrial capacity, even if they can find the money?

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @QCIC, @Derer, @Greasy William

    I think Russia also needs de facto control over Odessa and a land bridge to Transnistria. I doubt Ukraine and the West are ready for that, but who knows after the winter?

    • Agree: YetAnotherAnon
    • Replies: @A123
    @QCIC


    I think Russia also needs de facto control over Odessa and a land bridge to Transnistria.
     
    There is a difference between "wants" and "needs". Russia no doubt "wants" those things, but their current posture does not imply the necessity. They made one push over the Dnieper at Kherson City, never reaching Mykolaiv. Then they pulled back across the river and it has been the line ever since.

    If Odessa is a top priority, why has there been so little activity on the Black Sea coast versus other fronts?

    PEACE 😇

    , @John Johnson
    @QCIC

    I think Russia also needs de facto control over Odessa and a land bridge to Transnistria. I doubt Ukraine and the West are ready for that, but who knows after the winter?

    So you think Russia should occupy more areas that were not part of the separatist movement and voted for Zelensky? What would stop a future separatist movement that wants to return to Ukraine? Another Chechen war where Putin decides you can't have independence if it means from Russia?

    Russia hasn't taken Kharkiv and the summer is nearly over.

    In October the rains will return which favors the defense.

    Ukraine's drones keep getting more powerful. They in fact now have a drone large enough to drop a TM-62 anti-tank mine:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcsf5yuEHDY

    How would you like to drive a tank around Ukraine knowing that could land on your head?

    There isn't a single armored vehicle that could take a TM-62 dropped on the top. They aren't designed to protect against such hits which is why the javelin is so effective.

    Replies: @YetAnotherAnon, @QCIC, @Derer

  1018. @Greasy William
    @John Johnson

    I had money on it. Keep in mind that Crawford is considered the best fighter in the world and was supposed to win with an easy knockout, but instead he took a lot of damage and won only with a controversial (if correct) decision. I used two charts for that fight, an horary contest chart and an event chart. Both charts were extremely hard to read as they both featured aspects that I had never seen before so I was flying somewhat blind. The horary chart really seemed to favor Israil except that his signifier in the chart, Jupiter, is currently in Gemini. Not only is that a weak placement for Jupiter, but Crawford's signifier was Mercury who was in his own house of Virgo and also rules Gemini, so Jupiter (Israil) was in Crawford's power. I didn't think that would be enough with so many other testimonies going for Israil but I was wrong.

    You win some, you lose some. I win a lot more than I lose and I learn from all my losses. I actually hit two upsets in soccer yesterday. The only pick I have for today is Paula Badosa -198 to win the WTA Washington, so not particularly impressive even if I win. I may have some more picks later in the day, though

    Replies: @John Johnson

    I think Scott Ritter could use your star charts.

    He told us that Ukraine won’t be getting F-16s this year and possibly never.

    • Replies: @Greasy William
    @John Johnson

    hit.

    Major upset to close out the weekend: Cobolli +290 over Korda in the CITI open men's finals

  1019. Battle of the Nations
    Serbia Spain

    [MORE]

    This was a remarkable feat for Novak Djokovic. He is still wearing a brace on his recently wounded knee.

    Also: Italy doubles women won the gold medal over that nation which cannot be spoken and cannot fly their flag in Paris or play their fight song.

    Russia. Mirra Andreeva is 17 years old and right now she looks like she is going to be a very big star. She already is almost a big enough star I maybe probably should refer to her as Miss Russia.

    No terrorists have yet spoiled the Olympics. Keep your fingers crossed at least through Wednesday. If we can get through the men’s 400m hurdles and the women’s 49kg weightlifting with no bombs we can click on close and forget about it.

    Right now google news search for (paris olympics protest israel palestine) has very few hits or explosions.

  1020. A123 says: • Website
    @QCIC
    @A123

    I think Russia also needs de facto control over Odessa and a land bridge to Transnistria. I doubt Ukraine and the West are ready for that, but who knows after the winter?

    Replies: @A123, @John Johnson

    I think Russia also needs de facto control over Odessa and a land bridge to Transnistria.

    There is a difference between “wants” and “needs”. Russia no doubt “wants” those things, but their current posture does not imply the necessity. They made one push over the Dnieper at Kherson City, never reaching Mykolaiv. Then they pulled back across the river and it has been the line ever since.

    If Odessa is a top priority, why has there been so little activity on the Black Sea coast versus other fronts?

    PEACE 😇

  1021. @QCIC
    @A123

    I think Russia also needs de facto control over Odessa and a land bridge to Transnistria. I doubt Ukraine and the West are ready for that, but who knows after the winter?

    Replies: @A123, @John Johnson

    I think Russia also needs de facto control over Odessa and a land bridge to Transnistria. I doubt Ukraine and the West are ready for that, but who knows after the winter?

    So you think Russia should occupy more areas that were not part of the separatist movement and voted for Zelensky? What would stop a future separatist movement that wants to return to Ukraine? Another Chechen war where Putin decides you can’t have independence if it means from Russia?

    Russia hasn’t taken Kharkiv and the summer is nearly over.

    In October the rains will return which favors the defense.

    Ukraine’s drones keep getting more powerful. They in fact now have a drone large enough to drop a TM-62 anti-tank mine:

    How would you like to drive a tank around Ukraine knowing that could land on your head?

    There isn’t a single armored vehicle that could take a TM-62 dropped on the top. They aren’t designed to protect against such hits which is why the javelin is so effective.

    • Replies: @YetAnotherAnon
    @John Johnson

    It's a pity the Russian General Staff don't take any notice of your posts. Oh well.

    Outside the propaganda world, China are cutting down exports of certain drone components from September.

    https://www.reuters.com/world/china-curbs-exports-drone-related-equipment-amid-us-tech-tensions-2023-07-31/


    BEIJING, July 31 (Reuters) - China on Monday announced export controls on some drones and drone-related equipment, saying it wanted to safeguard "national security and interests" amid escalating tension with the United States over access to technology.
    The restrictions on equipment, including some drone engines, lasers, communication equipment and anti-drone systems, will take effect on Sept. 1, the commerce ministry said.
    The controls also affect some consumer drones, and no civilian drones can be exported for military purposes, a ministry spokesperson said in a statement.

    The drone export curbs come after China announced export controls on some metals widely used in chipmaking last month, following moves by the United States to restrict China's access to key technologies, such as chipmaking equipment.

     

    Anyone here know what the score is here? Will this hit Ukraine, who have a thriving drone industry but IIRC with almost wholly Chinese components?

    Replies: @John Johnson

    , @QCIC
    @John Johnson

    From the perspective of a Russian planner considering treaties, I think the risk of the West immediately stirring up another round of this conflict is higher if Odessa is controlled by Ukraine and the West. Transnistria seems like an obvious pressure point. But who knows what Russia and the West are really doing? To me it still looks like Russia is intentionally grinding until the Ukrainians have a change of heart and throw out the West. The Kremlin seems very patient, but maybe other factors will cause them to change their approach. I see they recently published specifications for the Peresvet battlefield laser (anti-drone, anti-satellite).

    I guess the big mine is intended for the turtle tanks and other vehicles with cope cages. AFAIK the little anti-tank grenade can get though most top armor unless it hits reactive armor blocks.

    In December winter starts which favors having electricity and natural gas.

    Replies: @John Johnson

    , @Derer
    @John Johnson

    Another optimistic Ukrainian view...victory must be just around the corner. The celebration day must be near. Are you cracking up?

    BTW, Chechnya is a land lock "island" withing RF, how can it survive being a hostile independent entity? Show us some precedent examples. Can Utah realistically seek independence?

    Replies: @AP, @John Johnson

  1022. @YetAnotherAnon
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    The Japanese Navy was well aware of its relative inferiority to Western navies, despite what they'd done to the Tsar's fleet in 1905. They were a more cautious lot.

    The army, on the other hand, thought it could deal with any land forces in the area and was generally right.

    Replies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    There was a diplomatic incident here in 1940 off the shores of Japan when Royal Navy boarded a Japanese civilian ship carrying German citizens.

    The British had received intelligence that crewmen from the scuttled German liner Columbus who had escaped to the United States had taken passage on Asama Maru in an attempt to return to Germany.[11]

    In direct violation of Japan’s neutrality and international law, the British Government had authorised the Commander-in-Chief, China Station to board, provided that the coast of Japan was not within sight.[12]

    She initially refused to stop, but was forced to do so after Liverpool fired a blank round. An armed boarding party removed 21 of the ship’s passengers, all former officers or technicians of Standard Oil tankers, claiming that they were German military personnel[13]

    Despite the upsurge in anti-British sentiment in Japan, the government of Prime Minister Mitsumasa Yonai took a more conciliatory approach.

    In return for promising not to offer passage to certain categories of military age Germans in the future, the British agreed to return some of the detained passengers.[14]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Asama_Maru_(1928)

    When Chinese did something similar to Brits in 1856 that was what triggered the Second Opium War.

    But yes, Yōsuke Matsuoka who signed Tripartite Pact, even grew partly in US and should have known better. He thought because Germans were kicking ass in Europe, they were going to be “Too Big to Fail.”

    Japanese Navy was well aware of its relative inferiority

    IJN was not cost effective, and lost to the Americans even in incidences when they had local advantage.

    IJA in fact beat up a modernized German-trained Chinese army 1937-38. The West just wasn’t paying attention.

    • Replies: @Torna atrás
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Japan has never reconciled its WWII history with its neighbors, in fact Japan has been pushing an alternative history in which it is Japan that is the victim. Inside the Yasukuni shrine complex there is a building dedicated in explaining that it is the US that has tricked innocent Japan into bombing pearl harbor and other tales.

    Note that the Yasukuni shrine is not some obscure temple, it is in the heart of Tokyo and successive Japanese prime ministers and their cabinet members paid tribute there in official capacities every year. As years pass this narrative has been gaining acceptance among the gullible Japanese public. Japan has a huge grudge against the US and Russia but it dares not to speak out aloud. This is why the US should keep Japan on a short leash.

  1023. @John Johnson
    @QCIC

    I think Russia also needs de facto control over Odessa and a land bridge to Transnistria. I doubt Ukraine and the West are ready for that, but who knows after the winter?

    So you think Russia should occupy more areas that were not part of the separatist movement and voted for Zelensky? What would stop a future separatist movement that wants to return to Ukraine? Another Chechen war where Putin decides you can't have independence if it means from Russia?

    Russia hasn't taken Kharkiv and the summer is nearly over.

    In October the rains will return which favors the defense.

    Ukraine's drones keep getting more powerful. They in fact now have a drone large enough to drop a TM-62 anti-tank mine:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcsf5yuEHDY

    How would you like to drive a tank around Ukraine knowing that could land on your head?

    There isn't a single armored vehicle that could take a TM-62 dropped on the top. They aren't designed to protect against such hits which is why the javelin is so effective.

    Replies: @YetAnotherAnon, @QCIC, @Derer

    It’s a pity the Russian General Staff don’t take any notice of your posts. Oh well.

    Outside the propaganda world, China are cutting down exports of certain drone components from September.

    https://www.reuters.com/world/china-curbs-exports-drone-related-equipment-amid-us-tech-tensions-2023-07-31/

    BEIJING, July 31 (Reuters) – China on Monday announced export controls on some drones and drone-related equipment, saying it wanted to safeguard “national security and interests” amid escalating tension with the United States over access to technology.
    The restrictions on equipment, including some drone engines, lasers, communication equipment and anti-drone systems, will take effect on Sept. 1, the commerce ministry said.
    The controls also affect some consumer drones, and no civilian drones can be exported for military purposes, a ministry spokesperson said in a statement.

    The drone export curbs come after China announced export controls on some metals widely used in chipmaking last month, following moves by the United States to restrict China’s access to key technologies, such as chipmaking equipment.

    Anyone here know what the score is here? Will this hit Ukraine, who have a thriving drone industry but IIRC with almost wholly Chinese components?

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @YetAnotherAnon

    Outside the propaganda world, China are cutting down exports of certain drone components from September.

    From your article:

    The controls also affect some consumer drones, and no civilian drones can be exported for military purposes, a ministry spokesperson said in a statement.

    They'll just be purchased third party and then sent to Ukraine.

    Ukraine is also making their own drones which is old news
    https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-produce-million-fpv-drones-next-year-minister-2023-12-20/

    Drone attacks have become deadlier even in the last few months.

    The Ukrainians have developed their own cluster drone that can take out a dozen troops if they are standing near each other.

  1024. @John Johnson
    @QCIC

    I think Russia also needs de facto control over Odessa and a land bridge to Transnistria. I doubt Ukraine and the West are ready for that, but who knows after the winter?

    So you think Russia should occupy more areas that were not part of the separatist movement and voted for Zelensky? What would stop a future separatist movement that wants to return to Ukraine? Another Chechen war where Putin decides you can't have independence if it means from Russia?

    Russia hasn't taken Kharkiv and the summer is nearly over.

    In October the rains will return which favors the defense.

    Ukraine's drones keep getting more powerful. They in fact now have a drone large enough to drop a TM-62 anti-tank mine:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcsf5yuEHDY

    How would you like to drive a tank around Ukraine knowing that could land on your head?

    There isn't a single armored vehicle that could take a TM-62 dropped on the top. They aren't designed to protect against such hits which is why the javelin is so effective.

    Replies: @YetAnotherAnon, @QCIC, @Derer

    From the perspective of a Russian planner considering treaties, I think the risk of the West immediately stirring up another round of this conflict is higher if Odessa is controlled by Ukraine and the West. Transnistria seems like an obvious pressure point. But who knows what Russia and the West are really doing? To me it still looks like Russia is intentionally grinding until the Ukrainians have a change of heart and throw out the West. The Kremlin seems very patient, but maybe other factors will cause them to change their approach. I see they recently published specifications for the Peresvet battlefield laser (anti-drone, anti-satellite).

    I guess the big mine is intended for the turtle tanks and other vehicles with cope cages. AFAIK the little anti-tank grenade can get though most top armor unless it hits reactive armor blocks.

    In December winter starts which favors having electricity and natural gas.

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @QCIC

    To me it still looks like Russia is intentionally grinding until the Ukrainians have a change of heart and throw out the West.

    You think that by killing enough Ukrainians they will reject the West?

    That's like suggesting the bully can make friends by hitting people.

    Putin has caused a permanent expansion of Western Europe.

    The Kremlin seems very patient, but maybe other factors will cause them to change their approach.

    What you call patience is only a plan B. They tried to take it all overnight.

    A war of attrition can make sense but I'm not buying that Putin is employing some 5d chess strategy over Kharkiv. Once the Trump/Johnson aid bill passed he should have rushed in to take it. The more likely explanation is that he doesn't have the forces required to take and occupy the city. That would also explain why we are seeing T-55s and motorcycle squads. Perhaps he is developing a massive reserve army as both Ritter and Macgregor claim but he doesn't currently have the forces to take a city less than an hour from the border.

    I guess the big mine is intended for the turtle tanks and other vehicles with cope cages. AFAIK the little anti-tank grenade can get though most top armor unless it hits reactive armor blocks.

    Both sides have plenty of TM-62s. They will be dropped on a variety of targets including buildings where Russian soldiers are stationed.

    In December winter starts which favors having electricity and natural gas.

    Trying to freeze women and children over the winter was the original plan.

    World is impressed with the 2.5 week special operation. It went from "Ukraine is doomed" to "let's freeze them to death" within one year. Real impressive for the second largest military in the world.

    Replies: @Beckow, @QCIC

  1025. @John Johnson
    @QCIC

    I think Russia also needs de facto control over Odessa and a land bridge to Transnistria. I doubt Ukraine and the West are ready for that, but who knows after the winter?

    So you think Russia should occupy more areas that were not part of the separatist movement and voted for Zelensky? What would stop a future separatist movement that wants to return to Ukraine? Another Chechen war where Putin decides you can't have independence if it means from Russia?

    Russia hasn't taken Kharkiv and the summer is nearly over.

    In October the rains will return which favors the defense.

    Ukraine's drones keep getting more powerful. They in fact now have a drone large enough to drop a TM-62 anti-tank mine:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcsf5yuEHDY

    How would you like to drive a tank around Ukraine knowing that could land on your head?

    There isn't a single armored vehicle that could take a TM-62 dropped on the top. They aren't designed to protect against such hits which is why the javelin is so effective.

    Replies: @YetAnotherAnon, @QCIC, @Derer

    Another optimistic Ukrainian view…victory must be just around the corner. The celebration day must be near. Are you cracking up?

    BTW, Chechnya is a land lock “island” withing RF, how can it survive being a hostile independent entity? Show us some precedent examples. Can Utah realistically seek independence?

    • Replies: @AP
    @Derer


    BTW, Chechnya is a land lock “island” withing RF
     
    It borders Georgia.

    Are you from the Balkans?
    , @John Johnson
    @Derer

    Another optimistic Ukrainian view…victory must be just around the corner. The celebration day must be near. Are you cracking up?

    There you go projecting your own fanaticism again. I've said since the beginning that Putin may very well take an Eastern chunk of Ukraine.

    That's in my history.

    The main winners of this war are death and the US military industrial complex.

    Defense stocks continue to beat the market thanks to the dwarf and his genius war
    https://finbold.com/these-defense-stocks-rally-as-the-markets-crash/

    Most of his idiot fans at Unz still think the Jews somehow lose. I've asked them many times as to how Jews lose in this war. Over at Anglin's blog their number one explanation is U MUST BE A JEW.

    Fascinating stuff. I actually doubt most of Anglin's fans are Germanic or Anglo. Too many sound like third worlders.

    BTW, Chechnya is a land lock “island” withing RF, how can it survive being a hostile independent entity? Show us some precedent examples.

    Why would it be hostile? Because it is Muslim? Well Putin has praised Muslim values as integral to Russia. He is on record boasting of Russia as a multi-cultural/multi-racial empire. For some reason his fans at Unz get upset when I point that out.

    DPR would have been a land locked island that Putin decreed to be independent before taking them as vanilla territory. Isn't that right?

    Austria is landlocked and has a GDP per capita that Russians could only dream about. What is your point here?

    Replies: @YetAnotherAnon

  1026. @A123
    @Greasy William


    The problem is that there is no deal that Trump could offer that Putin would ever accept.
     
    Remember, Trump's 2nd term will not be burdened by the now debunked Russia, Russia, Russia myth and associated impeachment threat. He will almost certainly offer something like this:

    • Current lines as the new border
    • Massive reduction or elimination of U.S. funding for Kiev aggression
    • No NATO (at least during his term)
    • Lifting of some, possibly all, sanctions

    Why would Putin turn down such a fair & reasonable deal?

    Yes, Russia wants "No NATO Ever". However, that is difficult for the U.S. to offer as it would take a Senate ratified treaty to bind future administrations. This Putin objective will be more readily obtained in a bilateral Russia/Ukraine final status deal.
    ___

    The European Empire might want to continue on, but how much can Germany and France afford? And, do they have the military industrial capacity, even if they can find the money?

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @QCIC, @Derer, @Greasy William

    Trump’s priority is controlling China and Islam it is the unfinished agenda from his 1st term and he seek Putin help in that effort.

  1027. @John Johnson
    @Greasy William

    I think Scott Ritter could use your star charts.

    He told us that Ukraine won't be getting F-16s this year and possibly never.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfBubEmK6hQ

    Replies: @Greasy William

    hit.

    Major upset to close out the weekend: Cobolli +290 over Korda in the CITI open men’s finals

  1028. Voroslava Mahuchikh wins women’s high jump for THE Ukraine!

    The highlight was the presentation ceremony where they debuted the brand new THE Ukraine National Anthem Fight Song.

  1029. @A123
    @Greasy William


    The problem is that there is no deal that Trump could offer that Putin would ever accept.
     
    Remember, Trump's 2nd term will not be burdened by the now debunked Russia, Russia, Russia myth and associated impeachment threat. He will almost certainly offer something like this:

    • Current lines as the new border
    • Massive reduction or elimination of U.S. funding for Kiev aggression
    • No NATO (at least during his term)
    • Lifting of some, possibly all, sanctions

    Why would Putin turn down such a fair & reasonable deal?

    Yes, Russia wants "No NATO Ever". However, that is difficult for the U.S. to offer as it would take a Senate ratified treaty to bind future administrations. This Putin objective will be more readily obtained in a bilateral Russia/Ukraine final status deal.
    ___

    The European Empire might want to continue on, but how much can Germany and France afford? And, do they have the military industrial capacity, even if they can find the money?

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @QCIC, @Derer, @Greasy William

    Current lines as the new border

    Completely unacceptable to Putin

    Massive reduction or elimination of U.S. funding for Kiev aggression

    Trump is in no position to offer this. Congress would NEVER allow it

    No NATO (at least during his term)

    Red herring. Putin doesn’t care about NATO. Especially since NATO is likely to lose Turkey in the next several years, a much more geopolitically important state than is Ukraine

    Lifting of some, possibly all, sanctions

    Putin doesn’t care about the sanctions. Russia isn’t Nazi Germany, it’s self sufficient in food and materials and it is able to get any technology it needs from abroad from China. Attempts to economically strangle Russia have been a total failure, only making Russia more self sufficient, confident and belligerent.

  1030. @Dmitry
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    He's a professional historian from Germany, I think he knows how to read the German sources.

    Replies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Well I’m fluent in German. I feel like I care about Germany’s future more than most Germans.

    This is not Völkerwanderung when the barbarians took over the Roman military by martial merit. They are just putting up with the barbarians taking over with whimper.

    What’s his deal belittling people here as “weird” “unpleasant”? The Denker und Dichter that his country known for having drip are totally “not weird” “pleasant”

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms


    They are just putting up with the barbarians taking over with whimper.

     

    We de-legitimized this view a few weeks ago during the “Purpose of NATO–keep Russians out, Americans in, Germans down” episode. Since 1945 Germany has been a vassal state. For the foreseeable future, the same. There are volumes of German sources it is illegal to cite because it offends the Jews.
    , @Torna atrás
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms


    Well I’m fluent in German.
     
    Werner Herzog: “Is there such thing as insanity among Wajin?”



    https://youtu.be/x7kdDeGXUjI

    Replies: @songbird

    , @Dmitry
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Your comment attacked the venerable German Reader, so his response wasn't so unfair.

    German Reader is probably feeling grumpy anyway, as you can see how he has recently been bullying me and Bashibuzuk.

    But this dude is a professional historian, so we can also accept what a lowering it is for him to talk to us or distracting from his serious studies being recommended to watch our childish YouTube videos.


    known for having drip are totally “not weird” “pleasant”
     
    I think Kant was reported as just a civilized person, like his civilized views. Wagner was extroverted, theatrical and sociable. But, in the way, of a crazy bipolar, bullying artist. Schopenhauer was famous as a grumpy person.

    Replies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

  1031. @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @Dmitry

    Well I'm fluent in German. I feel like I care about Germany's future more than most Germans.

    This is not Völkerwanderung when the barbarians took over the Roman military by martial merit. They are just putting up with the barbarians taking over with whimper.

    What's his deal belittling people here as "weird" "unpleasant"? The Denker und Dichter that his country known for having drip are totally "not weird" "pleasant"

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/RichardWagner.jpg

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Arthur_Schopenhauer_by_J_Sch%C3%A4fer%2C_1859b.jpg

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Immanuel_Kant_portrait_c1790.jpg

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Torna atrás, @Dmitry

    They are just putting up with the barbarians taking over with whimper.

    We de-legitimized this view a few weeks ago during the “Purpose of NATO–keep Russians out, Americans in, Germans down” episode. Since 1945 Germany has been a vassal state. For the foreseeable future, the same. There are volumes of German sources it is illegal to cite because it offends the Jews.

  1032. Did people once really think Zimbardo was black or Puerto Rican? Am thinking he must have definitely made that up, but if not, can we go back to that NYC?
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Zimbardo

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    Zimbardo is one of those fellows who might as well be a Jew.

    Replies: @songbird

  1033. S1 says:
    @Emil Nikola Richard
    @S1


    Proofs of a Conspiracy: Against All The Religions and Governments Of Europe, Carried On In The Secret Meetings of Freemasons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies.

     

    John Robison

    https://ia600301.us.archive.org/25/items/proofsofconspira00r/proofsofconspira00r_bw.pdf

    Replies: @S1

    Even George Washington himself in the last years of his life expressed shock and concern about what John Robinson had to say.

    The thrust of Robinson’s book title you’ve posted was more or less probably correct, though why today people go on about ‘the Illuminati’ I don’t know, as from my own reading on the subject of that very real organization was that it was pretty much rooted out and destroyed in the latter 18th century by the various European kingdoms they were active amongst, and hasn’t been around since.

    [MORE]

    Apologists for the secret societies, namely the Freemasons, when on the rare occasions they address the subject, say there was no other way to enact social change than to secretly conspire behind the veil of these organizations, otherwise they would have been crushed.

    And there were indeed (and are) severe social problems, between peoples, between the sexes, between individuals, and to a certain degree, the apologists may have had a point about the need to conspire.

    But, that’s only up to a certain degree.

    The British already were changing for the better by 1776, slower than some may have liked, but they were changing. Same with the Russians prior to 1917 and the war. Can’t speak for the French, but it wouldn’t surprise me if prior to 1789 they too were changing for the better.

    My big problem with these revolutionaries is the Pandora’s Box they open up when they engage in wanton mass murder, shed much innocent blood, and how this bloodlust ultimately turns upon the revolutionaries themselves, as many a guillotined French revolutionary and executed Old Bolshevik could attest.

    Make no mistake, these crude modern woke so called ‘progressives’ have murder in their heart and are perfectly capable of committing mass murder, something these would be ‘revolutionaries’ are probably planning upon.

    There has to be better, more humanitarian ways of going about things…and there are.

  1034. Even George Washington himself in the last years of his life expressed shock and concern about what John Robinson had to say.

    Have you ever heard Noam Chomsky’s perennial favorite quote so-called from John Jay?

    “The people who own the country ought to run it”

    It’s pretty convincing folded into his rap but I looked into this specific thing a long time ago. Right now the wikipedia page on John Jay has that attributed to him. As near as I can tell he did not write that. His son wrote that he said that. And for all we know he was drunk or in a terrible mood when he said it.

    The Founding Fathers’ Mythology could perhaps use a skeptical analysis. : )

    • Replies: @S1
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    Have you ever heard Noam Chomsky’s perennial favorite quote so-called from John Jay?

    “The people who own the country ought to run it”
     
    Well, I'm not particularly a fan or follower of Chomsky, and no, I've not heard of that John Jay Wikipedia quote, which could very well indeed be erroneous.

    John Jay did, however, comment upon how the United States (excluding the slaves) had the happy condition of being more or less homogenous at the time of it's creation, which apparently he did really write or say.

    The Founding Fathers’ Mythology could perhaps use a skeptical analysis. : )
     
    I wholeheartedly agree.

    This is why (whenever possible) I try to base what I have to say in regards to history (including what I said about George Washington and the Illuminati in my previous post) on what I see as being the gold standard, ie original source materials, and letting the chips fall where they may in that regard.

    The below are extracts (and links to the National Archives and Library of Congress where the original letters have been transcribed) from personal correspondence via letters George Washington had in 1798 with G W Snyder of Maryland. Snyder had sent Washington a copy of Robinson's Proofs of a Conspiracy, and, indeed, according to the National Archives, a copy of Robinson's book was found amongst Washington's personal effects when he died in early 1799.



    Washington, like the author Robinson, seemed to have subscribed to the idea that the British based Freemasonry was generally 'good', while the Continental (French) based Freemasonry was generally 'bad'.

    As for myself, I'm a bit skeptical of both branches, and am not so sure the purported great divide said to exist between them is quite as impermeable as we have been told.

    National Archives:

    https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/06-02-02-0435

    Library of Congress link where a photocopy of Washington's original Sept 25, 1798 letter excerpted below has been scanned in:

    https://www.loc.gov/resource/mgw2.021/?q=illuminati&sp=182&st=text

    Sept 25th, 1798

    “I have heard much of the nefarious, & dangerous plan, & doctrines of the Illuminati, but never saw the Book until you were pleased to send it to me."

    and...


    Oct 24, 1798

    “It was not my intention to doubt that, the Doctrines of the Iluminati, and principles of Jacobinism had not spread in the United States. On the contrary, no one is more fully satisfied of this fact than I am."

    “The idea I meant to convey, was, that I did not believe that the Lodges of Free Masons in this Country had, as Societies, endeavoured to propagate the diabolical tenets of the first, or the pernicious principles of the latter (if they are susceptible of seperation). That Individuals of them may have done it, and that the founder, or instrument employed to found, the Democratic Societies in the United States, may have had these objects—and actually had a seperation of the People from their Government in view, is too evident to be questioned."
  1035. @songbird
    Did people once really think Zimbardo was black or Puerto Rican? Am thinking he must have definitely made that up, but if not, can we go back to that NYC?
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Zimbardo

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    Zimbardo is one of those fellows who might as well be a Jew.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    We used to joke in high school that he was the devil, because he was smooth-talking and sort of had the appearance of the devil.

    I later read some old book he wrote where he goes into this long, unexpected diatribe about how there is no such thing as a soul, and, how so many bad beliefs flow from the idea that there is a soul. Laughed pretty hard, when I came across that, imagining him saying something like, "There is no soul, so sell me your soul."

    APA used to be the preferred way to cite sources, for many, and Zimbardo was the president of the APA for at least a little while. Should tell you something indirect about academic biases. Most of psychology is BS.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

  1036. @Derer
    @John Johnson

    Another optimistic Ukrainian view...victory must be just around the corner. The celebration day must be near. Are you cracking up?

    BTW, Chechnya is a land lock "island" withing RF, how can it survive being a hostile independent entity? Show us some precedent examples. Can Utah realistically seek independence?

    Replies: @AP, @John Johnson

    BTW, Chechnya is a land lock “island” withing RF

    It borders Georgia.

    Are you from the Balkans?

  1037. @A123
    @Matra


    Jamie Diamond, Larry Fink, and Mike Pompeo set to be in a Trump cabinet
     
    What supports this bizarre rumor that Pompeo is being considered for Trump's 2nd term cabinet? This is not the first time the idea has been floated, but it never seems to track back to anyone who could have inside knowledge.

    Public information points against it. Pompeo was an overly hawkish Senate ally in Trump's 1st term. He further distanced himself from MAGA objectives in his recent, unrealistic Ukraine policy piece. It read like a wishlist of what warmonger Lindsey Graham wants.

    Richard Grenell could recur in a 2nd term slot. He is much better aligned with MAGA foreign policy goals towards Russia and Ukraine. And, his recent policy article was much more plausible as a rough outline to begin negotiations.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Mikhail

    Grenell doesn’t c0me across as being so different than Pompeo and Bolton. Offhand, he seems closer to them than Vance.

  1038. AP says:
    @Beckow
    @AP


    ...Finnic is indigenous to Europe.
     
    No, it's not. It is originally east-Siberian (or Asian) and half of the Finns test with the east Asian DNA - it is heavily diluted, but you can spot it. That druggie PM lady they had until recently looked quite non-European, maybe she was spending too much time in a those hot ovens drinking piss (they do that in Finland, I have seen it).

    obsessed with Hollywood. Did it address the Magyar migration?
     
    They created a fake medieval past with 'knights' and 'warriors'. The reality was more prosaic. The Magyars mostly died out shortly after arrival, as did Huns previously (not related). They were replaced with local nobility and hard working peasants - it is all in the data. Magyar language was only saved by the Ottoman 200-year rule: the isolation, similarity to Turkic, Ottomans supported Magyars as being 'more like them'. Then Habsburgs saved them - the Habs feared and hated Slavs and Magyars were useful. Nazis tried the same trick and Magyars again paid a big price. They seemed to have learned from it.

    But I like culture, movies, myths. Hollywood Anglo-Jewish Wakanda has lately instead become fully Negro-LGBTQ-weirdos...isn't progress just great?


    Large majority of Russians state that they are not Europeans.
     
    I doubt it. Some today do out of spite, it won't last. Send them a map.

    Prague was fine in 1910. Czech culture was flourishing, it was a beautiful and wealthy place.
     
    It still is. But never forget that the Czechs hated the Habsurgs with a passion, they knew Habs were weasel-has beens with silly dreams of grandeur. And medieval brutality right under the surface. But they are your 'kin' so celebrate them if you must - nobody else does.

    Replies: @AP

    …Finnic is indigenous to Europe.

    No, it’s not. It is originally east-Siberian (or Asian) and half of the Finns test with the east Asian DNA

    Indo-Europeans once came from Asia too..thousands of years ago. The Finnic peoples came from the Volga region to the area around Estonia around 3,000 years ago and to Finland a couple of thousand years later. he original homeland of these peoples was from the Volga to the Urals and western Siberia. Finns came from the western parts.

    But the ancestors of the Magyars were in Asia. The Magyars emerged from the Urals when they invaded Europe in the 9th century. The Finnic peoples had already been living in their lands.

    obsessed with Hollywood. Did it address the Magyar migration?

    They created a fake medieval past with ‘knights’ and ‘warriors’.

    Hollywood was anti-elitist and seems to have portrayed the nobles badly. Like you do. It makes sense – many Hollywood people were closet communists. They were your friends. And of curse America rebelled against the King and nobles.

    I think Robin Hood was the most popular Hollywood genre set in the Middle Ages. Braveheart came later. Mel Gibson is of course no Communist, but he is an anti-elitist, like you.

    Large majority of Russians state that they are not Europeans.

    I doubt it. Some today do out of spite, it won’t last.

    They do, and have done so for decades.

    Including smart ones, not merely midwits who can dutifully look at maps.

    In 2008, only 35% of Russians considered themselves to be Europeans.

    In 2021 it was down to 27%.

    You can read maps though.

  1039. @Matra
    "If you support Ukraine but have Trump Derangement Syndrome: Get a grip. Ukraine is going to be fine"

    This Ukrainian makes a case for a Trump presidency being better for Ukraine. (Starts at 1h17m39 - I can't get the time stamp to work). I don't agree with his view reducing Russian self-identity to imperialism or that Putin can't compromise with Trump, but I think he makes a decent case for Trump being worse for Putin. With Jamie Diamond, Larry Fink, and Mike Pompeo set to be in a Trump cabinet Ukraine is unlikely to be abandoned.

    Replies: @A123, @Greasy William, @AP, @Derer

    If Trump had picked Bergum or Rubio it would have been a positive signal, but Vance was a negative one. Probably he will not be, but I would not be surprised if Trump ended up being better for Ukraine than Biden is. I’d give it a 10%-15% chance.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @AP

    Trump's position in relation to Ukraine, will depend a lot how much people believe the world is going to a new Cold War mode.

    In the non-Cold War mode, the conflict between Kiev and Moscow is like a typical postsoviet border conflict, similar to the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

    From the point of view of a postsoviet border conflict in a post-Cold War mode, the policy of J.D. Vance and Tucker Carlson, seems quite sensible for the American voters.

    But if Washington views Moscow as part of a "bloc" with Caracas, Havana, Tehran, Pyongyang, Beijing?

    Then support for Kiev would be prioritized in Washington. In the historical Cold War situation,* Washington was supporting South Africa, Pakistan, Republic of China, later even Taliban, even directly fighting in wars in Korea, Indochina.


    Bergum or Rubio it would have been a positive

     

    Rubio's parents were born in Havana and he is part of the Republicans who believes the "Cold War never ended".

    But Ted Cruz, even from similar background, is skeptical of supporting Kiev and doesn't view it like part of a new Cold War.

    Other politicians who would have Cuban-American voters like Anna Paulina Luna, are even strongly criticizing aid for Ukraine.

    So, for now, it seems a Republicans are very distant from believing Ukraine is part of a new Cold War, even though there are a few features becoming more similar to the Cold War even since 2022.

    -

    *Although in the 1950s still inconsistently, Washington still supports Egypt, against Israel, France and UK.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_proxy_wars#Cold_War_proxy_wars

    Replies: @AP, @Mr. XYZ

  1040. Sher Singh says:

    https://nitter.poast.org/haravayin_hogh/status/1819922924641701890#m

    Tldr Persia used to appoint Rabbis to enforce Jewish orthodoxy.

    Greco-Roman Egypt allowed Jews freedom which led to christianity.


    Thread by Yevardian on how Greco-Roman religious indifference or freedom led to the rise of a
    Jewish Bastard Cult.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision_of_Jesus?useskin=vector

    • Replies: @AP
    @Sher Singh

    Persians subverted the Jewish religion, teaching the Jews to worship the God worshipped by Persians and Scythians, the universal God. They allowed the Jews to use their own old name for the universal God (Persians did likewise with others). This opened the door for the universal God to be incarcerated among the Jews. And ultimately, in this way the God recognised by Persians and Scythians completely vanquished the beliefs of the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, etc.

  1041. @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @Dmitry

    Well I'm fluent in German. I feel like I care about Germany's future more than most Germans.

    This is not Völkerwanderung when the barbarians took over the Roman military by martial merit. They are just putting up with the barbarians taking over with whimper.

    What's his deal belittling people here as "weird" "unpleasant"? The Denker und Dichter that his country known for having drip are totally "not weird" "pleasant"

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/RichardWagner.jpg

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Arthur_Schopenhauer_by_J_Sch%C3%A4fer%2C_1859b.jpg

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Immanuel_Kant_portrait_c1790.jpg

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Torna atrás, @Dmitry

    Well I’m fluent in German.

    Werner Herzog: “Is there such thing as insanity among Wajin?”

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Torna atrás

    Herzog is such a good narrator. Much better than Morgan Freeman.

  1042. • Replies: @Beckow
    @Mikhail

    Georgia was always a bridge too far, geography matters. The Georgian pro-Westies made the same mistake as the Ukies or the failed Belorussians around 'president Tichanovskaia': they overreached, they were too eager to please the West and rushed things.

    The noisy Nato-or-bust contingent lives in a bubble, they forget that bubbles burst and it doesn't matter where the prick comes from. They desperately substitute EU or even 'Euro-western civilization' for NATO but that is only a label to hide what is really going on - another Euro-Atlantic military expansion eastward. They failed before when better staffed and armed, why would this paper-n-speeches aggression work any better?

    The underlying deal that NATO offered was: "you suckers fight and die, we will pay, give you weapons and reward the small activist elites - but we are not coming in to risk our lives." It would be comical if it wasn't so bloody. Who is stupid enough to sign up for that?

    NATO will try again - they are a one-trick pony: 'color revolutions' in capital cities, media overload, weapons and post-modern-nationalists (of the rainbow kind). And the virtual 'money': some get it, others are cut off, the make-believe financial lubricant flows from the West and buys everything in sight.

    But what is worthless can't hold value, it can only be endlessly traded...that is the bubble-of-all-bubbles. When a bubble stops expanding it inevitably deflates. That's why the hysteria against Russia, China, Middle East - but how do you support a virtual empire without willingness to die on the ground? It eventually killed all empires, when they lost the will to actually fight and die for it...

  1043. @Emil Nikola Richard

    Even George Washington himself in the last years of his life expressed shock and concern about what John Robinson had to say.
     
    Have you ever heard Noam Chomsky's perennial favorite quote so-called from John Jay?

    "The people who own the country ought to run it"

    It's pretty convincing folded into his rap but I looked into this specific thing a long time ago. Right now the wikipedia page on John Jay has that attributed to him. As near as I can tell he did not write that. His son wrote that he said that. And for all we know he was drunk or in a terrible mood when he said it.

    The Founding Fathers' Mythology could perhaps use a skeptical analysis. : )

    Replies: @S1

    Have you ever heard Noam Chomsky’s perennial favorite quote so-called from John Jay?

    “The people who own the country ought to run it”

    Well, I’m not particularly a fan or follower of Chomsky, and no, I’ve not heard of that John Jay Wikipedia quote, which could very well indeed be erroneous.

    John Jay did, however, comment upon how the United States (excluding the slaves) had the happy condition of being more or less homogenous at the time of it’s creation, which apparently he did really write or say.

    The Founding Fathers’ Mythology could perhaps use a skeptical analysis. : )

    I wholeheartedly agree.

    This is why (whenever possible) I try to base what I have to say in regards to history (including what I said about George Washington and the Illuminati in my previous post) on what I see as being the gold standard, ie original source materials, and letting the chips fall where they may in that regard.

    The below are extracts (and links to the National Archives and Library of Congress where the original letters have been transcribed) from personal correspondence via letters George Washington had in 1798 with G W Snyder of Maryland. Snyder had sent Washington a copy of Robinson’s Proofs of a Conspiracy, and, indeed, according to the National Archives, a copy of Robinson’s book was found amongst Washington’s personal effects when he died in early 1799.

    [MORE]

    Washington, like the author Robinson, seemed to have subscribed to the idea that the British based Freemasonry was generally ‘good’, while the Continental (French) based Freemasonry was generally ‘bad’.

    As for myself, I’m a bit skeptical of both branches, and am not so sure the purported great divide said to exist between them is quite as impermeable as we have been told.

    National Archives:

    https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/06-02-02-0435

    Library of Congress link where a photocopy of Washington’s original Sept 25, 1798 letter excerpted below has been scanned in:

    https://www.loc.gov/resource/mgw2.021/?q=illuminati&sp=182&st=text

    Sept 25th, 1798

    “I have heard much of the nefarious, & dangerous plan, & doctrines of the Illuminati, but never saw the Book until you were pleased to send it to me.”

    and…

    Oct 24, 1798

    “It was not my intention to doubt that, the Doctrines of the Iluminati, and principles of Jacobinism had not spread in the United States. On the contrary, no one is more fully satisfied of this fact than I am.”

    “The idea I meant to convey, was, that I did not believe that the Lodges of Free Masons in this Country had, as Societies, endeavoured to propagate the diabolical tenets of the first, or the pernicious principles of the latter (if they are susceptible of seperation). That Individuals of them may have done it, and that the founder, or instrument employed to found, the Democratic Societies in the United States, may have had these objects—and actually had a seperation of the People from their Government in view, is too evident to be questioned.”

  1044. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    Zimbardo is one of those fellows who might as well be a Jew.

    Replies: @songbird

    We used to joke in high school that he was the devil, because he was smooth-talking and sort of had the appearance of the devil.

    I later read some old book he wrote where he goes into this long, unexpected diatribe about how there is no such thing as a soul, and, how so many bad beliefs flow from the idea that there is a soul. Laughed pretty hard, when I came across that, imagining him saying something like, “There is no soul, so sell me your soul.”

    APA used to be the preferred way to cite sources, for many, and Zimbardo was the president of the APA for at least a little while. Should tell you something indirect about academic biases. Most of psychology is BS.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    If you wanted to do a Mrs Mao purge in America you might get the biggest bang for your buck taking out the entire APA.

    The whitewashing of Martin Seligman former president of APA is an interesting case study. He exerted more kCal of labor and got more income than any human in formulating the Guantanamo Bay interrogation procedures. Jordan Peterson is a lifetime member of the same clan.

  1045. @Sher Singh
    https://nitter.poast.org/haravayin_hogh/status/1819922924641701890#m

    Tldr Persia used to appoint Rabbis to enforce Jewish orthodoxy.

    Greco-Roman Egypt allowed Jews freedom which led to christianity.

    ---
    Thread by Yevardian on how Greco-Roman religious indifference or freedom led to the rise of a
    Jewish Bastard Cult.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision_of_Jesus?useskin=vector

    Replies: @AP

    Persians subverted the Jewish religion, teaching the Jews to worship the God worshipped by Persians and Scythians, the universal God. They allowed the Jews to use their own old name for the universal God (Persians did likewise with others). This opened the door for the universal God to be incarcerated among the Jews. And ultimately, in this way the God recognised by Persians and Scythians completely vanquished the beliefs of the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, etc.

  1046. @songbird
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    We used to joke in high school that he was the devil, because he was smooth-talking and sort of had the appearance of the devil.

    I later read some old book he wrote where he goes into this long, unexpected diatribe about how there is no such thing as a soul, and, how so many bad beliefs flow from the idea that there is a soul. Laughed pretty hard, when I came across that, imagining him saying something like, "There is no soul, so sell me your soul."

    APA used to be the preferred way to cite sources, for many, and Zimbardo was the president of the APA for at least a little while. Should tell you something indirect about academic biases. Most of psychology is BS.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    If you wanted to do a Mrs Mao purge in America you might get the biggest bang for your buck taking out the entire APA.

    The whitewashing of Martin Seligman former president of APA is an interesting case study. He exerted more kCal of labor and got more income than any human in formulating the Guantanamo Bay interrogation procedures. Jordan Peterson is a lifetime member of the same clan.

    • Thanks: songbird
  1047. @Torna atrás
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms


    Well I’m fluent in German.
     
    Werner Herzog: “Is there such thing as insanity among Wajin?”



    https://youtu.be/x7kdDeGXUjI

    Replies: @songbird

    Herzog is such a good narrator. Much better than Morgan Freeman.

  1048. @YetAnotherAnon
    @John Johnson

    It's a pity the Russian General Staff don't take any notice of your posts. Oh well.

    Outside the propaganda world, China are cutting down exports of certain drone components from September.

    https://www.reuters.com/world/china-curbs-exports-drone-related-equipment-amid-us-tech-tensions-2023-07-31/


    BEIJING, July 31 (Reuters) - China on Monday announced export controls on some drones and drone-related equipment, saying it wanted to safeguard "national security and interests" amid escalating tension with the United States over access to technology.
    The restrictions on equipment, including some drone engines, lasers, communication equipment and anti-drone systems, will take effect on Sept. 1, the commerce ministry said.
    The controls also affect some consumer drones, and no civilian drones can be exported for military purposes, a ministry spokesperson said in a statement.

    The drone export curbs come after China announced export controls on some metals widely used in chipmaking last month, following moves by the United States to restrict China's access to key technologies, such as chipmaking equipment.

     

    Anyone here know what the score is here? Will this hit Ukraine, who have a thriving drone industry but IIRC with almost wholly Chinese components?

    Replies: @John Johnson

    Outside the propaganda world, China are cutting down exports of certain drone components from September.

    From your article:

    The controls also affect some consumer drones, and no civilian drones can be exported for military purposes, a ministry spokesperson said in a statement.

    They’ll just be purchased third party and then sent to Ukraine.

    Ukraine is also making their own drones which is old news
    https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-produce-million-fpv-drones-next-year-minister-2023-12-20/

    Drone attacks have become deadlier even in the last few months.

    The Ukrainians have developed their own cluster drone that can take out a dozen troops if they are standing near each other.

  1049. Did RFK get his brainworm from eating roadkill? (And, if so, would not have expected this of a Kennedy.)

  1050. @QCIC
    @John Johnson

    From the perspective of a Russian planner considering treaties, I think the risk of the West immediately stirring up another round of this conflict is higher if Odessa is controlled by Ukraine and the West. Transnistria seems like an obvious pressure point. But who knows what Russia and the West are really doing? To me it still looks like Russia is intentionally grinding until the Ukrainians have a change of heart and throw out the West. The Kremlin seems very patient, but maybe other factors will cause them to change their approach. I see they recently published specifications for the Peresvet battlefield laser (anti-drone, anti-satellite).

    I guess the big mine is intended for the turtle tanks and other vehicles with cope cages. AFAIK the little anti-tank grenade can get though most top armor unless it hits reactive armor blocks.

    In December winter starts which favors having electricity and natural gas.

    Replies: @John Johnson

    To me it still looks like Russia is intentionally grinding until the Ukrainians have a change of heart and throw out the West.

    You think that by killing enough Ukrainians they will reject the West?

    That’s like suggesting the bully can make friends by hitting people.

    Putin has caused a permanent expansion of Western Europe.

    The Kremlin seems very patient, but maybe other factors will cause them to change their approach.

    What you call patience is only a plan B. They tried to take it all overnight.

    A war of attrition can make sense but I’m not buying that Putin is employing some 5d chess strategy over Kharkiv. Once the Trump/Johnson aid bill passed he should have rushed in to take it. The more likely explanation is that he doesn’t have the forces required to take and occupy the city. That would also explain why we are seeing T-55s and motorcycle squads. Perhaps he is developing a massive reserve army as both Ritter and Macgregor claim but he doesn’t currently have the forces to take a city less than an hour from the border.

    I guess the big mine is intended for the turtle tanks and other vehicles with cope cages. AFAIK the little anti-tank grenade can get though most top armor unless it hits reactive armor blocks.

    Both sides have plenty of TM-62s. They will be dropped on a variety of targets including buildings where Russian soldiers are stationed.

    In December winter starts which favors having electricity and natural gas.

    Trying to freeze women and children over the winter was the original plan.

    World is impressed with the 2.5 week special operation. It went from “Ukraine is doomed” to “let’s freeze them to death” within one year. Real impressive for the second largest military in the world.

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @John Johnson


    ...That’s like suggesting the bully can make friends by hitting people.
     
    Projecting again? That seems to be the modus operandi of US and NATO...they are not making too many friends with it...:)

    Russia is not trying to make friends, they are trying to win the war. They will if they kill enough Ukies - it's just math.


    ...What you call patience is only a plan B.
     
    Any rational person always has a backup plan. What is Kiev's plan B? They don't seem to have one. NATO's plan B is to consolidate Europe. But what are they going to do when the Euro citizens wake up a few years from now and ask 'why are we wasting so much money on the junky weapons from US?' This whole crazy project depends on keeping the Euros on-board by scaring and lying to them? How long can that last?

    If Ukraine is subdued (it most likely will be) and NATO is blocked from going east, the same usual Euro dynamic will kick in: good life, no fuss, trade with others, cut military budgets. So make sure you sell your MIC stocks before that happens. It always does.

    Replies: @John Johnson

    , @QCIC
    @John Johnson

    Until 2024, Russia left the power mostly intact with the main exception of ZPP and a bunch of substations. Since the Ukrainian population and industry were down this probably did not cause massive problems. After the more serious strikes in the past few months I think Kharkov and maybe Kiev will have major power problems this winter. AFAIK Russian has not wiped out many of the gas compressor stations, but this could happen as well. If Russia typically doesn't strike these facilities, the Ukies may store things there. For all I know Russia is still shipping natural gas to Ukraine.

    Ukraine's leadership knew what would happen when they deprioritized Russian language and culture, started shelling civilians and repeatedly made it clear they expected to be in NATO. The results are not surprising. The West was already pressuring Russia with expansion of NATO and emplacement of missiles in EE (construction started on the Romanian Aegis site in 2013, but was agreed to before then). Ukrainian leaders chose to get in the middle of the pressure war of the West against Russia. They thought they could pull it off, now they know better. Russia still has the kid gloves on, maybe it will stay that way.

    I think Hitler also had a "permanent" expansion of Western Europe ;)

  1051. @Derer
    @John Johnson

    Another optimistic Ukrainian view...victory must be just around the corner. The celebration day must be near. Are you cracking up?

    BTW, Chechnya is a land lock "island" withing RF, how can it survive being a hostile independent entity? Show us some precedent examples. Can Utah realistically seek independence?

    Replies: @AP, @John Johnson

    Another optimistic Ukrainian view…victory must be just around the corner. The celebration day must be near. Are you cracking up?

    There you go projecting your own fanaticism again. I’ve said since the beginning that Putin may very well take an Eastern chunk of Ukraine.

    That’s in my history.

    The main winners of this war are death and the US military industrial complex.

    Defense stocks continue to beat the market thanks to the dwarf and his genius war
    https://finbold.com/these-defense-stocks-rally-as-the-markets-crash/

    Most of his idiot fans at Unz still think the Jews somehow lose. I’ve asked them many times as to how Jews lose in this war. Over at Anglin’s blog their number one explanation is U MUST BE A JEW.

    Fascinating stuff. I actually doubt most of Anglin’s fans are Germanic or Anglo. Too many sound like third worlders.

    BTW, Chechnya is a land lock “island” withing RF, how can it survive being a hostile independent entity? Show us some precedent examples.

    Why would it be hostile? Because it is Muslim? Well Putin has praised Muslim values as integral to Russia. He is on record boasting of Russia as a multi-cultural/multi-racial empire. For some reason his fans at Unz get upset when I point that out.

    DPR would have been a land locked island that Putin decreed to be independent before taking them as vanilla territory. Isn’t that right?

    Austria is landlocked and has a GDP per capita that Russians could only dream about. What is your point here?

    • Replies: @YetAnotherAnon
    @John Johnson

    Austria-Hungary owned Lvov/Lemberg in WW1.

    Yes, yesterday British Aerospace was the only FT100 riser.

    Nonetheless if it all goes hot the UK is up the Swanee. We make sod-all and have fallen from #8 to #12 in manufacturing. Russia is now at #8.

    https://www.imeche.org/news/news-article/a-major-body-blow-industry-reacts-as-uk-manufacturing-falls-out-global-top-10

  1052. @Mikhail
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVkyk4j75HM

    Replies: @Beckow

    Georgia was always a bridge too far, geography matters. The Georgian pro-Westies made the same mistake as the Ukies or the failed Belorussians around ‘president Tichanovskaia‘: they overreached, they were too eager to please the West and rushed things.

    The noisy Nato-or-bust contingent lives in a bubble, they forget that bubbles burst and it doesn’t matter where the prick comes from. They desperately substitute EU or even ‘Euro-western civilization‘ for NATO but that is only a label to hide what is really going on – another Euro-Atlantic military expansion eastward. They failed before when better staffed and armed, why would this paper-n-speeches aggression work any better?

    The underlying deal that NATO offered was: “you suckers fight and die, we will pay, give you weapons and reward the small activist elites – but we are not coming in to risk our lives.” It would be comical if it wasn’t so bloody. Who is stupid enough to sign up for that?

    NATO will try again – they are a one-trick pony: ‘color revolutions‘ in capital cities, media overload, weapons and post-modern-nationalists (of the rainbow kind). And the virtual ‘money’: some get it, others are cut off, the make-believe financial lubricant flows from the West and buys everything in sight.

    But what is worthless can’t hold value, it can only be endlessly traded…that is the bubble-of-all-bubbles. When a bubble stops expanding it inevitably deflates. That’s why the hysteria against Russia, China, Middle East – but how do you support a virtual empire without willingness to die on the ground? It eventually killed all empires, when they lost the will to actually fight and die for it…

  1053. Pretty alarming:

    [MORE]

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @songbird


    ...Last year more people migrated to the UK from India, Nigeria, China, Pakistan, and Zimbabwe...
    Than total amount of children born in the Visegrad countries...
     
    UK had 600k births last year, 2/3 were white. If you add the migrants UK will be plurality non-white by 2045. They made their bed, they will have to sleep in it.

    The Faustian deal West made to suppress 'socialism' is backfiring spectacularly. They would be much better off if they instead kept the borders under control and rewarded the natives. But they didn't and it is too late.

    Visegrad at current trends will stay white for hundreds of years. There is now a substantial Western Euros migration to Visegrad...If EU kicks out Hungary (they won't) that would become more difficult.

    Replies: @songbird

    , @Torna atrás
    @songbird

    There's only one solution, send them back!

    https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQNycBso6TwALdEIdIrVaOxkx7W0r_lsd4AUbdzR9QYH_vYQWxE1JLk0qIf&s.jpg

    Otherwise it's all over red rover.

    Replies: @Beckow, @songbird

    , @Dmitry
    @songbird

    That's especially East Poland excluding Warsaw, has one of the oldest populations and also lowest fertility rates in the world.

    East Poland excluding Warsaw has significantly lower fertility rates than countries like Japan, possibly similar to Taiwan or Singapore.

    Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary are relatively more normal in this area, although populations are aging a lot, fertility rate doesn't actually change so much there in the last generations.

  1054. @John Johnson
    @QCIC

    To me it still looks like Russia is intentionally grinding until the Ukrainians have a change of heart and throw out the West.

    You think that by killing enough Ukrainians they will reject the West?

    That's like suggesting the bully can make friends by hitting people.

    Putin has caused a permanent expansion of Western Europe.

    The Kremlin seems very patient, but maybe other factors will cause them to change their approach.

    What you call patience is only a plan B. They tried to take it all overnight.

    A war of attrition can make sense but I'm not buying that Putin is employing some 5d chess strategy over Kharkiv. Once the Trump/Johnson aid bill passed he should have rushed in to take it. The more likely explanation is that he doesn't have the forces required to take and occupy the city. That would also explain why we are seeing T-55s and motorcycle squads. Perhaps he is developing a massive reserve army as both Ritter and Macgregor claim but he doesn't currently have the forces to take a city less than an hour from the border.

    I guess the big mine is intended for the turtle tanks and other vehicles with cope cages. AFAIK the little anti-tank grenade can get though most top armor unless it hits reactive armor blocks.

    Both sides have plenty of TM-62s. They will be dropped on a variety of targets including buildings where Russian soldiers are stationed.

    In December winter starts which favors having electricity and natural gas.

    Trying to freeze women and children over the winter was the original plan.

    World is impressed with the 2.5 week special operation. It went from "Ukraine is doomed" to "let's freeze them to death" within one year. Real impressive for the second largest military in the world.

    Replies: @Beckow, @QCIC

    …That’s like suggesting the bully can make friends by hitting people.

    Projecting again? That seems to be the modus operandi of US and NATO…they are not making too many friends with it…:)

    Russia is not trying to make friends, they are trying to win the war. They will if they kill enough Ukies – it’s just math.

    …What you call patience is only a plan B.

    Any rational person always has a backup plan. What is Kiev’s plan B? They don’t seem to have one. NATO’s plan B is to consolidate Europe. But what are they going to do when the Euro citizens wake up a few years from now and ask ‘why are we wasting so much money on the junky weapons from US?‘ This whole crazy project depends on keeping the Euros on-board by scaring and lying to them? How long can that last?

    If Ukraine is subdued (it most likely will be) and NATO is blocked from going east, the same usual Euro dynamic will kick in: good life, no fuss, trade with others, cut military budgets. So make sure you sell your MIC stocks before that happens. It always does.

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @Beckow

    Projecting again? That seems to be the modus operandi of US and NATO…they are not making too many friends with it…:)

    You are projecting your own bias. I'm not a representative of America and I'm not whorishly attached to a political position like yourself to where I am never allowed intellectual honesty.

    Unlike you I can criticize both the US and Russia.

    The US is terrible on foreign policy in the middle east and Putin is a complete idiot when it comes to building alliances in Europe. So maybe try quoting me when it comes to anything related to the US instead if assuming I take a predictably biased position like yourself.

    Russia is not trying to make friends, they are trying to win the war.

    Yea well we have this thing called the global economy and it's not a good idea to make enemies with everyone around you.

    Any rational person always has a backup plan. What is Kiev’s plan B?

    Ukraine is fighting for their existence. The goal has been the same from day one.

    It's Russia that keeps changing plans. This was after all supposed to be a 2.5 week special operation and they still haven't taken a border city despite having an infantry 8x the size of Ukraine.

    World is impressed.

    Ukraine is subdued (it most likely will be) and NATO is blocked from going east

    That's incorrect as NATO already moved East through Finland.

    Not sure why you would think a complete submission is likely when Putin already offered to walk with the existing lines.

    He still hasn't taken Kharkiv and isn't close to taking Odessa. The fact that you still imagine complete domination shows wishful thinking on your part. All of his actions from the last three months suggest that he would like to walk even though he doesn't have all of the former DPR.

  1055. @Matra
    "If you support Ukraine but have Trump Derangement Syndrome: Get a grip. Ukraine is going to be fine"

    This Ukrainian makes a case for a Trump presidency being better for Ukraine. (Starts at 1h17m39 - I can't get the time stamp to work). I don't agree with his view reducing Russian self-identity to imperialism or that Putin can't compromise with Trump, but I think he makes a decent case for Trump being worse for Putin. With Jamie Diamond, Larry Fink, and Mike Pompeo set to be in a Trump cabinet Ukraine is unlikely to be abandoned.

    Replies: @A123, @Greasy William, @AP, @Derer

    Trump was screwed by Ukraine and impeached for them siding with Biden nepotism. He does not forgets his enemies. Furthermore, his priorities are China and domestically immigration. He was betrayed and fooled by RINOs in his first term; he has reason to be vindictive.

  1056. @songbird
    Pretty alarming:
    https://twitter.com/PoleConnection/status/1820443581137523159

    Replies: @Beckow, @Torna atrás, @Dmitry

    …Last year more people migrated to the UK from India, Nigeria, China, Pakistan, and Zimbabwe…
    Than total amount of children born in the Visegrad countries…

    UK had 600k births last year, 2/3 were white. If you add the migrants UK will be plurality non-white by 2045. They made their bed, they will have to sleep in it.

    The Faustian deal West made to suppress ‘socialism’ is backfiring spectacularly. They would be much better off if they instead kept the borders under control and rewarded the natives. But they didn’t and it is too late.

    Visegrad at current trends will stay white for hundreds of years. There is now a substantial Western Euros migration to Visegrad…If EU kicks out Hungary (they won’t) that would become more difficult.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Beckow


    Visegrad at current trends will stay white for hundreds of years.
     
    Am not convinced this is the case.

    I don't think we have seen a full stop into Visegrad, and there have definitely been changes, since the '80s.

    Hungary seems to be the only country with any rhetoric against inflow - but it seems to be the rhetoric of a landlocked country, afraid of offending the West, by criticizing it much.

    At best, the Poles seem like boomercons obsessed with Russia - when they probably should be looking the other way.

    Am not saying they are doomed. But I don't think they are serious about having a strategy that would save them. Not on the political end. Maybe, it is covert? Planned but wait for Poland to displace Germany in GDP? But I don't think so.

    Replies: @AP, @Beckow

  1057. Does Yaroslava Mahuchikh know how to talk Ukrainian?

    I presume not. One of you soyboys may be able to find a video. Maybe the Azov Battalion IT department can work up a deep fake.

  1058. @AP
    @Matra

    If Trump had picked Bergum or Rubio it would have been a positive signal, but Vance was a negative one. Probably he will not be, but I would not be surprised if Trump ended up being better for Ukraine than Biden is. I'd give it a 10%-15% chance.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    Trump’s position in relation to Ukraine, will depend a lot how much people believe the world is going to a new Cold War mode.

    In the non-Cold War mode, the conflict between Kiev and Moscow is like a typical postsoviet border conflict, similar to the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

    From the point of view of a postsoviet border conflict in a post-Cold War mode, the policy of J.D. Vance and Tucker Carlson, seems quite sensible for the American voters.

    But if Washington views Moscow as part of a “bloc” with Caracas, Havana, Tehran, Pyongyang, Beijing?

    Then support for Kiev would be prioritized in Washington. In the historical Cold War situation,* Washington was supporting South Africa, Pakistan, Republic of China, later even Taliban, even directly fighting in wars in Korea, Indochina.

    Bergum or Rubio it would have been a positive

    Rubio’s parents were born in Havana and he is part of the Republicans who believes the “Cold War never ended”.

    But Ted Cruz, even from similar background, is skeptical of supporting Kiev and doesn’t view it like part of a new Cold War.

    Other politicians who would have Cuban-American voters like Anna Paulina Luna, are even strongly criticizing aid for Ukraine.

    So, for now, it seems a Republicans are very distant from believing Ukraine is part of a new Cold War, even though there are a few features becoming more similar to the Cold War even since 2022.

    *Although in the 1950s still inconsistently, Washington still supports Egypt, against Israel, France and UK.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_proxy_wars#Cold_War_proxy_wars

    • Replies: @AP
    @Dmitry


    In the non-Cold War mode, the conflict between Kiev and Moscow is like a typical postsoviet border conflict, similar to the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia
     
    Not completely. Ukraine borders NATO members Poland and Romania, and Poland is in the process of replacing Germany as the USA's closest European partner. So even when not seen as part of a new Cold War, Ukraine is more important for the USA/West than some random country would be.

    Rubio’s parents were born in Havana and he is part of the Republicans who believes the “Cold War never ended”.

    But Ted Cruz, even from similar background, is skeptical of supporting Kiev and doesn’t view it like part of a new Cold War.
     
    Ted Cruz does not have a similar background to Rubio. He is only half Cuban, and he grew up in Texas, far away from the Cuban diaspora in Miami.

    Other politicians who would have Cuban-American voters like Anna Paulina Luna, are even strongly criticizing aid for Ukraine.
     
    She is in Florida but from California, and is of mixed German and Mexican heritage, not Cuban. Her grandfather was a Wehrmacht soldier. Her district in suburban Tampa is not heavily Cuban.

    ::::::::::::::::

    Speaking of Trump/Vance, I can't disclose any details, other than to say that odds of the ticket supporting Ukraine if they win are probably higher than my previously stated 10%-15%. Maybe 30%. Still risky IMO, but better.

    Trump is certainly not colluding with Russia, but he is not above benefiting from any problems that Russia may cause for the current administration, so it will be helpful for Russia to consider him the lesser evil and for it to act accordingly.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Mr. XYZ

    , @Mr. XYZ
    @Dmitry


    In the non-Cold War mode, the conflict between Kiev and Moscow is like a typical postsoviet border conflict, similar to the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

     

    Ukraine has much larger human capital reserves to offer the West in comparison to Armenia. And Ukraine also provides a pro-Western civilizational model for the Eastern Slavs. Armenia doesn't really provide a civilizational model to anyone else.
  1059. @Gerard1234
    @sudden death


    haha, Lithuania so far has more medals than RF in Paris



    WHAT "haha" you fuckwit, except on my side?

    Russia, having reached the final of the tennis doubles guaranteed a gold or silver ( unfortunately lossed to probably drugged up Italians)....is above the useless irrelevant shithole of Lithuania DESPITE the fact we have been banned! Since when is Gold or silver ahead of one bronze ( competing with Chad or San Marino) you imbecile? You are that pathetic you are reduced to only counting when the medal is officially hung around the neck.

    The most embarrassing thing for Proebaltica and Poland is that we are competing against Belarus more than them for more medals.

    So its not even Baltards losing to banned Russia - its Baltards losing to Belarus ( with Sabalenka not even doing the tennis)!

    Belarus, despite being unfairly banned.....is infinitely ahead of the entire Baltic shitheads, and equal or ahead of the disastrous Banderastan team....who only have the Gold in fencing because it was fixed , and of course because Russia ( the masters of Fencing) were Satanically banned you thick POS.

    Still waiting for your condemnation if Soviet satanists in Stalingrad
     
    Because its too stupid and misleading and exhaustatively easy to disprove comparison you cretin .

    Its why American pigs were "warning" at the start of the SMO about Russia to "not use chemical weapons"- a signal not about Russia, but of the pussy tactics and intention to have as much of the Donbass destroyed as possible for the Ukronazis/NATO.
     

    Replies: @Derer

    Its why American pigs were “warning” at the start of the SMO about Russia to “not use chemical weapons”- a signal not about Russia, but of the pussy tactics and intention to have as much of the Donbass destroyed as possible for the Ukronazis/NATO.

    What makes me puke is banning Russian athletes, initiated and, coerced others to support, by who else but the sinister players in Washington. Those actions reveal nothing else but pathological hate of everything Russian from the decaying self-appointed world policeman.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Derer

    They didn't ban Mirra Andreeva!

    https://images.tennis.com/image/private/t_16-9_768/tenniscom-prd/jcntee9vqeojb6qhj8lr.jpg

  1060. This shit is great if you mute the audio.

    I don’t know why everybody keeps complaining about youtubes recommendations.

  1061. @songbird
    Pretty alarming:
    https://twitter.com/PoleConnection/status/1820443581137523159

    Replies: @Beckow, @Torna atrás, @Dmitry

    There’s only one solution, send them back!

    Otherwise it’s all over red rover.

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @Torna atrás


    ...There’s only one solution, send them back!
     
    How? I am serious, it is not possible in normal circumstances. There is no solution, that's the way it is going to be.

    Imagine a different UK: mostly homogeneous, less crowded with fewer people, affordable housing, functioning infrastructure, higher incomes and better job market, native Brits able to form families with social guarantees and more pleasant life.

    Why did Brits vote for the own gradual self-destruction? Well, the plurality of boomers were rewarded for going along with it - or at least protected from most consequences. And then there was the 'liberal impulse', people buying propaganda words about 'free this-and-that'..but still, how stupid...

    Replies: @Coconuts

    , @songbird
    @Torna atrás

    All joking aside, I have become convinced that the only way to stop it is to reverse it.

    The in-group betrayal is far too high, to trust the out-group, with its own incentives and resentments, for a halt in some kind of radical egalitarian way.

    It's also clear that a major part of the problem is the idea that everything has to be at the border. There can't be any inner defense because that would offend people. It is like if the immune system was only your skin and nothing inside - it wouldn't work. At the very least, the obnoxious people have to go and I don't mean just the ones not born locally.

    I don't necessarily think everything has to be 100%, but I do think that it will not halt below a certain number, unless it is reversed. And we are already below that number.

  1062. @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @Dmitry

    Well I'm fluent in German. I feel like I care about Germany's future more than most Germans.

    This is not Völkerwanderung when the barbarians took over the Roman military by martial merit. They are just putting up with the barbarians taking over with whimper.

    What's his deal belittling people here as "weird" "unpleasant"? The Denker und Dichter that his country known for having drip are totally "not weird" "pleasant"

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/RichardWagner.jpg

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Arthur_Schopenhauer_by_J_Sch%C3%A4fer%2C_1859b.jpg

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Immanuel_Kant_portrait_c1790.jpg

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Torna atrás, @Dmitry

    Your comment attacked the venerable German Reader, so his response wasn’t so unfair.

    German Reader is probably feeling grumpy anyway, as you can see how he has recently been bullying me and Bashibuzuk.

    But this dude is a professional historian, so we can also accept what a lowering it is for him to talk to us or distracting from his serious studies being recommended to watch our childish YouTube videos.

    known for having drip are totally “not weird” “pleasant”

    I think Kant was reported as just a civilized person, like his civilized views. Wagner was extroverted, theatrical and sociable. But, in the way, of a crazy bipolar, bullying artist. Schopenhauer was famous as a grumpy person.

    • Replies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @Dmitry

    Kant was sociable but a lifelong celibate. He never travelled outside of his hometown and local shopkeepers set their watches to his daily routine. Nietzsche call him the "Chinese of Konigsberg" for being rigid and moralistic.

    Soviet era cities have all reverted to their pre-Communist names with Kaliningrad being the only exception. A reasonable gesture by Putin, who is fluent in German, would have been to rename it to Kantgrad. A city with one of the most distinguished histories in Europe.

    Replies: @Torna atrás

  1063. @Derer
    @Gerard1234


    Its why American pigs were “warning” at the start of the SMO about Russia to “not use chemical weapons”- a signal not about Russia, but of the pussy tactics and intention to have as much of the Donbass destroyed as possible for the Ukronazis/NATO.
     
    What makes me puke is banning Russian athletes, initiated and, coerced others to support, by who else but the sinister players in Washington. Those actions reveal nothing else but pathological hate of everything Russian from the decaying self-appointed world policeman.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    They didn’t ban Mirra Andreeva!

  1064. @Torna atrás
    @songbird

    There's only one solution, send them back!

    https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQNycBso6TwALdEIdIrVaOxkx7W0r_lsd4AUbdzR9QYH_vYQWxE1JLk0qIf&s.jpg

    Otherwise it's all over red rover.

    Replies: @Beckow, @songbird

    …There’s only one solution, send them back!

    How? I am serious, it is not possible in normal circumstances. There is no solution, that’s the way it is going to be.

    Imagine a different UK: mostly homogeneous, less crowded with fewer people, affordable housing, functioning infrastructure, higher incomes and better job market, native Brits able to form families with social guarantees and more pleasant life.

    Why did Brits vote for the own gradual self-destruction? Well, the plurality of boomers were rewarded for going along with it – or at least protected from most consequences. And then there was the ‘liberal impulse‘, people buying propaganda words about ‘free this-and-that’..but still, how stupid…

    • Replies: @Coconuts
    @Beckow


    Why did Brits vote for the own gradual self-destruction?
     
    It wasn't really a question of voting because there has been a consensus between the two main parties (in the British system these are the only ones which are able to form a government) about immigration.

    The left-wing party is overtly pro-immigration and pro-diversity and increasingly rely on ethnic minority and immigrant communities for their voting base.

    The right-wing party counter signaled immigration and was elected to power after repeatedly making promises to reduce it, but when in power did the exact opposite and increased it massively. In practical terms they share the viewpoint of the left-wing party or are even more pro-migration.

    There has been a tacit, sometimes overt agreement in the media and cultural institutions to be very careful with reporting the topic of immigration with a strong bias to presenting it positively. This is related to what borders on a fixation with anti-racism and other related forms of identity politics.

    With the riots that are currently breaking out everywhere I think we are seeing the consequences of the failure to address these issues within the political system for some time.

    The study Emil quoted in the next thread is a good one, imo the authors set out the underlying political issues pretty well:

    Migration, Stagnation, or Procreation: Quantifying the Demographic Trilemma

    Paul Morland and Philip Pilkington ARC Research

    https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6516e3215981fa376a3ea80d/t/65402445f48ff173e

    Replies: @Beckow

  1065. @songbird
    Pretty alarming:
    https://twitter.com/PoleConnection/status/1820443581137523159

    Replies: @Beckow, @Torna atrás, @Dmitry

    That’s especially East Poland excluding Warsaw, has one of the oldest populations and also lowest fertility rates in the world.

    East Poland excluding Warsaw has significantly lower fertility rates than countries like Japan, possibly similar to Taiwan or Singapore.

    Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary are relatively more normal in this area, although populations are aging a lot, fertility rate doesn’t actually change so much there in the last generations.

  1066. @John Johnson
    @QCIC

    To me it still looks like Russia is intentionally grinding until the Ukrainians have a change of heart and throw out the West.

    You think that by killing enough Ukrainians they will reject the West?

    That's like suggesting the bully can make friends by hitting people.

    Putin has caused a permanent expansion of Western Europe.

    The Kremlin seems very patient, but maybe other factors will cause them to change their approach.

    What you call patience is only a plan B. They tried to take it all overnight.

    A war of attrition can make sense but I'm not buying that Putin is employing some 5d chess strategy over Kharkiv. Once the Trump/Johnson aid bill passed he should have rushed in to take it. The more likely explanation is that he doesn't have the forces required to take and occupy the city. That would also explain why we are seeing T-55s and motorcycle squads. Perhaps he is developing a massive reserve army as both Ritter and Macgregor claim but he doesn't currently have the forces to take a city less than an hour from the border.

    I guess the big mine is intended for the turtle tanks and other vehicles with cope cages. AFAIK the little anti-tank grenade can get though most top armor unless it hits reactive armor blocks.

    Both sides have plenty of TM-62s. They will be dropped on a variety of targets including buildings where Russian soldiers are stationed.

    In December winter starts which favors having electricity and natural gas.

    Trying to freeze women and children over the winter was the original plan.

    World is impressed with the 2.5 week special operation. It went from "Ukraine is doomed" to "let's freeze them to death" within one year. Real impressive for the second largest military in the world.

    Replies: @Beckow, @QCIC

    Until 2024, Russia left the power mostly intact with the main exception of ZPP and a bunch of substations. Since the Ukrainian population and industry were down this probably did not cause massive problems. After the more serious strikes in the past few months I think Kharkov and maybe Kiev will have major power problems this winter. AFAIK Russian has not wiped out many of the gas compressor stations, but this could happen as well. If Russia typically doesn’t strike these facilities, the Ukies may store things there. For all I know Russia is still shipping natural gas to Ukraine.

    Ukraine’s leadership knew what would happen when they deprioritized Russian language and culture, started shelling civilians and repeatedly made it clear they expected to be in NATO. The results are not surprising. The West was already pressuring Russia with expansion of NATO and emplacement of missiles in EE (construction started on the Romanian Aegis site in 2013, but was agreed to before then). Ukrainian leaders chose to get in the middle of the pressure war of the West against Russia. They thought they could pull it off, now they know better. Russia still has the kid gloves on, maybe it will stay that way.

    I think Hitler also had a “permanent” expansion of Western Europe 😉

  1067. @QCIC
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    I generally agree. As expected, the top people in any demanding field tend to be very bright, unless it is a field where high verbal intelligence can be used to scam one's peers!

    I don't know if mathematicians are actually low on common sense. This does seem to be the case for philosophers.

    In the USA, biology and economics undergrad degrees give little indication of the caliber of the student's mind. I think math and physics undergrad degrees can be taken mostly at face value, but I don't know about any other STEM degrees. There is some evidence that everything has been watered down.

    Replies: @A123, @Emil Nikola Richard, @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Philosophers deal with fundamental questions so there’s no reason that they need have common sense. But modern academic philosophy is basically sterile because they can’t get around political correctness, post-modernism, Critical Race Theory, etc.

    Math and computing are more skill sets, required for all hard sciences and engineering domain. Whereas biology and medicine is more knowledge sets that’s domain-specific.

    But the two are converging because life and social sciences adopted computational approaches

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

    Steve Hsu covers this alot since he pivoted from particle physics to genetics. There’s not much more groundbreaking discoveries to be made in the former, but alot in the latter, using quantitative methods from physics.

    You even see this in political science doctoral programs where there’s alot more math and programming required.

    https://politicalscience.stanford.edu/graduate-program/doctoral-program/doctoral-program-requirements

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    I think PolySci students should worry more about morality and values and less about math and programming. No good will come from teaching a PolySci major higher level math, unless it prompts them to change majors.

    , @Emil Nikola Richard
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Did Hsu take the stupid experimental gene medicine?

    Do you personally know anybody who will tell you they never caught covid until they took the vaccine? There are quite a few of them running around out there in the real world.

    , @Torna atrás
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    In late May, Joshua Sherlock, an long term resident of Kyoto offering local tours, took a group of English tourists on an evening visit of Yasaka Shrine. They were confronted by a local middle-aged woman, accusing them of ringing the shrine’s bell too loudly and disrespecting a religious place.

    Fujino took the liberty of filming the occasion, and according to her video, Sherlock’s group apologized multiple times. But she still chased after them as they left. Sherlock repeatedly asked her to leave them alone in English and Japanese, to which Fujino accused Sherlock of discrimination because he spoke English to her. Finally, he answered in Japanese using the same tone she used on him. Claiming Sherlock had “rudely brushed her off,” Fujino then uploaded her videos to Twitter where they got a million views.

    What happened next was devastating. According to The Times (London), Sherlock’s family reported people telephoning his home to scream insults and demand he leave Japan. A removal van arrived to collect their belongings. Strangers began prowling their neighborhood, and somebody threatened to set their apartment on fire. His wife began having panic attacks and their daughter was taken out of school.

    Sherlock says that he no longer feels safe in Kyoto, and, suspending his tour services, fears that even stepping outside might result in him being “attacked by a lynch mob of extreme right-wing people.”

    Replies: @QCIC

  1068. @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @QCIC

    Philosophers deal with fundamental questions so there's no reason that they need have common sense. But modern academic philosophy is basically sterile because they can't get around political correctness, post-modernism, Critical Race Theory, etc.

    Math and computing are more skill sets, required for all hard sciences and engineering domain. Whereas biology and medicine is more knowledge sets that's domain-specific.

    But the two are converging because life and social sciences adopted computational approaches

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

    Steve Hsu covers this alot since he pivoted from particle physics to genetics. There's not much more groundbreaking discoveries to be made in the former, but alot in the latter, using quantitative methods from physics.

    You even see this in political science doctoral programs where there's alot more math and programming required.

    https://politicalscience.stanford.edu/graduate-program/doctoral-program/doctoral-program-requirements

    Replies: @QCIC, @Emil Nikola Richard, @Torna atrás

    I think PolySci students should worry more about morality and values and less about math and programming. No good will come from teaching a PolySci major higher level math, unless it prompts them to change majors.

  1069. @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @QCIC

    Philosophers deal with fundamental questions so there's no reason that they need have common sense. But modern academic philosophy is basically sterile because they can't get around political correctness, post-modernism, Critical Race Theory, etc.

    Math and computing are more skill sets, required for all hard sciences and engineering domain. Whereas biology and medicine is more knowledge sets that's domain-specific.

    But the two are converging because life and social sciences adopted computational approaches

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

    Steve Hsu covers this alot since he pivoted from particle physics to genetics. There's not much more groundbreaking discoveries to be made in the former, but alot in the latter, using quantitative methods from physics.

    You even see this in political science doctoral programs where there's alot more math and programming required.

    https://politicalscience.stanford.edu/graduate-program/doctoral-program/doctoral-program-requirements

    Replies: @QCIC, @Emil Nikola Richard, @Torna atrás

    Did Hsu take the stupid experimental gene medicine?

    Do you personally know anybody who will tell you they never caught covid until they took the vaccine? There are quite a few of them running around out there in the real world.

  1070. @Torna atrás
    @songbird

    There's only one solution, send them back!

    https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQNycBso6TwALdEIdIrVaOxkx7W0r_lsd4AUbdzR9QYH_vYQWxE1JLk0qIf&s.jpg

    Otherwise it's all over red rover.

    Replies: @Beckow, @songbird

    All joking aside, I have become convinced that the only way to stop it is to reverse it.

    The in-group betrayal is far too high, to trust the out-group, with its own incentives and resentments, for a halt in some kind of radical egalitarian way.

    It’s also clear that a major part of the problem is the idea that everything has to be at the border. There can’t be any inner defense because that would offend people. It is like if the immune system was only your skin and nothing inside – it wouldn’t work. At the very least, the obnoxious people have to go and I don’t mean just the ones not born locally.

    I don’t necessarily think everything has to be 100%, but I do think that it will not halt below a certain number, unless it is reversed. And we are already below that number.

  1071. @Beckow
    @songbird


    ...Last year more people migrated to the UK from India, Nigeria, China, Pakistan, and Zimbabwe...
    Than total amount of children born in the Visegrad countries...
     
    UK had 600k births last year, 2/3 were white. If you add the migrants UK will be plurality non-white by 2045. They made their bed, they will have to sleep in it.

    The Faustian deal West made to suppress 'socialism' is backfiring spectacularly. They would be much better off if they instead kept the borders under control and rewarded the natives. But they didn't and it is too late.

    Visegrad at current trends will stay white for hundreds of years. There is now a substantial Western Euros migration to Visegrad...If EU kicks out Hungary (they won't) that would become more difficult.

    Replies: @songbird

    Visegrad at current trends will stay white for hundreds of years.

    Am not convinced this is the case.

    I don’t think we have seen a full stop into Visegrad, and there have definitely been changes, since the ’80s.

    Hungary seems to be the only country with any rhetoric against inflow – but it seems to be the rhetoric of a landlocked country, afraid of offending the West, by criticizing it much.

    At best, the Poles seem like boomercons obsessed with Russia – when they probably should be looking the other way.

    Am not saying they are doomed. But I don’t think they are serious about having a strategy that would save them. Not on the political end. Maybe, it is covert? Planned but wait for Poland to displace Germany in GDP? But I don’t think so.

    • Replies: @AP
    @songbird


    Hungary seems to be the only country with any rhetoric against inflow – but it seems to be the rhetoric of a landlocked country, afraid of offending the West, by criticizing it much.
     
    Hungary has a large and growing Roma population. It is the poorest and most corrupt of the Visegrad countries, and largely owned/bought by Russia. Better to replace Hungary with Ukraine.

    At best, the Poles seem like boomercons obsessed with Russia – when they probably should be looking the other way.
     
    Russia is the one trying to flood Poland's neighborhood with non-Europeans and killing Poles' eastern cousins. Obsession is warranted under such circumstances.

    Replies: @songbird, @Mr. XYZ

    , @Beckow
    @songbird


    ...Hungary seems to be the only country with any rhetoric against inflow – but it seems to be the rhetoric of a landlocked country, afraid of offending the West, by criticizing it much.
    ...
    At best, the Poles seem like boomercons obsessed with Russia – when they probably should be looking the other way
     
    Poles have always looked the wrong way - their leader (Pilsudski) had Hitler's picture in his office in the 1930's, he admired him so much...yes, the same Hitler who then proceeded to murder 3 million Poles. One can't understand the Poles, it is a mental condition.

    There is a lot of serious rhetoric in Czechia and Slovakia against migration across the political spectrum, but people don't think the libs believe in what they say publicly. Being openly pro-migrants (as leaders are in Western Europe) would end one's career.

    The socialist left is vocally against migrants. But some 'socialists' are very close to business and often try to import workers claiming 'labor shortages'. It has something to do with industrial unions. Will it last? Who knows - we worry most about the secondary migrants coming through Western Europe. But we hit them with the 'language' and they mostly prefer to leave...

    Replies: @Gerard1234

  1072. @Beckow
    @John Johnson


    ...That’s like suggesting the bully can make friends by hitting people.
     
    Projecting again? That seems to be the modus operandi of US and NATO...they are not making too many friends with it...:)

    Russia is not trying to make friends, they are trying to win the war. They will if they kill enough Ukies - it's just math.


    ...What you call patience is only a plan B.
     
    Any rational person always has a backup plan. What is Kiev's plan B? They don't seem to have one. NATO's plan B is to consolidate Europe. But what are they going to do when the Euro citizens wake up a few years from now and ask 'why are we wasting so much money on the junky weapons from US?' This whole crazy project depends on keeping the Euros on-board by scaring and lying to them? How long can that last?

    If Ukraine is subdued (it most likely will be) and NATO is blocked from going east, the same usual Euro dynamic will kick in: good life, no fuss, trade with others, cut military budgets. So make sure you sell your MIC stocks before that happens. It always does.

    Replies: @John Johnson

    Projecting again? That seems to be the modus operandi of US and NATO…they are not making too many friends with it…:)

    You are projecting your own bias. I’m not a representative of America and I’m not whorishly attached to a political position like yourself to where I am never allowed intellectual honesty.

    Unlike you I can criticize both the US and Russia.

    The US is terrible on foreign policy in the middle east and Putin is a complete idiot when it comes to building alliances in Europe. So maybe try quoting me when it comes to anything related to the US instead if assuming I take a predictably biased position like yourself.

    Russia is not trying to make friends, they are trying to win the war.

    Yea well we have this thing called the global economy and it’s not a good idea to make enemies with everyone around you.

    Any rational person always has a backup plan. What is Kiev’s plan B?

    Ukraine is fighting for their existence. The goal has been the same from day one.

    It’s Russia that keeps changing plans. This was after all supposed to be a 2.5 week special operation and they still haven’t taken a border city despite having an infantry 8x the size of Ukraine.

    World is impressed.

    Ukraine is subdued (it most likely will be) and NATO is blocked from going east

    That’s incorrect as NATO already moved East through Finland.

    Not sure why you would think a complete submission is likely when Putin already offered to walk with the existing lines.

    He still hasn’t taken Kharkiv and isn’t close to taking Odessa. The fact that you still imagine complete domination shows wishful thinking on your part. All of his actions from the last three months suggest that he would like to walk even though he doesn’t have all of the former DPR.

  1073. NATO has already moved East as a result of Putin’s war:

    Way to go dwarf.

    The exact opposite outcome of your stated goal.

    • Replies: @Derer
    @John Johnson

    Believe it or not, but NATO is in constant internal squabbles creating uncertain future. Once the European vs US ongoing differences are solidified in favour of a need of independent European security umbrella the US and UK seat in Europe will vanish.

    Replies: @John Johnson

  1074. AP says:
    @Dmitry
    @AP

    Trump's position in relation to Ukraine, will depend a lot how much people believe the world is going to a new Cold War mode.

    In the non-Cold War mode, the conflict between Kiev and Moscow is like a typical postsoviet border conflict, similar to the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

    From the point of view of a postsoviet border conflict in a post-Cold War mode, the policy of J.D. Vance and Tucker Carlson, seems quite sensible for the American voters.

    But if Washington views Moscow as part of a "bloc" with Caracas, Havana, Tehran, Pyongyang, Beijing?

    Then support for Kiev would be prioritized in Washington. In the historical Cold War situation,* Washington was supporting South Africa, Pakistan, Republic of China, later even Taliban, even directly fighting in wars in Korea, Indochina.


    Bergum or Rubio it would have been a positive

     

    Rubio's parents were born in Havana and he is part of the Republicans who believes the "Cold War never ended".

    But Ted Cruz, even from similar background, is skeptical of supporting Kiev and doesn't view it like part of a new Cold War.

    Other politicians who would have Cuban-American voters like Anna Paulina Luna, are even strongly criticizing aid for Ukraine.

    So, for now, it seems a Republicans are very distant from believing Ukraine is part of a new Cold War, even though there are a few features becoming more similar to the Cold War even since 2022.

    -

    *Although in the 1950s still inconsistently, Washington still supports Egypt, against Israel, France and UK.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_proxy_wars#Cold_War_proxy_wars

    Replies: @AP, @Mr. XYZ

    In the non-Cold War mode, the conflict between Kiev and Moscow is like a typical postsoviet border conflict, similar to the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia

    Not completely. Ukraine borders NATO members Poland and Romania, and Poland is in the process of replacing Germany as the USA’s closest European partner. So even when not seen as part of a new Cold War, Ukraine is more important for the USA/West than some random country would be.

    Rubio’s parents were born in Havana and he is part of the Republicans who believes the “Cold War never ended”.

    But Ted Cruz, even from similar background, is skeptical of supporting Kiev and doesn’t view it like part of a new Cold War.

    Ted Cruz does not have a similar background to Rubio. He is only half Cuban, and he grew up in Texas, far away from the Cuban diaspora in Miami.

    Other politicians who would have Cuban-American voters like Anna Paulina Luna, are even strongly criticizing aid for Ukraine.

    She is in Florida but from California, and is of mixed German and Mexican heritage, not Cuban. Her grandfather was a Wehrmacht soldier. Her district in suburban Tampa is not heavily Cuban.

    ::::::::::::::::

    Speaking of Trump/Vance, I can’t disclose any details, other than to say that odds of the ticket supporting Ukraine if they win are probably higher than my previously stated 10%-15%. Maybe 30%. Still risky IMO, but better.

    Trump is certainly not colluding with Russia, but he is not above benefiting from any problems that Russia may cause for the current administration, so it will be helpful for Russia to consider him the lesser evil and for it to act accordingly.

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @AP

    Trump is against the war and the risk of wider fighting. He knows it is a foolish Western project against Russia. However, he will readily support Ukraine if this helps end the war quickly in a way that is unlikely to flare back. This pro-Ukraine position may not be to give weapons, but rather to negotiate against Russia on behalf of Ukraine and support some of their Nationalist platform. Trump will probably negotiate more with the oligarchs than with the political figureheads.

    A wise person would figure out a way to give both sides most of what they need out of the conflict.

    Many of the oligarchs on all sides are Jewish so this conflict has a Jewish aspect. The wildcard with Trump is how will he "deal" with these factions?

    Replies: @John Johnson

    , @Mr. XYZ
    @AP


    Ukraine borders NATO members Poland and Romania,
     
    Also less reliable NATO members Hungary and Slovakia.

    Speaking of Trump/Vance, I can’t disclose any details, other than to say that odds of the ticket supporting Ukraine if they win are probably higher than my previously stated 10%-15%. Maybe 30%. Still risky IMO, but better.

    Trump is certainly not colluding with Russia, but he is not above benefiting from any problems that Russia may cause for the current administration, so it will be helpful for Russia to consider him the lesser evil and for it to act accordingly.
     
    Do you have some sort of deep US political connections, AP?
  1075. AP says:
    @songbird
    @Beckow


    Visegrad at current trends will stay white for hundreds of years.
     
    Am not convinced this is the case.

    I don't think we have seen a full stop into Visegrad, and there have definitely been changes, since the '80s.

    Hungary seems to be the only country with any rhetoric against inflow - but it seems to be the rhetoric of a landlocked country, afraid of offending the West, by criticizing it much.

    At best, the Poles seem like boomercons obsessed with Russia - when they probably should be looking the other way.

    Am not saying they are doomed. But I don't think they are serious about having a strategy that would save them. Not on the political end. Maybe, it is covert? Planned but wait for Poland to displace Germany in GDP? But I don't think so.

    Replies: @AP, @Beckow

    Hungary seems to be the only country with any rhetoric against inflow – but it seems to be the rhetoric of a landlocked country, afraid of offending the West, by criticizing it much.

    Hungary has a large and growing Roma population. It is the poorest and most corrupt of the Visegrad countries, and largely owned/bought by Russia. Better to replace Hungary with Ukraine.

    At best, the Poles seem like boomercons obsessed with Russia – when they probably should be looking the other way.

    Russia is the one trying to flood Poland’s neighborhood with non-Europeans and killing Poles’ eastern cousins. Obsession is warranted under such circumstances.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @AP


    It is the poorest and most corrupt of the Visegrad countries, and largely owned/bought by Russia
     
    Its per capita GDP seems very slightly under Poland's, and I understand Poland's is on track to overtake Germany's by 2030. (At least if the trends continue)

    I am not sure what you mean by "owned/bought." I think a vassal would be sending troops or supplies, whereas a nationalist or independent regime would probably be pursuing neutrality.

    Hungary has a large and growing Roma population.
     
    A coherent Roma policy seems to have been missing from Europe for some time. I think Henry VIII had the right one, heretic though he was.

    Obsession is warranted under such circumstances.
     
    Russia doesn't really have the ideology or demographics to conquer Eastern Europe. It would require a vast garrison, and native auxiliaries signed up for the same ideology.

    OTOH, there is no question that many EEs are quite happy to sign up for the liberalist/universalist ideology of the West.

    If I were leading Poland, I would be trying to prepare for the inevitable confrontation with Western Europe/US. (That is, unless they fully integrate and converge, which would be bad for Poles) I don't know if buying American weapons systems is a good longterm strategy.

    Russia is the one trying to flood Poland’s neighborhood with non-Europeans
     
    quite possible to question what is happening on the border with Belarus, but the consequences of it - a border fence and rhetoric against migrants - seem undeniably good.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @AP, @S1

    , @Mr. XYZ
    @AP


    Better to replace Hungary with Ukraine.
     
    Or even with Romania, no? Duller than Hungary, but as wealthy per capita as Hungary is, and also considerably more populous. And Romania isn't shilling for Putin like Hungary is.

    Replies: @AP

  1076. @songbird
    @Beckow


    Visegrad at current trends will stay white for hundreds of years.
     
    Am not convinced this is the case.

    I don't think we have seen a full stop into Visegrad, and there have definitely been changes, since the '80s.

    Hungary seems to be the only country with any rhetoric against inflow - but it seems to be the rhetoric of a landlocked country, afraid of offending the West, by criticizing it much.

    At best, the Poles seem like boomercons obsessed with Russia - when they probably should be looking the other way.

    Am not saying they are doomed. But I don't think they are serious about having a strategy that would save them. Not on the political end. Maybe, it is covert? Planned but wait for Poland to displace Germany in GDP? But I don't think so.

    Replies: @AP, @Beckow

    …Hungary seems to be the only country with any rhetoric against inflow – but it seems to be the rhetoric of a landlocked country, afraid of offending the West, by criticizing it much.

    At best, the Poles seem like boomercons obsessed with Russia – when they probably should be looking the other way

    Poles have always looked the wrong way – their leader (Pilsudski) had Hitler’s picture in his office in the 1930’s, he admired him so much…yes, the same Hitler who then proceeded to murder 3 million Poles. One can’t understand the Poles, it is a mental condition.

    There is a lot of serious rhetoric in Czechia and Slovakia against migration across the political spectrum, but people don’t think the libs believe in what they say publicly. Being openly pro-migrants (as leaders are in Western Europe) would end one’s career.

    The socialist left is vocally against migrants. But some ‘socialists’ are very close to business and often try to import workers claiming ‘labor shortages’. It has something to do with industrial unions. Will it last? Who knows – we worry most about the secondary migrants coming through Western Europe. But we hit them with the ‘language’ and they mostly prefer to leave…

    • Thanks: songbird
    • Replies: @Gerard1234
    @Beckow


    But we hit them with the ‘language’ and they mostly prefer to leave…
     
    How is the language in Slovakia? By that I mean is English like it is in the Baltics where nearly everyone seems to be fluent in it, to the point its comparable to how the dutch were 25 years before with English?..........or is every Slovakian fluent in German and that is the main second language in the country instead of English?

    And how is Russian going there? Last time I went to Czechia the number of people willing to engage with me in Russian, and speak it competently was much higher than I was expecting.

    Though its helpful on holiday , I intrinsically despise the mass influence and now the ability of people to speak English across the world. When I went to France and Spain ( not including the Islands) 30 years before - people were as gloriously incapable and irritated at speaking English .....as they were at communicating in Russian. The French particularly irritated. Now if you go on holiday to France and Spain , then you can literally succeed without speaking a single word of French or Spanish and doing it all in English language.

    Replies: @Beckow

  1077. @Beckow
    @Torna atrás


    ...There’s only one solution, send them back!
     
    How? I am serious, it is not possible in normal circumstances. There is no solution, that's the way it is going to be.

    Imagine a different UK: mostly homogeneous, less crowded with fewer people, affordable housing, functioning infrastructure, higher incomes and better job market, native Brits able to form families with social guarantees and more pleasant life.

    Why did Brits vote for the own gradual self-destruction? Well, the plurality of boomers were rewarded for going along with it - or at least protected from most consequences. And then there was the 'liberal impulse', people buying propaganda words about 'free this-and-that'..but still, how stupid...

    Replies: @Coconuts

    Why did Brits vote for the own gradual self-destruction?

    It wasn’t really a question of voting because there has been a consensus between the two main parties (in the British system these are the only ones which are able to form a government) about immigration.

    The left-wing party is overtly pro-immigration and pro-diversity and increasingly rely on ethnic minority and immigrant communities for their voting base.

    The right-wing party counter signaled immigration and was elected to power after repeatedly making promises to reduce it, but when in power did the exact opposite and increased it massively. In practical terms they share the viewpoint of the left-wing party or are even more pro-migration.

    There has been a tacit, sometimes overt agreement in the media and cultural institutions to be very careful with reporting the topic of immigration with a strong bias to presenting it positively. This is related to what borders on a fixation with anti-racism and other related forms of identity politics.

    With the riots that are currently breaking out everywhere I think we are seeing the consequences of the failure to address these issues within the political system for some time.

    The study Emil quoted in the next thread is a good one, imo the authors set out the underlying political issues pretty well:

    Migration, Stagnation, or Procreation: Quantifying the Demographic Trilemma

    Paul Morland and Philip Pilkington ARC Research

    https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6516e3215981fa376a3ea80d/t/65402445f48ff173e

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @Coconuts


    ...in the British system these are the only ones...
     
    I understand the British system and all things you wrote are true - but it really doesn't matter, does it? If the 'system' screws you, the media lies and Tories are hypocrites, it is all the same: UK is still f..ed up.

    Regarding duopolies (US, Canada, others also have them):
    democracy is a system where the will of the majority is implemented. Period. If what majority wants is ignored you don't have a democracy no matter how elaborate the process or how puffed-up the self-celebratory speeches. You have to face the reality that it is only a pretense in things that matter.

    The riots are a scream in the wilderness. They are too late and easily controlled. What people should had done in the past was to use the recall process or demonstrate then. Instead most Brits I know grumbled and said, 'what an ancient democracy we have, the Parliament, king, Magna Charta (?)'...they were fooled. People are responsible when they lie to themselves or when they take temporary personal benefit to ruin the place where they live in the long run.

    There really is no solution now. Starmer and his goons will drive over any resistance. That's what you get in a system where 32% is a 'landslide'. But you knew that, didn't you?

    (By the way, the link you attached doesn't work.)

    Replies: @Coconuts

  1078. @John Johnson
    @Derer

    Another optimistic Ukrainian view…victory must be just around the corner. The celebration day must be near. Are you cracking up?

    There you go projecting your own fanaticism again. I've said since the beginning that Putin may very well take an Eastern chunk of Ukraine.

    That's in my history.

    The main winners of this war are death and the US military industrial complex.

    Defense stocks continue to beat the market thanks to the dwarf and his genius war
    https://finbold.com/these-defense-stocks-rally-as-the-markets-crash/

    Most of his idiot fans at Unz still think the Jews somehow lose. I've asked them many times as to how Jews lose in this war. Over at Anglin's blog their number one explanation is U MUST BE A JEW.

    Fascinating stuff. I actually doubt most of Anglin's fans are Germanic or Anglo. Too many sound like third worlders.

    BTW, Chechnya is a land lock “island” withing RF, how can it survive being a hostile independent entity? Show us some precedent examples.

    Why would it be hostile? Because it is Muslim? Well Putin has praised Muslim values as integral to Russia. He is on record boasting of Russia as a multi-cultural/multi-racial empire. For some reason his fans at Unz get upset when I point that out.

    DPR would have been a land locked island that Putin decreed to be independent before taking them as vanilla territory. Isn't that right?

    Austria is landlocked and has a GDP per capita that Russians could only dream about. What is your point here?

    Replies: @YetAnotherAnon

    Austria-Hungary owned Lvov/Lemberg in WW1.

    Yes, yesterday British Aerospace was the only FT100 riser.

    Nonetheless if it all goes hot the UK is up the Swanee. We make sod-all and have fallen from #8 to #12 in manufacturing. Russia is now at #8.

    https://www.imeche.org/news/news-article/a-major-body-blow-industry-reacts-as-uk-manufacturing-falls-out-global-top-10

  1079. @AP
    @Dmitry


    In the non-Cold War mode, the conflict between Kiev and Moscow is like a typical postsoviet border conflict, similar to the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia
     
    Not completely. Ukraine borders NATO members Poland and Romania, and Poland is in the process of replacing Germany as the USA's closest European partner. So even when not seen as part of a new Cold War, Ukraine is more important for the USA/West than some random country would be.

    Rubio’s parents were born in Havana and he is part of the Republicans who believes the “Cold War never ended”.

    But Ted Cruz, even from similar background, is skeptical of supporting Kiev and doesn’t view it like part of a new Cold War.
     
    Ted Cruz does not have a similar background to Rubio. He is only half Cuban, and he grew up in Texas, far away from the Cuban diaspora in Miami.

    Other politicians who would have Cuban-American voters like Anna Paulina Luna, are even strongly criticizing aid for Ukraine.
     
    She is in Florida but from California, and is of mixed German and Mexican heritage, not Cuban. Her grandfather was a Wehrmacht soldier. Her district in suburban Tampa is not heavily Cuban.

    ::::::::::::::::

    Speaking of Trump/Vance, I can't disclose any details, other than to say that odds of the ticket supporting Ukraine if they win are probably higher than my previously stated 10%-15%. Maybe 30%. Still risky IMO, but better.

    Trump is certainly not colluding with Russia, but he is not above benefiting from any problems that Russia may cause for the current administration, so it will be helpful for Russia to consider him the lesser evil and for it to act accordingly.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Mr. XYZ

    Trump is against the war and the risk of wider fighting. He knows it is a foolish Western project against Russia. However, he will readily support Ukraine if this helps end the war quickly in a way that is unlikely to flare back. This pro-Ukraine position may not be to give weapons, but rather to negotiate against Russia on behalf of Ukraine and support some of their Nationalist platform. Trump will probably negotiate more with the oligarchs than with the political figureheads.

    A wise person would figure out a way to give both sides most of what they need out of the conflict.

    Many of the oligarchs on all sides are Jewish so this conflict has a Jewish aspect. The wildcard with Trump is how will he “deal” with these factions?

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @QCIC

    Trump is against the war and the risk of wider fighting. He knows it is a foolish Western project against Russia.

    Then why did he greenlight a massive spending bill instead of having Johnson lowball the Democrats?

    They had weeks to negotiate before Johnson could be tossed and Trump gave him a massive bill that handed over the entire ATACMS inventory plus all kinds of spending that wasn't requested.

    No negotiations. Just a Trump stamped bill that split the remaining Moscow Marge wing by offering state based goodies. And it worked.

    Trump does not have the creativity to develop such a bill on his own which means some figure in the dark handed it to him.

    So why couldn't that happen again?

    The Russian state media is giddy over the prospect of a Trump presidency but they clearly aren't paying attention. They in fact seem completely unaware of the Mar-A-Lago Ukraine aid bill and think it came from Biden. They of course like Vance but he completely flipped on supporting Trump which shows that he is highly impressionable. He in fact opposed Trump in 2016 and voted third party.

    Both Trump and Vance will dance for the military industrial complex if the right music plays.

    It's wishful thinking to believe they will change the war. Trump already proved himself to be an establishment first politician. His fans seem to have ignored his first term. He was pressured out of his tax cuts for the middle class in his first year. Bannon didn't want tax cuts for the wealthy but Trump gave into the swamp.

    Harris is an affirmative action dingbat but Trump is really just an establishment NYC Democrat in policy. He talks a good game but caves to establishment pressure.

    It's really a battle of two Democrats.

  1080. @Coconuts
    @Beckow


    Why did Brits vote for the own gradual self-destruction?
     
    It wasn't really a question of voting because there has been a consensus between the two main parties (in the British system these are the only ones which are able to form a government) about immigration.

    The left-wing party is overtly pro-immigration and pro-diversity and increasingly rely on ethnic minority and immigrant communities for their voting base.

    The right-wing party counter signaled immigration and was elected to power after repeatedly making promises to reduce it, but when in power did the exact opposite and increased it massively. In practical terms they share the viewpoint of the left-wing party or are even more pro-migration.

    There has been a tacit, sometimes overt agreement in the media and cultural institutions to be very careful with reporting the topic of immigration with a strong bias to presenting it positively. This is related to what borders on a fixation with anti-racism and other related forms of identity politics.

    With the riots that are currently breaking out everywhere I think we are seeing the consequences of the failure to address these issues within the political system for some time.

    The study Emil quoted in the next thread is a good one, imo the authors set out the underlying political issues pretty well:

    Migration, Stagnation, or Procreation: Quantifying the Demographic Trilemma

    Paul Morland and Philip Pilkington ARC Research

    https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6516e3215981fa376a3ea80d/t/65402445f48ff173e

    Replies: @Beckow

    …in the British system these are the only ones…

    I understand the British system and all things you wrote are true – but it really doesn’t matter, does it? If the ‘system’ screws you, the media lies and Tories are hypocrites, it is all the same: UK is still f..ed up.

    Regarding duopolies (US, Canada, others also have them):
    democracy is a system where the will of the majority is implemented. Period. If what majority wants is ignored you don’t have a democracy no matter how elaborate the process or how puffed-up the self-celebratory speeches. You have to face the reality that it is only a pretense in things that matter.

    The riots are a scream in the wilderness. They are too late and easily controlled. What people should had done in the past was to use the recall process or demonstrate then. Instead most Brits I know grumbled and said, ‘what an ancient democracy we have, the Parliament, king, Magna Charta (?)‘…they were fooled. People are responsible when they lie to themselves or when they take temporary personal benefit to ruin the place where they live in the long run.

    There really is no solution now. Starmer and his goons will drive over any resistance. That’s what you get in a system where 32% is a ‘landslide’. But you knew that, didn’t you?

    (By the way, the link you attached doesn’t work.)

    • Replies: @Coconuts
    @Beckow


    I understand the British system and all things you wrote are true – but it really doesn’t matter, does it?
     
    It means that what you wrote here:

    Why did Brits vote for the own gradual self-destruction?
     
    was false.

    From your post it looks like you really meant something like this:

    Why didn't Brits override their representative liberal democracy thing to block non-white immigration sooner?
     
    In our era do I need to answer that? But I am guessing you knew that, didn’t you?

    (By the way, the link you attached doesn’t work.)
     
    It mustn't have copied properly. You can find it in post no. 9 from Emil in the next thread if you want it.
  1081. You sunk my submarine!

  1082. @QCIC
    @AP

    Trump is against the war and the risk of wider fighting. He knows it is a foolish Western project against Russia. However, he will readily support Ukraine if this helps end the war quickly in a way that is unlikely to flare back. This pro-Ukraine position may not be to give weapons, but rather to negotiate against Russia on behalf of Ukraine and support some of their Nationalist platform. Trump will probably negotiate more with the oligarchs than with the political figureheads.

    A wise person would figure out a way to give both sides most of what they need out of the conflict.

    Many of the oligarchs on all sides are Jewish so this conflict has a Jewish aspect. The wildcard with Trump is how will he "deal" with these factions?

    Replies: @John Johnson

    Trump is against the war and the risk of wider fighting. He knows it is a foolish Western project against Russia.

    Then why did he greenlight a massive spending bill instead of having Johnson lowball the Democrats?

    They had weeks to negotiate before Johnson could be tossed and Trump gave him a massive bill that handed over the entire ATACMS inventory plus all kinds of spending that wasn’t requested.

    No negotiations. Just a Trump stamped bill that split the remaining Moscow Marge wing by offering state based goodies. And it worked.

    Trump does not have the creativity to develop such a bill on his own which means some figure in the dark handed it to him.

    So why couldn’t that happen again?

    The Russian state media is giddy over the prospect of a Trump presidency but they clearly aren’t paying attention. They in fact seem completely unaware of the Mar-A-Lago Ukraine aid bill and think it came from Biden. They of course like Vance but he completely flipped on supporting Trump which shows that he is highly impressionable. He in fact opposed Trump in 2016 and voted third party.

    Both Trump and Vance will dance for the military industrial complex if the right music plays.

    It’s wishful thinking to believe they will change the war. Trump already proved himself to be an establishment first politician. His fans seem to have ignored his first term. He was pressured out of his tax cuts for the middle class in his first year. Bannon didn’t want tax cuts for the wealthy but Trump gave into the swamp.

    Harris is an affirmative action dingbat but Trump is really just an establishment NYC Democrat in policy. He talks a good game but caves to establishment pressure.

    It’s really a battle of two Democrats.

  1083. @John Johnson
    NATO has already moved East as a result of Putin's war:

    https://foreignpolicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Finland-NATO-map-naval-bases-020524_d425f1.png?resize=275

    Way to go dwarf.

    The exact opposite outcome of your stated goal.

    Replies: @Derer

    Believe it or not, but NATO is in constant internal squabbles creating uncertain future. Once the European vs US ongoing differences are solidified in favour of a need of independent European security umbrella the US and UK seat in Europe will vanish.

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @Derer

    Believe it or not, but NATO is in constant internal squabbles creating uncertain future.

    I really don't care. I'm not sure why you and others address me as if I am a representative of NATO.

    Unlike you I recognize the sovereignty of Ukraine and their borders as recognized by the UN since 1991 and by Putin in 2008:

    Putin on video stating that Crimea is part of Ukraine
    https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-crimea-ukraine/26942862.html

    That is the normal position outside of Unz but that doesn't mean I expect Ukraine to be in NATO.

    I am in fact on record stating that they don't need to be in NATO. They have that right but from a security perspective it isn't required. This type of half-assed 1930s land invasion won't be worth the risk to a future Tsar. The sats and drone swarms will make it unviable. A future tsar would go for a third world target or simply accept his limitations in life and be content to rule over the world's largest country. What I would like to see is an end to Russian state media dominance so the people are free to call out the bullshit of their leaders. They aren't even allowed to do it on the internet as seen by the fact that pro-war Igor Girkin was literally hauled away in the night for criticizing the goblin king. He thinks the goblin is inept when it comes to war strategy and I completely agree. But unlike Girkin I am allowed to say that in a web post. I don't support suppressing the thoughts and speech of anyone.

    "free speech for me but not for thee"

    Unspoken motto of Unz pro-Putin supporters

  1084. @Beckow
    @Coconuts


    ...in the British system these are the only ones...
     
    I understand the British system and all things you wrote are true - but it really doesn't matter, does it? If the 'system' screws you, the media lies and Tories are hypocrites, it is all the same: UK is still f..ed up.

    Regarding duopolies (US, Canada, others also have them):
    democracy is a system where the will of the majority is implemented. Period. If what majority wants is ignored you don't have a democracy no matter how elaborate the process or how puffed-up the self-celebratory speeches. You have to face the reality that it is only a pretense in things that matter.

    The riots are a scream in the wilderness. They are too late and easily controlled. What people should had done in the past was to use the recall process or demonstrate then. Instead most Brits I know grumbled and said, 'what an ancient democracy we have, the Parliament, king, Magna Charta (?)'...they were fooled. People are responsible when they lie to themselves or when they take temporary personal benefit to ruin the place where they live in the long run.

    There really is no solution now. Starmer and his goons will drive over any resistance. That's what you get in a system where 32% is a 'landslide'. But you knew that, didn't you?

    (By the way, the link you attached doesn't work.)

    Replies: @Coconuts

    I understand the British system and all things you wrote are true – but it really doesn’t matter, does it?

    It means that what you wrote here:

    Why did Brits vote for the own gradual self-destruction?

    was false.

    From your post it looks like you really meant something like this:

    Why didn’t Brits override their representative liberal democracy thing to block non-white immigration sooner?

    In our era do I need to answer that? But I am guessing you knew that, didn’t you?

    (By the way, the link you attached doesn’t work.)

    It mustn’t have copied properly. You can find it in post no. 9 from Emil in the next thread if you want it.

  1085. @AP
    @songbird


    Hungary seems to be the only country with any rhetoric against inflow – but it seems to be the rhetoric of a landlocked country, afraid of offending the West, by criticizing it much.
     
    Hungary has a large and growing Roma population. It is the poorest and most corrupt of the Visegrad countries, and largely owned/bought by Russia. Better to replace Hungary with Ukraine.

    At best, the Poles seem like boomercons obsessed with Russia – when they probably should be looking the other way.
     
    Russia is the one trying to flood Poland's neighborhood with non-Europeans and killing Poles' eastern cousins. Obsession is warranted under such circumstances.

    Replies: @songbird, @Mr. XYZ

    It is the poorest and most corrupt of the Visegrad countries, and largely owned/bought by Russia

    Its per capita GDP seems very slightly under Poland’s, and I understand Poland’s is on track to overtake Germany’s by 2030. (At least if the trends continue)

    I am not sure what you mean by “owned/bought.” I think a vassal would be sending troops or supplies, whereas a nationalist or independent regime would probably be pursuing neutrality.

    Hungary has a large and growing Roma population.

    A coherent Roma policy seems to have been missing from Europe for some time. I think Henry VIII had the right one, heretic though he was.

    Obsession is warranted under such circumstances.

    Russia doesn’t really have the ideology or demographics to conquer Eastern Europe. It would require a vast garrison, and native auxiliaries signed up for the same ideology.

    OTOH, there is no question that many EEs are quite happy to sign up for the liberalist/universalist ideology of the West.

    If I were leading Poland, I would be trying to prepare for the inevitable confrontation with Western Europe/US. (That is, unless they fully integrate and converge, which would be bad for Poles) I don’t know if buying American weapons systems is a good longterm strategy.

    Russia is the one trying to flood Poland’s neighborhood with non-Europeans

    quite possible to question what is happening on the border with Belarus, but the consequences of it – a border fence and rhetoric against migrants – seem undeniably good.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @songbird


    d Poland’s is on track to overtake Germany’s by 2030
     
    Poland's GDP per capita is left than half of Germany, only 42% of Germany. It's not going to "overtake Germany by 2030", even though the new government has unlocked all those EU wealth transfers which were temporarily frozen.

    Replies: @songbird

    , @AP
    @songbird


    It [Hungary] is the poorest and most corrupt of the Visegrad countries, and largely owned/bought by Russia

    Its per capita GDP seems very slightly under Poland’s, and I understand Poland’s is on track to overtake Germany’s by 2030. (At least if the trends continue)
     
    Its per capita GDP nominal was once much higher than Poland's (nearly double in the early 90s) but now it is lower than Poland's , and this difference will only increase, as Hungary continues to sink relative to the other Visegrad countries.

    https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?locations=PL-HU-SK-CZ

    And despite being poorer than Poland, Hungary is also more expensive than Poland. So the difference in standard of living is rather high.

    I am not sure what you mean by “owned/bought.” I think a vassal would be sending troops or supplies, whereas a nationalist or independent regime would probably be pursuing neutrality.
     
    Orban is very corrupt and gets a lot of Russian money. He behaves accordingly.

    Obsession is warranted under such circumstances.

    Russia doesn’t really have the ideology or demographics to conquer Eastern Europe.
     
    It doesn't now. If Ukraine were allowed to fall completely (extremely unlikely), this would change. And other than Poland and France, no one on the European has much of a military. Through Ukraine, Russia could deepen its control over Hungary and Slovakia through the local collaborators Orban and Fico.

    If I were leading Poland, I would be trying to prepare for the inevitable confrontation with Western Europe/US
     
    Russia is much worse, and the threat more imminent.

    I don’t know if buying American weapons systems is a good longterm strategy.
     
    Poland is buying a lot of Korean arms.

    Replies: @songbird, @Mr. XYZ

    , @S1
    @songbird


    A coherent Roma policy seems to have been missing from Europe for some time. I think Henry VIII had the right one, heretic though he was.
     
    So, what exactly was Henry VIlI's 'Roma policy'?

    Replies: @songbird

  1086. @songbird
    @AP


    It is the poorest and most corrupt of the Visegrad countries, and largely owned/bought by Russia
     
    Its per capita GDP seems very slightly under Poland's, and I understand Poland's is on track to overtake Germany's by 2030. (At least if the trends continue)

    I am not sure what you mean by "owned/bought." I think a vassal would be sending troops or supplies, whereas a nationalist or independent regime would probably be pursuing neutrality.

    Hungary has a large and growing Roma population.
     
    A coherent Roma policy seems to have been missing from Europe for some time. I think Henry VIII had the right one, heretic though he was.

    Obsession is warranted under such circumstances.
     
    Russia doesn't really have the ideology or demographics to conquer Eastern Europe. It would require a vast garrison, and native auxiliaries signed up for the same ideology.

    OTOH, there is no question that many EEs are quite happy to sign up for the liberalist/universalist ideology of the West.

    If I were leading Poland, I would be trying to prepare for the inevitable confrontation with Western Europe/US. (That is, unless they fully integrate and converge, which would be bad for Poles) I don't know if buying American weapons systems is a good longterm strategy.

    Russia is the one trying to flood Poland’s neighborhood with non-Europeans
     
    quite possible to question what is happening on the border with Belarus, but the consequences of it - a border fence and rhetoric against migrants - seem undeniably good.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @AP, @S1

    d Poland’s is on track to overtake Germany’s by 2030

    Poland’s GDP per capita is left than half of Germany, only 42% of Germany. It’s not going to “overtake Germany by 2030”, even though the new government has unlocked all those EU wealth transfers which were temporarily frozen.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Dmitry

    Last year, the Telegraph ran a story that predicted that Poland would be wealthier than the UK by 2030. That is probably what I was thinking of.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/13ayf1a/poland_will_be_wealthier_than_britain_by_2030_its/

    I did not read it, and I don't know how realistic it really is. I don't think you can keep on extrapolating when TFR is so low.

    But it does seem likely to me that the relative quality of life for proles in Poland may be noteably better than either in the UK or Germany, within the next 10-20 years.

    Not just from growth but from decline and increasing interethnic conflict.

    Was just watching a news segment from DW and their business expert was a gay African, kind of like the new Doctor Who. He has also been billed as their diversity expert.

    Replies: @AP

  1087. @Dmitry
    @songbird


    d Poland’s is on track to overtake Germany’s by 2030
     
    Poland's GDP per capita is left than half of Germany, only 42% of Germany. It's not going to "overtake Germany by 2030", even though the new government has unlocked all those EU wealth transfers which were temporarily frozen.

    Replies: @songbird

    Last year, the Telegraph ran a story that predicted that Poland would be wealthier than the UK by 2030. That is probably what I was thinking of.

    Poland will be wealthier than Britain by 2030 – it’s time we took notice
    byu/Smooth_Warthog1760 ineurope

    I did not read it, and I don’t know how realistic it really is. I don’t think you can keep on extrapolating when TFR is so low.

    But it does seem likely to me that the relative quality of life for proles in Poland may be noteably better than either in the UK or Germany, within the next 10-20 years.

    Not just from growth but from decline and increasing interethnic conflict.

    Was just watching a news segment from DW and their business expert was a gay African, kind of like the new Doctor Who. He has also been billed as their diversity expert.

    • Replies: @AP
    @songbird

    This was PPP, not nominal. Poland is a lot cheaper, so money goes further there.

  1088. @AP
    @songbird


    Hungary seems to be the only country with any rhetoric against inflow – but it seems to be the rhetoric of a landlocked country, afraid of offending the West, by criticizing it much.
     
    Hungary has a large and growing Roma population. It is the poorest and most corrupt of the Visegrad countries, and largely owned/bought by Russia. Better to replace Hungary with Ukraine.

    At best, the Poles seem like boomercons obsessed with Russia – when they probably should be looking the other way.
     
    Russia is the one trying to flood Poland's neighborhood with non-Europeans and killing Poles' eastern cousins. Obsession is warranted under such circumstances.

    Replies: @songbird, @Mr. XYZ

    Better to replace Hungary with Ukraine.

    Or even with Romania, no? Duller than Hungary, but as wealthy per capita as Hungary is, and also considerably more populous. And Romania isn’t shilling for Putin like Hungary is.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Mr. XYZ

    Poles are aware of this. But Hungary inconveniently is in the middle. Ukraine links Poland to Romania, bypassing Hungary.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ

  1089. @AP
    @Dmitry


    In the non-Cold War mode, the conflict between Kiev and Moscow is like a typical postsoviet border conflict, similar to the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia
     
    Not completely. Ukraine borders NATO members Poland and Romania, and Poland is in the process of replacing Germany as the USA's closest European partner. So even when not seen as part of a new Cold War, Ukraine is more important for the USA/West than some random country would be.

    Rubio’s parents were born in Havana and he is part of the Republicans who believes the “Cold War never ended”.

    But Ted Cruz, even from similar background, is skeptical of supporting Kiev and doesn’t view it like part of a new Cold War.
     
    Ted Cruz does not have a similar background to Rubio. He is only half Cuban, and he grew up in Texas, far away from the Cuban diaspora in Miami.

    Other politicians who would have Cuban-American voters like Anna Paulina Luna, are even strongly criticizing aid for Ukraine.
     
    She is in Florida but from California, and is of mixed German and Mexican heritage, not Cuban. Her grandfather was a Wehrmacht soldier. Her district in suburban Tampa is not heavily Cuban.

    ::::::::::::::::

    Speaking of Trump/Vance, I can't disclose any details, other than to say that odds of the ticket supporting Ukraine if they win are probably higher than my previously stated 10%-15%. Maybe 30%. Still risky IMO, but better.

    Trump is certainly not colluding with Russia, but he is not above benefiting from any problems that Russia may cause for the current administration, so it will be helpful for Russia to consider him the lesser evil and for it to act accordingly.

    Replies: @QCIC, @Mr. XYZ

    Ukraine borders NATO members Poland and Romania,

    Also less reliable NATO members Hungary and Slovakia.

    Speaking of Trump/Vance, I can’t disclose any details, other than to say that odds of the ticket supporting Ukraine if they win are probably higher than my previously stated 10%-15%. Maybe 30%. Still risky IMO, but better.

    Trump is certainly not colluding with Russia, but he is not above benefiting from any problems that Russia may cause for the current administration, so it will be helpful for Russia to consider him the lesser evil and for it to act accordingly.

    Do you have some sort of deep US political connections, AP?

  1090. @songbird
    @Dmitry

    Last year, the Telegraph ran a story that predicted that Poland would be wealthier than the UK by 2030. That is probably what I was thinking of.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/13ayf1a/poland_will_be_wealthier_than_britain_by_2030_its/

    I did not read it, and I don't know how realistic it really is. I don't think you can keep on extrapolating when TFR is so low.

    But it does seem likely to me that the relative quality of life for proles in Poland may be noteably better than either in the UK or Germany, within the next 10-20 years.

    Not just from growth but from decline and increasing interethnic conflict.

    Was just watching a news segment from DW and their business expert was a gay African, kind of like the new Doctor Who. He has also been billed as their diversity expert.

    Replies: @AP

    This was PPP, not nominal. Poland is a lot cheaper, so money goes further there.

  1091. @Mr. XYZ
    @AP


    Better to replace Hungary with Ukraine.
     
    Or even with Romania, no? Duller than Hungary, but as wealthy per capita as Hungary is, and also considerably more populous. And Romania isn't shilling for Putin like Hungary is.

    Replies: @AP

    Poles are aware of this. But Hungary inconveniently is in the middle. Ukraine links Poland to Romania, bypassing Hungary.

    • Replies: @Mr. XYZ
    @AP

    Agreed that Ukraine is necessary to link Poland to Romania.

  1092. AP says:
    @songbird
    @AP


    It is the poorest and most corrupt of the Visegrad countries, and largely owned/bought by Russia
     
    Its per capita GDP seems very slightly under Poland's, and I understand Poland's is on track to overtake Germany's by 2030. (At least if the trends continue)

    I am not sure what you mean by "owned/bought." I think a vassal would be sending troops or supplies, whereas a nationalist or independent regime would probably be pursuing neutrality.

    Hungary has a large and growing Roma population.
     
    A coherent Roma policy seems to have been missing from Europe for some time. I think Henry VIII had the right one, heretic though he was.

    Obsession is warranted under such circumstances.
     
    Russia doesn't really have the ideology or demographics to conquer Eastern Europe. It would require a vast garrison, and native auxiliaries signed up for the same ideology.

    OTOH, there is no question that many EEs are quite happy to sign up for the liberalist/universalist ideology of the West.

    If I were leading Poland, I would be trying to prepare for the inevitable confrontation with Western Europe/US. (That is, unless they fully integrate and converge, which would be bad for Poles) I don't know if buying American weapons systems is a good longterm strategy.

    Russia is the one trying to flood Poland’s neighborhood with non-Europeans
     
    quite possible to question what is happening on the border with Belarus, but the consequences of it - a border fence and rhetoric against migrants - seem undeniably good.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @AP, @S1

    It [Hungary] is the poorest and most corrupt of the Visegrad countries, and largely owned/bought by Russia

    Its per capita GDP seems very slightly under Poland’s, and I understand Poland’s is on track to overtake Germany’s by 2030. (At least if the trends continue)

    Its per capita GDP nominal was once much higher than Poland’s (nearly double in the early 90s) but now it is lower than Poland’s , and this difference will only increase, as Hungary continues to sink relative to the other Visegrad countries.

    https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?locations=PL-HU-SK-CZ

    And despite being poorer than Poland, Hungary is also more expensive than Poland. So the difference in standard of living is rather high.

    I am not sure what you mean by “owned/bought.” I think a vassal would be sending troops or supplies, whereas a nationalist or independent regime would probably be pursuing neutrality.

    Orban is very corrupt and gets a lot of Russian money. He behaves accordingly.

    Obsession is warranted under such circumstances.

    Russia doesn’t really have the ideology or demographics to conquer Eastern Europe.

    It doesn’t now. If Ukraine were allowed to fall completely (extremely unlikely), this would change. And other than Poland and France, no one on the European has much of a military. Through Ukraine, Russia could deepen its control over Hungary and Slovakia through the local collaborators Orban and Fico.

    If I were leading Poland, I would be trying to prepare for the inevitable confrontation with Western Europe/US

    Russia is much worse, and the threat more imminent.

    I don’t know if buying American weapons systems is a good longterm strategy.

    Poland is buying a lot of Korean arms.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @AP


    Its per capita GDP nominal was once much higher than Poland’s (nearly double in the early 90s) but now it is lower than Poland’s , and this difference will only increase, as Hungary continues to sink relative to the other Visegrad countries.
     
    Estimates from the transition away from communism may not be the most reliable.

    But anyway, there are major advantages to being on the Baltic and sharing a border with Europe's biggest economy. Poland has seen a great rise in exports.

    GDP per capita isn't really a measure of the health of society as Ireland can tell you.

    Personally, I am convinced that "line go up" is one of the most evil ideologies that has ever existed.

    There seem to be a lot more non-Europeans in Poland. As far as I know, they are continuing to increase, and there isn't a state policy to try to avert becoming like Western Europe.


    Russia is much worse, and the threat more imminent.
     
    What is worse than ethnic replacement? The threat is already manifesting in the lower age cohorts of Western Europe and America. There are inevitable political consequences coming down the road, and I am not sure Poland isn't misprioritizing by buying a lot of big ticket military items (probably with kill switches in them) and not making any investments in trying to blunt the coming crisis, such as propaganda.

    Better to replace Hungary with Ukraine.

     

    In Ireland, a Ukrainian recently stole the mike at an anti-migrant protest and shouted "I'll kill you!!!" when Irish people tried to take it back. I am not sure they are the best partners for advancing mutually-beneficial, cooperative nationalism.

    And other than Poland and France, no one on the European has much of a military.
     
    the people who want Ukraine to join NATO seem to think that being part of a formal military alliance with America is qualitatively different than not being in such an alliance.

    Anyway, Poland has no nukes which is probably more important.


    Russia could deepen its control over Hungary and Slovakia through the local collaborators Orban and Fico.
     
    Everyone who is not gung-ho about providing support for the war seems to be a collaborator in your eyes.

    The idea of a collaborator is someone who goes against their own national interests to support some foreign party. I don't think you can make a convincing case that they have. But it would be very easy to do that with Germany.

    Replies: @AP, @Mr. Hack

    , @Mr. XYZ
    @AP


    Through Ukraine, Russia could deepen its control over Hungary and Slovakia through the local collaborators Orban and Fico.
     
    The biggest effect of this would be effectively splitting NATO into two separate parts, a northern NATO and a southern NATO, no?

    In such a scenario, there would be a huge de facto neutral zone consisting of Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, and Slovakia, with only France being the bridge that would connect both ends of NATO.

    BTW, off-topic, but in regards to Austria-Hungary, while I will admit that it was better than both Imperial Germany and Tsarist Russia, don't you think that the status quo for Eastern Europe, with the European Union, is better than Austria-Hungary was? It certainly allows them to be a part of a much larger bloc than Austria-Hungary ever was. With a surviving Austria-Hungary, the only comparable deal for them might have eventually been Mitteleuropa, which would have been considerably more German-dominated.

    (You could say that in real life, Eastern Europe is poorer than Western Europe is, but it is gradually catching up to Western Europe and at least the Soviet Freezer allowed Eastern Europe to avoid Western Europe's more destructive immigration policies and instead to design better immigration policies for itself.)

    In turn, doesn't this suggest that if there would have been some sort of powerful guarantor to help keep the peace in Europe after the end of World War I, such as a non-Bolshevik Russia and/or a non-isolationist US, similar to how the US, NATO, and the EU all help keep the peace in Europe right now, then the breakup of Austria-Hungary would have been a good thing rather than a bad thing for Eastern Europe, at least long-term, once the effects of the economic dislocation that were caused by Austria-Hungary's collapse and break-up would have been dealt with?
  1093. @songbird
    @AP


    It is the poorest and most corrupt of the Visegrad countries, and largely owned/bought by Russia
     
    Its per capita GDP seems very slightly under Poland's, and I understand Poland's is on track to overtake Germany's by 2030. (At least if the trends continue)

    I am not sure what you mean by "owned/bought." I think a vassal would be sending troops or supplies, whereas a nationalist or independent regime would probably be pursuing neutrality.

    Hungary has a large and growing Roma population.
     
    A coherent Roma policy seems to have been missing from Europe for some time. I think Henry VIII had the right one, heretic though he was.

    Obsession is warranted under such circumstances.
     
    Russia doesn't really have the ideology or demographics to conquer Eastern Europe. It would require a vast garrison, and native auxiliaries signed up for the same ideology.

    OTOH, there is no question that many EEs are quite happy to sign up for the liberalist/universalist ideology of the West.

    If I were leading Poland, I would be trying to prepare for the inevitable confrontation with Western Europe/US. (That is, unless they fully integrate and converge, which would be bad for Poles) I don't know if buying American weapons systems is a good longterm strategy.

    Russia is the one trying to flood Poland’s neighborhood with non-Europeans
     
    quite possible to question what is happening on the border with Belarus, but the consequences of it - a border fence and rhetoric against migrants - seem undeniably good.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @AP, @S1

    A coherent Roma policy seems to have been missing from Europe for some time. I think Henry VIII had the right one, heretic though he was.

    So, what exactly was Henry VIlI’s ‘Roma policy’?

    • Replies: @songbird
    @S1

    Rereading it, I guess there are a lot of loopholes.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptians_Act_1554

    But we have better tools today.

    Replies: @S1

  1094. @S1
    @songbird


    A coherent Roma policy seems to have been missing from Europe for some time. I think Henry VIII had the right one, heretic though he was.
     
    So, what exactly was Henry VIlI's 'Roma policy'?

    Replies: @songbird

    Rereading it, I guess there are a lot of loopholes.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptians_Act_1554

    But we have better tools today.

    • Replies: @S1
    @songbird

    Thank. I thought Henry VIII as a deterrent may have ordered the same thing done to the Gypsies what he had done to his wives. ;-)

  1095. @AP
    @songbird


    It [Hungary] is the poorest and most corrupt of the Visegrad countries, and largely owned/bought by Russia

    Its per capita GDP seems very slightly under Poland’s, and I understand Poland’s is on track to overtake Germany’s by 2030. (At least if the trends continue)
     
    Its per capita GDP nominal was once much higher than Poland's (nearly double in the early 90s) but now it is lower than Poland's , and this difference will only increase, as Hungary continues to sink relative to the other Visegrad countries.

    https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?locations=PL-HU-SK-CZ

    And despite being poorer than Poland, Hungary is also more expensive than Poland. So the difference in standard of living is rather high.

    I am not sure what you mean by “owned/bought.” I think a vassal would be sending troops or supplies, whereas a nationalist or independent regime would probably be pursuing neutrality.
     
    Orban is very corrupt and gets a lot of Russian money. He behaves accordingly.

    Obsession is warranted under such circumstances.

    Russia doesn’t really have the ideology or demographics to conquer Eastern Europe.
     
    It doesn't now. If Ukraine were allowed to fall completely (extremely unlikely), this would change. And other than Poland and France, no one on the European has much of a military. Through Ukraine, Russia could deepen its control over Hungary and Slovakia through the local collaborators Orban and Fico.

    If I were leading Poland, I would be trying to prepare for the inevitable confrontation with Western Europe/US
     
    Russia is much worse, and the threat more imminent.

    I don’t know if buying American weapons systems is a good longterm strategy.
     
    Poland is buying a lot of Korean arms.

    Replies: @songbird, @Mr. XYZ

    Its per capita GDP nominal was once much higher than Poland’s (nearly double in the early 90s) but now it is lower than Poland’s , and this difference will only increase, as Hungary continues to sink relative to the other Visegrad countries.

    Estimates from the transition away from communism may not be the most reliable.

    But anyway, there are major advantages to being on the Baltic and sharing a border with Europe’s biggest economy. Poland has seen a great rise in exports.

    GDP per capita isn’t really a measure of the health of society as Ireland can tell you.

    Personally, I am convinced that “line go up” is one of the most evil ideologies that has ever existed.

    There seem to be a lot more non-Europeans in Poland. As far as I know, they are continuing to increase, and there isn’t a state policy to try to avert becoming like Western Europe.

    Russia is much worse, and the threat more imminent.

    What is worse than ethnic replacement? The threat is already manifesting in the lower age cohorts of Western Europe and America. There are inevitable political consequences coming down the road, and I am not sure Poland isn’t misprioritizing by buying a lot of big ticket military items (probably with kill switches in them) and not making any investments in trying to blunt the coming crisis, such as propaganda.

    Better to replace Hungary with Ukraine.

    In Ireland, a Ukrainian recently stole the mike at an anti-migrant protest and shouted “I’ll kill you!!!” when Irish people tried to take it back. I am not sure they are the best partners for advancing mutually-beneficial, cooperative nationalism.

    And other than Poland and France, no one on the European has much of a military.

    the people who want Ukraine to join NATO seem to think that being part of a formal military alliance with America is qualitatively different than not being in such an alliance.

    Anyway, Poland has no nukes which is probably more important.

    Russia could deepen its control over Hungary and Slovakia through the local collaborators Orban and Fico.

    Everyone who is not gung-ho about providing support for the war seems to be a collaborator in your eyes.

    The idea of a collaborator is someone who goes against their own national interests to support some foreign party. I don’t think you can make a convincing case that they have. But it would be very easy to do that with Germany.

    • Replies: @AP
    @songbird


    GDP per capita isn’t really a measure of the health of society as Ireland can tell you.
     
    Hungary is also much more corrupt than Poland (CPI equal to Moldova's), and also has higher divorce rate.

    So Hungary is poorer, more corrupt, and has more social problems than Poland has.

    There seem to be a lot more non-Europeans in Poland.
     
    "A lot" is relative. Going from .3% to .6% non-Europeans (or something like that) may be doubling, but it is still only .6% and only an increase of .3%.

    https://notesfrompoland.com/2024/01/27/number-of-foreign-workers-in-poland-rises-6-to-1-13-million/

    Hungary, meanwhile, may be up to 8% Roma. Those folks can be much more trouble than the Vietnamese workers Poland attracts.

    Russia is much worse, and the threat more imminent.

    What is worse than ethnic replacement?
     
    What do you think Russia does? The areas it has occupied has gotten far more central Asians and Chechens in 2 years relative to population than Poland has gotten non-Europeans in 20 years in the EU.

    The difference is that you did it to yourselves while Eastern Europeans have it done to them by force by Russia. Then you use your own stupidity and greed as an excuse to allow Russia to do worse to those other countries.

    Better to replace Hungary with Ukraine.

    In Ireland, a Ukrainian recently stole the mike at an anti-migrant protest and shouted “I’ll kill you!!!” when Irish people tried to take it back. I am not sure they are the best partners for advancing mutually-beneficial, cooperative nationalism.
     
    Any Westerner thinking of allying with Russia is much worse than that.

    Russia could deepen its control over Hungary and Slovakia through the local collaborators Orban and Fico.

    Everyone who is not gung-ho about providing support for the war seems to be a collaborator in your eye
     
    Everyone who does not want Ukraine to have the means to defend itself against the Eurasian invader is a supporter of the war and a collaborator with Europe's invaders.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ, @songbird

    , @Mr. Hack
    @songbird


    In Ireland, a Ukrainian recently stole the mike at an anti-migrant protest and shouted “I’ll kill you!!!” when Irish people tried to take it back.
     
    I'm curious to know what exactly any Ukrainian refugees were guilty of to spur a couple of hundred of the locals to demonstrate in the first place? I'm guessing that about 90% of the refugees were comprised of women and children. Probably taking away highly coveted jobs from the locals? :-) Glad to say that my family and the two Irish families in my neighborhood in Mpls got along pretty well, I still have fond memories of the Irish kids that I hung around with and with whom I went to school.

    Were imported far right wing agitators really needed there? :-(

    Replies: @songbird

  1096. @Derer
    @John Johnson

    Believe it or not, but NATO is in constant internal squabbles creating uncertain future. Once the European vs US ongoing differences are solidified in favour of a need of independent European security umbrella the US and UK seat in Europe will vanish.

    Replies: @John Johnson

    Believe it or not, but NATO is in constant internal squabbles creating uncertain future.

    I really don’t care. I’m not sure why you and others address me as if I am a representative of NATO.

    Unlike you I recognize the sovereignty of Ukraine and their borders as recognized by the UN since 1991 and by Putin in 2008:

    Putin on video stating that Crimea is part of Ukraine
    https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-crimea-ukraine/26942862.html

    That is the normal position outside of Unz but that doesn’t mean I expect Ukraine to be in NATO.

    I am in fact on record stating that they don’t need to be in NATO. They have that right but from a security perspective it isn’t required. This type of half-assed 1930s land invasion won’t be worth the risk to a future Tsar. The sats and drone swarms will make it unviable. A future tsar would go for a third world target or simply accept his limitations in life and be content to rule over the world’s largest country. What I would like to see is an end to Russian state media dominance so the people are free to call out the bullshit of their leaders. They aren’t even allowed to do it on the internet as seen by the fact that pro-war Igor Girkin was literally hauled away in the night for criticizing the goblin king. He thinks the goblin is inept when it comes to war strategy and I completely agree. But unlike Girkin I am allowed to say that in a web post. I don’t support suppressing the thoughts and speech of anyone.

    “free speech for me but not for thee”

    Unspoken motto of Unz pro-Putin supporters

    • LOL: QCIC
  1097. @AP
    @songbird


    It [Hungary] is the poorest and most corrupt of the Visegrad countries, and largely owned/bought by Russia

    Its per capita GDP seems very slightly under Poland’s, and I understand Poland’s is on track to overtake Germany’s by 2030. (At least if the trends continue)
     
    Its per capita GDP nominal was once much higher than Poland's (nearly double in the early 90s) but now it is lower than Poland's , and this difference will only increase, as Hungary continues to sink relative to the other Visegrad countries.

    https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?locations=PL-HU-SK-CZ

    And despite being poorer than Poland, Hungary is also more expensive than Poland. So the difference in standard of living is rather high.

    I am not sure what you mean by “owned/bought.” I think a vassal would be sending troops or supplies, whereas a nationalist or independent regime would probably be pursuing neutrality.
     
    Orban is very corrupt and gets a lot of Russian money. He behaves accordingly.

    Obsession is warranted under such circumstances.

    Russia doesn’t really have the ideology or demographics to conquer Eastern Europe.
     
    It doesn't now. If Ukraine were allowed to fall completely (extremely unlikely), this would change. And other than Poland and France, no one on the European has much of a military. Through Ukraine, Russia could deepen its control over Hungary and Slovakia through the local collaborators Orban and Fico.

    If I were leading Poland, I would be trying to prepare for the inevitable confrontation with Western Europe/US
     
    Russia is much worse, and the threat more imminent.

    I don’t know if buying American weapons systems is a good longterm strategy.
     
    Poland is buying a lot of Korean arms.

    Replies: @songbird, @Mr. XYZ

    Through Ukraine, Russia could deepen its control over Hungary and Slovakia through the local collaborators Orban and Fico.

    The biggest effect of this would be effectively splitting NATO into two separate parts, a northern NATO and a southern NATO, no?

    In such a scenario, there would be a huge de facto neutral zone consisting of Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, and Slovakia, with only France being the bridge that would connect both ends of NATO.

    BTW, off-topic, but in regards to Austria-Hungary, while I will admit that it was better than both Imperial Germany and Tsarist Russia, don’t you think that the status quo for Eastern Europe, with the European Union, is better than Austria-Hungary was? It certainly allows them to be a part of a much larger bloc than Austria-Hungary ever was. With a surviving Austria-Hungary, the only comparable deal for them might have eventually been Mitteleuropa, which would have been considerably more German-dominated.

    (You could say that in real life, Eastern Europe is poorer than Western Europe is, but it is gradually catching up to Western Europe and at least the Soviet Freezer allowed Eastern Europe to avoid Western Europe’s more destructive immigration policies and instead to design better immigration policies for itself.)

    In turn, doesn’t this suggest that if there would have been some sort of powerful guarantor to help keep the peace in Europe after the end of World War I, such as a non-Bolshevik Russia and/or a non-isolationist US, similar to how the US, NATO, and the EU all help keep the peace in Europe right now, then the breakup of Austria-Hungary would have been a good thing rather than a bad thing for Eastern Europe, at least long-term, once the effects of the economic dislocation that were caused by Austria-Hungary’s collapse and break-up would have been dealt with?

  1098. @AP
    @Mr. XYZ

    Poles are aware of this. But Hungary inconveniently is in the middle. Ukraine links Poland to Romania, bypassing Hungary.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ

    Agreed that Ukraine is necessary to link Poland to Romania.

  1099. @songbird
    @AP


    Its per capita GDP nominal was once much higher than Poland’s (nearly double in the early 90s) but now it is lower than Poland’s , and this difference will only increase, as Hungary continues to sink relative to the other Visegrad countries.
     
    Estimates from the transition away from communism may not be the most reliable.

    But anyway, there are major advantages to being on the Baltic and sharing a border with Europe's biggest economy. Poland has seen a great rise in exports.

    GDP per capita isn't really a measure of the health of society as Ireland can tell you.

    Personally, I am convinced that "line go up" is one of the most evil ideologies that has ever existed.

    There seem to be a lot more non-Europeans in Poland. As far as I know, they are continuing to increase, and there isn't a state policy to try to avert becoming like Western Europe.


    Russia is much worse, and the threat more imminent.
     
    What is worse than ethnic replacement? The threat is already manifesting in the lower age cohorts of Western Europe and America. There are inevitable political consequences coming down the road, and I am not sure Poland isn't misprioritizing by buying a lot of big ticket military items (probably with kill switches in them) and not making any investments in trying to blunt the coming crisis, such as propaganda.

    Better to replace Hungary with Ukraine.

     

    In Ireland, a Ukrainian recently stole the mike at an anti-migrant protest and shouted "I'll kill you!!!" when Irish people tried to take it back. I am not sure they are the best partners for advancing mutually-beneficial, cooperative nationalism.

    And other than Poland and France, no one on the European has much of a military.
     
    the people who want Ukraine to join NATO seem to think that being part of a formal military alliance with America is qualitatively different than not being in such an alliance.

    Anyway, Poland has no nukes which is probably more important.


    Russia could deepen its control over Hungary and Slovakia through the local collaborators Orban and Fico.
     
    Everyone who is not gung-ho about providing support for the war seems to be a collaborator in your eyes.

    The idea of a collaborator is someone who goes against their own national interests to support some foreign party. I don't think you can make a convincing case that they have. But it would be very easy to do that with Germany.

    Replies: @AP, @Mr. Hack

    GDP per capita isn’t really a measure of the health of society as Ireland can tell you.

    Hungary is also much more corrupt than Poland (CPI equal to Moldova’s), and also has higher divorce rate.

    So Hungary is poorer, more corrupt, and has more social problems than Poland has.

    There seem to be a lot more non-Europeans in Poland.

    “A lot” is relative. Going from .3% to .6% non-Europeans (or something like that) may be doubling, but it is still only .6% and only an increase of .3%.

    https://notesfrompoland.com/2024/01/27/number-of-foreign-workers-in-poland-rises-6-to-1-13-million/

    Hungary, meanwhile, may be up to 8% Roma. Those folks can be much more trouble than the Vietnamese workers Poland attracts.

    Russia is much worse, and the threat more imminent.

    What is worse than ethnic replacement?

    What do you think Russia does? The areas it has occupied has gotten far more central Asians and Chechens in 2 years relative to population than Poland has gotten non-Europeans in 20 years in the EU.

    The difference is that you did it to yourselves while Eastern Europeans have it done to them by force by Russia. Then you use your own stupidity and greed as an excuse to allow Russia to do worse to those other countries.

    Better to replace Hungary with Ukraine.

    In Ireland, a Ukrainian recently stole the mike at an anti-migrant protest and shouted “I’ll kill you!!!” when Irish people tried to take it back. I am not sure they are the best partners for advancing mutually-beneficial, cooperative nationalism.

    Any Westerner thinking of allying with Russia is much worse than that.

    Russia could deepen its control over Hungary and Slovakia through the local collaborators Orban and Fico.

    Everyone who is not gung-ho about providing support for the war seems to be a collaborator in your eye

    Everyone who does not want Ukraine to have the means to defend itself against the Eurasian invader is a supporter of the war and a collaborator with Europe’s invaders.

    • Replies: @Mr. XYZ
    @AP


    and also has higher divorce rate.
     
    Is this necessary a problem? Unhappy marriages should often be ended, after all, unless perhaps sometimes there is a mutual decision to open up these marriages instead and make them non-monogamous.

    Everyone who does not want Ukraine to have the means to defend itself against the Eurasian invader is a supporter of the war and a collaborator with Europe’s invaders.

     

    Anatoly Karlin argued that it would be comparable to giving weapons to the Iraqi regime to continue resisting the US had the initial US invasion of Iraq failed, but I still think that there's a huge difference here:

    Russia is fighting to end democracy in Ukraine while the US was fighting to install democracy in Ukraine. Pre-war Iraq certainly wasn't a democracy by any means, while pre-war Ukraine was, albeit a flawed one. So, while having the US overthrow the Iraqi regime could on the net be said to be good for the Iraqis (even with the huge amount of civilian deaths that subsequently occurred, but even more so if these huge civilian deaths would not be reasonably foreseeable ahead of time), the same certainly couldn't be said of a hypothetical Russian overthrow of the Ukrainian regime.
    , @songbird
    @AP


    Hungary is also much more corrupt than Poland (CPI equal to Moldova’s), and also has higher divorce rate.
     
    CPI is a pretty questionable metric. It seems to ignore Western corruptions like open borders. Personally, I'd rather have to pay bribes or for there to be a lot of honest graft, than have my country ethnically transformed, while my own people are villainized.

    Those folks can be much more trouble than the Vietnamese workers Poland attracts.
     
    Have nothing personally against Vietnamese, but I don't think this is true.

    A semi-indigenous population of Roma, for all their dysfunction and threat of differential TFR are probably less corrosive to identity than several hundred thousand racial others with ties to densely-populated country of 100 million.

    Nobody likes Gypsies.

    But lots of people like Vietnamese. Their mere presence encourages the idea that other groups could be brought in and not be problematic.

    Everyone who does not want Ukraine to have the means to defend itself against the Eurasian invader is a supporter of the war and a collaborator with Europe’s invaders.
     
    Without neutral parties, it is difficult to achieve peace, IMO.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ, @Torna atrás

  1100. @songbird
    @AP


    Its per capita GDP nominal was once much higher than Poland’s (nearly double in the early 90s) but now it is lower than Poland’s , and this difference will only increase, as Hungary continues to sink relative to the other Visegrad countries.
     
    Estimates from the transition away from communism may not be the most reliable.

    But anyway, there are major advantages to being on the Baltic and sharing a border with Europe's biggest economy. Poland has seen a great rise in exports.

    GDP per capita isn't really a measure of the health of society as Ireland can tell you.

    Personally, I am convinced that "line go up" is one of the most evil ideologies that has ever existed.

    There seem to be a lot more non-Europeans in Poland. As far as I know, they are continuing to increase, and there isn't a state policy to try to avert becoming like Western Europe.


    Russia is much worse, and the threat more imminent.
     
    What is worse than ethnic replacement? The threat is already manifesting in the lower age cohorts of Western Europe and America. There are inevitable political consequences coming down the road, and I am not sure Poland isn't misprioritizing by buying a lot of big ticket military items (probably with kill switches in them) and not making any investments in trying to blunt the coming crisis, such as propaganda.

    Better to replace Hungary with Ukraine.

     

    In Ireland, a Ukrainian recently stole the mike at an anti-migrant protest and shouted "I'll kill you!!!" when Irish people tried to take it back. I am not sure they are the best partners for advancing mutually-beneficial, cooperative nationalism.

    And other than Poland and France, no one on the European has much of a military.
     
    the people who want Ukraine to join NATO seem to think that being part of a formal military alliance with America is qualitatively different than not being in such an alliance.

    Anyway, Poland has no nukes which is probably more important.


    Russia could deepen its control over Hungary and Slovakia through the local collaborators Orban and Fico.
     
    Everyone who is not gung-ho about providing support for the war seems to be a collaborator in your eyes.

    The idea of a collaborator is someone who goes against their own national interests to support some foreign party. I don't think you can make a convincing case that they have. But it would be very easy to do that with Germany.

    Replies: @AP, @Mr. Hack

    In Ireland, a Ukrainian recently stole the mike at an anti-migrant protest and shouted “I’ll kill you!!!” when Irish people tried to take it back.

    I’m curious to know what exactly any Ukrainian refugees were guilty of to spur a couple of hundred of the locals to demonstrate in the first place? I’m guessing that about 90% of the refugees were comprised of women and children. Probably taking away highly coveted jobs from the locals? 🙂 Glad to say that my family and the two Irish families in my neighborhood in Mpls got along pretty well, I still have fond memories of the Irish kids that I hung around with and with whom I went to school.

    Were imported far right wing agitators really needed there? 🙁

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Mr. Hack


    I’m guessing that about 90% of the refugees were comprised of women and children.
     
    There are migrant centers opening allover Ireland. That they are "for Ukrainians" seems to be a rhetorical trick. In point of fact, the border is open for anyone to exploit and the government is completely in on it, with practically zero seated opposition.

    Yes, there are lots of Ukrainians and lots of other people too. Quite a bit more of the second category, overall, I'd say. But no consequences - they won't be shipped back to Ukraine for being called "Ukrainians."

    I wonder if there was one single Ukrainian who stood with the Irish people? Am guessing probably not. Women are less concerned with such things anyway.

    Were imported far right wing agitators really needed there? 🙁
     
    Et tu, Hacke?

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  1101. @AP
    @songbird


    GDP per capita isn’t really a measure of the health of society as Ireland can tell you.
     
    Hungary is also much more corrupt than Poland (CPI equal to Moldova's), and also has higher divorce rate.

    So Hungary is poorer, more corrupt, and has more social problems than Poland has.

    There seem to be a lot more non-Europeans in Poland.
     
    "A lot" is relative. Going from .3% to .6% non-Europeans (or something like that) may be doubling, but it is still only .6% and only an increase of .3%.

    https://notesfrompoland.com/2024/01/27/number-of-foreign-workers-in-poland-rises-6-to-1-13-million/

    Hungary, meanwhile, may be up to 8% Roma. Those folks can be much more trouble than the Vietnamese workers Poland attracts.

    Russia is much worse, and the threat more imminent.

    What is worse than ethnic replacement?
     
    What do you think Russia does? The areas it has occupied has gotten far more central Asians and Chechens in 2 years relative to population than Poland has gotten non-Europeans in 20 years in the EU.

    The difference is that you did it to yourselves while Eastern Europeans have it done to them by force by Russia. Then you use your own stupidity and greed as an excuse to allow Russia to do worse to those other countries.

    Better to replace Hungary with Ukraine.

    In Ireland, a Ukrainian recently stole the mike at an anti-migrant protest and shouted “I’ll kill you!!!” when Irish people tried to take it back. I am not sure they are the best partners for advancing mutually-beneficial, cooperative nationalism.
     
    Any Westerner thinking of allying with Russia is much worse than that.

    Russia could deepen its control over Hungary and Slovakia through the local collaborators Orban and Fico.

    Everyone who is not gung-ho about providing support for the war seems to be a collaborator in your eye
     
    Everyone who does not want Ukraine to have the means to defend itself against the Eurasian invader is a supporter of the war and a collaborator with Europe's invaders.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ, @songbird

    and also has higher divorce rate.

    Is this necessary a problem? Unhappy marriages should often be ended, after all, unless perhaps sometimes there is a mutual decision to open up these marriages instead and make them non-monogamous.

    Everyone who does not want Ukraine to have the means to defend itself against the Eurasian invader is a supporter of the war and a collaborator with Europe’s invaders.

    Anatoly Karlin argued that it would be comparable to giving weapons to the Iraqi regime to continue resisting the US had the initial US invasion of Iraq failed, but I still think that there’s a huge difference here:

    Russia is fighting to end democracy in Ukraine while the US was fighting to install democracy in Ukraine. Pre-war Iraq certainly wasn’t a democracy by any means, while pre-war Ukraine was, albeit a flawed one. So, while having the US overthrow the Iraqi regime could on the net be said to be good for the Iraqis (even with the huge amount of civilian deaths that subsequently occurred, but even more so if these huge civilian deaths would not be reasonably foreseeable ahead of time), the same certainly couldn’t be said of a hypothetical Russian overthrow of the Ukrainian regime.

  1102. @Mr. Hack
    @songbird


    In Ireland, a Ukrainian recently stole the mike at an anti-migrant protest and shouted “I’ll kill you!!!” when Irish people tried to take it back.
     
    I'm curious to know what exactly any Ukrainian refugees were guilty of to spur a couple of hundred of the locals to demonstrate in the first place? I'm guessing that about 90% of the refugees were comprised of women and children. Probably taking away highly coveted jobs from the locals? :-) Glad to say that my family and the two Irish families in my neighborhood in Mpls got along pretty well, I still have fond memories of the Irish kids that I hung around with and with whom I went to school.

    Were imported far right wing agitators really needed there? :-(

    Replies: @songbird

    I’m guessing that about 90% of the refugees were comprised of women and children.

    There are migrant centers opening allover Ireland. That they are “for Ukrainians” seems to be a rhetorical trick. In point of fact, the border is open for anyone to exploit and the government is completely in on it, with practically zero seated opposition.

    Yes, there are lots of Ukrainians and lots of other people too. Quite a bit more of the second category, overall, I’d say. But no consequences – they won’t be shipped back to Ukraine for being called “Ukrainians.”

    I wonder if there was one single Ukrainian who stood with the Irish people? Am guessing probably not. Women are less concerned with such things anyway.

    Were imported far right wing agitators really needed there? 🙁

    Et tu, Hacke?

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @songbird


    But no consequences – they won’t be shipped back to Ukraine for being called “Ukrainians
     
    .”

    Why should they be?

    I wonder if there was one single Ukrainian who stood with the Irish people? Am guessing probably not.
     
    Again, why should they stand with a riled up mob, whose impetus may well be directed by outside forces? You've failed to establish that those opposed to immigrants or refugees represent the majority of native Irish opinion.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Coconuts

  1103. @Dmitry
    @AP

    Trump's position in relation to Ukraine, will depend a lot how much people believe the world is going to a new Cold War mode.

    In the non-Cold War mode, the conflict between Kiev and Moscow is like a typical postsoviet border conflict, similar to the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

    From the point of view of a postsoviet border conflict in a post-Cold War mode, the policy of J.D. Vance and Tucker Carlson, seems quite sensible for the American voters.

    But if Washington views Moscow as part of a "bloc" with Caracas, Havana, Tehran, Pyongyang, Beijing?

    Then support for Kiev would be prioritized in Washington. In the historical Cold War situation,* Washington was supporting South Africa, Pakistan, Republic of China, later even Taliban, even directly fighting in wars in Korea, Indochina.


    Bergum or Rubio it would have been a positive

     

    Rubio's parents were born in Havana and he is part of the Republicans who believes the "Cold War never ended".

    But Ted Cruz, even from similar background, is skeptical of supporting Kiev and doesn't view it like part of a new Cold War.

    Other politicians who would have Cuban-American voters like Anna Paulina Luna, are even strongly criticizing aid for Ukraine.

    So, for now, it seems a Republicans are very distant from believing Ukraine is part of a new Cold War, even though there are a few features becoming more similar to the Cold War even since 2022.

    -

    *Although in the 1950s still inconsistently, Washington still supports Egypt, against Israel, France and UK.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_proxy_wars#Cold_War_proxy_wars

    Replies: @AP, @Mr. XYZ

    In the non-Cold War mode, the conflict between Kiev and Moscow is like a typical postsoviet border conflict, similar to the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

    Ukraine has much larger human capital reserves to offer the West in comparison to Armenia. And Ukraine also provides a pro-Western civilizational model for the Eastern Slavs. Armenia doesn’t really provide a civilizational model to anyone else.

  1104. @songbird
    @S1

    Rereading it, I guess there are a lot of loopholes.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptians_Act_1554

    But we have better tools today.

    Replies: @S1

    Thank. I thought Henry VIII as a deterrent may have ordered the same thing done to the Gypsies what he had done to his wives. 😉

    • LOL: songbird
  1105. @songbird
    @Mr. Hack


    I’m guessing that about 90% of the refugees were comprised of women and children.
     
    There are migrant centers opening allover Ireland. That they are "for Ukrainians" seems to be a rhetorical trick. In point of fact, the border is open for anyone to exploit and the government is completely in on it, with practically zero seated opposition.

    Yes, there are lots of Ukrainians and lots of other people too. Quite a bit more of the second category, overall, I'd say. But no consequences - they won't be shipped back to Ukraine for being called "Ukrainians."

    I wonder if there was one single Ukrainian who stood with the Irish people? Am guessing probably not. Women are less concerned with such things anyway.

    Were imported far right wing agitators really needed there? 🙁
     
    Et tu, Hacke?

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    But no consequences – they won’t be shipped back to Ukraine for being called “Ukrainians

    .”

    Why should they be?

    I wonder if there was one single Ukrainian who stood with the Irish people? Am guessing probably not.

    Again, why should they stand with a riled up mob, whose impetus may well be directed by outside forces? You’ve failed to establish that those opposed to immigrants or refugees represent the majority of native Irish opinion.

    • Troll: songbird, German_reader, Coconuts, S1
    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Mr. Hack

    TROLL?

    songbird,

    My questions to you and points brought up are reasonable and not meant to to make fun of you or insult you. Your reply is most puzzling and unfair.

    Replies: @German_reader

    , @Coconuts
    @Mr. Hack


    Again, why should they stand with a riled up mob, whose impetus may well be directed by outside forces? You’ve failed to establish that those opposed to immigrants or refugees represent the majority of native Irish opinion.
     
    The problem in Western Europe is that there are systemic factors working to produce an outcome that it is plausibly hard to imagine people voting for if consulted directly, i.e. massive demographic and cultural change.

    Imo there are problems with the liberal democratic representative system in terms of short-termism, the amount of built in protections for minority groups and lastly interest groups with disproportionate power and access operating within the political system (a known issue with representative democracies). There is also the general climate of anti-racism and suspicion of nationalism that is more typical in Western Europe.

    Overtime these factors have arguably snowballed into the situation that exists now.

    I think a good policy would be to allow a referendum on immigration and demographic change at the same time as taking off a lot of the liberal/anti-racist legal restrictions on debate. One of the common problems is that the content of debate is restricted in the mass media and people have ended up fearing the consequences of openly expressing their opinion. No European countries have US style protections on free speech.

    Personally I tend to agree with the Aristotelian idea that one of the foundational reasons for the existence of political authority is to protect families and facilitate procreation, if a ruling system is failing to do that or acting in a way that actively discourages procreation there is doubt about whether it is a legitimate authority and protesting against it is probably justified even if it is being carried out by a minority.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @German_reader

  1106. @AP
    @songbird


    GDP per capita isn’t really a measure of the health of society as Ireland can tell you.
     
    Hungary is also much more corrupt than Poland (CPI equal to Moldova's), and also has higher divorce rate.

    So Hungary is poorer, more corrupt, and has more social problems than Poland has.

    There seem to be a lot more non-Europeans in Poland.
     
    "A lot" is relative. Going from .3% to .6% non-Europeans (or something like that) may be doubling, but it is still only .6% and only an increase of .3%.

    https://notesfrompoland.com/2024/01/27/number-of-foreign-workers-in-poland-rises-6-to-1-13-million/

    Hungary, meanwhile, may be up to 8% Roma. Those folks can be much more trouble than the Vietnamese workers Poland attracts.

    Russia is much worse, and the threat more imminent.

    What is worse than ethnic replacement?
     
    What do you think Russia does? The areas it has occupied has gotten far more central Asians and Chechens in 2 years relative to population than Poland has gotten non-Europeans in 20 years in the EU.

    The difference is that you did it to yourselves while Eastern Europeans have it done to them by force by Russia. Then you use your own stupidity and greed as an excuse to allow Russia to do worse to those other countries.

    Better to replace Hungary with Ukraine.

    In Ireland, a Ukrainian recently stole the mike at an anti-migrant protest and shouted “I’ll kill you!!!” when Irish people tried to take it back. I am not sure they are the best partners for advancing mutually-beneficial, cooperative nationalism.
     
    Any Westerner thinking of allying with Russia is much worse than that.

    Russia could deepen its control over Hungary and Slovakia through the local collaborators Orban and Fico.

    Everyone who is not gung-ho about providing support for the war seems to be a collaborator in your eye
     
    Everyone who does not want Ukraine to have the means to defend itself against the Eurasian invader is a supporter of the war and a collaborator with Europe's invaders.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ, @songbird

    Hungary is also much more corrupt than Poland (CPI equal to Moldova’s), and also has higher divorce rate.

    CPI is a pretty questionable metric. It seems to ignore Western corruptions like open borders. Personally, I’d rather have to pay bribes or for there to be a lot of honest graft, than have my country ethnically transformed, while my own people are villainized.

    Those folks can be much more trouble than the Vietnamese workers Poland attracts.

    Have nothing personally against Vietnamese, but I don’t think this is true.

    A semi-indigenous population of Roma, for all their dysfunction and threat of differential TFR are probably less corrosive to identity than several hundred thousand racial others with ties to densely-populated country of 100 million.

    Nobody likes Gypsies.

    But lots of people like Vietnamese. Their mere presence encourages the idea that other groups could be brought in and not be problematic.

    Everyone who does not want Ukraine to have the means to defend itself against the Eurasian invader is a supporter of the war and a collaborator with Europe’s invaders.

    Without neutral parties, it is difficult to achieve peace, IMO.

    • Replies: @Mr. XYZ
    @songbird


    But lots of people like Vietnamese. Their mere presence encourages the idea that other groups could be brought in and not be problematic.

     

    Because one can't tell the difference between (Muslims + Africans) and other groups?

    Without neutral parties, it is difficult to achieve peace, IMO.

     

    AP will probably say that to achieve peace, Ukraine needs to be given more and better weapons and intel. Am I right, AP?

    But honestly, we need to ensure that the war won't simply be resumed 5 or 10 or 20 years later. WWI ended, for instance, but arguably ended too quickly because many Germans didn't grasp the message that their country had been defeated. They wanted the WWI German defeat to be more comprehensive--more total. And Europe went to war again 20 years later.

    , @Torna atrás
    @songbird


    Have nothing personally against Vietnamese, but I don’t think this is true.

    A semi-indigenous population of Roma, for all their dysfunction and threat of differential TFR are probably less corrosive to identity than several hundred thousand racial others with ties to densely-populated country of 100 million.
     
    This Vietnamese youtuber is quite popular amongst the GAE audience.

    He went to help Ukrainian refugees in Europe, unfortunately this world is complex and not everyone is appreciative of your virtue signaling.

    I'm not a fan of his content, but did chuckle when this was uploaded.

    https://youtube.com/shorts/BRF3hi_q0-o?si=YbMR4B18lioTneGL

    But lots of people like Vietnamese. Their mere presence encourages the idea that other groups could be brought in and not be problematic.
     
    This is very true, that is why I've always been a huge fan of Linh Dinh.

    https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSjb9Jj_UhDcr7mO6pcreSZfvpfeEKsW72brA&s.jpg

    He managed to achieve what AK failed to do.



    Carl Jung — 'The world will ask who you are, and if you do not know, the world will tell you.'
  1107. @Mr. Hack
    @songbird


    But no consequences – they won’t be shipped back to Ukraine for being called “Ukrainians
     
    .”

    Why should they be?

    I wonder if there was one single Ukrainian who stood with the Irish people? Am guessing probably not.
     
    Again, why should they stand with a riled up mob, whose impetus may well be directed by outside forces? You've failed to establish that those opposed to immigrants or refugees represent the majority of native Irish opinion.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Coconuts

    TROLL?

    songbird,

    My questions to you and points brought up are reasonable and not meant to to make fun of you or insult you. Your reply is most puzzling and unfair.

    • Disagree: Torna atrás
    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Mr. Hack


    Your reply is most puzzling and unfair.
     
    If anything, songbird is far too nice and polite to you. You're a horrible example of someone who manages to combine LARP- like diaspora nationalism (including the most braindead nationalist mythology, like when you essentially claimed "General DeGaulle had nice things to say about the mass murderers of OUN/UPA, they can't have been that bad") with conformist pro-globalist and pro-immigration talking points when it comes to the West. "riled up mob, whose impetus may well be directed by outside forces", just get lost with bs like that. But it's no sense trying to explain any of that to you, since your world view stopped evolving sometime around 1980 and you don't care about anything besides your fantasy version of Ukraine anyway.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  1108. @songbird
    @AP


    Hungary is also much more corrupt than Poland (CPI equal to Moldova’s), and also has higher divorce rate.
     
    CPI is a pretty questionable metric. It seems to ignore Western corruptions like open borders. Personally, I'd rather have to pay bribes or for there to be a lot of honest graft, than have my country ethnically transformed, while my own people are villainized.

    Those folks can be much more trouble than the Vietnamese workers Poland attracts.
     
    Have nothing personally against Vietnamese, but I don't think this is true.

    A semi-indigenous population of Roma, for all their dysfunction and threat of differential TFR are probably less corrosive to identity than several hundred thousand racial others with ties to densely-populated country of 100 million.

    Nobody likes Gypsies.

    But lots of people like Vietnamese. Their mere presence encourages the idea that other groups could be brought in and not be problematic.

    Everyone who does not want Ukraine to have the means to defend itself against the Eurasian invader is a supporter of the war and a collaborator with Europe’s invaders.
     
    Without neutral parties, it is difficult to achieve peace, IMO.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ, @Torna atrás

    But lots of people like Vietnamese. Their mere presence encourages the idea that other groups could be brought in and not be problematic.

    Because one can’t tell the difference between (Muslims + Africans) and other groups?

    Without neutral parties, it is difficult to achieve peace, IMO.

    AP will probably say that to achieve peace, Ukraine needs to be given more and better weapons and intel. Am I right, AP?

    But honestly, we need to ensure that the war won’t simply be resumed 5 or 10 or 20 years later. WWI ended, for instance, but arguably ended too quickly because many Germans didn’t grasp the message that their country had been defeated. They wanted the WWI German defeat to be more comprehensive–more total. And Europe went to war again 20 years later.

  1109. @songbird
    @AP


    Hungary is also much more corrupt than Poland (CPI equal to Moldova’s), and also has higher divorce rate.
     
    CPI is a pretty questionable metric. It seems to ignore Western corruptions like open borders. Personally, I'd rather have to pay bribes or for there to be a lot of honest graft, than have my country ethnically transformed, while my own people are villainized.

    Those folks can be much more trouble than the Vietnamese workers Poland attracts.
     
    Have nothing personally against Vietnamese, but I don't think this is true.

    A semi-indigenous population of Roma, for all their dysfunction and threat of differential TFR are probably less corrosive to identity than several hundred thousand racial others with ties to densely-populated country of 100 million.

    Nobody likes Gypsies.

    But lots of people like Vietnamese. Their mere presence encourages the idea that other groups could be brought in and not be problematic.

    Everyone who does not want Ukraine to have the means to defend itself against the Eurasian invader is a supporter of the war and a collaborator with Europe’s invaders.
     
    Without neutral parties, it is difficult to achieve peace, IMO.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ, @Torna atrás

    Have nothing personally against Vietnamese, but I don’t think this is true.

    A semi-indigenous population of Roma, for all their dysfunction and threat of differential TFR are probably less corrosive to identity than several hundred thousand racial others with ties to densely-populated country of 100 million.

    This Vietnamese youtuber is quite popular amongst the GAE audience.

    He went to help Ukrainian refugees in Europe, unfortunately this world is complex and not everyone is appreciative of your virtue signaling.

    I’m not a fan of his content, but did chuckle when this was uploaded.

    https://youtube.com/shorts/BRF3hi_q0-o?si=YbMR4B18lioTneGL

    But lots of people like Vietnamese. Their mere presence encourages the idea that other groups could be brought in and not be problematic.

    This is very true, that is why I’ve always been a huge fan of Linh Dinh.

    He managed to achieve what AK failed to do.

    Carl Jung — ‘The world will ask who you are, and if you do not know, the world will tell you.’

  1110. German_reader says:
    @Mr. Hack
    @Mr. Hack

    TROLL?

    songbird,

    My questions to you and points brought up are reasonable and not meant to to make fun of you or insult you. Your reply is most puzzling and unfair.

    Replies: @German_reader

    Your reply is most puzzling and unfair.

    If anything, songbird is far too nice and polite to you. You’re a horrible example of someone who manages to combine LARP- like diaspora nationalism (including the most braindead nationalist mythology, like when you essentially claimed “General DeGaulle had nice things to say about the mass murderers of OUN/UPA, they can’t have been that bad”) with conformist pro-globalist and pro-immigration talking points when it comes to the West. “riled up mob, whose impetus may well be directed by outside forces”, just get lost with bs like that. But it’s no sense trying to explain any of that to you, since your world view stopped evolving sometime around 1980 and you don’t care about anything besides your fantasy version of Ukraine anyway.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @German_reader


    when you essentially claimed “General DeGaulle had nice things to say about the mass murderers of OUN/UPA
     
    ,

    Oh, so that's what really unhinged songbird to indicate an uncharitable response. I should have known. :-)

    with conformist pro-globalist and pro-immigration talking points when it comes to the West
     
    You may be right, and I'm going to allow you the same opportunity that I offered songbird and allow you to prove it, otherwise I'd suggest that you return to your musty basement and lose yourself in reading old manuscripts of ancient Rome:

    You’ve failed to establish that those opposed to immigrants or refugees represent the majority of native Irish opinion.
     
  1111. @German_reader
    @Mr. Hack


    Your reply is most puzzling and unfair.
     
    If anything, songbird is far too nice and polite to you. You're a horrible example of someone who manages to combine LARP- like diaspora nationalism (including the most braindead nationalist mythology, like when you essentially claimed "General DeGaulle had nice things to say about the mass murderers of OUN/UPA, they can't have been that bad") with conformist pro-globalist and pro-immigration talking points when it comes to the West. "riled up mob, whose impetus may well be directed by outside forces", just get lost with bs like that. But it's no sense trying to explain any of that to you, since your world view stopped evolving sometime around 1980 and you don't care about anything besides your fantasy version of Ukraine anyway.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    when you essentially claimed “General DeGaulle had nice things to say about the mass murderers of OUN/UPA

    ,

    Oh, so that’s what really unhinged songbird to indicate an uncharitable response. I should have known. 🙂

    with conformist pro-globalist and pro-immigration talking points when it comes to the West

    You may be right, and I’m going to allow you the same opportunity that I offered songbird and allow you to prove it, otherwise I’d suggest that you return to your musty basement and lose yourself in reading old manuscripts of ancient Rome:

    You’ve failed to establish that those opposed to immigrants or refugees represent the majority of native Irish opinion.

  1112. @Beckow
    @songbird


    ...Hungary seems to be the only country with any rhetoric against inflow – but it seems to be the rhetoric of a landlocked country, afraid of offending the West, by criticizing it much.
    ...
    At best, the Poles seem like boomercons obsessed with Russia – when they probably should be looking the other way
     
    Poles have always looked the wrong way - their leader (Pilsudski) had Hitler's picture in his office in the 1930's, he admired him so much...yes, the same Hitler who then proceeded to murder 3 million Poles. One can't understand the Poles, it is a mental condition.

    There is a lot of serious rhetoric in Czechia and Slovakia against migration across the political spectrum, but people don't think the libs believe in what they say publicly. Being openly pro-migrants (as leaders are in Western Europe) would end one's career.

    The socialist left is vocally against migrants. But some 'socialists' are very close to business and often try to import workers claiming 'labor shortages'. It has something to do with industrial unions. Will it last? Who knows - we worry most about the secondary migrants coming through Western Europe. But we hit them with the 'language' and they mostly prefer to leave...

    Replies: @Gerard1234

    But we hit them with the ‘language’ and they mostly prefer to leave…

    How is the language in Slovakia? By that I mean is English like it is in the Baltics where nearly everyone seems to be fluent in it, to the point its comparable to how the dutch were 25 years before with English?……….or is every Slovakian fluent in German and that is the main second language in the country instead of English?

    And how is Russian going there? Last time I went to Czechia the number of people willing to engage with me in Russian, and speak it competently was much higher than I was expecting.

    Though its helpful on holiday , I intrinsically despise the mass influence and now the ability of people to speak English across the world. When I went to France and Spain ( not including the Islands) 30 years before – people were as gloriously incapable and irritated at speaking English …..as they were at communicating in Russian. The French particularly irritated. Now if you go on holiday to France and Spain , then you can literally succeed without speaking a single word of French or Spanish and doing it all in English language.

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @Gerard1234


    How is the language in Slovakia?
     
    English only gets you so far, people speak it but to function you need to speak Slovak (it is a bit like France and French, not like the Dutch). German is common but spotty - in the southwest and tourist centers. Russian is close enough so people understand enough of it and so is Ukrainian.

    In Czechia it is similar, but has a lot more German and Prague tends to be on the assh..e side of the spectrum. The countryside is much better.

    The problem with today's English ubiquity is the low skill level of most people who insist on speaking English - the 500-word English. It oversimplifies communication and impoverishes their brains. We see it in many migrant communities - they are often verbal idiots, sad cases.
  1113. @Mr. Hack
    @songbird


    But no consequences – they won’t be shipped back to Ukraine for being called “Ukrainians
     
    .”

    Why should they be?

    I wonder if there was one single Ukrainian who stood with the Irish people? Am guessing probably not.
     
    Again, why should they stand with a riled up mob, whose impetus may well be directed by outside forces? You've failed to establish that those opposed to immigrants or refugees represent the majority of native Irish opinion.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Coconuts

    Again, why should they stand with a riled up mob, whose impetus may well be directed by outside forces? You’ve failed to establish that those opposed to immigrants or refugees represent the majority of native Irish opinion.

    The problem in Western Europe is that there are systemic factors working to produce an outcome that it is plausibly hard to imagine people voting for if consulted directly, i.e. massive demographic and cultural change.

    Imo there are problems with the liberal democratic representative system in terms of short-termism, the amount of built in protections for minority groups and lastly interest groups with disproportionate power and access operating within the political system (a known issue with representative democracies). There is also the general climate of anti-racism and suspicion of nationalism that is more typical in Western Europe.

    Overtime these factors have arguably snowballed into the situation that exists now.

    I think a good policy would be to allow a referendum on immigration and demographic change at the same time as taking off a lot of the liberal/anti-racist legal restrictions on debate. One of the common problems is that the content of debate is restricted in the mass media and people have ended up fearing the consequences of openly expressing their opinion. No European countries have US style protections on free speech.

    Personally I tend to agree with the Aristotelian idea that one of the foundational reasons for the existence of political authority is to protect families and facilitate procreation, if a ruling system is failing to do that or acting in a way that actively discourages procreation there is doubt about whether it is a legitimate authority and protesting against it is probably justified even if it is being carried out by a minority.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Coconuts

    Your answer provides some of your own interesting ideas, but doesn't help to move the dialogue forward, as it doesn't answer why Ukrainians need to join and support protesters opposed to immigration to Ireland (a strange proposition that songbird originally brought up?), nor does it provide any information showing that the majority of native Irish citizens are opposed to immigrants or even refugees.

    , @German_reader
    @Coconuts

    You're wasting your time writing such an elaborate and well-thought-out reply to Hack. He's a boomer whose mental horizons are limited to cheering on Cold War 2.0, like it's forever 1980 and the only thing that matters is defeating America's evil enemies abroad. Essentially he's fine with infinity immigration to Western countries, because his own parents were immigrants and he believes all that "muh democracy, muh nation of immigrants" bs, developments since the 1990s seem to have passed him by entirely (or he thinks they're not a problem, because his Mexican neighbours are nice people and supposedly representative). Also notice that "directed by outside forces" bit, hard to read that as anything else than a sympathetic reference to the idea that Russia is sponsoring the "far right" in an attempt to discredit "our democracy". Not much reason to doubt that Mr Hack and those like him will come down in favour of even greater repression against any nationalist sentiment in Western Europe (while downplaying the more dubious aspects of Ukrainian nationalism, both because of his own residual ethnic attachments and because of Ukraine's current geopolitical usefulness for US primacy).

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Coconuts

  1114. @Coconuts
    @Mr. Hack


    Again, why should they stand with a riled up mob, whose impetus may well be directed by outside forces? You’ve failed to establish that those opposed to immigrants or refugees represent the majority of native Irish opinion.
     
    The problem in Western Europe is that there are systemic factors working to produce an outcome that it is plausibly hard to imagine people voting for if consulted directly, i.e. massive demographic and cultural change.

    Imo there are problems with the liberal democratic representative system in terms of short-termism, the amount of built in protections for minority groups and lastly interest groups with disproportionate power and access operating within the political system (a known issue with representative democracies). There is also the general climate of anti-racism and suspicion of nationalism that is more typical in Western Europe.

    Overtime these factors have arguably snowballed into the situation that exists now.

    I think a good policy would be to allow a referendum on immigration and demographic change at the same time as taking off a lot of the liberal/anti-racist legal restrictions on debate. One of the common problems is that the content of debate is restricted in the mass media and people have ended up fearing the consequences of openly expressing their opinion. No European countries have US style protections on free speech.

    Personally I tend to agree with the Aristotelian idea that one of the foundational reasons for the existence of political authority is to protect families and facilitate procreation, if a ruling system is failing to do that or acting in a way that actively discourages procreation there is doubt about whether it is a legitimate authority and protesting against it is probably justified even if it is being carried out by a minority.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @German_reader

    Your answer provides some of your own interesting ideas, but doesn’t help to move the dialogue forward, as it doesn’t answer why Ukrainians need to join and support protesters opposed to immigration to Ireland (a strange proposition that songbird originally brought up?), nor does it provide any information showing that the majority of native Irish citizens are opposed to immigrants or even refugees.

  1115. @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @QCIC

    Philosophers deal with fundamental questions so there's no reason that they need have common sense. But modern academic philosophy is basically sterile because they can't get around political correctness, post-modernism, Critical Race Theory, etc.

    Math and computing are more skill sets, required for all hard sciences and engineering domain. Whereas biology and medicine is more knowledge sets that's domain-specific.

    But the two are converging because life and social sciences adopted computational approaches

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

    Steve Hsu covers this alot since he pivoted from particle physics to genetics. There's not much more groundbreaking discoveries to be made in the former, but alot in the latter, using quantitative methods from physics.

    You even see this in political science doctoral programs where there's alot more math and programming required.

    https://politicalscience.stanford.edu/graduate-program/doctoral-program/doctoral-program-requirements

    Replies: @QCIC, @Emil Nikola Richard, @Torna atrás

    In late May, Joshua Sherlock, an long term resident of Kyoto offering local tours, took a group of English tourists on an evening visit of Yasaka Shrine. They were confronted by a local middle-aged woman, accusing them of ringing the shrine’s bell too loudly and disrespecting a religious place.

    Fujino took the liberty of filming the occasion, and according to her video, Sherlock’s group apologized multiple times. But she still chased after them as they left. Sherlock repeatedly asked her to leave them alone in English and Japanese, to which Fujino accused Sherlock of discrimination because he spoke English to her. Finally, he answered in Japanese using the same tone she used on him. Claiming Sherlock had “rudely brushed her off,” Fujino then uploaded her videos to Twitter where they got a million views.

    What happened next was devastating. According to The Times (London), Sherlock’s family reported people telephoning his home to scream insults and demand he leave Japan. A removal van arrived to collect their belongings. Strangers began prowling their neighborhood, and somebody threatened to set their apartment on fire. His wife began having panic attacks and their daughter was taken out of school.

    Sherlock says that he no longer feels safe in Kyoto, and, suspending his tour services, fears that even stepping outside might result in him being “attacked by a lynch mob of extreme right-wing people.”

    • Replies: @QCIC
    @Torna atrás

    So was the event:

    - organic (rude, though well meaning tourists and genuine crazy lady),
    - organic and capitalized upon (all the above plus "let no crisis go to waste"),
    - completely fake?

    Cui bono?

  1116. German_reader says:
    @Coconuts
    @Mr. Hack


    Again, why should they stand with a riled up mob, whose impetus may well be directed by outside forces? You’ve failed to establish that those opposed to immigrants or refugees represent the majority of native Irish opinion.
     
    The problem in Western Europe is that there are systemic factors working to produce an outcome that it is plausibly hard to imagine people voting for if consulted directly, i.e. massive demographic and cultural change.

    Imo there are problems with the liberal democratic representative system in terms of short-termism, the amount of built in protections for minority groups and lastly interest groups with disproportionate power and access operating within the political system (a known issue with representative democracies). There is also the general climate of anti-racism and suspicion of nationalism that is more typical in Western Europe.

    Overtime these factors have arguably snowballed into the situation that exists now.

    I think a good policy would be to allow a referendum on immigration and demographic change at the same time as taking off a lot of the liberal/anti-racist legal restrictions on debate. One of the common problems is that the content of debate is restricted in the mass media and people have ended up fearing the consequences of openly expressing their opinion. No European countries have US style protections on free speech.

    Personally I tend to agree with the Aristotelian idea that one of the foundational reasons for the existence of political authority is to protect families and facilitate procreation, if a ruling system is failing to do that or acting in a way that actively discourages procreation there is doubt about whether it is a legitimate authority and protesting against it is probably justified even if it is being carried out by a minority.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @German_reader

    You’re wasting your time writing such an elaborate and well-thought-out reply to Hack. He’s a boomer whose mental horizons are limited to cheering on Cold War 2.0, like it’s forever 1980 and the only thing that matters is defeating America’s evil enemies abroad. Essentially he’s fine with infinity immigration to Western countries, because his own parents were immigrants and he believes all that “muh democracy, muh nation of immigrants” bs, developments since the 1990s seem to have passed him by entirely (or he thinks they’re not a problem, because his Mexican neighbours are nice people and supposedly representative). Also notice that “directed by outside forces” bit, hard to read that as anything else than a sympathetic reference to the idea that Russia is sponsoring the “far right” in an attempt to discredit “our democracy”. Not much reason to doubt that Mr Hack and those like him will come down in favour of even greater repression against any nationalist sentiment in Western Europe (while downplaying the more dubious aspects of Ukrainian nationalism, both because of his own residual ethnic attachments and because of Ukraine’s current geopolitical usefulness for US primacy).

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @German_reader

    You've got me pegged completely wrong. I'm all for stringent border controls including a careful review of whoever it is that is trying to cross any border without permission. My own parents were accepted to the US after they signed paperwork stipulating that they would not apply for any social benefit programs or financial support from the state after they were accepted (they needed to have a sponsor). I think that these sorts of stipulations and laws need to be brought back.

    Your crass and inaccurate portrayals of me would be on a par with any intimations on my part that:

    German_reader is opposed to the increase of any immigrants or refugees to Germany because he fears for the dilution of pure German blood within the general German public.

    BTW and for the record, is this what's really motivating you? :-)

    , @Coconuts
    @German_reader


    You’re wasting your time writing such an elaborate and well-thought-out reply to Hack. He’s a boomer whose mental horizons are limited to cheering on Cold War 2.0, like it’s forever 1980 and the only thing that matters is defeating America’s evil enemies abroad.
     
    It's a possibility, the generational difference in perspective on these issues can be pretty large.

    Also notice that “directed by outside forces” bit, hard to read that as anything else than a sympathetic reference to the idea that Russia is sponsoring the “far right” in an attempt to discredit “our democracy”.
     
    I noticed this in relation to the riots here in the UK, this sort of story was going around early on until things got too big for it to seem a likely explanation. The riots have got me thinking about the demographic change issue again, something seems to have changed in the public mood here.

    Not much reason to doubt that Mr Hack and those like him will come down in favour of even greater repression against any nationalist sentiment in Western Europe (while downplaying the more dubious aspects of Ukrainian nationalism, both because of his own residual ethnic attachments and because of Ukraine’s current geopolitical usefulness for US primacy).
     
    Now I am wondering how successful this will be longer term, looking at what is happening in Britain, the rise of the RN in France and the situation in other European countries. Demographic change seems to be built in and an inevitability, maybe this will lead to a situation of ongoing unresolved social tension between the different ethnic groups. This would be quite far from the realisation of the old multi-cultural ideal people hoped for in the past.

    Replies: @German_reader

  1117. @Dmitry
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Your comment attacked the venerable German Reader, so his response wasn't so unfair.

    German Reader is probably feeling grumpy anyway, as you can see how he has recently been bullying me and Bashibuzuk.

    But this dude is a professional historian, so we can also accept what a lowering it is for him to talk to us or distracting from his serious studies being recommended to watch our childish YouTube videos.


    known for having drip are totally “not weird” “pleasant”
     
    I think Kant was reported as just a civilized person, like his civilized views. Wagner was extroverted, theatrical and sociable. But, in the way, of a crazy bipolar, bullying artist. Schopenhauer was famous as a grumpy person.

    Replies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Kant was sociable but a lifelong celibate. He never travelled outside of his hometown and local shopkeepers set their watches to his daily routine. Nietzsche call him the “Chinese of Konigsberg” for being rigid and moralistic.

    Soviet era cities have all reverted to their pre-Communist names with Kaliningrad being the only exception. A reasonable gesture by Putin, who is fluent in German, would have been to rename it to Kantgrad. A city with one of the most distinguished histories in Europe.

    • Replies: @Torna atrás
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Japan is Tokyo and Osaka and their environs (about half the population and most of the economic output). The rest of the country is dying gerontocracy.

    Japan has not only the oldest population in the world, it is declining in absolute terms! There are towns in the provinces where you see no children, and few middle aged people! And Japanese women will not turn this around. They are materialistic, like Western women, and they hate the soft and boring yet chauvinistic Japanese men with a passion.

    Yes, they have great public transportation. It is so expensive a half hour subway ride with a transfer or two could set you back ten dollars. And remember, car ownership is beyond the reach of the middle class in the cities. The gas taxes, the car taxes, the parking fees, the highway tolls…

    Japan’s economic situation is indeed dire. See John Maudlin’s writings on this, government debt, low rates because most of the debt is domestically held by brainwashed docile citizens, who are now beginning to move from savers to retirees and therefore consumers of savings because of demographics.

    If your only understanding of Japan is from “Lost in Translation” and “Spirited Away”, please do not comment. Read “Lost Japan” and “Dogs and Demons” by Alex Kerr, for starters.

  1118. @German_reader
    @Coconuts

    You're wasting your time writing such an elaborate and well-thought-out reply to Hack. He's a boomer whose mental horizons are limited to cheering on Cold War 2.0, like it's forever 1980 and the only thing that matters is defeating America's evil enemies abroad. Essentially he's fine with infinity immigration to Western countries, because his own parents were immigrants and he believes all that "muh democracy, muh nation of immigrants" bs, developments since the 1990s seem to have passed him by entirely (or he thinks they're not a problem, because his Mexican neighbours are nice people and supposedly representative). Also notice that "directed by outside forces" bit, hard to read that as anything else than a sympathetic reference to the idea that Russia is sponsoring the "far right" in an attempt to discredit "our democracy". Not much reason to doubt that Mr Hack and those like him will come down in favour of even greater repression against any nationalist sentiment in Western Europe (while downplaying the more dubious aspects of Ukrainian nationalism, both because of his own residual ethnic attachments and because of Ukraine's current geopolitical usefulness for US primacy).

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Coconuts

    You’ve got me pegged completely wrong. I’m all for stringent border controls including a careful review of whoever it is that is trying to cross any border without permission. My own parents were accepted to the US after they signed paperwork stipulating that they would not apply for any social benefit programs or financial support from the state after they were accepted (they needed to have a sponsor). I think that these sorts of stipulations and laws need to be brought back.

    Your crass and inaccurate portrayals of me would be on a par with any intimations on my part that:

    German_reader is opposed to the increase of any immigrants or refugees to Germany because he fears for the dilution of pure German blood within the general German public.

    BTW and for the record, is this what’s really motivating you? 🙂

  1119. @Torna atrás
    @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    In late May, Joshua Sherlock, an long term resident of Kyoto offering local tours, took a group of English tourists on an evening visit of Yasaka Shrine. They were confronted by a local middle-aged woman, accusing them of ringing the shrine’s bell too loudly and disrespecting a religious place.

    Fujino took the liberty of filming the occasion, and according to her video, Sherlock’s group apologized multiple times. But she still chased after them as they left. Sherlock repeatedly asked her to leave them alone in English and Japanese, to which Fujino accused Sherlock of discrimination because he spoke English to her. Finally, he answered in Japanese using the same tone she used on him. Claiming Sherlock had “rudely brushed her off,” Fujino then uploaded her videos to Twitter where they got a million views.

    What happened next was devastating. According to The Times (London), Sherlock’s family reported people telephoning his home to scream insults and demand he leave Japan. A removal van arrived to collect their belongings. Strangers began prowling their neighborhood, and somebody threatened to set their apartment on fire. His wife began having panic attacks and their daughter was taken out of school.

    Sherlock says that he no longer feels safe in Kyoto, and, suspending his tour services, fears that even stepping outside might result in him being “attacked by a lynch mob of extreme right-wing people.”

    Replies: @QCIC

    So was the event:

    – organic (rude, though well meaning tourists and genuine crazy lady),
    – organic and capitalized upon (all the above plus “let no crisis go to waste”),
    – completely fake?

    Cui bono?

  1120. …nor does it provide any information showing that the majority of native Irish citizens are opposed to immigrants or even refugees.

    I think we know that the ruling parties in the Irish government (probably most of the governing elite), large parts of the Irish media, NGOs and multi-national companies are favourable to very favourable to immigration and refugees, if not they would not be present in the numbers they are within Ireland.

    But the opinion of the majority of the population seems less clear without the kind of referendum I was talking about.

    And over time, if the situation I mentioned develops where massive demographic and cultural change follows the immigration policy, I think there will be a question about whether it is plausible to believe that this was an outcome positively desired by the original pre-immigration population at earlier points in time.

    A situation has arisen in the past where elite and ruling groups enact policies in their own interests regardless of the interests of the rest of the population. Aristotle even discusses this in his book on politics in relation to the significance of foreigners being introduced into a pre-existing political community, this suggests it is probably a recurrent phenomena.

    …as it doesn’t answer why Ukrainians need to join and support protesters opposed to immigration to Ireland (a strange proposition that songbird originally brought up?)

    I thought Songbird was arguing something to the effect that he didn’t see a need to support Ukraine over Russia because because from the pov of the future of the ethnic Irish there is little to choose between them? Or possibly a stronger case that in pursuing their own ethnic interests Ukrainians are siding with factions that threaten the future of the ethnic Irish (as well as other Western European peoples) more than the Russians might?

    LatW seems to have had the best defence against this pov that I have seen so far in these discussions but she doesn’t seem to be around at the moment.

  1121. @German_reader
    @Coconuts

    You're wasting your time writing such an elaborate and well-thought-out reply to Hack. He's a boomer whose mental horizons are limited to cheering on Cold War 2.0, like it's forever 1980 and the only thing that matters is defeating America's evil enemies abroad. Essentially he's fine with infinity immigration to Western countries, because his own parents were immigrants and he believes all that "muh democracy, muh nation of immigrants" bs, developments since the 1990s seem to have passed him by entirely (or he thinks they're not a problem, because his Mexican neighbours are nice people and supposedly representative). Also notice that "directed by outside forces" bit, hard to read that as anything else than a sympathetic reference to the idea that Russia is sponsoring the "far right" in an attempt to discredit "our democracy". Not much reason to doubt that Mr Hack and those like him will come down in favour of even greater repression against any nationalist sentiment in Western Europe (while downplaying the more dubious aspects of Ukrainian nationalism, both because of his own residual ethnic attachments and because of Ukraine's current geopolitical usefulness for US primacy).

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Coconuts

    You’re wasting your time writing such an elaborate and well-thought-out reply to Hack. He’s a boomer whose mental horizons are limited to cheering on Cold War 2.0, like it’s forever 1980 and the only thing that matters is defeating America’s evil enemies abroad.

    It’s a possibility, the generational difference in perspective on these issues can be pretty large.

    Also notice that “directed by outside forces” bit, hard to read that as anything else than a sympathetic reference to the idea that Russia is sponsoring the “far right” in an attempt to discredit “our democracy”.

    I noticed this in relation to the riots here in the UK, this sort of story was going around early on until things got too big for it to seem a likely explanation. The riots have got me thinking about the demographic change issue again, something seems to have changed in the public mood here.

    Not much reason to doubt that Mr Hack and those like him will come down in favour of even greater repression against any nationalist sentiment in Western Europe (while downplaying the more dubious aspects of Ukrainian nationalism, both because of his own residual ethnic attachments and because of Ukraine’s current geopolitical usefulness for US primacy).

    Now I am wondering how successful this will be longer term, looking at what is happening in Britain, the rise of the RN in France and the situation in other European countries. Demographic change seems to be built in and an inevitability, maybe this will lead to a situation of ongoing unresolved social tension between the different ethnic groups. This would be quite far from the realisation of the old multi-cultural ideal people hoped for in the past.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Coconuts


    Demographic change seems to be built in and an inevitability, maybe this will lead to a situation of ongoing unresolved social tension between the different ethnic groups.
     
    Seems likely. It's not like countries like Lebanon are all that harmonious either, even if a big explosion of interethnic strife can be avoided, there's always at least some low-level tension that has to be "managed". But how exactly it will play out in institutional terms is hard to predict. The present strategy (at least in Britain and Germany) seems to be increasing repression against any openly stated ethnic sentiment of the native population, deconstruction of their identity and attempts to turn (certain) immigrant communities into privileged groups, e. g. by setting official goals for their representation in the civil service and the like. But who knows if that is viable long-term, it seems quite perverse and contrary to human nature (regarding the native pppulation) after all. In Malaysia it's the native Malays who get preferential treatment by law, so there's a wide spectrum how multiethnic and multicultural societies can be organized.
    Another issue that might be underestimated is that these demographic changes provide an opening for external powers, not least those from the Islamic world, to spread their influence in Europe. Western Europe is already in stark decline anyway and more a geopolitical object of others than an independent actor, and these trends are likely to aggravate that situation. But unlike Russian and Chinese machinations you can't even discuss that danger.

    Replies: @Coconuts

  1122. An alternative theory to explain Mr. Hack might be that he owns one of these big hotels in Western Ireland somewhere in the countryside, and he is looking to fill it up all year long, even when the tourists have gone home.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @songbird

    Leave it to you, songbird, to uncover my true motivations. My original "large hotel" was established in Kuala Lampur several years back, and is doing quite well (although it grieves me that its only garnered a 2* rating), so yes, I'm looking to expand:

    https://www.booking.com/hotel/my/manis.html?aid=2276390&label=msn-1ZumHQvnGkotjuoGsyFWnA-79989609430943%3Atikwd-79989757446279%3Aloc-190%3Aneo%3Amte%3Alp43501%3Adec%3AqsMars%20Hotel&sid=0458457fc3863ef5c44a4cd0e71a0a5d&dest_id=-2403010;dest_type=city;dist=0;group_adults=2;group_children=0;hapos=1;hpos=1;no_rooms=1;req_adults=2;req_children=0;room1=A%2CA;sb_price_type=total;sr_order=popularity;srepoch=1723294329;srpvid=02945a660a9702a0;type=total;ucfs=1&.

    As part of my plans to expand my holdings to Europe, Ireland does indeed loom high in my thoughts. I'm thinking of starting it all off with a big bang including an extravagant marketing campaign. Whaddya think, would something like this attract aging boomer that have more money than time on their hands?

    https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/sPgAAOSwddlkM5KD/s-l1600.webp

    Replies: @songbird

  1123. @songbird
    An alternative theory to explain Mr. Hack might be that he owns one of these big hotels in Western Ireland somewhere in the countryside, and he is looking to fill it up all year long, even when the tourists have gone home.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    Leave it to you, songbird, to uncover my true motivations. My original “large hotel” was established in Kuala Lampur several years back, and is doing quite well (although it grieves me that its only garnered a 2* rating), so yes, I’m looking to expand:

    https://www.booking.com/hotel/my/manis.html?aid=2276390&label=msn-1ZumHQvnGkotjuoGsyFWnA-79989609430943%3Atikwd-79989757446279%3Aloc-190%3Aneo%3Amte%3Alp43501%3Adec%3AqsMars%20Hotel&sid=0458457fc3863ef5c44a4cd0e71a0a5d&dest_id=-2403010;dest_type=city;dist=0;group_adults=2;group_children=0;hapos=1;hpos=1;no_rooms=1;req_adults=2;req_children=0;room1=A%2CA;sb_price_type=total;sr_order=popularity;srepoch=1723294329;srpvid=02945a660a9702a0;type=total;ucfs=1&#038;.

    As part of my plans to expand my holdings to Europe, Ireland does indeed loom high in my thoughts. I’m thinking of starting it all off with a big bang including an extravagant marketing campaign. Whaddya think, would something like this attract aging boomer that have more money than time on their hands?

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Mr. Hack


    would something like this attract aging boomer that have more money than time on their hands?
     
    Would be interested to see how profitable this venture will be.
    h/t to AK:
    https://vitalia.city/

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  1124. German_reader says:
    @Coconuts
    @German_reader


    You’re wasting your time writing such an elaborate and well-thought-out reply to Hack. He’s a boomer whose mental horizons are limited to cheering on Cold War 2.0, like it’s forever 1980 and the only thing that matters is defeating America’s evil enemies abroad.
     
    It's a possibility, the generational difference in perspective on these issues can be pretty large.

    Also notice that “directed by outside forces” bit, hard to read that as anything else than a sympathetic reference to the idea that Russia is sponsoring the “far right” in an attempt to discredit “our democracy”.
     
    I noticed this in relation to the riots here in the UK, this sort of story was going around early on until things got too big for it to seem a likely explanation. The riots have got me thinking about the demographic change issue again, something seems to have changed in the public mood here.

    Not much reason to doubt that Mr Hack and those like him will come down in favour of even greater repression against any nationalist sentiment in Western Europe (while downplaying the more dubious aspects of Ukrainian nationalism, both because of his own residual ethnic attachments and because of Ukraine’s current geopolitical usefulness for US primacy).
     
    Now I am wondering how successful this will be longer term, looking at what is happening in Britain, the rise of the RN in France and the situation in other European countries. Demographic change seems to be built in and an inevitability, maybe this will lead to a situation of ongoing unresolved social tension between the different ethnic groups. This would be quite far from the realisation of the old multi-cultural ideal people hoped for in the past.

    Replies: @German_reader

    Demographic change seems to be built in and an inevitability, maybe this will lead to a situation of ongoing unresolved social tension between the different ethnic groups.

    Seems likely. It’s not like countries like Lebanon are all that harmonious either, even if a big explosion of interethnic strife can be avoided, there’s always at least some low-level tension that has to be “managed”. But how exactly it will play out in institutional terms is hard to predict. The present strategy (at least in Britain and Germany) seems to be increasing repression against any openly stated ethnic sentiment of the native population, deconstruction of their identity and attempts to turn (certain) immigrant communities into privileged groups, e. g. by setting official goals for their representation in the civil service and the like. But who knows if that is viable long-term, it seems quite perverse and contrary to human nature (regarding the native pppulation) after all. In Malaysia it’s the native Malays who get preferential treatment by law, so there’s a wide spectrum how multiethnic and multicultural societies can be organized.
    Another issue that might be underestimated is that these demographic changes provide an opening for external powers, not least those from the Islamic world, to spread their influence in Europe. Western Europe is already in stark decline anyway and more a geopolitical object of others than an independent actor, and these trends are likely to aggravate that situation. But unlike Russian and Chinese machinations you can’t even discuss that danger.

    • Replies: @Coconuts
    @German_reader


    Another issue that might be underestimated is that these demographic changes provide an opening for external powers, not least those from the Islamic world, to spread their influence in Europe.
     
    I've wondered about this one for a while, it seems obvious but you don't hear it discussed. Things like Pakistani or Saudi/Gulf influence on UK politics is rarely addressed as such (though definitely present), in some ways the policy seems to be to create more opportunities for this to expand. At the same time given the size of the Muslim minorities that developing in some of the Western European countries it may be a possibility over time that countries like France even get drawn into the Islamic/North African sphere.

    I don't know if much thought is given to this. French commentators seem to be more aware of the potential scale of the issue, maybe because they are more aware of the specific cultural and historical background to secularism, and there are progressive sociologists like Emmanuel Todd who have studied the influence of things like 'family structure' on politics, a lot can be brought out via a topic like that (for example, the impact of kinship groups and cousin marriage on politics, things like that).


    The present strategy (at least in Britain and Germany) seems to be increasing repression against any openly stated ethnic sentiment of the native population, deconstruction of their identity and attempts to turn (certain) immigrant communities into privileged groups...
     
    It looks like they will try this in Britain, but the response to the riots and demonstrators already seems to be generating unexpected effects. I've noticed that since they started calling the demonstrators far-right, some normie working class people have started adopting it as a label for themselves. Apparently a lot of the protests did have an organic/informal origin as well, it may mean the attempt to close discussion down can only go so far (especially if more stabbings and sensational crimes take place involving immigrants, the economic situation doesn't change and so on ). It will be interesting to see how far it develops and how far they try to go.
  1125. It’s not just people’s imaginations that many of the so called liberal/progressive ruling elites and their hangers on have a disdain (if not outright contempt) towards their own. The below excerpt is taken from a May 11, 2006 debate on immigration into Ireland in the Sinead Eireann. [A little over halfway down the linked page.]

    https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/seanad/2006-05-11/4/

    Ms White

    Immigrants here work in restaurants, hotels, shops, IT customer support companies and on ibuilding sites. I find them an inspiration. Their work ethic, dedication and enthusiasm in customer service is outstanding. It may not be politically correct to say so but it is a major contrast to our workers. Last night on the way home I went into a beauty salon in Dundrum at around 8.45 p.m. An advertisement for a new service was displayed and I went in——

    Mr. Bradford

    There is no need for the Senator to go there.

    Ms White

    I thank Senator Bradford for the courtesy. I went into the salon and there were four Irish girls behind the counter who told me the salon was closed. I said I wanted to make an appointment but they said they had nothing available until next week. This was Wednesday night. We all know that foreign people working in shops, or the service industry generally, cannot wait to pack the bags properly and so on. They smile and talk to everyone.

    • Thanks: songbird
  1126. @Mr. Hack
    @songbird

    Leave it to you, songbird, to uncover my true motivations. My original "large hotel" was established in Kuala Lampur several years back, and is doing quite well (although it grieves me that its only garnered a 2* rating), so yes, I'm looking to expand:

    https://www.booking.com/hotel/my/manis.html?aid=2276390&label=msn-1ZumHQvnGkotjuoGsyFWnA-79989609430943%3Atikwd-79989757446279%3Aloc-190%3Aneo%3Amte%3Alp43501%3Adec%3AqsMars%20Hotel&sid=0458457fc3863ef5c44a4cd0e71a0a5d&dest_id=-2403010;dest_type=city;dist=0;group_adults=2;group_children=0;hapos=1;hpos=1;no_rooms=1;req_adults=2;req_children=0;room1=A%2CA;sb_price_type=total;sr_order=popularity;srepoch=1723294329;srpvid=02945a660a9702a0;type=total;ucfs=1&.

    As part of my plans to expand my holdings to Europe, Ireland does indeed loom high in my thoughts. I'm thinking of starting it all off with a big bang including an extravagant marketing campaign. Whaddya think, would something like this attract aging boomer that have more money than time on their hands?

    https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/sPgAAOSwddlkM5KD/s-l1600.webp

    Replies: @songbird

    would something like this attract aging boomer that have more money than time on their hands?

    Would be interested to see how profitable this venture will be.
    h/t to AK:
    https://vitalia.city/

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @songbird

    It looks nice to me, but I enjoy tropical climates next to the sea. I can't see you lounging around there though, with your aversion towards insects and all. I'm pretty sure that Karlin would fit right in. Could you leave me any links where Karlin has written about this place? Thanks for the info about this futuristic community being developed in Honduras!

    https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/65cd4ec2fb10eb639faf1b84/fec24765-b07a-4846-b4c3-4be5ac922efe/3.jpg?format=1500w

    How did it get its slavic sounding name?...Vitalia?

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @German_reader, @songbird

  1127. @Gerard1234
    @Beckow


    But we hit them with the ‘language’ and they mostly prefer to leave…
     
    How is the language in Slovakia? By that I mean is English like it is in the Baltics where nearly everyone seems to be fluent in it, to the point its comparable to how the dutch were 25 years before with English?..........or is every Slovakian fluent in German and that is the main second language in the country instead of English?

    And how is Russian going there? Last time I went to Czechia the number of people willing to engage with me in Russian, and speak it competently was much higher than I was expecting.

    Though its helpful on holiday , I intrinsically despise the mass influence and now the ability of people to speak English across the world. When I went to France and Spain ( not including the Islands) 30 years before - people were as gloriously incapable and irritated at speaking English .....as they were at communicating in Russian. The French particularly irritated. Now if you go on holiday to France and Spain , then you can literally succeed without speaking a single word of French or Spanish and doing it all in English language.

    Replies: @Beckow

    How is the language in Slovakia?

    English only gets you so far, people speak it but to function you need to speak Slovak (it is a bit like France and French, not like the Dutch). German is common but spotty – in the southwest and tourist centers. Russian is close enough so people understand enough of it and so is Ukrainian.

    In Czechia it is similar, but has a lot more German and Prague tends to be on the assh..e side of the spectrum. The countryside is much better.

    The problem with today’s English ubiquity is the low skill level of most people who insist on speaking English – the 500-word English. It oversimplifies communication and impoverishes their brains. We see it in many migrant communities – they are often verbal idiots, sad cases.

  1128. @Bashibuzuk
    @Mr. XYZ

    Aren’t you the OP who posted the link to Rational Wiki thrice in a discussion of about only a dozen comments?

    BTW, some of the comments were pretty funny.

    🙂

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mr. XYZ

    Yeah, it might have been thrice. But I subsequently quickly deleted all of these links as a courtesy to Anatoly Karlin and thus I didn’t count their exact number.

  1129. @songbird
    @Mr. Hack


    would something like this attract aging boomer that have more money than time on their hands?
     
    Would be interested to see how profitable this venture will be.
    h/t to AK:
    https://vitalia.city/

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    It looks nice to me, but I enjoy tropical climates next to the sea. I can’t see you lounging around there though, with your aversion towards insects and all. I’m pretty sure that Karlin would fit right in. Could you leave me any links where Karlin has written about this place? Thanks for the info about this futuristic community being developed in Honduras!

    How did it get its slavic sounding name?…Vitalia?

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Mr. Hack

    Could that be Karlin locking his arms in the center with one of his new playpals (I hope that XYZ doesn't see this photo, for it might set him off)? Could this be the site where the first annual "Russian Community" get together finally takes place? I remember Barbarossa kindly inviting the participants of this blog to his country home to take part in such an event...it never took place and just fizzled out?...

    https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/65cd4ec2fb10eb639faf1b84/f9f1ccb5-b6a5-42e8-bcfb-9e55ae77cb53/1.jpg?format=1500w

    , @German_reader
    @Mr. Hack

    Karlin wrote about it here:
    https://ehc.zone/p/open-thread-1
    But I don't think you'd be welcome, it's probably only for rich assholes who are into cults like Effective Altruism and their hangers-on like Karlin.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    , @songbird
    @Mr. Hack


    I enjoy tropical climates next to the sea.
     
    thought you had only endorsed some special microclimate on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica? The Nicoya pennisula, was it?

    I can’t see you lounging around there though, with your aversion towards insects and all.

     

    Would be more accurate to say I prefer something closer to my genetic, ancestral climate. Rationally fear the heat and sun - as those things are alien to it, and cause problems for me. And have acquired a somewhat rare knowledge (and thus fear) of tropical diseases.

    Have no specific love for biting flies, but would say I am probably less bug averse than the average person.

    How did it get its slavic sounding name?…Vitalia
     
    does sound a bit like that etherium guy, but I would suppose it was Latin.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mr. Hack

  1130. @Mr. Hack
    @songbird

    It looks nice to me, but I enjoy tropical climates next to the sea. I can't see you lounging around there though, with your aversion towards insects and all. I'm pretty sure that Karlin would fit right in. Could you leave me any links where Karlin has written about this place? Thanks for the info about this futuristic community being developed in Honduras!

    https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/65cd4ec2fb10eb639faf1b84/fec24765-b07a-4846-b4c3-4be5ac922efe/3.jpg?format=1500w

    How did it get its slavic sounding name?...Vitalia?

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @German_reader, @songbird

    Could that be Karlin locking his arms in the center with one of his new playpals (I hope that XYZ doesn’t see this photo, for it might set him off)? Could this be the site where the first annual “Russian Community” get together finally takes place? I remember Barbarossa kindly inviting the participants of this blog to his country home to take part in such an event…it never took place and just fizzled out?…

  1131. @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @Dmitry

    Kant was sociable but a lifelong celibate. He never travelled outside of his hometown and local shopkeepers set their watches to his daily routine. Nietzsche call him the "Chinese of Konigsberg" for being rigid and moralistic.

    Soviet era cities have all reverted to their pre-Communist names with Kaliningrad being the only exception. A reasonable gesture by Putin, who is fluent in German, would have been to rename it to Kantgrad. A city with one of the most distinguished histories in Europe.

    Replies: @Torna atrás

    Japan is Tokyo and Osaka and their environs (about half the population and most of the economic output). The rest of the country is dying gerontocracy.

    Japan has not only the oldest population in the world, it is declining in absolute terms! There are towns in the provinces where you see no children, and few middle aged people! And Japanese women will not turn this around. They are materialistic, like Western women, and they hate the soft and boring yet chauvinistic Japanese men with a passion.

    Yes, they have great public transportation. It is so expensive a half hour subway ride with a transfer or two could set you back ten dollars. And remember, car ownership is beyond the reach of the middle class in the cities. The gas taxes, the car taxes, the parking fees, the highway tolls…

    Japan’s economic situation is indeed dire. See John Maudlin’s writings on this, government debt, low rates because most of the debt is domestically held by brainwashed docile citizens, who are now beginning to move from savers to retirees and therefore consumers of savings because of demographics.

    If your only understanding of Japan is from “Lost in Translation” and “Spirited Away”, please do not comment. Read “Lost Japan” and “Dogs and Demons” by Alex Kerr, for starters.

  1132. @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @YetAnotherAnon

    There was a diplomatic incident here in 1940 off the shores of Japan when Royal Navy boarded a Japanese civilian ship carrying German citizens.


    The British had received intelligence that crewmen from the scuttled German liner Columbus who had escaped to the United States had taken passage on Asama Maru in an attempt to return to Germany.[11]

    In direct violation of Japan's neutrality and international law, the British Government had authorised the Commander-in-Chief, China Station to board, provided that the coast of Japan was not within sight.[12]

    She initially refused to stop, but was forced to do so after Liverpool fired a blank round. An armed boarding party removed 21 of the ship's passengers, all former officers or technicians of Standard Oil tankers, claiming that they were German military personnel[13]
     


    Despite the upsurge in anti-British sentiment in Japan, the government of Prime Minister Mitsumasa Yonai took a more conciliatory approach.

    In return for promising not to offer passage to certain categories of military age Germans in the future, the British agreed to return some of the detained passengers.[14]
     

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Asama_Maru_(1928)

    When Chinese did something similar to Brits in 1856 that was what triggered the Second Opium War.

    But yes, Yōsuke Matsuoka who signed Tripartite Pact, even grew partly in US and should have known better. He thought because Germans were kicking ass in Europe, they were going to be "Too Big to Fail."


    Japanese Navy was well aware of its relative inferiority
     
    IJN was not cost effective, and lost to the Americans even in incidences when they had local advantage.

    IJA in fact beat up a modernized German-trained Chinese army 1937-38. The West just wasn't paying attention.

    Replies: @Torna atrás

    Japan has never reconciled its WWII history with its neighbors, in fact Japan has been pushing an alternative history in which it is Japan that is the victim. Inside the Yasukuni shrine complex there is a building dedicated in explaining that it is the US that has tricked innocent Japan into bombing pearl harbor and other tales.

    Note that the Yasukuni shrine is not some obscure temple, it is in the heart of Tokyo and successive Japanese prime ministers and their cabinet members paid tribute there in official capacities every year. As years pass this narrative has been gaining acceptance among the gullible Japanese public. Japan has a huge grudge against the US and Russia but it dares not to speak out aloud. This is why the US should keep Japan on a short leash.

  1133. @Mr. Hack
    @songbird

    It looks nice to me, but I enjoy tropical climates next to the sea. I can't see you lounging around there though, with your aversion towards insects and all. I'm pretty sure that Karlin would fit right in. Could you leave me any links where Karlin has written about this place? Thanks for the info about this futuristic community being developed in Honduras!

    https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/65cd4ec2fb10eb639faf1b84/fec24765-b07a-4846-b4c3-4be5ac922efe/3.jpg?format=1500w

    How did it get its slavic sounding name?...Vitalia?

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @German_reader, @songbird

    Karlin wrote about it here:
    https://ehc.zone/p/open-thread-1
    But I don’t think you’d be welcome, it’s probably only for rich assholes who are into cults like Effective Altruism and their hangers-on like Karlin.

    • Thanks: Mr. Hack
    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @German_reader

    He doesn't really offer a lot of information (I only skimmed the article and will reread it more closely when I have some time). He complains about the hot weather and the need for air conditioning.

    I seem to have passed the website's parole requirements and felt no undue recriminations for not being a "rich asshole". I wasn't asked if I belonged to any strange cults and shudder to think about how they would treat me if they found out that I'm a secret Bandera groupie. They'd probably ban me for life :-(

    I'm glad to see that our little hissy fit seems to have subsided. :-)

    Replies: @German_reader

  1134. @German_reader
    @Mr. Hack

    Karlin wrote about it here:
    https://ehc.zone/p/open-thread-1
    But I don't think you'd be welcome, it's probably only for rich assholes who are into cults like Effective Altruism and their hangers-on like Karlin.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    He doesn’t really offer a lot of information (I only skimmed the article and will reread it more closely when I have some time). He complains about the hot weather and the need for air conditioning.

    I seem to have passed the website’s parole requirements and felt no undue recriminations for not being a “rich asshole”. I wasn’t asked if I belonged to any strange cults and shudder to think about how they would treat me if they found out that I’m a secret Bandera groupie. They’d probably ban me for life 🙁

    I’m glad to see that our little hissy fit seems to have subsided. 🙂

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Mr. Hack


    I’m glad to see that our little hissy fit seems to have subsided.
     
    I don't wish ill on you and still feel sorry for your relatives in Ukraine. I'm just irritated by some of your views which seem somewhat obtuse to me. But you may have noticed I've been pretty irritable in general lately, so the issue may be more with me than anything else.

    He doesn’t really offer a lot of information
     
    It seems to be part of this whole "network state" idea which I find totally bizarre. Essentially a resort for transhumanist weirdos who think they're trail-blazers for the next stage of humanity's development. tbh it feels quite self-centred and narcissistic to me. I don't know if Karlin has written about it in greater depth somewhere else, since I don't really read his content anymore (spent about half an hour browsing his new website, that was enough to sate my curiosity).

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  1135. German_reader says:
    @Mr. Hack
    @German_reader

    He doesn't really offer a lot of information (I only skimmed the article and will reread it more closely when I have some time). He complains about the hot weather and the need for air conditioning.

    I seem to have passed the website's parole requirements and felt no undue recriminations for not being a "rich asshole". I wasn't asked if I belonged to any strange cults and shudder to think about how they would treat me if they found out that I'm a secret Bandera groupie. They'd probably ban me for life :-(

    I'm glad to see that our little hissy fit seems to have subsided. :-)

    Replies: @German_reader

    I’m glad to see that our little hissy fit seems to have subsided.

    I don’t wish ill on you and still feel sorry for your relatives in Ukraine. I’m just irritated by some of your views which seem somewhat obtuse to me. But you may have noticed I’ve been pretty irritable in general lately, so the issue may be more with me than anything else.

    He doesn’t really offer a lot of information

    It seems to be part of this whole “network state” idea which I find totally bizarre. Essentially a resort for transhumanist weirdos who think they’re trail-blazers for the next stage of humanity’s development. tbh it feels quite self-centred and narcissistic to me. I don’t know if Karlin has written about it in greater depth somewhere else, since I don’t really read his content anymore (spent about half an hour browsing his new website, that was enough to sate my curiosity).

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @German_reader


    Essentially a resort for transhumanist weirdos who think they’re trail-blazers for the next stage of humanity’s development. tbh it feels quite self-centred and narcissistic to me.
     
    I tend to agree. Anybody who would spend 100's of thousands of dollars to have himself cryogenically frozen in order to be reanimated 100 years into the future, to be fixed and improved to be able to live another 1,000 years or more has to be narcissistic. If I had that kind of money to spend, I'd just take my chances in meeting my maker in the next world, and leave the money to the less fortunate in a myriad of different ways. BTW, have these transhumanists considered the energy costs involved in keeping their warehouses of corpses frozen for a long period of time in a tropical climate? Better to build these complexes closer to the North Pole. :-)

    Replies: @John Johnson

  1136. @German_reader
    @Mr. Hack


    I’m glad to see that our little hissy fit seems to have subsided.
     
    I don't wish ill on you and still feel sorry for your relatives in Ukraine. I'm just irritated by some of your views which seem somewhat obtuse to me. But you may have noticed I've been pretty irritable in general lately, so the issue may be more with me than anything else.

    He doesn’t really offer a lot of information
     
    It seems to be part of this whole "network state" idea which I find totally bizarre. Essentially a resort for transhumanist weirdos who think they're trail-blazers for the next stage of humanity's development. tbh it feels quite self-centred and narcissistic to me. I don't know if Karlin has written about it in greater depth somewhere else, since I don't really read his content anymore (spent about half an hour browsing his new website, that was enough to sate my curiosity).

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    Essentially a resort for transhumanist weirdos who think they’re trail-blazers for the next stage of humanity’s development. tbh it feels quite self-centred and narcissistic to me.

    I tend to agree. Anybody who would spend 100’s of thousands of dollars to have himself cryogenically frozen in order to be reanimated 100 years into the future, to be fixed and improved to be able to live another 1,000 years or more has to be narcissistic. If I had that kind of money to spend, I’d just take my chances in meeting my maker in the next world, and leave the money to the less fortunate in a myriad of different ways. BTW, have these transhumanists considered the energy costs involved in keeping their warehouses of corpses frozen for a long period of time in a tropical climate? Better to build these complexes closer to the North Pole. 🙂

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @Mr. Hack

    I tend to agree. Anybody who would spend 100’s of thousands of dollars to have himself cryogenically frozen in order to be reanimated 100 years into the future, to be fixed and improved to be able to live another 1,000 years or more has to be narcissistic.

    It's a scam.

    There is no way those places can maintain low temperatures in a prolonged blackout. Few realize how much energy it takes to even maintain below freezing temperatures in commercial freezers. The big box stores will normally dump all their food instead of trying to keep it frozen via generators.

    They probably have some "act of God" liability release that was buried in the contract.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  1137. @Mr. Hack
    @songbird

    It looks nice to me, but I enjoy tropical climates next to the sea. I can't see you lounging around there though, with your aversion towards insects and all. I'm pretty sure that Karlin would fit right in. Could you leave me any links where Karlin has written about this place? Thanks for the info about this futuristic community being developed in Honduras!

    https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/65cd4ec2fb10eb639faf1b84/fec24765-b07a-4846-b4c3-4be5ac922efe/3.jpg?format=1500w

    How did it get its slavic sounding name?...Vitalia?

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @German_reader, @songbird

    I enjoy tropical climates next to the sea.

    thought you had only endorsed some special microclimate on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica? The Nicoya pennisula, was it?

    I can’t see you lounging around there though, with your aversion towards insects and all.

    Would be more accurate to say I prefer something closer to my genetic, ancestral climate. Rationally fear the heat and sun – as those things are alien to it, and cause problems for me. And have acquired a somewhat rare knowledge (and thus fear) of tropical diseases.

    Have no specific love for biting flies, but would say I am probably less bug averse than the average person.

    How did it get its slavic sounding name?…Vitalia

    does sound a bit like that etherium guy, but I would suppose it was Latin.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    Utopia communities have been done and shown to be a bad idea unless you are the top dog alpha male in which case they are a great idea for a short time.

    Fourier, Oneida, The Farm, and so forth. There is an extensive literature.

    One thing the Bitcoin Bros are not big on is history. The history of money innovators is one of probable violent death.

    Replies: @songbird

    , @Mr. Hack
    @songbird


    thought you had only endorsed some special microclimate on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica? The Nicoya peninsula, was it?
     
    Almost, except that it was the Osa peninsula, further south close to Panama and larger and much wetter and tropical too. The beaches in the area are quite nice, and the water...well lets just say that I'm not exaggerating when I state that you could bathe a baby in the water in January! Quite unlike the cold water to be found in August on southern California beaches. The beaches further north around Jaco are a mecca for tourists and surfers, I've only passed on my way to the Osa. I do recall that you have issues with the heat and sun. Don't forget that Costa Rica is not Arizona and is often cloudy and rainy with a mean average temperature of around 80 fahrenheit.

    I've stayed in a community just north of San Jose that was mountainous, and quite lush with coniferous forests and clear meandering fresh water streams (trout fishing included). The economy is a dairy based one with beautiful large cows that produce the milk to fuel several cheese and yogurt concerns, the lush green mountainous grass grows quite green and quite high. It's not all just coffee and pineapple plantations.
  1138. @German_reader
    @Coconuts


    Demographic change seems to be built in and an inevitability, maybe this will lead to a situation of ongoing unresolved social tension between the different ethnic groups.
     
    Seems likely. It's not like countries like Lebanon are all that harmonious either, even if a big explosion of interethnic strife can be avoided, there's always at least some low-level tension that has to be "managed". But how exactly it will play out in institutional terms is hard to predict. The present strategy (at least in Britain and Germany) seems to be increasing repression against any openly stated ethnic sentiment of the native population, deconstruction of their identity and attempts to turn (certain) immigrant communities into privileged groups, e. g. by setting official goals for their representation in the civil service and the like. But who knows if that is viable long-term, it seems quite perverse and contrary to human nature (regarding the native pppulation) after all. In Malaysia it's the native Malays who get preferential treatment by law, so there's a wide spectrum how multiethnic and multicultural societies can be organized.
    Another issue that might be underestimated is that these demographic changes provide an opening for external powers, not least those from the Islamic world, to spread their influence in Europe. Western Europe is already in stark decline anyway and more a geopolitical object of others than an independent actor, and these trends are likely to aggravate that situation. But unlike Russian and Chinese machinations you can't even discuss that danger.

    Replies: @Coconuts

    Another issue that might be underestimated is that these demographic changes provide an opening for external powers, not least those from the Islamic world, to spread their influence in Europe.

    I’ve wondered about this one for a while, it seems obvious but you don’t hear it discussed. Things like Pakistani or Saudi/Gulf influence on UK politics is rarely addressed as such (though definitely present), in some ways the policy seems to be to create more opportunities for this to expand. At the same time given the size of the Muslim minorities that developing in some of the Western European countries it may be a possibility over time that countries like France even get drawn into the Islamic/North African sphere.

    I don’t know if much thought is given to this. French commentators seem to be more aware of the potential scale of the issue, maybe because they are more aware of the specific cultural and historical background to secularism, and there are progressive sociologists like Emmanuel Todd who have studied the influence of things like ‘family structure’ on politics, a lot can be brought out via a topic like that (for example, the impact of kinship groups and cousin marriage on politics, things like that).

    The present strategy (at least in Britain and Germany) seems to be increasing repression against any openly stated ethnic sentiment of the native population, deconstruction of their identity and attempts to turn (certain) immigrant communities into privileged groups…

    It looks like they will try this in Britain, but the response to the riots and demonstrators already seems to be generating unexpected effects. I’ve noticed that since they started calling the demonstrators far-right, some normie working class people have started adopting it as a label for themselves. Apparently a lot of the protests did have an organic/informal origin as well, it may mean the attempt to close discussion down can only go so far (especially if more stabbings and sensational crimes take place involving immigrants, the economic situation doesn’t change and so on ). It will be interesting to see how far it develops and how far they try to go.

  1139. @songbird
    @Mr. Hack


    I enjoy tropical climates next to the sea.
     
    thought you had only endorsed some special microclimate on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica? The Nicoya pennisula, was it?

    I can’t see you lounging around there though, with your aversion towards insects and all.

     

    Would be more accurate to say I prefer something closer to my genetic, ancestral climate. Rationally fear the heat and sun - as those things are alien to it, and cause problems for me. And have acquired a somewhat rare knowledge (and thus fear) of tropical diseases.

    Have no specific love for biting flies, but would say I am probably less bug averse than the average person.

    How did it get its slavic sounding name?…Vitalia
     
    does sound a bit like that etherium guy, but I would suppose it was Latin.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mr. Hack

    Utopia communities have been done and shown to be a bad idea unless you are the top dog alpha male in which case they are a great idea for a short time.

    Fourier, Oneida, The Farm, and so forth. There is an extensive literature.

    One thing the Bitcoin Bros are not big on is history. The history of money innovators is one of probable violent death.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    Utopia communities have been done and shown to be a bad idea unless
     
    If it is a cult, IMO,it's more like an international, jetset one, which should introduce its own dynamic different from Jim Jones, etc. I think it would tend more to stock bubbles and pyramid schemes than coolaid.

    Believe they see it more as a special economic zone. There may even be some qualified validity in the idea - such places were pretty transformative for China. And there are a lot of regulations in the EU and US.

    One thing the Bitcoin Bros are not big on is history. The history of money innovators is one of probable violent death.
     
    I think it is a major question how tolerant the powers-that-be will feel towards such places. Mostly, it depends on how useful they are.

    If it is just regulatory framework, they might have a chance. Too many ideas about personal freedom, or being an escape hatch, and they will probably be targeted.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  1140. @songbird
    @Mr. Hack


    I enjoy tropical climates next to the sea.
     
    thought you had only endorsed some special microclimate on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica? The Nicoya pennisula, was it?

    I can’t see you lounging around there though, with your aversion towards insects and all.

     

    Would be more accurate to say I prefer something closer to my genetic, ancestral climate. Rationally fear the heat and sun - as those things are alien to it, and cause problems for me. And have acquired a somewhat rare knowledge (and thus fear) of tropical diseases.

    Have no specific love for biting flies, but would say I am probably less bug averse than the average person.

    How did it get its slavic sounding name?…Vitalia
     
    does sound a bit like that etherium guy, but I would suppose it was Latin.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mr. Hack

    thought you had only endorsed some special microclimate on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica? The Nicoya peninsula, was it?

    Almost, except that it was the Osa peninsula, further south close to Panama and larger and much wetter and tropical too. The beaches in the area are quite nice, and the water…well lets just say that I’m not exaggerating when I state that you could bathe a baby in the water in January! Quite unlike the cold water to be found in August on southern California beaches. The beaches further north around Jaco are a mecca for tourists and surfers, I’ve only passed on my way to the Osa. I do recall that you have issues with the heat and sun. Don’t forget that Costa Rica is not Arizona and is often cloudy and rainy with a mean average temperature of around 80 fahrenheit.

    I’ve stayed in a community just north of San Jose that was mountainous, and quite lush with coniferous forests and clear meandering fresh water streams (trout fishing included). The economy is a dairy based one with beautiful large cows that produce the milk to fuel several cheese and yogurt concerns, the lush green mountainous grass grows quite green and quite high. It’s not all just coffee and pineapple plantations.

    • Thanks: Torna atrás, songbird
  1141. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    Utopia communities have been done and shown to be a bad idea unless you are the top dog alpha male in which case they are a great idea for a short time.

    Fourier, Oneida, The Farm, and so forth. There is an extensive literature.

    One thing the Bitcoin Bros are not big on is history. The history of money innovators is one of probable violent death.

    Replies: @songbird

    Utopia communities have been done and shown to be a bad idea unless

    If it is a cult, IMO,it’s more like an international, jetset one, which should introduce its own dynamic different from Jim Jones, etc. I think it would tend more to stock bubbles and pyramid schemes than coolaid.

    Believe they see it more as a special economic zone. There may even be some qualified validity in the idea – such places were pretty transformative for China. And there are a lot of regulations in the EU and US.

    One thing the Bitcoin Bros are not big on is history. The history of money innovators is one of probable violent death.

    I think it is a major question how tolerant the powers-that-be will feel towards such places. Mostly, it depends on how useful they are.

    If it is just regulatory framework, they might have a chance. Too many ideas about personal freedom, or being an escape hatch, and they will probably be targeted.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @songbird

    Jetsetters and no doubt later day hippies and new age adepts too. I think that one of the original of these sorts of communities is based right here in the Phoenix area, it's called Arcosanti. I've never visited this place, but have driven by on the main artery going north I-17. Once I retire, I'll have more time and will give the place a visit. I think that Karlin would feel right at home there:

    https://media.architecturaldigest.com/photos/5a30259dcf0d6c31eb82eb9c/16:9/w_1600,c_limit/045.327204ip-m-J300.jpg


    Every year, tens of thousands of people visit Arcosanti in person, and you could be one of them. When you step onto our mesa, you are entering an ongoing experiment in architecture, ecology, art, and community that you won’t find anywhere else in the world.
     
    https://www.arcosanti.org/

    Replies: @songbird

  1142. @songbird
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    Utopia communities have been done and shown to be a bad idea unless
     
    If it is a cult, IMO,it's more like an international, jetset one, which should introduce its own dynamic different from Jim Jones, etc. I think it would tend more to stock bubbles and pyramid schemes than coolaid.

    Believe they see it more as a special economic zone. There may even be some qualified validity in the idea - such places were pretty transformative for China. And there are a lot of regulations in the EU and US.

    One thing the Bitcoin Bros are not big on is history. The history of money innovators is one of probable violent death.
     
    I think it is a major question how tolerant the powers-that-be will feel towards such places. Mostly, it depends on how useful they are.

    If it is just regulatory framework, they might have a chance. Too many ideas about personal freedom, or being an escape hatch, and they will probably be targeted.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    Jetsetters and no doubt later day hippies and new age adepts too. I think that one of the original of these sorts of communities is based right here in the Phoenix area, it’s called Arcosanti. I’ve never visited this place, but have driven by on the main artery going north I-17. Once I retire, I’ll have more time and will give the place a visit. I think that Karlin would feel right at home there:

    Every year, tens of thousands of people visit Arcosanti in person, and you could be one of them. When you step onto our mesa, you are entering an ongoing experiment in architecture, ecology, art, and community that you won’t find anywhere else in the world.

    https://www.arcosanti.org/

    • Thanks: songbird
    • Replies: @songbird
    @Mr. Hack

    Never realized that an actual architect had coined the term 'arcology.'. Or tried to build some vision of his idea - though puzzingly quite a small-scale one that seems a mismatch to it.

    Have a slight curiosity to read what he wrote about the idea, even though it seems like he was psychopathic.

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

    Replies: @QCIC

  1143. @Mr. Hack
    @German_reader


    Essentially a resort for transhumanist weirdos who think they’re trail-blazers for the next stage of humanity’s development. tbh it feels quite self-centred and narcissistic to me.
     
    I tend to agree. Anybody who would spend 100's of thousands of dollars to have himself cryogenically frozen in order to be reanimated 100 years into the future, to be fixed and improved to be able to live another 1,000 years or more has to be narcissistic. If I had that kind of money to spend, I'd just take my chances in meeting my maker in the next world, and leave the money to the less fortunate in a myriad of different ways. BTW, have these transhumanists considered the energy costs involved in keeping their warehouses of corpses frozen for a long period of time in a tropical climate? Better to build these complexes closer to the North Pole. :-)

    Replies: @John Johnson

    I tend to agree. Anybody who would spend 100’s of thousands of dollars to have himself cryogenically frozen in order to be reanimated 100 years into the future, to be fixed and improved to be able to live another 1,000 years or more has to be narcissistic.

    It’s a scam.

    There is no way those places can maintain low temperatures in a prolonged blackout. Few realize how much energy it takes to even maintain below freezing temperatures in commercial freezers. The big box stores will normally dump all their food instead of trying to keep it frozen via generators.

    They probably have some “act of God” liability release that was buried in the contract.

    • Agree: Mr. Hack
    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @John Johnson

    There's a very large vault built in Svarbald close to the North Pole, where scarce and important seeds are housed, just in case some lunatic like Putler does ever use nuclear weapons. I remember reading about this place and it came to mind when I suggested that perhaps cryogenic storage units would better be served by being serviced in such an area, instead of in Honduras, close to the equator.

    http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/56ddda92dd089565238b4652-1200/its-more-than-400-feet-above-sea-level-and-theres-little-moisture-in-the-air.jpg


    Since the vault is buried in permafrost, it could stay frozen at least 200 years, even if the power were to go out...The vault has seeds from more than 60 institutions and almost every country in the world, collected from the more than 1,500 global gene banks that store samples of seeds from all the crops native to the region they're in.
     
    https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-what-it-s-like-inside-the-doomsday-vault-that-stores-every-known-crop-on-the-planet
  1144. @John Johnson
    @Mr. Hack

    I tend to agree. Anybody who would spend 100’s of thousands of dollars to have himself cryogenically frozen in order to be reanimated 100 years into the future, to be fixed and improved to be able to live another 1,000 years or more has to be narcissistic.

    It's a scam.

    There is no way those places can maintain low temperatures in a prolonged blackout. Few realize how much energy it takes to even maintain below freezing temperatures in commercial freezers. The big box stores will normally dump all their food instead of trying to keep it frozen via generators.

    They probably have some "act of God" liability release that was buried in the contract.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    There’s a very large vault built in Svarbald close to the North Pole, where scarce and important seeds are housed, just in case some lunatic like Putler does ever use nuclear weapons. I remember reading about this place and it came to mind when I suggested that perhaps cryogenic storage units would better be served by being serviced in such an area, instead of in Honduras, close to the equator.

    Since the vault is buried in permafrost, it could stay frozen at least 200 years, even if the power were to go out…The vault has seeds from more than 60 institutions and almost every country in the world, collected from the more than 1,500 global gene banks that store samples of seeds from all the crops native to the region they’re in.

    https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-what-it-s-like-inside-the-doomsday-vault-that-stores-every-known-crop-on-the-planet

  1145. @Mr. Hack
    @songbird

    Jetsetters and no doubt later day hippies and new age adepts too. I think that one of the original of these sorts of communities is based right here in the Phoenix area, it's called Arcosanti. I've never visited this place, but have driven by on the main artery going north I-17. Once I retire, I'll have more time and will give the place a visit. I think that Karlin would feel right at home there:

    https://media.architecturaldigest.com/photos/5a30259dcf0d6c31eb82eb9c/16:9/w_1600,c_limit/045.327204ip-m-J300.jpg


    Every year, tens of thousands of people visit Arcosanti in person, and you could be one of them. When you step onto our mesa, you are entering an ongoing experiment in architecture, ecology, art, and community that you won’t find anywhere else in the world.
     
    https://www.arcosanti.org/

    Replies: @songbird

    Never realized that an actual architect had coined the term ‘arcology.’. Or tried to build some vision of his idea – though puzzingly quite a small-scale one that seems a mismatch to it.

    Have a slight curiosity to read what he wrote about the idea, even though it seems like he was psychopathic.

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

    • Thanks: Mr. Hack
    • Replies: @QCIC
    @songbird

    Any Unz discussion of Arcologies deserves a Judge Dredd clip. Considering the movies, it's pretty slim pickings: : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOSsrcKHujM

  1146. It appears that Soleri was a close associate of Frank Lloyd Wright, the great American architect. When in Arizona, be sure to visit Taliesin West dedicated to the maestros’ work and memory:

    • Thanks: songbird
  1147. @songbird
    @Mr. Hack

    Never realized that an actual architect had coined the term 'arcology.'. Or tried to build some vision of his idea - though puzzingly quite a small-scale one that seems a mismatch to it.

    Have a slight curiosity to read what he wrote about the idea, even though it seems like he was psychopathic.

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

    Replies: @QCIC

    Any Unz discussion of Arcologies deserves a Judge Dredd clip. Considering the movies, it’s pretty slim pickings:

    [MORE]
    :

    • Thanks: songbird
  1148. @Mr. XYZ
    @Mikel


    the results changed quite dramatically as the counting process advanced
     
    Weren't Democrats much more likely to vote absentee in 2020 because Trump discouraged the GOP from voting absentee that year?

    BTW, the 2020 election results in Georgia closely mirrored what they were in the Georgia January 2021 US Senate elections.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ

    The red mirage was predicted ahead of time at least a couple of months before the election, BTW:

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/01/politics/2020-election-count-red-mirage-blue-shift/index.html

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