From the New York Times on this morning's fighting in Kiev, Ukraine:
The fighting shattered a truce declared just hours earlier. Just after dawn, young men in ski masks opened a breach in their barricade near a stage on the square, ran across a hundred yards of smoldering debris and surged toward riot police officers who were firing at them with shotguns.
Protesters pushed back the police in a continual racket of gunshots and by around 10 a.m. had recaptured the entire square, but at the cost of creating a scene of mayhem.
The fighting left bodies lined up on a sidewalk, makeshift clinics crammed with the bloody wounded, and sirens and gunfire ringing through the center of the city.
The demonstrators captured at least several dozen policemen, whom they marched, dazed and bloodied, toward the center of the square through a crowd of men who heckled and shoved them.
“There will be many dead today,” Anatoly Volk, 38, one of the demonstrators, said. He was watching stretchers carry dead and wounded men down a stairway slick with mud near the Hotel Ukraina.
Mr. Volk said the protesters had decided to try to retake the square because they believed a truce announced around midnight was a ruse. The young men in ski masks who led the push, he said, believed it was a stalling maneuver by President Viktor F. Yanukovych, to buy time to deploy troops in the capital after discovering that the civilian police had insufficient forces to clear the square.
“A truce means real negotiations,” Mr. Volk said. “They are just delaying to make time to bring in more troops. They didn’t have the forces to storm us last night. So we are expanding our barricades to where they were before. We are restoring what we had.”
This will sound absurdly pollyannaish, but there's a small hope that these apocalyptic Mad Max scenes from Kiev's theater of insane bravery might lay the foundations for a true Ukrainian nation to emerge years hence.
Europe between Warsaw and Moscow lagged behind Western Europe in developing effective nationalism, and continues to pay the price for its nationalism-deficit in looting by elites. Yet, nationalism, although it has its pragmatic benefits, isn't wholly based on rational cost-benefit analysis. It needs legends and heroes.
And there are no shortage of volunteers in Kiev.
In the best case scenario, both sides somehow emerge ennobled, as the roots of world-beating American unity from 1898-1963 were laid at Gettysburg.
In the worst case scenario ...
In the worst case scenario ...
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197 comments:
OT, but this just has to be a surreptitious shout-out to Steve from the NYT:
Income Gap Is Greater in Big Cities, Study Finds
By ANNIE LOWREY 14 minutes ago
Income inequality was found to be sharply higher in vibrant cities like New York than in ones like Columbus, Ohio.
This may well turn out to the the bloodiest incident in Europe since the Kosovo fracas fifteen years ago.
It's a long time coming. Ukraine has been a question mark for a long time. Now the question will be settled, one way or the other. My bet is on Russia taking them back, along with Belarus and Moldova.
But Steve, one thing th astern euros are not short of and never have been short of nationalism nd national legends. Think of the causes of world war 1 Gavrilo Prinip, Czech nationalism etc. What of Stefan Bandera and the western Ukrainian insurgency that continued right up to the 1970s yes some people were fanatic enough to fight Stalin and his death camps right in to the 50s and continue into the 60s and 70s modern times. What is being exposed in Ukraine is payback for the 1930s soviet famine from the deeply patriotic uniate catholic west against russian speaking industrial workers from east Ukraine. It's nationalism, patriotism and ethnic conflict on steriods.
Reminded me of this article:
http://alternative-right.blogspot.jp/2014/01/the-great-hate-of-kiev.html#more
"In short, the country suffers from a deficit of its own history. History, as it has happened in the Ukraine, has largely been the history of others. The allegiances and occasional rebellions of the Cossacks, the Crimean Tartars, the Holodomor, the German invasions, etc., all fit into the grand narratives of the surrounding powers. The riots in Kiev may be spectacular, but they are still a poor substitute for a real history."
Some Turkish officials are starting to make noises that hint of territorial claims to the Crimean Peninsula (incl. Sevastopol where the Russian naval base is located) based on the 18th century treaties between Catherine the Great and the Ottoman Empire which they claim are still valid
I wouldn't be too enamored with the magical powers of the USA through the sixties. We're the ultimate 'born on third base and thought we hit a triple' nation--we're stuck between two oceans and two weak neighbors and were free to conquer the whole swatch of North America while Napoleon was beating everyone else up. Then Europe went and blew itself up twice in the world wars, leaving us on top. Not to mention it was the Russians who did all the dying in WW2.
All the more reason to be conservative and paranoid, IMHO. People think God's chosen us for something, but we're really just lucky. America's time in the sun was always limited, as every nation's is, and we squandered it.
As for Ukraine, well--if it splits up or joins the EU, less competition for us, and it weakens Putin, who's a rival to the USA in the power-politics sense.
steve sailer wrote:
In the best case scenario, both sides somehow emerge ennobled, as the roots of world-beating American unity from 1898-1963 were laid at Gettysburg.
-----------
LOL...ah, no.
This "unity" you speak of was actually the cultural dominance of the elite, a hegemony of elite over the white majority working class based on propaganda dissemination. This propaganda-based hegemony of the elite was (and is) facilitated by pervasive reach of formal education in america, starting many decades ago. Education is propaganda, to a great degree.
The ability of the elite to ideologically dominate the majority bloc is proportional to the degree of centralization of curriculum development. Also, entertainment is ideology and thus propaganda.
Core educational curriculum is the foundation of edu-propaganda domestication of the core culture.
A centralized educational curriculum and movie-TV-entertainment complex was the key to the unity. A strange sort of unity, though--the unity of the livestock herd.
Where ideas and memes flow through and from centralized dissemination outlets, you had better believe that the ideas that flow therefrom are elite-centric and thus favor the interests of those at the top. This is axiomatic.
Yes, the elite of america "beat" the world, and we were their hammer.
Being a hammer, a tool for the elite, should not be a point of pride. Not unless you are a masochist.
Methinks that the Slav working class is tired of being hammers for their own elite, and so they are no longer being cattle, as evidenced by the violent protests. The slavs refuse to wear the brand of the elite.
Americans? Still kneeling before their own elite....
"Europe between Warsaw and Moscow lagged behind Western Europe in developing effective nationalism": nineteenth century schoolteacher nationalism has done far more harm than good.
Steve,
It's sounds as if you've taken up the banner first waved by Pat Buchanan nearly a quarter century ago. Buchanan argued that a nation is NOT a merely a collection of mindless buyers of consumer goods, but is in fact a people united by a common culture - a common language, a common history, born in a specific time and place. Blood and soil unite people and make a nation, wrote Buchanan.
He's right.
The global elites in this country and around the world hate him for saying that.
We need heroes and heroines.
Their stories inspire us and ties together as a people, as a nation.
If there are no heroes, no stories, no common history, there is no nation.
Having said that, what do you want to bet that at least some of the "radicals" in Kiev are being financed by the CIA? The interventionists in the Military/Industrial/Intelligence complex want to keep up the pressure on Russia. I bet President Obama is under intense pressure right now to "do something" ie: allow the CIA to smuggle in some pretty deadly weapons to the "radicals". . .
So why don't they just split up the Ukraine into a "Czech Republican" Roman-Papist West Ukraine and a "Slovakian" Constantinoplean-Papist East Ukraine?
Is that too obvious of a solution?
Would it cause too many self-important big-man jackasses to lose too much face?
Would it cause the Ayn-Randian nihilists at Reason Magazine to piss in their pants at the thought of a world with even MORE borders?
What's the point of fighting for "Ukraine" if the ultimate goal is simply to hand over your sovereignty and control of your borders to the EU?
These rioters want to join the EU?
I'd happily give many of these strapping lads EU Visas but, why do they want what happened to Ireland?
For a unique perspective on the Ukraine crisis go here: http://rt.com/
'It's nationalism, patriotism and ethnic conflict on steroids."
Make that "... on Obama/Clinton/Kerry pin money."
"Some Turkish officials are starting to make noises that hint of territorial claims to the Crimean Peninsula (incl. Sevastopol where the Russian naval base is located) based on the 18th century treaties between Catherine the Great and the Ottoman Empire which they claim are still valid"
Turkey is still some years away in facing Russia, during the Ottoman Empire days they got their assess kicked by Russia regurlarly.
"So why don't they just split up the Ukraine into a "Czech Republican" Roman-Papist West Ukraine and a "Slovakian" Constantinoplean-Papist East Ukraine?"
I keep saying the same thing, and yet no one listens. In fact, it seems the cultural divide between western(Catholic) Ukraine and eastern(Eastern Orthodox) Ukraine is downplayed or ignored entirely in news reports.
Obviously, such a solution won't be as peaceful as the Velvet Revolution, but it will certainly workout better long-term than anything the global elites have in mind. The biggest issue with this solution is "who gets to keep Kiev"?
It's interesting how Yugoslavia then Serbia was allowed to split into increasingly smaller ethno-religious states, but this doesn't even seem to be on the table for Ukraine. The global elite has an interest in keeping Ukraine together so it can be a mess and a headache for Russia.
"All the more reason to be conservative and paranoid, IMHO. People think God's chosen us for something, but we're really just lucky. America's time in the sun was always limited, as every nation's is, and we squandered it."
In that case, I suggest that close attention be paid to China. They've had their ups and downs for two-and-a-half millennia, but have always survived in one form or another. Their up-and-down periods seem to last several centuries. They seem to be coming out of a down period which started in the late 1700's. So if history is any indication, they are going to be a force to be reckoned with for at least the rest of this century and maybe longer.
The demonstrations are not about democracy or national unity. Democracy came to the Ukraine in the Orange Revolution of 2004, and the Yanukovych government is the legitimate, democratically elected government of the Ukraine. Instead of waiting until the next election to oust Yanukovych party, the demonstrators are attempting its violent overthrow. It appears that the US and the EU are aiding and abetting the violence.
The real issue is the division between the ethnic Ukrainians and the ethnic Russians, and this goes back hundreds of years. It no more likely to be resolved than are black/white relations in the US. A Czechoslovakian style partition might work, but the border would be a problem. The obvious choice of the Dnieper River leaves many ethnic Ukrainians stranded in the east. They would actually constitution a majority in the east.
The truly troubling aspect of the situation is that the apparent US/EU meddling might spark a war in Central Europe.
"What is being exposed in Ukraine is payback for the 1930s soviet famine from the deeply patriotic uniate catholic west against russian speaking industrial workers from east Ukraine. "
This is idiotic. The Uniate Catholic West was a part of Poland during the 1930s. It was not affected by the famine. The east was. And the collectivization campaign was run by guys with names like Kaganovich. And it is western, not eastern Ukrainians who are now allied with the neocons, the heirs of Marxism.
What is the dispute over in the Ukraine, I mean, other than which group of wholly corrupt Ukrainians gets to stick their snouts in the trough?
Just to make this as clear as I can, Catholic Western Ukrainians did not suffer the famine of the 1930s. They were not a part of the Soviet Union then. Eastern Ukrainians did suffer from it. Western Ukrainians are now getting help from the neocons, the heirs of the perpetrators of that famine, in their fight against the descendants of that famine's victims, namely eastern Ukrainians.
Despite Mister F's prognostications history has not ended.
America is a massively powerful Colossus bestriding the globe today much as the British Empire did in 1914.
http://www.pbenyon.plus.com/RN/Photos/Images/HMSLION.JPG
Within seven years of 1914 Britain had lost 22% of it's home territory, it's HOME territory, to the Irish Free State. One hundred years after 1914 the last remnants of Britain are being mopped up and the country in a disaster area.
Secession movements like FdlR in your South West and White seccessionists in your North West are growing, how long before China or Russia or even Japan or France start quietly supporting them?
Well, it should clear by now that they're not fighting and dying to join the f*cking EU.
Allegedly, 13 police killed by snipers:
http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2014/02/kiev-13-policemen-killed-by-sniper-fire.html
1/ I vote for pollyanish.
2/ I have no idea whether or not the CIA is paying anyone in Ukraine, but I hardly think you need to pay people to do something they'd do for free anyways.
If I'd been more suspiciously-minded I'd think that Nuland had let herself be recorded to make the Russians think that the Ukrainian rioters were completely
in the hands of the US, and that simply watching the Americans would solve the problem.
3/ If Superman Putin can't control Ukraine how is he going to control the much younger populated Muslim areas?
Pat and his paleos are going to have to find another White strongman to worship.
Anonymous said...
But Steve, one thing th astern euros are not short of and never have been short of nationalism nd national legends.
C.B.Liddell said...
Reminded me of this article:
"In short, the country suffers from a deficit of its own history. History, as it has happened in the Ukraine, has largely been the history of others."
Together these comments remind me of the title of and a memorable passage in Norman Davies' wonderful God's Playground: A History of Poland...
"Reputedly, Piast was a peasant. According to the Anonymous Gaul writing some 250 years later, he ascended to the throne in succession to the wicked Popiel who, also reputedly, was eaten by mice in the dungeon of Kruszwica."
Now that I think of it, that passage in turn brings to mind Ron Popeil's Veg-O-Matic.
leftist conservative said: Methinks that the Slav working class is tired of being hammers for their own elite, and so they are no longer being cattle, as evidenced by the violent protests. The slavs refuse to wear the brand of the elite.
Hunsdon asked: Which Slavs? The ones opposing the EU, or the ones opposing Russia?
Also, you forgot to say, "I'm the only one that notices this," this time.
"... ran across a hundred yards of smoldering debris and surged toward riot police officers who were firing at them with shotguns"
If that were true it would indeed be bravery beyond that shown by the Zulus at Rorke's Drift, and an example of God suspending the laws of physics in their favour.
Alternately the police were not firing at them and were either unarmed or under very strong discipline not to.
Reminiscent of the Yugoslav/Slovenian War in which Milosevic ensured that the army had no bullets because they were engaged in riot control, and the militia had a few, because Germany had supplied them.
33 people died, 31 of them unarmed Yugoslav soldiers who surrendered and were then murdered in cold blood. This was not one of the war crimes the NATO funded court was interested in.
America doesn't have nationalism, but a sort of pseudo-nationalism that was called "Americanism" in the 50's. This is what Steve means by "citizenism". I was at Disneyland recently, and it occurred to me the whole thing was a monument to Americanism. Americanism is of course long dead, replaced by multiculturalism.
It has gotten very nasty. From someone my relative knows:
"When our headquarters, the Trade Union House, burned last night I saw people jumping from 4th floor to escape the fire. Thing is, the building had a few floors filled with wounded. Many wounded. They couldn't escape. The police deliberately attacked and set ablaze a hospital. All of this was happening yesterday, but by now, we are _still_ delivering charred bodies from there, they are beyond all recognition."
They've gotten some martyrs now who can be exploited in order to push things even harder. The US spent five billion in the past twenty years there to do what exactly? Train people in the Gene Sharp method of regime change, bribing politicians, grooming local flunkies, financing propaganda? As in Syria, Libya and other places the US seems always to prefer violence and conflict as the means to effect change somewhere. The little people are the ones who usually pay the price for someone else's schemes.
The videos of the fighting are very intense. Seems to me to be more of a rebellion than a "protest".
It's almost medieval, two armies advancing on foot behind shield walls, then the physical clash with truncheons and pole-arms smashing into shield and helmet. Fire all around, rocks raining down.
Like Steve said, insane bravery.
Since you are on Eastern Europe topic:
"Gibson's skeptical reports to the State Department about the troubles of Polish Jews came to the attention of [Supreme Court Justice Louis] Brandeis. On 14 June 1919, Gibson was called by Colonel House to a meeting with the fabled justice and his protégé, Felix Frankfurter. Gibson not only was at a disadvantage because of Brandeis' exalted status but also because his appointment as ambassador to Poland had yet to be confirmed by the United States Senate. In Gibson's words, the two Zionists opened what the young diplomat later called the 'prosecution' by saying that 'I had done more mischief to the Jewish race than anyone who had lived in the last century. They said...that my reports on the Jewish question had gone around the world and had undone their work.... They finally said that I had stated that the stories of excesses against the Jews were exaggerated, to which I replied that they certainly were and I should think any Jew would be glad to know it.”
Hugh S. Gibson
Leftist Conservative:"LOL...ah, no.
This "unity" you speak of was actually the cultural dominance of the elite, a hegemony of elite over the white majority working class based on propaganda dissemination. This propaganda-based hegemony of the elite was (and is) facilitated by pervasive reach of formal education in america, starting many decades ago. Education is propaganda, to a great degree."
Well, yes, dear boy. Unity happens when the elites agree. When they do not (English Civil War, French Revolution, American Civil War, etc), well, things get unpleasant.
Leftist Conservative:"A centralized educational curriculum and movie-TV-entertainment complex was the key to the unity. A strange sort of unity, though--the unity of the livestock herd."
The masses are always being led by the elites, dear boy. That's why one group is the elite and the other is the mass.
Anonymous:"Where ideas and memes flow through and from centralized dissemination outlets, you had better believe that the ideas that flow therefrom are elite-centric and thus favor the interests of those at the top. This is axiomatic."
Ideas are always generated by elites, dear boy. People in the left half of the Bell Curve don't conjure much in the way of ideas.
Leftist Conservative:"Yes, the elite of america "beat" the world, and we were their hammer."
As opposed to being their transistor?
Anonymous:"Being a hammer, a tool for the elite, should not be a point of pride. Not unless you are a masochist."
MMMM, rather be a hammer than a nail, dear boy.
Anonymous:"Methinks that the Slav working class is tired of being hammers for their own elite, and so they are no longer being cattle, as evidenced by the violent protests. The slavs refuse to wear the brand of the elite."
No, what we are seeing here is a schism in elite ranks.
Leftist Conservatives:"Americans? Still kneeling before their own elite...."
Everyone kneels before an elite, dear boy. Elites are an inescapable part of the human condition. For particulars, try reading THE BELL CURVE.
ww1 one was a bit of a mystery. It wouldn't have become ww1 had the British turned a blind eye to the Schleiffen Plan. France would have toadied to Germany in some sort of supine fashion as they do now.
Russia would be limping along as it is now and the Brits might still have an Empire...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/30/britain-first-world-war-biggest-error-niall-ferguson
I noticed that a Savantian posted this.
any thoughts on the Ferguson/Gove spat? it's gotten quite hot lately. boris Johnson and Nick Clegg weighed in. These pols will argue over a hole in a mint.
Ferguson if unknown to you is a Scot. best work he's done is on ww1 and the Rothschilds. Basically a neo-con though.
Tisch Professor at an ivy league monster after he abandoned Jesus College at Oxford.
Gove, Education Minister in the Tory cabinet. Adopted by a Butcher or Baker from a naughty co-ed tryst at Edinburgh U. , probably a Mischling but claims Anglicanism.
Two Neo-con fellows arguing about the rights and wrongs of tipping 1+ British men into the slough of despond.
That's Modern British intellectual and policy life.
http://mondoweiss.net/2014/02/explodes-american-massacre.html
http://mondoweiss.net/2014/02/hillary-clinton-fundraiser.html
"Would it cause the Ayn-Randian nihilists at Reason Magazine to piss in their pants at the thought of a world with even MORE borders?"
I don't know about the Randroids, but has it ever occurred to anyone that self-determination of small nations is good for the USA?
We're a fairly large country with no big nationally different, geographically contained subgroup ready to leave since 1865. The more little countrylets like Tibet, Scotland, Catalonia, and so on break off and do their own thing, the weaker our potential rivals.
Of course, in Europe, smaller countries might be easier to corral into the EU, which is a potential alternate power bloc...
It's only partly true that nationalism between Warsaw and Moscow lagged other parts of Europe following WW II.
The Baltic nations had plenty of nationalism, but they were historically part of the Russian empire (as was Finland). They enjoyed brief independence between the world wars but got used as bargaining chips in the Nazi-Soviet pact. As a result they were gobbled up (again) by the USSR and then got taken over by the Germans during WW II. At the end of the war, the Soviets took them back. The Communists were well aware of the dangers of the nationalistic feelings of these peoples and dealt with it through deportations to Siberia and mass murder. Nevertheless, anti-Soviet partisan activities continued up into the 1950's (the "Forest Brothers"). These were brutally suppressed by the NKVD. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are the only former Soviet republics to join the EU (so far).
Eastern Ukraine has traditionally been pro-Russian, while the western part harbors fierce nationalistic elements. The tsars regarded Ukrainian nationalism as an ongoing problem and suppressed it brutally. Stalin dealt with it by famine, genocide and mass deportations. But it never totally went away. In the western Ukraine and parts of the Baltics, the German invaders in 1941 were greeted as liberators. A few years with the Einsatzgruppen changed all that, but the hatred for the Russians/Communists/Stalin never really disappeared.
"Volk" (ВОЛК) is the Russian word for wolf.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/20/opinion/kristof-is-that-sausage-worth-this.html
END THE HOGOCAUST
"Europe between Warsaw and Moscow lagged behind Western Europe in developing effective nationalism, and continues to pay the price for its nationalism-deficit in looting by elites. Yet, nationalism, although it has its pragmatic benefits, isn't wholly based on rational cost-benefit analysis. It needs legends and heroes."
Nationalism is about as rational as love or gastronomy--it's a biological urge, the generalization of tribalism to the nation-state.
I don't think more nationalistic countries get looted less, though. The Russians are a proud, patriotic people, but get screwed by their leaders whether they're Russian or not. The Germans have been very un-nationalistic since WW2, but they've actually got less corruption than many other places. Overall, Europe has been less nationalistic and better-run than most of the world since WW2. Conversely, China, with its undoubted patriotism built on two millennia of civilization, is full of corrupt state-run industries.
"Europe between Warsaw and Moscow lagged behind Western Europe in developing effective nationalism, and continues to pay the price for its nationalism-deficit in looting by elites. "
--Central Europe between the wars was fine, the Czechs prosperous and a democracy until 1938 and Hitler (one of the few such in Europe), Poland making great strides economically and socially. Central Europe was murdered by Hitler, Stalin, and 45 years of Communist negative selection. As for looting by the elites... none of that is happening in the good ol' USA, oh no. The sweeping ignorant condescension in the above statement is beneath you, Mr. Sailer.
People want to be free, they want to live in a normal country, with dignity, not as serfs. That's all there is too it. In 1989 you thought that the Tiananmen protesters (June 4th) were also financed by the CIA?
This will sound absurdly pollyannaish, but there's a small hope that these apocalyptic Mad Max scenes of insane bravery might lay the foundations for a true Ukrainian nation to emerge years hence.
Natural selection: the bravest, most patriotic are more likely to die in "these apocalyptic Mad Max scenes" than the less brave, less patriotic. Thus the "foundations for a true Ukrainian nation to emerge years hence" may be eroded by this.
Being a hammer, a tool for the elite, should not be a point of pride. Not unless you are a masochist.
Methinks that the Slav working class is tired of being hammers for their own elite, and so they are no longer being cattle, as evidenced by the violent protests. The slavs refuse to wear the brand of the elite.
Americans? Still kneeling before their own elite....
I don't necessarily disagree with you entirely, but it seems to me that elites, good or bad, are an inevitable feature of human societies.
Talking of Ukraine, I've a feeling the open-borders crowd won't let us forget about this food-stamps-to-billionaire immigrant.
What is being exposed in Ukraine is payback for the 1930s soviet famine from the deeply patriotic uniate catholic west against russian speaking industrial workers from east Ukraine. It's nationalism, patriotism and ethnic conflict on steriods.
If that were the case then the last person these nationalistic Ukrainians would want to bring to power is Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Vicki Nuland's hand chosen leader.
...for a true Ukrainian nation to emerge years hence.
Care to define what a "true Ukrainian nation" would be?
"Not to mention it was the Russians who did all the dying in WW2."
While the western powers did much of the killing.
Yes, far more russians died, but wars are not by dying, but by killing the enemy.
A little mot than 50% of German units destroyed were caused by the western powers. While it is true that some of this was towards the end of the war when the Germans were surrendering, the Soviet part of the ground war is exagerated.
In addition the west countributed with:
* almost all the cruicial and resource consuming airwar
* Supplying Russia
* Attrition War in Atlantic
* Beating Japan, not to be neglected.
It is now being reported that Israeli military officers are directing the anti-government protestors in Ukraine:
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/02/16/350986/israel-exofficer-leads-ukraine-unrest/
This really shouldn't surprise anyone who understands what this conflict is about.
I wonder, is the Ukrainian government accepting volunteers...?
So my Ukranian co-workers take on this is that a sovereign Ukraine woul dbe better off allied with Moscow than the west. American "investment" has lead to new factories and jobs, sure but the profits mostly go back to the US, wages are low and the land is more polluted.
These "freedom fighters" are not really nationalist heroes motivated by love of country in a blood and soil sense. They want the Ukraine to join the EU (which would destroy them). My co-worker said most are likely unemployed and paid by the US to agitate just like those in Orange Revolution were.
Interesting observations as (almost) always from America's best journalist. I suggest loyal fans start beating the drums for his acceptance by the mainstream press. The country could learn a lot, and our public discourse would at least be a lot more constructive than it is now. IMHP
SFG said: "People think God's chosen us for something, but we're really just lucky."
Thomas Edison just got lucky with his inventions. Wasn't it Edison who said that genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent luck?
Henry Ford got lucky. The Wright brothers got lucky, assembling random parts into a working airplane.
The U.S. got lucky to have the world's strongest gold-backed currency. Then our luck ran out.
The U.S. got lucky to be a nation where people were basically honest and respected the rule of law. Then we got unlucky.
The U.S. got lucky to have a representative government that was loyal to the American people. The U.S. Constitution was also a real stroke of luck.
I think of George Washington at Valley Forge. The remnants of the Continental Army were lucky to be there.
I would like to ask SFG why he feels it necessary to derogate America's real accomplishments and ascribe them falsely to luck. It is usually the envious losers who ascribe the world-beater's victories to luck.
Ukraine is split down the middle on this question, and civil war looks like by far the most likely outcome.
Buchanan argued that a nation is NOT a merely a collection of mindless buyers of consumer goods, but is in fact a people united by a common culture - a common language, a common history, born in a specific time and place. Blood and soil unite people and make a nation, wrote Buchanan.
That's hardly unique to Buchanan, it was the everyday understanding of a "nation" up until a few short years ago.
If the Slavic border regions are lacking in nationalism it's because for a long time their respective nationalisms were subsumed entirely under the Russian.
Gogol is probably the Ukrainian writer best known to the world and his great work, Dead Souls, ends with something of a paean to the Russian empire. It's also written in Russian.
Ukraine is a bit unique in this, however. Poles have a long history of independent governance and Czechs have a defenestration to use in national myth-making as well as practice existing in a multi-ethnic empire long before the Soviets were even a whisper in Zurich.
Watching events unfold in the Ukraine, I can't help thinking of the United Kingdom, and its long term future this century.
In essence, the UK will be a majority 'ethnic minority' ie non-British nation sometime around mid-century. It is very likely that by then politics wil have become completely racialized with the Labour Party being the party of ethnics by ethnics and espousing views contra to the remainining idigenous Brits, and will further consolidate its power by importing more and pandering more in a vicious spiral. Also likely is that a British interest, perhaps UKIP, party will consolidate Brit opposition to the Labour party and fight it on explicit racial terms.
Compared to the UK, Ukrainian political and ethnic differences are mere child's play.
And thus will flow Enoch's prophesied 'rivers of blood'.
OT, but there have been several articles recently on George P. Bush's campaign for Texas land commissioner. Bush has raised $2.7 million and is spending, oh, about $2.7 million more than either his Republican primary opponent or his potential Democratic general opponent. Should provide two interesting test cases on the attitude of people towards the Bush clan. If either race is close, or if he loses, after having outspent them so overwhelmingly it could signal that 5 the public is finally done with them. And though they're unrelated to the job he's seeking, immigration issues have come up.
" What is being exposed in Ukraine is payback for the 1930s soviet famine from the deeply patriotic uniate catholic west"
What's ironic about this is that the deeply patriotic Uniate west (=Galicia) missed the famine, because it was part of Poland in the 1930s.
Some Turkish officials are starting to make noises that hint of territorial claims to the Crimean Peninsula…
And someone else is translating this claim into Greek, spelling "Crimea" B-O-S-P-O-R-U-S.
What a nonsense from another commenter about uniate west of Ukraine paying back for the famine in the 1930s. The uniates at that time lived in Poland with no famine at that time. Re Bandera and his gang, whose leadership originated mainly from those uniates, they are responsible for genocide of Poles. That is their only contribution to the history.
If the Ukraine splits east to west, then the west will lose access to the Black Sea.
A summary of what is happening in the Ukraine from someone who seems to know a lot about it.
Fire and Snow.
Timing of this is very suspect? Why did US back this during Sochi?
"I wouldn't be too enamored with the magical powers of the USA through the sixties. We're the ultimate 'born on third base and thought we hit a triple' nation--we're stuck between two oceans and two weak neighbors and were free to conquer the whole swatch of North America while Napoleon was beating everyone else up. Then Europe went and blew itself up twice in the world wars, leaving us on top. Not to mention it was the Russians who did all the dying in WW2."
Just more evidence of the genius of America's founding fathers. I can imagine Madison, Monroe, Jefferson, Franklin, et.al. discussing this at length and concluding:
A) We *could* put the nation where Belgium is, but that would mean that every time Germany wants to fight France, we'd get creamed.
B) Or we could go with the middle east and surround ourselves with homicidal crazies.
C) Or ... what about we put two large oceans between us and the crazies and the Euros, and then make sure that we have relatively nice (and militarily un-powerful) neighbors?
They went with (C). Now ... you can call that "luck" if you want to. But I call that "good, prudent, long-term planning".
-Mark Roulo
"Leading party says Soros prepares “Libyan scenario” for Ukraine
Published time: April 14, 2011 07:39"
http://rt.com/politics/leading-party-soros-prepares/
"Ukraine’s leading political party has said that the international financier George Soros has been preparing a “Lybian scenario” for the country.
The head of the Party of Regions parliamentary faction Aleksandr Yefremov said in a televised comment on Wednesday that he had information that George Soros had allocated funds for the overthrow of the Ukrainian political authorities.
“I even have information that Soros has allocated certain funds in order to prepare a certain group of young boys here in Ukraine who could launch any existing projects based on the North Africa examples,” Yefremov said."
Candid admission by Victoria Nuland that the US has already spent $5 billion to subvert Ukraine:
http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2014/02/candid-admission-united-states-has.html
And yet the NYT supports bring low-wage people to the US:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/14/opinion/hong-kongs-indentured-servants.html?src=rechp&_r=0
I am of partial Ukranian ancestry.
What irritates me is that what is happening in The Ukraine is nothing more than two different sides arguing over whether The Ukraine should be a vassal of Moscow or a vassal of Berlin-Brussels-Washington.
The Ukraine was Moscow's vassal and Berlin's vassal at varying points in the 20th century, and didn't work out so well either case.
I keep wondering: Is a true independent Ukraine an option here? If not that, an alliance of Eastern European countries that does not involve Russia?
Dan:"ww1 one was a bit of a mystery. It wouldn't have become ww1 had the British turned a blind eye to the Schleiffen Plan. France would have toadied to Germany in some sort of supine fashion as they do now. "
Are we still doing this, dear boy? Why do the Brits have to turn a blind eye? The Germans could have simply backed down.Problem solved. No war, and the Germans get to enjoy their economic domination of continental Europe.
Dan:"Russia would be limping along as it is now and the Brits might still have an Empire..."
Probably not.
"I would like to ask SFG why he feels it necessary to derogate America's real accomplishments and ascribe them falsely to luck. It is usually the envious losers who ascribe the world-beater's victories to luck."
Of course we have accomplishments. Of course George Washington, the Wright Brothers, Henry Ford, and so on were disciplined, hardworking, intelligent, and so on.
But what about Tadeusz Kosciuszko? Was Poland conquered and partitioned because it had no Washingtons, or because it was between Austria, Prussia, and Russia? Was Germany chaotic for so long because Germans are lazy and disorganized, or because they were a football between major powers for so long?
Sure, we can pour money into some African country and it'll never progress. Only some groups are capable of achieving civilization. But let's not think that America's success is due to some unique American genius and, hence, inevitable. A big mostly-white country with an entire continent to play with and no major enemies can accomplish a lot.
The US is like a smart kid whose dad died and left him a nice pile of money. The potential is there, and the environment is there, but if you don't realize your success isn't entirely due to your own efforts, you'll be a lot too loose and do a lot more stupid things than is wise. We assimilated lots of immigrants in the early 20th century because we forced them to assimilate--but now we embrace multiculturalism, and encourage division. We think we'll always be rich, so we waste our money in idiotic wars. (Yes, I hate the neocons as much as you do, at least since the Iraq war.)
Steve,
Nothing to do with Ukraine. Instead, immigration and Silicon Valley.
Yesterday, Facebook announced it had acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion. WhatsApp had two founders, both former staff software engineers for Yahoo. Amazingly, both tried to get jobs at Facebook, and at least one at Twitter, but neither was hired. Zuckerberg wants to re-engineer the American population in the name of a supposed shortage of "qualified" domestic engineers. And yet Facebook's hiring system is so screwed up, it can't even recognize superb, highly experienced, U.S. citizen software engineers when they walk in the door asking for a job. They could've had the founders for maybe $100K/yr each. Instead, they ended up paying $19B. And we're supposed to trust this guy's opinion on whether there are enough good engineers? Unbelievable.
Please write about this. Spread the word.
Elites are an inescapable part of the human condition.
In what way do Harry Reid, Mark Zuckerberg, George Soros, Anderson Cooper, Jodi Picoult and George Clooney constitute an élite?
Looks like we've escaped a true élite quite well.
"Watching events unfold in the Ukraine, I can't help thinking of the United Kingdom, and its long term future this century.
In essence, the UK will be a majority 'ethnic minority' ie non-British nation sometime around mid-century."
Is there any evidence to support this? The UK is 87% white, according to the estimates I've seen, but only 63% in the United States. Pretty sure most VDARE-type Americans would love to have those demographic "problems."
Unlike Americans, Brits are allowed to say they oppose immigration. Murdoch's American media outlets cheer open borders, while his British ones condemn further immigration in colorful terms.
I went to Wikipedia and got a list of largest cities in Ukraine. Then I searched for news on them. For the most part, nothing is happening outside of Kiev, so I personally do not think it amounts to much at this point.
I also read the article on the Ukrainian language, and was not able to figure out what the difference between it and Russian was.
Bert:
Ukraine has been a question mark for a long time. Now the question will be settled, one way or the other. My bet is on Russia taking them back, along with Belarus and Moldova.
My bet is on Russia dumping the Galacian/Volhynian end of Ukraine and not wanting Moldova either. But I think it would be very happy taking the strip of Odessa, Crimea, Dnieperopetrovsk, and Kharkov.
If you google "ukraine election results map" and look at the images, the easy line of division is very obvious, and I can't see how Russia gains much trying to keep the western half that keeps voting against it. All the good stuff (minerals, factories, Blakc Sea, ports) is in the east.
https://www.google.com/search?q=ukraine+election+results+map&client=safari&hl=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=_34GU8fLGcOW1AGl-YH4Bg&ved=0CDEQ7Ak&biw=1024&bih=672#facrc=_
"Just to make this as clear as I can, Catholic Western Ukrainians did not suffer the famine of the 1930s. They were not a part of the Soviet Union then. Eastern Ukrainians did suffer from it. Western Ukrainians are now getting help from the neocons, the heirs of the perpetrators of that famine, in their fight against the descendants of that famine's victims, namely eastern Ukrainians."
Anti-Semitism aside, the fact that the Galicians were under Polish rule and didn't suffer from the famine is immaterial. They are the ones most active in promoting the Holodomor narrative today, because it helps a nationalist cause to have a story of victimhood these days, and they're the most nationalist of all Ukrainians.
"--Central Europe between the wars was fine, the Czechs prosperous and a democracy until 1938 and Hitler (one of the few such in Europe), Poland making great strides economically and socially. Central Europe was murdered by Hitler, Stalin, and 45 years of Communist negative selection. As for looting by the elites... none of that is happening in the good ol' USA, oh no. The sweeping ignorant condescension in the above statement is beneath you, Mr. Sailer."
The Czechs and the Poles illustrate Steve's point well. They both have healthy, well-developed nationalisms and were able to prosper immediately upon independence from larger empires following WWI and the fall of the USSR.
They also illustrate the point I made at 10:34 about healthy vs. unhealthy nationalisms. The Czechs and Poles have much to be proud of, so as oppressed as they were over the last 500 years, they have more than a sense of grievance.
"I keep wondering: Is a true independent Ukraine an option here?"
If it were possible, it would have happened by now. The country is simply too poor and too divided. Hell, there are parts of the east where large amounts of people still use wood-fired stoves and horse-drawn wagons.
Funny that the Walt Disney Corporation profits heavily from nostalgia for America of yore while seeking to undo America itself as quickly and as profitably as possible. Disney is a major backer of open borders.
Michael Gove, Speaks!
Edison was kinda lucky in that he lived in a time where a guy could tinker, figure and intuit® his way into new inventions. That's essentially impossible today.
Also, second Zulu reference I've run across today.
"At one hundred yards, volley fire present"
Is there any evidence to support this? The UK is 87% white, according to the estimates I've seen, but only 63% in the United States. Pretty sure most VDARE-type Americans would love to have those demographic "problems."
The US was 87% white in 1965. It is expected to be majority nonwhite by 2040. So let's say the UK is 40 to 50 years behind us. That puts their magic date around 2080 to 2090.
So long as nothing is done to stop it now, it will inevitably lead to where the US is going.
Splitting up the Ukraine has long been mooted. The question is where you drawn the frontier. There are islands of Russian speakers in the west - especially Odessa.
If Britain breaks up, the frontier is known and accepted. The same is true in Canada.
If the US breaks up, where will the line be drawn between Hispanics and the rest?
Central Europe between the wars was fine, the Czechs prosperous and a democracy until 1938...
Poland played the jackal and seized part of prostate Czecho-slovakia for itself when the Munich Agreement was signed.
The Poles have a fierce sense of national identity, but the old German and Russian empires have left there mark. Just look at this electoral map of Poland.
http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/348-an-imperial-palimpsest-on-polands-electoral-map
I'm from Alberta, which has a fairly large Ukrainian population. My high school transcript lists Ukrainian as a possible language for instruction, and I've been told that there are Ukrainian language radio stations in the north of the province.
We told Ukrainian jokes, which were what you'd expect (How do you sink a Canadian battleship? Have a Ukrainian build it - those type of jokes). I told these to a friend, and he really liked them. He liked them so much, he shared them with his mom. She looked at him and said "Son, we're Ukrainian."
I laugh about that now.
I'm pessimistic about the outcome. I can understand resentment towards Russian influence, but I don't see this as 'riot-worthy', but I could be missing something.
"Why do the Brits have to turn a blind eye? The Germans could have simply backed down?"
Perhaps because it was simply in the best interests of Britain to avoid a long costly ruinous war, where "victory" was only an illusion?
Btw, the country that should have really "backed down" was Tsarist Russia. Had that stupid dope Tsar Nicholas simply told the Serbs flat out that they were on their own, that Russia was going to do nothing to help them, they would have succumbed to Austria's admittedly, harsh, demands. And even if they hadn't, WW1 would have been nothing more then an Austro-Serbian brawl. As for the Tsar he would have saved millions of lives, including his own and his families', and his throne and dynasty as well. The Tsar was far more responsible for unleashing the chain of events that caused the Great War then the Kaiser was, and he should have known better too because he had the example of 1905-06, when his armies and navy were defeated by Japan and a revolution nearly swept him off his perch. He should have learned his lesson and realized his only hope to hold his ramshackle empire together was to avoid any more wars. Even much-maligned Rasputin advised him against war in 1914. At least the Kaiser avoided war and revolution for 26 years (not a bad record for a European monarch). He at least could be partially excused for not appreciating the consequences as much as bone-head Nicholas.
In response to the question earlier about he Russian and Ukrainian languages. I read Russian well an can slog my way through Ukrainian.
Russian and Ukrainian are very similar and there is no clear dividing line between them. Many people speak a hotchpotch of the two called Surzhik.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surzhyk
Standard Ukrainian came out of the Austro-Hungarian empire where the Ruthenians were a poor and oppressed minority, the oppressors being Polish aristocrats and their often Jewish agents.
Panteleimon Kulish did more than anyone to create what passes for a standard Ukrainian language based on the Western dialects, but the people in the East have long been influenced by standard Russian. Ukraine's national author even wrote in Russian. Men like Ivan Franko who wrote in Ukrainian never achieved much international fame.
The result of all this is that the language of the street in the West is closer to Polish and the language of the street in the east is closer to Russian.
One of the most notable Ukrainian authors wrote in German and delighted in disparaging dumb Ukrainian bogans. His name was
Masoch. That's where we get the word masochist.
Says it all really.
In response to SFG, I would make a few points:
Yes, Europe has historically been a mess. If Europeans had been smarter or better, it would not have been such a mess.
Americans are largely descended from a self-selected group who chose to leave Europe and its problems behind.
Americans could have made as much of a mess of their section of North America as the Europeans did of Europe, but for a time Americans--with skill, foresight, and self-sacrifice--built a new nation that succeeded very well.
Credit should go where credit is due. Earlier generations of Americans habitually credited God (or Providence as Washington often called him) for their good fortune. They credited God as opposed to luck.
As today's godforsaken America rapidly degenerates into a worse mess than Europe, now is a good time for modern Americans to re-examine their own relationships with the Almighty.
"Hell, there are parts of the east where large amounts of people still use wood-fired stoves and horse-drawn wagons."
Now, I'm not saying this is technically false, but it is at least misleading. The Donbass region in the east is known for its heavy industy, steel production, and coal mining. Now, the area has fallen on hard times, like similar areas in the US have (Ohio, west Pennsylvania), but it's not something out of a Borat movie.
Why do the Brits have to turn a blind eye? The Germans could have simply backed down.
Why do the Germans have to back down? The Brit's could have simply turned a blind eye/minded their own business for once.
The natural division of Ukraine is east and south of Kiev to near the north edge of Moldova, not the Dnieper River.
West of there are the current band of insurgents and east are the partisans of Russia. These two groups divide the country 50-50.
The west is really the area that was long part of Poland after the Mongol terror, and was a mix of forested pastoral areas. The east is the area that was Tartar controlled as it was open plains and only conquered and properly settled in the 1700's by the Cossacks and the long push of the Russian Army against the Ottoman's. Hence the outstanding cultural difference from time immemorial.
Now if a split were to occur and make these two states, how long do you suppose it would take for each of them to be riven 50-50? The west "true Ukraine" would split between the K'yiv area (Orthodox) and L'viv area (Catholic). The east "Russian Ukraine" would split 50-50 between actual Russian areas (Crimea, Donetsk) and Ukranian areas (Odessa, Kharkov). Where does it end? Democratic politics always demands appeasing 50%+1 of the population (any more concessions to win votes is a waste and theft from your natural constituency) and so naturally rends all democratic countries in half via factionalism.
Anonymous:"Why do the Germans have to back down?"
Why not? Seeing as how the Germans lost big twice (1914-1918, 1939-45), backing down would have been quite sensible. Of course, German foreign policy in 1914 and 1939 was not exactly sensible.
Anonymous:" The Brit's could have simply turned a blind eye/minded their own business for once."
Germany could have minded their own business, too. Gone on with peaceful economic expansion.But no, they preferred national suicide.
Anonymous:"Perhaps because it was simply in the best interests of Britain to avoid a long costly ruinous war, where "victory" was only an illusion? "
Of course, the same reasoning also applies to Germany, only more so, seeing as how they lost. Twice. Big time.
"Yesterday, Facebook announced it had acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion. WhatsApp had two founders, both former staff software engineers for Yahoo. Amazingly, both tried to get jobs at Facebook, and at least one at Twitter, but neither was hired."
is this true? about the programmers, i mean.
i knew about the part where facebook paid 16 billion to buy an obscure social media company that makes no money and probably never will. overpaid by about 15 billion or so, give or take.
Arnold Willis:"Funny that the Walt Disney Corporation profits heavily from nostalgia for America of yore while seeking to undo America itself as quickly and as profitably as possible. Disney is a major backer of open borders."
Every big corporation is for open border/massive immigration.
Just as you said there seems to be "good smoking (i.e. pot)" and "bad smoking (cigarettes) in the media, do you think that there is a good revolt (revolt against the Ukraine government) that the media is all over, and a bad revolt ( revolt against the socialist Venezuela government) that the media has ignored?
nobody here has mentioned that a large part of this battle over ukraine is actually a battle over russian natural gas lines that run from russia, through the ukraine, and out to the rest of europe.
europe is now dependent on russian natural gas. russia can, and does, gouge the rest of the europeans on price, and sometimes bullies them to make sure they pay their bills on time by turning their gas off.
i'm not sure what the numbers at stake are here, but the ballpark is hundreds of billions of dollars per year.
Reg Caesar:"In what way do Harry Reid, Mark Zuckerberg, George Soros, Anderson Cooper, Jodi Picoult and George Clooney constitute an élite?"
They are elite in terms of the proles (i.e., the bulk of the population).
"Where does it end? Democratic politics always demands appeasing 50%+1 of the population (any more concessions to win votes is a waste and theft from your natural constituency) and so naturally rends all democratic countries in half via factionalism."
Not an unfair point, but there's a difference when a country is just riven apart between different groups, and when it is riven apart by different groups who each have close ties to major outside powers.
Italy has obvious cultural, genetic, economic, political differences between the North and South. But nobody from the outside is heavily invested in seeing one side win and the other side lose. It's not like France is heavily invested in seeing Neapolitans dominate and Germany is heavily invested in seeing Milanese dominate. Thus, this division is largely manageable and unlikely to lead to the breakup of Italy--in fact, there isn't a clear regional divide in voting patterns.
The best book I've read on WW1 was "The Myth of the Great War" by John Mosier. Some key points I remember:
1. The Germans had superior artillery for most of the war.
2. The British Army was grossly incompetent. Worse than the French by far. In fact out of those two armies the only general who was worth a damn was Petain. Too bad he went on to trash his own legacy during WW2.
3. The Allies ultimately came out on top for one reason, and one reason only: the infusion of 2 million American troops in 1918 - led by a competent general who wisely refused to take direction from the French and British. It amazes me how to this day the Brits brush off our contribution to that victory.
Nobody ever mentions that ww2 was largely a war for oil either.
The easily distracted think it was about race.
"The US was 87% white in 1965. It is expected to be majority nonwhite by 2040. So let's say the UK is 40 to 50 years behind us. That puts their magic date around 2080 to 2090.
So long as nothing is done to stop it now, it will inevitably lead to where the US is going."
1. 2080-2090 isn't midcentury.
2. The non-white population was 7% in 1991, 9% in 2001 and is at 14% now. Let's say 4% growth in the non-white population every decade. It reaches 30% in 2051, 46% in 2091, and finally hits 50% at the turn of the century. So your estimate would be basically correct.
BUT:
More importantly, as I said, it seems like the Brits are doing something. Restrictionist sentiments are mainstream. The Conservative Party has made it an explicit and prominent part of their platform and they have another party (UKIP) committed to keeping them honest on it. Even Labour Polls are clear that a vast majority of people in the UK want to reduce legal immigration--something that just doesn't exist in the US, as much as we would like it to. And early indications show that after the previous disastrous decade is falling.
"Just as you said there seems to be "good smoking (i.e. pot)" and "bad smoking (cigarettes) in the media, do you think that there is a good revolt (revolt against the Ukraine government) that the media is all over, and a bad revolt ( revolt against the socialist Venezuela government) that the media has ignored?"
While it's a shame our government is doing nothing to overthrow Maduro, to be fair to the media, US/EU vs. Russia is a lot more of a viscerally interesting narrative than an internal Venezuelan dispute with any international influence being much more muted.
The Czar didn't like the idea of a war actually. Rasputin was killed by a British agent and a mongering Aristo because he was counseling Nicky against war.
"The real issue is the division between the ethnic Ukrainians and the ethnic Russians, and this goes back hundreds of years."
No. The idea that Russians and "Little Russians," as Ukrainians were once known, are different ethnic groups dates to not much more than 100 years ago.
Before WWI, the people who are most heavily supporting the protests were considered a different ethnic group than Big Russians or Little Russians. They were called Galicians. Most Ukrainians today are not descended from Galicians.
"No. The idea that Russians and "Little Russians," as Ukrainians were once known, are different ethnic groups dates to not much more than 100 years ago.
Before WWI, the people who are most heavily supporting the protests were considered a different ethnic group than Big Russians or Little Russians. They were called Galicians. Most Ukrainians today are not descended from Galicians."
Well put.
Ironically, the development of any sense of nationhood separate from Russianness among non-Galicians was promoted by Stalin's 1920s nationalities policy of korenizatsiya. The Ukrainian language, which was basically the local Galician dialect, flourished like never before, ethnography and study of Ukrainian history flourished, etc. Stalin soon changed course and went back to Russian nationalism.
This all happened even though Galicia and Volhynia, the heartland of Ukrainian nationalism, was under Polish rule at the time.
To anon at 3:55 PM:
You completely missed my point Yes, Germany lost the war. No SH**. But my point was that victory was as bad, or almost as bad, as defeat. Thus so, Britain would have been wiser to have avoided it altogether. This wasn't very hard as they were on an island, off too the side of Europe, had a huge navy and no openly announced formal legal alliance with France and Russia. This is simply a matter of being prudent, not trying to be more or less pigheaded then Germany.
To Dan:
If the Czar didn't want war, why did he allow himself to get in two of them on his watch? As for Rasputin counselling him against war, that is true, but the Czar ignored him in 1914 and was hundreds of miles away at Stavka in 1916.
Also, little known fact, the Central Powers offered Russia peace at the beginning of 1916 on the basis of the pre-war status quo. Given the great successes of their 1915 campaign in the east and how much of the Russian empire's territory they had overrun, that was a very generous offer. Nicholas, bone-head to the end, turned it down. He thus sentenced millions of people to death, including himself and his whole family.
Anti-Semitism aside, the fact that the Galicians were under Polish rule and didn't suffer from the famine is immaterial.
Yes, why would the truth be material to you? Not only are Galicians fighting the heirs of the victims of that famine. That would have been bad enough for your thesis. But things have gone well beyond that. In their fight against the heirs of the victims of that famine Galicians have accepted the help of the heirs of the perpetrators of that famine. Your thesis is the exact opposite of the truth of this matter. You are a grotesque liar.
On the ground in the Ukraine we see the heirs of the victims of the famine on one side and the heirs of the perpetrators allied with an uninvolved-in-the-famine party on the other side.
So in fact you have called white black and black white. And when this was pointed out to you, you said that this is immaterial. The facts are immaterial to you. Mendacious propaganda is the only thing that's material in your view.
Anonymous:"You completely missed my point Yes, Germany lost the war. No SH**. But my point was that victory was as bad, or almost as bad, as defeat."
Nothing is as bad as defeat. Ask the Germans.
Anonymous:" Thus so, Britain would have been wiser to have avoided it altogether."
Who knows?Counterfactual scenarios are fun, but no one can anticipate what will happen. E.g., what would the Germans, already on something of a manic high in 1914, have been like in 1925 if they had succeeded in establishing a continental empire in 1914?
Anonymous:" This wasn't very hard as they were on an island, off too the side of Europe, had a huge navy and no openly announced formal legal alliance with France and Russia. This is simply a matter of being prudent, not trying to be more or less pigheaded then Germany."
Yes, the old game of pretending that the globe is a game of RISK. No one pursues policies based on rational considerations. Not even economic historians like Niall Ferguson. Ask the Germans.
Dan:"Nobody ever mentions that ww2 was largely a war for oil either.
The easily distracted think it was about race."
Everybody talks about the role of oil in the war, dear boy. I've read countless articles on oil and Japanese policy in the Pacific alone.
Anonymous:"More importantly, as I said, it seems like the Brits are doing something. Restrictionist sentiments are mainstream. The Conservative Party has made it an explicit and prominent part of their platform and they have another party (UKIP) committed to keeping them honest on it. Even Labour Polls are clear that a vast majority of people in the UK want to reduce legal immigration--something that just doesn't exist in the US, as much as we would like it to. And early indications show that after the previous disastrous decade is falling."
Well put. American pro-immigration restrictionists like to think that all Western countries are in the same boat, but that is not the case. Sadly, everyone of importance in the USA favors massive numbers of immigrants. Frankly, I blame this unfortunate example of "American Exceptionalism" on the lack of a socialist tradition in the USA.
WWC news.
"I would refute that absolutely, [this is] not a trial balloon." Yeah.
WW1 was the suicide of European civilization. It led directly to 70 million deaths in WWII, not to mention Nazi and Communist dictatorships. Basically anything that avoids WW1 is a win for Western civilization. Even the British putting up with the Kaiser.
Western Ukrainians are now getting help from the neocons, the heirs of the perpetrators of that famine, in their fight against the descendants of that famine's victims, namely eastern Ukrainians."
LOL -- so Stalin is Jewish now, and Bill Kristol is his direct descendant, because JEWS CAUSE EVERYTHING BAD. Good illustration of the (il)logic of anti-semitism.
"Ukraine girls really knock me out...."
Especially when they're hurling half-kilogram paving stones.
Watching the "World at War" narrated by Sir Laurence Olivier, I always root for the Wehrmacht.
The thing about Petain is that he wasn't all that great of a general he just figured out that trench warfare was a giant futility and that the French army would mutiny if the French generals kept telling them to attack. Petain basically thought the war was lost and said as much at the allied confab before Operation Michel was launched. Petain was ultimately vindicated only because the US got involved Petain probably would have dragged the war out for five more years otherwise. He simply didn't see the French army as capable of taking the offensive successfully after the Nivelles offensive.
Anonymous said...
Watching the "World at War" narrated by Sir Laurence Olivier, I always root for the Wehrmacht.
Cool bro.
"Poland played the jackal and seized part of prostate Czecho-slovakia for itself when the Munich Agreement was signed. "
--Poland was taking back its majority Polish-speaking territories (a very small chunk of land) which were forcefully grabbed by the Czechs in1918 and allotted to them by the meddling French in 1919. The region in question (Zaolzie) now has, thanks to the EU, two-language steet signs etc. Not that it matters, in those regions the locals all understand both languages. The jackal meme has been blown all out of proportion in the West to excuse Britain and France violating their treaty obligations and doing nothing when Poland was invaded in 1939.
OT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/06/nyregion/us-charges-dozens-of-russian-diplomats-and-spouses-with-medicaid-fraud.html?_r=0
Russian anchor babies. I didn't know children of diplomats get citizenship, despite policy.
http://cis.org/birthright-citizenship-diplomats
"Yes, why would the truth be material to you? Not only are Galicians fighting the heirs of the victims of that famine. That would have been bad enough for your thesis. But things have gone well beyond that. In their fight against the heirs of the victims of that famine Galicians have accepted the help of the heirs of the perpetrators of that famine. Your thesis is the exact opposite of the truth of this matter. You are a grotesque liar.
On the ground in the Ukraine we see the heirs of the victims of the famine on one side and the heirs of the perpetrators allied with an uninvolved-in-the-famine party on the other side.
So in fact you have called white black and black white. And when this was pointed out to you, you said that this is immaterial. The facts are immaterial to you. Mendacious propaganda is the only thing that's material in your view."
Mendacious propaganda is claiming that neocon Jews are behind everything that goes on and are somehow heirs to Stalin.
Also, note, I do you the courtesy of quoting your crap in full, and not deliberately distorting it with selective quotations.
As to the substance, you're dead wrong. Two of the three main opposition leaders--Tyanibok and Yatsenyuk--are both from Western Ukraine and are Greek Catholics, although Greek Catholicism is 10% of the population. During the famine, their families lived outside of the USSR.
To Anon at 6:13 Pm:
"Nothing is as bad as defeat. Ask the Germans"
A fairer analogy would be to compare the British - who chose to fight the war - with the Swiss or Swedes who did not. Which people got through 1914-18 better?
"What would the victorious Geramns have done in 1925.."
Don't see how it could have been any worse then what they ACTUALLY DID DO in 1939-45, when they were DEFEATED. Also the idea that Germany in 1914 could have establsihed, let alone maintained a continental empire seems absurd. Germany had no serious ally in Europe (Italy bailed on them immediately and the moribund Austro-Hungarian empire was on its last legs) and Germans comprise only a small portion of the total European population. The British Isles, Iberian peninsula, Scandinavia, etc were out of their areas or orbit or influence. Nor could Germmany have long maintained any forceful presence over sullen foreign conquered populations. The idea of the KaiserReich as some world-conquering maniacal force is pure Wellington House propaganda. The Kaiser kept his country at peace for 26 years. He took no action against France or Russia in 1905-06 when the latter country was defeated, in chaos and revolution.
"No one pursues policies based on rational considerations".
Pity that.
To MQ said:
Jews played a major role in the Bolshevik party and revolution. Very high numbers of key party officials were of Jewish extraction. While Stalin himself was a Georgian, this doesn't detract from that. Would you say because Hitler was an Austrain, Germans had nothing to do with the Holocaust?
MQ,
Irving Kristol, Bill's father, was a Trotskyist. From exile Trotsky criticized the collectivization campaign, which in the Ukraine was led by Kaganovich, of not being harsh enough. He wrote that the Red Army should have been involved, that the collectivization campaign should have been militarized. The famine grew out of the collectivization campaign.
From the Wikipedia:
"Kaganovich (together with Vyacheslav Molotov) participated with the All-Ukrainian Party Conference of 1930 and were given the task of implementation of the collectivization policy that caused a catastrophic 1932–33 famine known as the Holodomor. He also personally oversaw grain confiscations during the same time periods."
And of course the NYT supported collectivization at the time and denied that it led to famine when reports of famine appeared.
It's really all about who's on what team. When western Ukrainian nationalists accepted help from that team, from old Trotskyists and their proud children, they lost the moral right to invoke the famine. Especially against the children of its victims in eastern Ukraine.
"Even the British putting up with the Kaiser".
He really wasn't as bad as mythology makes him out to be. He did keep his country at peace for 26 years. That is really quite a good record for a European monarch.
"As to the substance, you're dead wrong. Two of the three main opposition leaders--Tyanibok and Yatsenyuk--are both from Western Ukraine and are Greek Catholics, although Greek Catholicism is 10% of the population. During the famine, their families lived outside of the USSR."
I know that. That supports my point, not yours. Learn to read.
I'd happily give many of these strapping lads EU Visas but, why do they want what happened to Ireland?
Ireland has a nominal GDP per capita 11x Ukraine's. Ukrainians would hand over their firstborn children to have Ireland's problems. For some perspective, Ukraine's number is 2x India's and 1/2 China's. This is a European country right next to the EU, with a per capita output number lower than Thailand's.
The neocons are literally, in the biological sense, descended from Trotskyists. It's true that Trotsky and Stalin were enemies. But it's also true that Trotsky criticized Stalin for not fighting kulaks enough, for not collectivizing enough. The famine grew out of collectivization. Trotsky thought that Stalin was too moderate on this particular issue, as on many others.
Jews played a major role in the Bolshevik party and revolution. Very high numbers of key party officials were of Jewish extraction. While Stalin himself was a Georgian, this doesn't detract from that. Would you say because Hitler was an Austrian, Germans had nothing to do with the Holocaust?
That makes no sense. Jews were certainly well overrepresented among Bolsheviks compared to their (small) fraction of the overall population, and it's interesting to discuss why. But it's not true that a majority of Jews in Russia were Bolsheviks, nor is it true that a majority of Bolsheviks were Jews. Obviously Communism was anathema to traditional Judaism, and even the majority of politically active Jewish leftists were not Bolsheviks (until Bolshevism was imposed by force post-revolution). Ascribing responsibility for all the crimes of Stalin to some kind of organized force of Jewish malevolence is just evidence of the reality distortion field of anti-semitism.
The 'red Bolshevik' charge was one of Hitler's favorite excuses for his exterminationist anti-semitism; parts of Mein Kampf read remarkably like some isteve commenters. Hitler makes much of the claim that he was not initially anti-semitic but by objective observation of the world around him simply happened to 'notice' that Jews were invariably the force behind leftist political movements, pornography, prostitution, degenerate culture of all kinds, etc.
anonymous:"A fairer analogy would be to compare the British - who chose to fight the war - with the Swiss or Swedes who did not. Which people got through 1914-18 better?"
I forget, were the Swiss and the Swedes major powers in 1914?Because if they were not, the comparison is rather pointless.
Anonymous:"Don't see how it could have been any worse then what they ACTUALLY DID DO in 1939-45, when they were DEFEATED."
On the other hand, it might have been just as bad, in which case we have a zero sum game.
Anonymous:" Also the idea that Germany in 1914 could have establsihed, let alone maintained a continental empire seems absurd."
Oh, I don't know. Try looking up the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk:
"Russia renounced all territorial claims in Finland (which it had already acknowledged), the future Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), Belarus, and Ukraine. (The territory of Congress Poland was not mentioned in the treaty.)
The treaty stated that "Germany and Austria-Hungary intend to determine the future fate of these territories in agreement with their populations." Most of these territories were in effect ceded to Germany, which intended to have them become economic and political dependencies. The many ethnic German residents (volksdeutsch) would be the ruling elite. Two new monarchies were created: in Lithuania, and in Latvia and Estonia; German aristocrats were appointed as rulers.
This plan was detailed by German Field Marshal Erich Ludendorff, who wrote, "German prestige demands that we should hold a strong protecting hand, not only over German citizens, but over all Germans." (WIKIPEDIA)
Anonymous:"Germany had no serious ally in Europe (Italy bailed on them immediately and the moribund Austro-Hungarian empire was on its last legs) and Germans comprise only a small portion of the total European population."
How large of a population do you need for an empire? Last time I checked, the English did not outnumber the Indians.
Anonymous:"The British Isles, Iberian peninsula, Scandinavia, etc were out of their areas or orbit or influence."
Since the Germans would be the dominant economic and political power on the continent (not to mention the territorial acquisitions following Brest-Litovsk), seems to me that the Scandos, Spanish, and Portuguese would be dancing to a German tune...
Anonymous:"Nor could Germmany have long maintained any forceful presence over sullen foreign conquered populations."
Why not? The Soviets managed it from 1917-1991.
Anonymous:" The idea of the KaiserReich as some world-conquering maniacal force is pure Wellington House propaganda."
Well, the Kaiser was rather keen on Weltpolitik. At the very least, he lacked Bismark's caution and sense of the possible.
Anonymous:" The Kaiser kept his country at peace for 26 years. He took no action against France or Russia in 1905-06 when the latter country was defeated, in chaos and revolution."
On the other hand, he was incredibly eager to increase the military power of the German Empire. In particular, note his expansion of the German Navy, a hugely destabilizing move.There was also the case of his intervention ("Panthersprung") in the Agadir Crisis. And there was also the little matter of WW1 (issuing a demand for neutrality to the French, invading Luxembourg, declaring war on France, declaring war on Belgium, etc).Not exactly a man who was following a Swedish style foreign policy.
Some quotes.
"Trotsky had viewed the grain procurement crisis of the winter of 1927-1928 as a manifestation of kulak power..."
Translation: the Soviet government didn't get as much grain from the kulaks as Trotsky would have liked it to. That's the meaning of the term "procurement crisis". The kulaks still had some power to resist grain confiscation by the government. Trotsky decried that they (the kulaks) still had that power.
"...and regarded the belated and and small price rise of mid-1928 as an intolerable concession to the kulaks."
Who were the kulaks? Farmers who, according to Trotsky and other Bolsheviks, were doing too well. This does not necessarily mean that they were actually doing well or were rich. Many starved in the course of these grain confiscations.
It follows that he [Trotsky] could not have objected to the extraordinary measures taken by Stalin to collect grain. Indeed he and some of his correspondents alleged that in the course of some of these measures, the kulak was still somehow favored.
Translation: Trotsky thought that Stalin favored the kulaks TOO MUCH, that Stalin wasn't being harsh ENOUGH with the kulaks, that Stalin wasn't confiscating ENOUGH grain from them.
And mind you, the author of this treatise that I'm quoting implicitly accepts that collectivization was bad, but is still defensing Trotsky. He implies that Trotsky simply misunderstood what was happening, but that he meant well. This is not a source of information that's hostile to Trotsky.
Thus in answering questions put by the New York Times he [Trotsky] said that "the successes in the sphere of collectivization and industrialization became possible because the Stalinist bureaucracy came up againt the resistance of its protege, the kulak..."
Here Trotsky describes Stalin as a defender of kulaks and himself as their enemy. Again, his, Trotsky's, point is that Stalin hasn't been harsh enough with the kulaks, that he was just pretending to fight them, that they are really his (Stalin's) proteges.
...who refused to surrender grain to the state...
Bad, bad kulak.
...and thus the bureaucracy
By the bureaucracy Trotsky means Stalin and his government.
...were compelled to take over and carry out the the policy of the left opposition."
"The left opposition" is Trotsky and his supporters. Trotsky presents collectivization as HIS policy, which Stalin did not adopt early or enthusiastically enough. He implies that Stalin was disingenuous in adopting this policy and that he was only forced into it by events. And that it's the right policy.
Anonymous:"He really wasn't as bad as mythology makes him out to be. He did keep his country at peace for 26 years. That is really quite a good record for a European monarch."
And he failed to maintain peace in 1914....
Anonymous:"The neocons are literally, in the biological sense, descended from Trotskyists. It's true that Trotsky and Stalin were enemies. But it's also true that Trotsky criticized Stalin for not fighting kulaks enough, for not collectivizing enough. The famine grew out of collectivization. Trotsky thought that Stalin was too moderate on this particular issue, as on many others."
Which goes a long way towards showing how wrong Trotsky could be....
Anonymous:"Watching the "World at War" narrated by Sir Laurence Olivier, I always root for the Wehrmacht."
I always root for the Anglo powers (the British and the Americans).
Essentially, Trotsky described Stalin as dragging his feet on collectivization and other Bolshevik projects. What other projects? World revolution for one. He insinuated that Stalin's sympathies were elsewhere, that he was not undertaking these projects sincerely. Events proved Trotsky right. As the 1930s continued, Stalin deviated from Bolshevik orthodoxy more and more. During WWII he abandoned it in everything but name.
MQ:"WW1 was the suicide of European civilization. It led directly to 70 million deaths in WWII, not to mention Nazi and Communist dictatorships. Basically anything that avoids WW1 is a win for Western civilization. Even the British putting up with the Kaiser."
The problem with the profoundly suicidal, dear boy, is that it's damn difficult to keep them from killing themselves.Stop them in 1914, and they will try again in 1916, 1919, 1920,....
"I know that. That supports my point, not yours. Learn to read."
No, it doesn't. It supports what I am saying--the descendants of Galician nationalists who did not suffer from the famine are the ones who are leading Ukrainian nationalism today.
Americans are largely descended from a self-selected group who chose to leave Europe and its problems behind.
Americans bear no small responsibility for the current problems of Europe and much of the rest of the world.
Anonymous fellow who says "Dear boy" a lot: Regardless of whether I agree with you, that "Dear boy" crap is snotty. Talk like a man, not a pederast.
I always root for the Anglo powers (the British and the Americans).
I look on from the sidelines and ask why we can't just let the Germans have bloody Danzig already.
16 policemen have been killed and 130 hospitalised with bullet wounds after dialogue with these peaceful protesters.
"As the 1930s continued, Stalin deviated from Bolshevik orthodoxy more and more. During WWII he abandoned it in everything but name."
Silliness. In the USSR until Gorbachev, the state controlled almost the entire means of production. And during this entire time the USSR was exporting revolution abroad at a very successful clip. Everything else, theoretical disagreements between Stalinists and Trots, is just fodder for masturbatory Marxist intellectuals.
As some may recall, William Lind is a big fan of the last Kaiser:
http://www.xys.org/forum/db/166/139.html
As regular readers in this column know, my reporting senior and lawful sovereign is His Imperial Majesty Kaiser Wilhelm II. When I finally report in to that great Oberste Heeresleitung in the sky, I expect to do so as the Kaiser’s last soldier.
Why? Well, beyond Bestimmung, the unhappy fact is that Western civilization’s last chance of survival was probably a victory by the Central Powers in World War I. Their defeat let all the poisons of the French Revolution loose unchecked, which is the main reason that we now live in a moral and cultural cesspool.
History has not been kind to Kaiser Wilhelm, unfairly in my view (an assessment in which Martin van Creveld agrees with me). He may have been the brightest chief of state in early 20th century Europe. His chief fault was yielding too often to his advisors, when he in fact was right. Once he saw where events were headed in the summer of 1914, he desperately sought to avert war. I have seen the actual last telegram he sent to the Tsar (interestingly, it is in English). When war came, he wanted Germany to remain on the defensive in the west, abandoning the Schlieffen Plan, and take the offensive in the east, against Russia. Such a course would have kept England out of the war and almost certainly resulted in a German victory. His Chief of the General Staff, von Moltke the less, told him it could not be done (the plans were in the file). After the war, in exile in Holland, his response to the terms of the Versailles Treaty was prophetic; he said, “The war to end wars has given us a peace to end peace.” He was an implacable opponent of Hitler and the Nazis. When the Second World War came, Churchill, who has always admired the Kaiser, offered him refuge in England.
(...)
Provide a few quotes.
Nevertheless, the validity of an observation isn't invalidated by the origin of the observation.
Weimar was wracked insurrections of the communist variety. Hungary was wracked by the same. See Paul Eisner and Bela Kun. The Boshevik revolution was the moment of liberation for the Jews living in the Pale and the consequences hit the Orthodox church very hard along with the Kulaks. antisemitism was punishable by death after 1917 and hanging priests became a sport.
Hard to ignore it.
Kaganovich implemented the holodomir.
It's rarely mentioned when the Germans are analyzed. Most of the historians start talking about one bollocked half mad dictators.
Rasputin was bumped off because he was counceling peace to the Czar. The Czarina was a German. Nicholas would have happily packed up his toy soldiers.
Anti war sentiment in Russia's population wasn't all that strong either. Highly exaggerated. The problem was parceling out power in exchange for service during the war. Oh, and food price inflation.
"On the other hand, he was incredibly eager to increase the military power of the German Empire. In particular, note his expansion of the German Navy, a hugely destabilizing move."
The expansion of the German Navy was the single biggest factor in turning Britain against Germany (per Niall Ferguson's "The Pity of War", another good book on WW1.) Germany's colonial ambitions and highly effective Army did not alarm the British anywhere near as the expansion of their Navy did. The British prided themselves on having the world's best Navy and the German buildup was viewed as a direct provocation. Ironically, both sides spent most of their Naval budget on what worked well in previous wars - large, extravagant battleships. As would soon be proved, the large battleships were a waste of resources, as they could be sunk by far less costly weaponry with surprising ease. Germany would have been better off spending less than half of the money solely on its U-boat fleet, which would not have alarmed the British as much, since no one really knew yet how lethal and effective those things could be.
The obvious solution is for the Ukraine and the UK to swap EU membership with each other.
Public opinion in the UK - which actually knows and undertands the EU, wants out. The naifs in the Ukraine, who don't know a thing about the reality of the EU, want in, therefore a straightforward one for one swap is in order.
On that note, I have no doubt that Ukrainians are aware that the EU would enable them to swamp -and destroy- the UK labor market, just like the POles and a whole host of other east Euros did before them.
"The young men in ski masks " most of whom are néo-nazis....
"Why? Well, beyond Bestimmung, the unhappy fact is that Western civilization’s last chance of survival was probably a victory by the Central Powers in World War I. Their defeat let all the poisons of the French Revolution loose unchecked, which is the main reason that we now live in a moral and cultural cesspool."
Doubtful. All the forces that shaped the culture of the 1920s were already in place by 1913; even without The Great War, our current cultural state would be about the same.
Anonymous:"I look on from the sidelines and ask why we can't just let the Germans have bloody Danzig already."
Probably because Danzig/Poland was a casus belli. Everyone knew that it was not the real issue, that Hitler was not going to stop there.And, of course, he did not stop there.Ask the Russians. They'll be more than happy to tell you about what happened next...
Discard:"Anonymous fellow who says "Dear boy" a lot: Regardless of whether I agree with you, that "Dear boy" crap is snotty. Talk like a man, not a pederast."
And hear I though that pederasts were men (cf Classical Greece).
Discard:"Anonymous fellow who says "Dear boy" a lot: Regardless of whether I agree with you, that "Dear boy" crap is snotty. Talk like a man, not a pederast."
I don't know, dear boy; it's awfully fun watching you manly fellows squirm. Seems to be a very effective psychological tactic, too. Been using it since secondary school.
do you think that there is a good revolt (revolt against the Ukraine government) that the media is all over, and a bad revolt ( revolt against the socialist Venezuela government) that the media has ignored?
Absolutely. Sometimes you see a different division: good revolt or invasion (Muslims against Christians) versus bad revolt (Christians against Muslims). Don't suppose that's the case here, though. Ukraine does have a fair number of Catholics, which certainly doesn't endear it to the media, but I doubt they draw a fine enough distinction between Catholic and Orthodox to choose sides based on that.
An insight into the Kaiser's view of human nature can be gleaned from the fact that in his retirement he was a big fan of H.L. Mencken's 1926 book Notes on Democracy. He gave copies to friends and told Mencken it was one of the best books he ever read. You can get a cheap copy from Scribd or Amazon.
It's interesting how Yugoslavia then Serbia was allowed to split into increasingly smaller ethno-religious states, but this doesn't even seem to be on the table for Ukraine.
No, that's exactly how modern independent, Ukraine came to exist. The Soviet Union broke up into its republics; apart from the issue of Crimea, and Sevastopol, no major boundary-rewriting was required. The same was true for Czechoslovakia. Any further subdivision in Yugoslavia (i.e., in Bosnia) occurred through warfare. Even Yugoslavia's Kosovo was a semi-autonomous republic for decades before the country broke apart.
However, there is no general consensus where Ukraine's East/West boundary lies and no practical, peaceful way of determining it.
Re: "In the best case scenario, both sides somehow emerge ennobled, as the roots of world-beating American unity from 1898-1963 were laid at Gettysburg."
Erm...haven't the casualties from the American Civil War been revised upward from 650 000 to closer to a million?
I'm not sure a million dead Ukrainians is a good thing, but then perhaps I'm just old fashioned.
Watching the footage from Ukraine on TV, I was struck by how well dressed and well fed the various protagonists looked, and also by how clean the place looked and the design and solidity of the buildings. Never having been there, I don't know if it's a fair representation or not, but I must say the contrast with London - the dirt the filth the feral scruffy looking undernourished dickensian social security chavs, the nasty looking ethnics etc, is remarkable. Quite frankly on appearances at least I refuse to believe Ukraine is poorer than the UK.
Probably because Danzig/Poland was a casus belli. Everyone knew that it was not the real issue, that Hitler was not going to stop there.
"Everyone knows" is not a compelling argument.
Survivor:"Weimar was wracked insurrections of the communist variety. Hungary was wracked by the same. See Paul Eisner and Bela Kun. The Boshevik revolution was the moment of liberation for the Jews living in the Pale and the consequences hit the Orthodox church very hard along with the Kulaks. antisemitism was punishable by death after 1917 and hanging priests became a sport.
Hard to ignore it."
On the other hand, Russian/Ukrainian Jewry did not exactly come out of the Russian Revolution unscathed:
"An estimated 100,000 Jews were killed in Ukraine" (WIKIPEDIA, RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR)
Some estimates (cf Matthew White's necrometrics site) go even higher (http://necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm#RCW)
SFG: Jews are about two or three percent of the U.S. population. When you see an institution or organization or industry that is 1/3 or 1/4 Jewish, at least at the top, something odd is afoot. Those who are called anti-Semites are generally, as Joseph Sobran put it, practicing sociology without a license.
Since the Russian Civil War has come up, here are some stats via Matthew White:
Eckhardt: 500,000 civ. + 300,000 mil. = 800,000
Readers Companion to Military History, Cowley and Parker, eds. (1996) [http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/mil/html/mh_045400_russiancivil.htm]:
Combat deaths: 825,000
Ancillary deaths: 2,000,000
TOTAL: 2,825,000
Davies, Norman (Europe A History, 1998)
Civil War and Volga Famine (1918-22): 3,000,000 to 5,000,000
Brzezinski, Z:
6 to 8 million people died under Lenin from war, famine etc.
Mastering Twentieth Century Russian History by Norman Lowe (2002)
TOTAL: 7,000,000 to 10,000,000
Red Army
Battle: 632,000
Disease: 581,000
Whites: 1,290,000 battle + disease
White Terror: "tens of thousands"
Red Terror
Executed: 50-200,000
Died in prison or killed in revolts: 400,000
Typhoid + typhus
1919: 890,000
1920: >1M
Urlanis:
Military deaths: 800,000
Battle deaths, all sides: 300,000
Dead of wounds: 50,000
Disease: 450,000
Civilians: 8,000,000
TOTAL: 8,800,000
Dyadkin, I.G. (cited in Adler, N., Victims of Soviet Terror, 1993)
9 million unnatural deaths from terror, famine and disease, 1918-23
Richard Pipes, A concise history of the Russian Revolution (1995): 9 million deaths, 1917-1922
Famine: 5M
Combat: 2M
Reds: 1M
Whites: 127,000
Epidemics: 2M
not incl.
Emigration: 2M
Birth deficit: 14M
Rummel:
Civil War (1917-22)
War: 1,410,000 (includes 500,000 civilian)
Famine: 5,000,000 (50% democidal)
Other democide: 784,000
Epidemics: 2,300,000
Total: 9,494,000
Lenin's Regime (1917-24)
Rummel blames Lenin for a lifetime total of 4,017,000 democides.
Figes, Orlando (A People's Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution, 1997)
10 million deaths from war, terror, famine and disease.
Including...
Famine (1921-22): 5 million
Killed in fighting, both military and civilian: 1M
Jews killed in pogroms: 150,000
Not including...
Demographic effects of a hugely reduced birth-rate: 10M
Emmigration: 2M
McEvedy, Colin (Atlas of World Population History, 1978)
War deaths: 2M
Other excess deaths: 14M
Reduced births: 10M
Emmigration: 2M
MEDIAN: Of these ten estimates that claim to be complete, the median is 8.8M-9.0M.
PARTIALS:
Small & Singer (battle deaths, 1917-21)
Russian Civil War (Dec.1917-Oct.1920)
Russians: 500,000
Allied Intervention:
Japan: 1,500
UK: 350
USA: 275
France: 50
Finland: 50
Russian Nationalities War (Dec.1917-Mar.1921)
USSR: 50,000
Bruce Lincoln, Red Victory: a History of the Russian Civil War 1918-1921
Death sentences by the Cheka: ca. 100,000
Pogroms: as many as one in 13 Jews k. out of 1.5M in Ukraine [i.e. ca. 115,000] (citing Heifetz)
Nevins, citing Heifetz and the Red Cross: 120,000 Jews killed in 1919 pogroms [http://www.west.net/~jazz/felshtin/redcross.html]
Richard Overy, Russia's War (1997): Cheka responsible for maybe 250,000+ violent deaths.
Paul Johnson
50,000 death sentences imposed by the Cheka by 12/20
100,000 Jews killed in 1919
Green, Barbara (in Rosenbaum, Is the Holocaust Unique?)
4 to 5 million deaths in the famine of 1921-23
Max Boot, The Savage Wars of Peace
North Russia: 244 USAns d. incl. 144 k.battle
Siberia: 160 USAns KIA + 168 other d.
[US Total: 304 KIA + 268 other = 572 d.]
Czech Legion: 13,000 dead.
(http://necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm#RCW)
Survivor:"It's rarely mentioned when the Germans are analyzed. Most of the historians start talking about one bollocked half mad dictators."
Well, insanity and Hitler go together like cream and coffee.
Leaving that aside, I'll still have to disagree. Serious historians have delved deeply into the geopolitical aspects of the Nazi period, unearthing profound continuities between German War aims in WW1 and in WW2.That is one of the reasons why a German victory in the Great War is so potentially disturbing.
As for oil, every serious history discusses things it (cf the Ploiesti Oil fields, etc)
"Europe between Warsaw and Moscow lagged behind Western Europe in developing effective nationalism"
What an idiotic statement.
Anonymous:"Everyone knows" is not a compelling argument."
Sadly, the truth is frequently not as compelling as fantasy.
"SFG: Jews are about two or three percent of the U.S. population. When you see an institution or organization or industry that is 1/3 or 1/4 Jewish, at least at the top, something odd is afoot. Those who are called anti-Semites are generally, as Joseph Sobran put it, practicing sociology without a license."
Something odd being an average of an extra IQ standard deviation and geographical concentration near the centers of economic, political, and cultural power. Unlike American whites who are distributed over the entire nation fairly evenly and underrepresented in the centers of power, over two thirds of all American Jews live in New York, Jersey, California, Massachusetts, Maryland, or Pennsylvania. When all your connections, family, educational, and professional, are in an area happens to be where decisions get made, that's going to help.
Somehow, I don't see these sociologists without licenses wondering about "something afoot" about the fact that only 20% of large law firm partners are female or that blacks compose 40% of the prison population.
Anonymous:"Everyone knows" is not a compelling argument."
I take it, then, that you actually think that Hitler just wanted Danzig?
I don't know if I should be appalled or charmed by such naivete.
For a bit of historical context, I suggest that you look up the history of Germany's actions in the East from '39 on. And, while you are at it, take a gander at Generalplan Ost.
Ukraine news:
Deal reached between Yanukovich and the opposition leaders, but people still in the capital. Parliament, which has turned on Yanukovich, is considering impeaching him. He has left Kiev and arrived in Kharkiv in the east to attend a meeting of leaders of the east and the Crimea.
The obvious thought is do we see secession of the east next?
"It needs legends and heroes"
Sviatoslav, Saint Vladimir, Yaroslav the Wise, Vladimir Monomakh, the Zaporozhian Cossacks . . . the only thing the Ukraine *doesn't* lack is heroes and legends.
They share these heroes and legends with the Russians and Byelorussians, but there is an important difference between the Russian pantheon of heroes and the Ukrainian version. The Ukrainian heroes all suitable for East Slav ethno-nationalism, while many of the Russian heroes are tainted by imperialism, Leninism or other flawed multicultural ideals.
The East Slavs should unite, but not through a Russian annexation of the Ukraine. Instead, there should be a Ukrainian annexation of Russia, and Kiev should once again be the capital. The west Ukrainian far right has the spiritual potential to accomplish what Putin and Dugin can't even conceive: a Russia completely purged of Leninist relics, Chechen terrorists, Jewish oligarchs and other such trash.
Quite frankly on appearances at least I refuse to believe Ukraine is poorer than the UK.
Not just poorer. It's got 1/10 the per capita GDP. I'm sure it's a great place to visit. The pound probably goes a great deal further there.
Sadly, the truth is frequently not as compelling as fantasy.
Your opinion to that effect has little bearing on the matter of historical plausibility.
"Watching the footage from Ukraine on TV, I was struck by how well dressed and well fed the various protagonists looked, and also by how clean the place looked and the design and solidity of the buildings. Never having been there, I don't know if it's a fair representation or not, but I must say the contrast with London - the dirt the filth the feral scruffy looking undernourished dickensian social security chavs, the nasty looking ethnics etc, is remarkable. Quite frankly on appearances at least I refuse to believe Ukraine is poorer than the UK."
-Ukraine has kept some of the old style Communist penchant for order, and Kiev as the capital is going to look a notch above anything else. I have traveled Ukraine up and down, and the falloff in the provinces and the small towns is steep. There is poverty, but there is much less pathology in the Western European sense because there are no third world minorities. And if you have no job, you can't sit around and make trouble--there is no money for that. You emigrate instead.
With that, the signs of poverty are everywhere outside the center of the capital. Lack of restaurants, cars from the 1980's, roads last maintained in the 1930's (as my taxi driver told me), no streetlamps at night, the only clothing store in a town being the second hand store, little things like that.
Anon at 5:11 PM: That women are only 20% of large law firm partners or that Blacks are 40% of the prison population does indeed indicate that something is afoot. The reasons, however, are pretty obvious and don't require much wondering. However, that Jews are a majority of the governors of the Federal Reserve, a third of the U.S. Supreme Court, that Jews control Hollywood and the publishing industry, are not explained by their average IQ of 115, since equally smart Whites far outnumber them.
Like I said, there's something odd about that. Quicky explanations like Jews just happen to live where the power are inadequate.
Britain rapidly lost its position as a major power after WW1 which it could have sat out. Staying out of the war would have preserved it.
As for the Kaiser not keeping the peace in 1914, the truth is there was plenty of blame to go around.
The Kaiser also had Germany sign a major naval arms treaty with Britain just shortly before the war, something conveniently forgotten.
The only way anyone has ever "proved" a uniquely aggressive German policy is to apply different standards to Germany than they do to every other country. This is a rule without exceptions.
Russia defeated Napoleon and Hitler, produced great works of literature and music, sending the first man into space, etc. The Jews gave the world monotheism and Christianity....
"Monotheism" is another word for intolerance or imperialism. It means that others can't worship their own gods; they have to worship mine and, by extension, me. Read J.M. Cuddihy's discussion of henotheism in No Offense: Civil Religion & Protestant Taste.
Sorta OT:
I've tuned into the Russia Today livestreams quite a bit recently to listen to news about the Ukraine from a different perspective, and man, are they beating that immigration drum. Just tonight, the hot Russian anchor was ranting about the "xenophobic" Arizona immigration law.
I know Putin doesn't personally run RT, and I know it makes a certain amount of sense from the Russian perspective to weaken America and spread self-loathing here, but I think it does provide a point of evidence against those who see Putin as some great leader of white Christendom or something.
"Monotheism" is another word for intolerance or imperialism. It means that others can't worship their own gods; they have to worship mine and, by extension, me. Read J.M. Cuddihy's discussion of henotheism in No Offense: Civil Religion & Protestant Taste."
Yes, Judaism wants everybody to worship its God. The religion that makes converting as difficult as possible and prohibits proselytizing. Totally.
I know this is an issue that causes you to lose any sense of logic, but don't be dumb.
"The west Ukrainian far right has the spiritual potential to accomplish what Putin and Dugin can't even conceive: a Russia completely purged of Leninist relics, Chechen terrorists, Jewish oligarchs and other such trash."
Galicians are now acting as tools of neocon trash. Whom does the trash hate the most? Putin. Whom does it support? Galicians. Who has taken power away from the oligarchs? Putin. Who's manning Soros's and the Kagans' phony revolution? Galicians.
How could western Ukrainian nationalists possibly claim to lead or represent all East Slavs? They're using Soros's and the US State Department's money to fight fellow East Slavs. And culturally, linguistically and religiously they are the odd man out in the big East Slavic picture. Even if they didn't accept neocon support to settle scores with their neighbors, they would still be poor candidates for leading their neighbors anywhere because they are quite different from them.
In a fair world the Greco-Catholic part of Ukraine would have an independent state of its own and the rest of Ukraine would go back to Russia. I have no idea how things will actually turn out however.
Poland played the jackal and seized part of prostate Czecho-slovakia for itself when the Munich Agreement was signed.
As Jerry pointed out, that area was ethnically mostly Polish. The real issue is that the "Czechoslovakia" that existed from 1918-1938 was a disastrous idea. It made no ethnic sense - there were more Germans than Slovaks, plus large Hungarian, Ruthenian and Polish minorities. So it was not an ethnic state. But it made no historical sense either because it included most of the Kingdom of Bohemia but not areas with large Polish majorities in Austrian Silesia. Basically the West punished ethnic Germans by giving Czechs German majority territories of the Bohemian Crown, but not Polish majority Bohemian Crown land, which undermined the whole "national determination" idea which was supposed to give Czechoslovakia legitimacy. Even worse, "Slovakia" aka "Upper Hungary" had always core land of the Hungarian Crown for 1000 years and was in no way a pure "Slovak" state, and had always been dominated by a Hungarian speaking elite. Contrary to the modern myth pre-1938 Czechoslovakia was hardly a functioning "democracy" as only ethnic Czechs and Jews had much of a voice. Germans and Hungarians mostly viewed the state as illegitimate and refused to participate, and Slovak and Ruthenian populations tended to be uneducated and easily manipulated and exploited by the Czechs. Even without Hitler, it is hard to imagine the pre-war Czechoslovak state could have made it into the 1950s without a major crisis.
Both the Czech Republic and Slovakia have done much better both politically and economically in the "ethnically cleansed" forms they transformed into after WWII and post 1991. Maybe there is a lesson here for Ukraine, which in many ways just as artificial as post-1918 Czechoslovakia.
Who's manning Soros's and the Kagans' phony revolution?
Phony? Keep telling yourself that. The truth is pretty simple - Yanukovich is a blatant crook, and a horribly incompetent crook at that. People in Donetsk and Kharkov hate him too. The only reason the East of Ukraine hasn't risen up in open rebellion is fear of Western Nationalists getting control. Yanukovich himself enjoys almost no loyalty from anyone, not even Russia.
"Yes, Judaism wants everybody to worship its God. The religion that makes converting as difficult as possible and prohibits proselytizing. Totally."
So follow the logic one step further and you get?
"Quite frankly on appearances at least I refuse to believe Ukraine is poorer than the UK."
The UK has been hijacked by the banking mafia. When that happens the wealth distribution very quickly gets very skewed towards the rich.
Sadly, the truth is frequently not as compelling as fantasy.
Anonymous:"Your opinion to that effect has little bearing on the matter of historical plausibility."
MMMM, seems that I have a little more than personal opinion backing me up, dear boy. There is the little matter of actual historical events from '39 to '45. All of which show that Danzig was not the end of Hitler's ambitions in the East. Of course, if one is a fantasist, things look different.
5371:"The only way anyone has ever "proved" a uniquely aggressive German policy is to apply different standards to Germany than they do to every other country. This is a rule without exceptions."
It's not about being "uniquely aggressive," dear boy, it's about showing deep continuities. And the simple fact of the matter is that there is a strong continuity between Hitler's Eastern policy and that of Imperial Germany in 1914-1918.
As for "apply[ing] different standards" to our German friends, that is a matter of time and chance, dear boy. The Germans simply tried to carve out an empire in the wrong place (Europe) at the wrong time (the 20th century). And, of course, in one of history's little ironies, the upshot of all Germany's efforts was the imposition of Stalin's empire in Eastern Europe.
"Unlike American whites...over two thirds of all American Jews live in New York, Jersey, California, Massachusetts, Maryland, or Pennsylvania. When all your connections, family, educational, and professional, are in an area happens to be where decisions get made, that's going to help."
You could argue the vast over-representation of Jews in particular sectors like the media is the result of meritocracy, circumstance or ethnic nepotism but it doesn't matter.
Massive Jewish anti-white racism is self-evident with whatever option you believe as long as those same Jews in the media are constantly attacking White people on the basis of disparate impact being de facto proof of racism and white privilege.
It is anti-white racism
1) if they applied the same disparate impact standard to themselves they apply to White people,
and it is also anti-white racism
2) if they don't apply the same standard to themselves while constantly attacking White people for the same thing.
Jewish anti-white racism on a massive scale 24/7 is self-evident from that combination of facts (or at least it would be self-evident if White people noticed the massive disparate impact of the people attacking White people for disparate impact).
"Nationalism is only beneficial if a nation has something to be proud of."
Nationalism is a biological construct and always beneficial although not always net beneficial.
Anonymous:"Britain rapidly lost its position as a major power after WW1 which it could have sat out. Staying out of the war would have preserved it."
Well, seeing as how Germany would have emerged as the most powerful nation in Europe, both economically and militarily, I don't see how Britain could have managed to maintain great power status. Britain's imperial decline was inevitable.
Anonymous:"As for the Kaiser not keeping the peace in 1914, the truth is there was plenty of blame to go around."
There always is.
"More importantly, as I said, it seems like the Brits are doing something. Restrictionist sentiments are mainstream. The Conservative Party has made it an explicit and prominent part of their platform and they have another party (UKIP) committed to keeping them honest on it. Even Labour Polls are clear that a vast majority of people in the UK want to reduce legal immigration--something that just doesn't exist in the US, as much as we would like it to. And early indications show that after the previous disastrous decade is falling."
Not remotely true.
The political elite of all the main parties and all the TV media are united in favor of continued unlimited mass immigration while making soothing noises to stop the public voting for people who would actually stop it.
The political and media elite in the UK is as bought and treasonous as the US.
There is *some* political pushback so it is a better situation than the US but on current extrapolation the UK is as doomed as the US.
"LOL -- so Stalin is Jewish now, and Bill Kristol is his direct descendant, because JEWS CAUSE EVERYTHING BAD. Good illustration of the (il)logic of anti-semitism."
The perpetrators of the Holodomor were mostly Bolshevik Jews.
That doesn't mean all Jews are to blame obviously, especially the ones who weren't alive at the time - unlike Germans who are all collectively and eternally to blame for the Holocaust.
I'm sure there's a good reason for the inconsistency there.
"Italians, Jews, Greeks, poor Scots-Irish from the Appalachians: They all get lumped into the same category."
lol
One trick: if
You look at the enrollment stats at Harvard, as Ron Unz did, you find that many if not most of the "whites" are Jews. The blacks are over represented by a factor or two, Asians are about equal to whites. At this university you have a white population that isn't well disposed to "whiteness" even though in a statistical manipulation this population is listed as white.
It's group evolutionary selection.
Uncharitable reading: Nepotism.
Dan:"One trick: if
You look at the enrollment stats at Harvard, as Ron Unz did, you find that many if not most of the "whites" are Jews."
You'll also find that most of the "Blacks" are mixed-race.
Anonymous:" The blacks are over represented by a factor or two, Asians are about equal to whites."
You'll also find that certain Asian groups (Chinese, Koreans, etc) are over-represented in comparison to the Hmong, Philipinos, etc.
Anonymous:" At this university you have a white population that isn't well disposed to "whiteness" even though in a statistical manipulation this population is listed as white."
Are there any elite Whites who are "well disposed to "whiteness?"" All of the elite Whites that I know of are fully in favor of mass immigration to the USA.
Dan:"One trick: if
You look at the enrollment stats at Harvard, as Ron Unz did, you find that many if not most of the "whites" are Jews. The blacks are over represented by a factor or two, Asians are about equal to whites. At this university you have a white population that isn't well disposed to "whiteness" even though in a statistical manipulation this population is listed as white."
Unz's stats have been questioned: (http://andrewgelman.com/2013/02/12/that-claim-that-harvard-admissions-discriminate-in-favor-of-jews-after-checking-the-statistics-maybe-not/)
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