Tuesday, May 19, 2015

No, you can't go back to the USSR!

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One of the fake stories kept alive by certain American politicians, with the help of western media, is that Vladimir Putin (who, they vacuously claim, is a dictator and a tyrant) wants to reconstitute the USSR, with the annexation of Crimea as the first step.

Instead of listening to their gossip, let's lay out the facts.

The USSR was officially dissolved on December 26, 1991 by declaration №142-H of the Supreme Soviet. It acknowledged the independence of the 15 Soviet republics, and in the place of the USSR created a Commonwealth of Independent States, which hasn't amounted to much.

In the west, there was much rejoicing, and everyone assumed that in the east everyone was rejoicing as well. Well, that's a funny thing, actually, because a union-wide referendum held on March 17, 1991, produced a stunning result: with over 80% turnout, of the 185,647,355 people who voted 113,512,812 voted to preserve the USSR. That's 71.92%—not exactly a slim majority. Their wishes were disregarded.

Was this public sentiment temporary, borne of fear in the face of uncertainty? And if it were to persist, it would surely be a purely Russian thing, because the populations of all these other Independent States, having tasted freedom, would never consider rejoining Russia. Well, that's another funny thing: in September of 2011, fully two decades after the referendum, Ukrainian sociologists found out that 30% of the people there wished for a return to a Soviet-style planned economy (stunningly, 17% of these were young people with no experience of life in the USSR) and only 22% wished for some sort of European-style democracy. The wish for a return to Soviet-style central planning is telling: it shows just how miserable a failure the Ukraine's experiment with instituting a western-style market economy had become. But, again, their wishes were disregarded.

This would seem to indicate that Putin's presumptuously postulated project of reconstituting the USSR would have plenty of popular support, would it not? What he said on the subject, when asked directly (in December of 2010) is this: “He who doesn't regret the collapse of the USSR doesn't have a heart; he who wants to see it reborn doesn't have a brain.” Last I checked, Putin does have a brain; ergo, no USSR 2.0 is forthcoming.

Interestingly, he went on to say a few more words on the subject. He said that the USSR had a competitive advantage as a unified market and a free trade zone. This one element of the USSR is now embodied in the Customs Union, of which Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and several smaller countries are members, and it appears to be a success.

The Ukraine—with over 40 million inhabitants, a major piece—refused to join while continuing to trade mostly with Customs Union members. This strategy has turned out to be, to put it mildly, disadvantageous, with Ukrainian economy now in rapid collapse, having declined over 17% in just the first quarter of this year. Thus, while the theory of competitive advantage may or may not be valid, the converse competitive disadvantage of *not* joining the Customs Union is there for all to see.

* * *

To be sure, many aspects of the old USSR have been happily consigned to oblivion. Among them:

• The communist ideology: the Communist Party no longer has a monopoly on power.
• The bloc mentality: the Warsaw Pact evaporated, leaving NATO behind as the one hand clapping. The new system is a multipolar one.
• Central planning: replaced with a market economy
• Economic isolationism: replaced with an export-driven economy based on trade agreements with numerous nations around the world
• Authoritarian governance: replaced with authoritative governance, in which leaders derive their authority from their popularity, which is based on their performance in office, whereas previously the General Secretary of the CPSU was a bit like the Pope—infallible by definition.

These are all positive changes, and very few people regret that they have occurred, or wish for a return to status quo ante.

There are many other aspects of the old USSR which have been degraded, sometimes severely, but nevertheless remain in place. Among them are public health and public education.

The USSR had a system of socialized medicine that excelled at some things and was mediocre in others. The shift to privatized medicine has been a success in some ways, but is very hard on those who cannot afford the care or the medications. The educational system is still very good at all levels, but here too there has been significant degradation, bemoaned by many observers.

The USSR invested heavily in science and culture, and much has been lost during the difficult years of the 1990s—something that many people regret very much. The USSR led the world in basic scientific research, probing into matters that did not have any commercial applications, simply because they were scientifically interesting and led to publishable results. The US led the world in product design, something that Soviet engineers were happy to simply copy much of the time, to save time and effort. Since they were not attempting to export into the western consumer market, a slight lag in time to market was of no consequence to them.

On the other hand, Americans have always had trouble wrapping their heads around the idea of financing scientific research that had absolutely no conceivable commercial applications. In addition, the anti-intellectualism prevalent in American culture caused a proliferation of other sorts of “scientists”: political scientists, social scientists, food scientists... a certificate in “janitorial science” wouldn't be too much of a stretch.

Basic science is the premier transnational intellectual endeavor of the human species in modern times, and the damage done to Soviet science has caused significant damage to the pursuit of scientific knowledge throughout the world, and a diminution in the stature of the scientific endeavor. Now even in Russia scientists are forced to chase after grant money by pursuing avenues of research that lead to patentable gizmos and gadgets.

One of the things that has been retained is the living arrangement. Over the seven decades of the USSR's existence, there took place a thorough transformation from an agrarian population dispersed across the countryside to an industrialized population concentrated in major cities. The people went from being log cabin-dwellers to apartment-dwellers. Following the dissolution of the USSR, the housing stock was privatized, and now many families own their residences free and clear. The ability to live rent-free provides them with a very large competitive advantage compared to families in high-rent, debt-ridden countries such as the US.

Along with apartment buildings built in dense, walkable clusters went a system of public transportation. This, too, has remained largely intact, and in many cities has been expanded and modernized. This, again, provides numerous benefits to the population, and gives them an advantage vis à vis people in car-dependent countries, where the people spend much of their life stuck in traffic, and where the elderly, who are too old to drive safely, are often forced to choose between being stuck in their homes and taking their lives (and those of others) in their own hands behind the wheel.

* * *

When something is said to have collapsed, people often assume that it has simply ceased to exist. But the effects of collapse depend on the nature of the thing that collapses. When a hydroelectric dam collapses, it ceases to produce electricity, plus it destroys lots of things downstream from it, plus it may disrupt access to water. When a school collapses, it may kill some schoolchildren, and some teachers, but it doesn't necessarily destroy the knowledge that was being imparted. And when a mausoleum collapses, only its description changes: it can then be described as “ruined.”

Some collapses are common, others not. Economies, especially bubble economies, collapse all the time. Empires collapse with great regularity. Civilizations are said to collapse, but do they really? A civilization can be viewed as a functioning apparatus, but doing so seems to confuse a set of principles with the entity that embodies them. Civilizational principles can be quite durable: the Roman empire was gone for a thousand years when Europe once again became capable of large-scale social organization, but, sure enough, the Europeans dusted off the old Roman legal codes and principles of organization, and started applying them. In the meantime, in the colleges and universities, Latin had remained the language of learned discourse, in absence of any surviving Latins being present to teach LSL classes. It would appear that civilizations don't really collapse; they just become quiescent. New developments may spark them back to life, or they may eventually be supplanted—by another civilization.

The USSR is gone as a political entity, but as a civilizational entity it appears to be holding its own, though it lacks a name. The two-part name—Soviet, plus “Soyuz” (Union)—fell apart. The word “Soviet,” used as an adjective, applies only to the past. As a noun, it means “council,” having originated from the revolutionary workers' councils, and this is still used, although cautiously: “to help with council” is, to a Russian, to only pretend to help. But the term “Soyuz” lives on; it is the name of the only spaceship that can still ferry passengers to the International Space Station; the new Customs Union is a Customs Soyuz. And Russian children still grow up in the Soyuz, in a manner of speaking, thanks to Soyuzmultfilm, the Soviet-era studio that produced excellent children's animated films, which are still hugely popular and are now available on Youtube.

Let us think of the Soyuz—as a civilization, rather than of the USSR—which was a political empire. A major effort was made to supplant it with western civilization, through the introduction of market economics and a flood of western imports, both material and cultural. Western civilizational principles dominated for a time, among them such western innovations as granting equal status to homosexual practices, disregarding the role of ethnicity in political organization, and the abnegation of economic and political sovereignty to the imperial center in Washington, DC. All of these were, for a time, masticated thoroughly. Then they were rather forcefully spat out, everywhere in the former USSR except for a few sorry basket cases, the Ukraine foremost among them. But everywhere else, once the full fiasco of western values became clear to all, previous civilizational principles came roaring back to life.

Perhaps foremost among them is social conservatism. The Russian Federation has two major religions: Orthodox Christianity and Islam, and a great deal of effort goes into maintaining their mutual compatibility, so that religion does not become a divisive factor. Introducing constructs that are alien to both, such as gay marriage, is a nonstarter. But polygamy is not off the table, and a senior Chechen official recently took a young bride to be his second wife. This event caused quite a sensation, but was allowed to proceed—in Moslem Chechnya.

Second is the principle that ethnicity is significant to social and political organization. Russia is not a nation—it is a multinational federation. There are over 190 different nations that make it up, with ethnic Russians accounting for a little over 3/4 of the population. This percentage is likely to decrease over time: Russia is second only to USA in the number of immigrants it absorbs, and their country of origin, sorted by the number of immigrants, is as follows: Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Belarus, China, Germany and USA.

During the existence of the USSR, the multi-ethnic composition of the country was given much emphasis. Numerous small nations had their languages written down for the first time, using the ever-expanding Cyrillic alphabet, and endowed with a national literature. National languages were included in school curricula, and various nations used them in their local self-governance, to enlarge their autonomy and improve social cohesion. In essence, the Russian Federation provides for ethnic sovereignty—each nation can claim a measure of sovereignty for itself, rule itself and create its own laws, provided they do not conflict with the larger whole. A prime example of this is modern Chechnya: Moscow is content to let it prosecute its own anti-terrorist campaign, to put down the remaining foreign-financed jihadis.

Imagine the principle of ethnic sovereignty being applied to the US, where one's ethnicity is of no consequence provided one looks, sounds and behaves sufficiently Anglo. In the US, ethnicity has been reduced to questions of music and cuisine, with perhaps a festival here and there, but always with the tacit understanding that “ethnic” means “other”: there is no such thing as an “ethnic Anglo.” Since ethnicity is essentially taboo, the completely artificial construct of race is used instead, with artificial, discriminatory labels attached to categories of individuals. The label “Latino” is particularly bogus, since there is very little in common between, say, a Cuban and a Bolivian, except that both are likely to face discrimination, neither being considered sufficiently “white”—Anglo, that is. But imagine if the Mexicans or the African-Americans were to be granted a similar level of autonomy within the US? It would blow the country to pieces!

A country predicated on protecting “white privilege” cannot possibly survive such a corruption of its founding principles. The US fought a revolution to keep slavery legal (it was about to be abolished by the British); then it fought a civil war to change slavery from one form to another (there are more African-Americans in US jails now than there were slaves in the Confederate South prior to the Civil War).

Nobody knows what wars lie in its future, or what will provoke them, but this particular intercivilizational fault line is likely to be very important. For what is a nation? Is it your tribe, or is it a bunch of mercenaries pretending to be Anglo so that they are allowed into the country club? Only time will tell which of the two civilizations will prove to be more durable.

30 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yet another excellent article. I had a funny feeling when reading an article about homosexual spies here: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/18/exploitation-social-issues-generate-support-militarism-imperialism/
and I am glad you called this out as a fundamental part of Western culture. Also totally right about forcing people to swallow positive ethnic identities to enable ethnic discrimination.

Anonymous said...

I felt the cultural discord you are describing most acutely from female genital mutilation. It seems that the official terms are "female genital mutilation" and "circumcision", where the mismatch in terms between the sexes is meant, rather than to describe what is going on, to declare what is culturally acceptable. (Note I am not talking about UN type II, to which "female genital mutilation" is more appropriate.) Type I is deliberately not called "female circumcision" to distance it from socially acceptable practice, even though it would accurately describe the procedure.

Activists against male circumcision....angsty men without foreskin....often comment that it is "really" male genital mutilation, but their point would already be made for them if the term that best communicated what the practice is, "female circumcision", was used. All this simply highlights that the only difference is in what is culturally acceptable, and it was the cultural exceptionalism that led to the current naming, which these activists have internalized, that is discrediting them.

Spanish fly said...

'The label “Latino” is particularly bogus, since there is very little in common between, say, a Cuban and a Bolivian, except that both are likely to face discrimination, neither being considered sufficiently “white”—'

When you add to the equation a Brazilian and and Argentinian, that label is even more bogus...

axxxo79 said...

compare this...

"National languages were included in school curricula, and various nations used them in their local self-governance, to enlarge their autonomy and improve social cohesion. In essence, the Russian Federation provides for ethnic sovereignty..."

to this

A German political party wants immigrants to stop speaking foreign languages—even at home

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/12/08/a-german-political-party-wants-immigrants-to-stop-speaking-foreign-languages-even-at-home/

and this

Merkel allies want immigrants to speak German at home

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/12/07/uk-germany-immigration-idUKKBN0JL0C620141207

Unknown said...

The race is on, towards social structures, that provide longterm selfsufficient daily life for mankind. It is all about motivation factors. Neoliberal capitalism is essentially a way for "cutthroats" to get rich quick at the expense of others (hence the name cutthroat capitalsim) then get even more money, power and ressources to ruin others. "The problems of others are not OUR concern". The soviet union did transform a feudal agrarian russian empire in decline into industrial planned-economy modern state. But there still was room for improvement, namely computer-aided planning as it is done today in corporations (Enterprise Ressource Planning). Without a long term plan selfsustainance cannot be achieved. Also a big obstacle is ideology, not just in the soviet union but today in western nations. And since the soviet union excelled at basic research, they had the best objective analytic approach in the world, albeit hindered by ideology and party corruption. Today they know the errors and know what they want. Russia has plenty of ressources to develop asia and possibly eurasia into a self sufficient market. But they will only succeed if they transform from bubble economy to a better economy.

Alejo said...

"The label “Latino” is particularly bogus, since there is very little in common between, say, a Cuban and a Bolivian, except that both are likely to face discrimination,.."

Dmitry, I am not 100 % agree with you on this one. I think there is something quite important in common between a Cuban and a Bolivian and it is the language. For a country like the US it is very dangerous to have millions of people speaking the same language and even more dangerous is to have that group of people in a particular part of the country (the Southwest). One day the Anglos will wake up and realize that they have this people asking for more freedom, autonomy and...Independence.(Kosovo anyone ?)The Anglos know very well how to use the power of the language and this is probably the reason they are terrified by all this people coming south of the border. Personally I do not think that they are too worried about food stamps or narcogangs, they are terrified by the language.Language is money and money is Power.

Marcelo

Unknown said...

Marcelo - eso es la razón por que intento aprender español. Actualmente 50-70 porciento de mis vecinos hablan español ahora, entonces no hay que ser "rocket scientist" para saber que quizás es útil saber hablarlo. Soy bastante intelligente y no tengo un razón de evitarlo.

Jonathryn@mac.com said...

Reads like the introduction to a new book.

Murdoch Matthew said...

"Gay marriage" or "granting equal status to homosexual practices" may be alien to Orthodox Christianity and Islam, but they're not alien to the basic science that you tout. Left-handedness is now understood as reflecting how the brain is wired; and our affectional orientations are increasingly seen as results of hormonal development in the womb. Male OR female is a myth long preserved in religion and society, but now seem to be positions on a continuum. This is a preserve where tradition should yield gracefully to science and experience rather than to attempt to maintain an established social order.

In some places today, kids with same-gender attractions aren't "coming out" and joining a separate identity group -- they're simply dating whom they feel like dating within their peer groups. Assimilation is, of course, the death knell of separatist orders. I liked the old gay community and benefited from it (found my husband of 32 years within it), but I envy the kids who don't have to go through all the hiding and accommodating. Russia's ban on "homosexual propaganda" gets the situation precisely wrong. Kids don't become gay when they learn that it's a possibility; they discover their orientations as they mature and that's just when they need accurate information about their options. The assumption that everyone is heterosexual but some inexplicably seek forbidden pleasures is no longer tenable.

Gays are among those who have personally experienced the fact that official stories may be wrong. We're equipped to suspect official lies. I wish Russia would modernize in this area -- its anti-gay reputation is not entirely deserved (parts of the US are worse) but it is disregarding potential allies. Israel covers a lot of sins with a pro-gay reputation. Russia could remove a taint from its positive accomplishments.

stevelaudig@gmail.com said...

"A country predicated on protecting “white privilege” cannot possibly survive such a corruption of its founding principles. The US fought a revolution to keep slavery legal (it was about to be abolished by the British); then it fought a civil war to change slavery from one form to another (there are more African-Americans in US jails now than there were slaves in the Confederate South prior to the Civil War)."

I "agree" with this notion in the sense that I "feel" it's true. I have been unable find any "direct" evidence and only some circumstantial evidence "The Sommersett Case" for the proposition that preserving slavery was a motivator. I'd enjoy any instruction, in the sense of here are the parts of the historical record that are relevant. Cheers.

Macon Richardson said...

You've left me nothing to say and I'll say it here. Your analysis and critique is stunning. I'm 74 years old--American--and in my old age have been searching for organizing principles by which to understand the world I have lived in. Your article has added greatly to my quest.

I apologize for this rather inarticulate comment. I'm still in a daze from what you have written.

Thank you.

greybeard616 said...

Moreover, the UN"civil war" was also fought to provide profits, through Tariffs, to the Northern states/Federal government. "The Union" that needed to be preserved was the nascent Empire!

rapier said...

Americas founding and American freedom was intimately entwined with slavery but "The US fought a revolution to keep slavery legal (it was about to be abolished by the British)" is a bridge too far.

That "about to be abolished" was 47 years after 1776. The anti slavery movements great champion William Wilberforce did not become politically active in the quest until 1787. At that time the idea that slavery could be abolished was far less than a long shot.

Again, slavery, the chattel slavery of blacks was an absolutely essential part of Americas very existence as a unified nation. Without it there would not have been an America that is recognizable now or in history books. I don't want to discount that in the least. I just want to say the formulation that the revolution against the British was about keeping slavery legal is at best sloppy and at worst cheap.

seraphim said...

@I wish Russia would modernize in this area -- its anti-gay reputation is not entirely deserved (parts of the US are worse) but it is disregarding potential allies. Israel covers a lot of sins with a pro-gay reputation. Russia could remove a taint from its positive accomplishments.

Wishful thinking. It ain't happen. And certainly not Israel is an example to emulate.

Analyse,comment on political theory,Geopolitics and History of International Relationss said...

Your piece includes many things very positive and informative on the USSR. But your article shows also a visceral anti-communism. when you are an anti-communist like in western and capitalist countries, USA and Europe, you are not going to analyse objectively and in some way with intellectual honesty the huge and glorious accomplishments of the USSR and the communist regimes in general as we can see nowadays with China ruled by the communist party.
today, comparing to the soviet period, Russia I mean inside Russia is nothing but a developing country like the USA as it was the case with Katherina 10 years ago. I have read some days ago that the Russian finance minister is planning to prolong the age of retirement up to 70 years. since the collapse the USSR, the current capitalist Russia has dramatically lost 7 millions of its citizens. While the USSR was a model to imitate by all the oppressed people of the earth, today nobody take the capitalist Russia as a model to imitate.

Unknown said...

Thinking of the USA as a model of civilization is grossly mistaken. 'Experiment America', as I like to call it, was from its very inception a mass-mind-control program by the Elites, that proved far more successful and long-lasting than even a Machiavelli, an Edward Bernays, an Aldous Huxley, or for that matter, the founders of the FED, could ever have hoped for.

The parameters of the continent-wide real-time-study in social-control and culture-creation were simple: to what degree can we harvest the human energy of large populations without anyone noticing, anyone resisting, while at the same time, building the New Atlantis, the ''Exceptional Nation' and thus, through deceit, propaganda and dirty wars without end, enlarge the experiment to a global scale?

The banal combination of slavery-by-debt, administered through banking and Central-banking on the one hand, and Hollywoodism and torture-by-media on the other hand, turned out to be an almost fool-proof recipe for a Happy New World.

Almost, i said. Because there was a certain Vladimir Vladimirovic and his buddy Xi Jinping - but that is a different story.

samir

Dmitry Orlov said...

For those interested in learning all about how slavery was at the heart of the British American colonies' quest for independence, look up Gerald Horne. There are really three secrets behind "America's" success in forming a "free" nation: free labor by black slaves; free land stolen from the indigenous peoples; and free military aid from France and Spain in fighting the British. High principles had nothing to do with it.

Val said...

Shawny, the Glenn Greenwald article you've linked isn't about gay spies. It's about how British and American spy agencies cynically exploit the political success of the gay movement. A couple of generations ago, before there was a gay movement to speak of, the same agencies would have surveilled, arrested and prosecuted gays. Check out what happened to Alan Turing, who is mentioned in the article.

In most of the west, homosexuality has gained acceptance only within the last 46 years. It was repressed and persecuted for 1,600 years before that. Since its repression has a much deeper history than its acceptance, to describe it as a fundamental part of western culture is dubious at best.

46 years ago, when the modern gay movement got started, America and some other western societies could truly claim to have freedom of expression and assembly. That's how there was able to be a gay movement. Nowadays, if there were no such movement and somebody tried to start one, I expect the national security state apparatus would crush them.

I agree with Murdoch. It's really too bad that Russia has not chosen to modernize in this respect. The result will be much unhappiness and misery for a great many people, as in the preceding dozen centuries or so. It's not good for people to be required to pretend that they're something they're not.

TH in SoC said...

There is a measure of "cultural sovereignty" here in the U.S., which is tolerated as long as it flies under the radar. For instance, there are many immigrant enclaves where I live, representing a wide variety of nationalities. I recently drove past a store (магазин)whose sign read, "Дом Хлеба." And over the last couple of years I have regularly visited both Spanish, Karen (Myanmar), Oromo Ethiopian and Vietnamese churches.

Most immigrants are like most people of color in the United States, in that they don't want to start a revolution. They just want to live their lives in peace. The problem in the U.S. lies in the heads of those who hold, enjoy and defend "white privilege." For these people, anyone who exists as a sovereign human being independent from them is an intolerable psychic threat - even if that other person is just minding his own business. They can relate to others only as a master relates to slaves. This is a feature of American narcissism, a feature which has existed since this nation's founding. Many of the societal troubles we are now seeing - troubles largely instigated by the holders of white privilege - are the first signs of narcissistic decompensation.

Murdoch Matthew said...

Thanks to the response from Seraphim. Yes, religion is reluctant to let go of any belief, but acceptance of same-sex relationships hasn't led to an explosion of Conchita Wursts or outrageous public behavior. Where freed of stigma, gay people have simply been paring off, making families (often with children), and contributing to the community. I'm told that Russian Orthodoxy explains homosexuality as a result of the Fall of Man in Genesis. But that's legend, not history. Sexuality is a fact of biology, and knowledge of gay family members and friends has displaced the uninformed Yuck and Urk reactions. Wishful thinking, for sure, but integration of gay relationships in Russian would be a plus for all.

wagelaborer said...

From a planned, self-sufficient economy to a market, export-based economy? I fail to see the benefits of that shift.
If the human race, as a whole, is to survive, we need to quit producing for profit, and start producing for needs.
The only way to do that is to survey needs and plan for their providence.
Especially knowing that oil is a finite substance, and its abuse is killing our atmosphere, how on Earth can it be a good thing to drill as much as possible, as fast as possible, for export?
I think that the American Revolution was more about wanting to expand the Empire. The king insisted on upholding the treaties with the natives, that barred further expansion west, and the rebels wanted to move into native land. It's right there in the Declaration of Independence, with talk of the savages, and how the king is pampering them.
Anyway, the loss of the USSR, and the loss of 7,000,000 people who didn't quite make it in "market society" is a bigger tragedy than most of us can comprehend.
The letting loose of rampant US imperialism, with no one to oppose it, has led to worldwide misery and untimely deaths.
A tragedy.

Dammerung said...

How is polygamy any less of a sexual "perversion" than homosexuality? Of all the things that affect one's ability to prosper as a citizen and a leader, private sexual expression hardly seems to be a relevant factor. The history of the relationship between sexuality and religion is replete with examples of highly stable, commercial, cosmopolitan societies who chose not to claim legislative authority over sexual expression.

michigan native said...

Yes, Putin the tyrant, Joseph Stalin reincarnated in a judo robe. The ever so complacent media never challenges the lies and the distortions, and apparently the interests they serve have control over the media in the vassal states of the US: France, as they allowed themselves to get sodomized when they refused to sell 2 Mistral warships to Russia (I am sure Russia could build better and more sophisticated helicopter gunships if they put their mind to it); Germany, as that sell out Merkel had the audacity to refuse to acknowledge the sacrifice of the some 26.6 million people that died fighting her country and defeating the SOBs 70 years ago, the despicable pig that she is; Of course, the UK and that wimp Cameron who should have his lips welded shut, the British version of that oversized fetus John McCain (we can always count on the Brits to be our bitch boys and go along with any and every resource war we start anywhere on the planet); Canada, who make better hockey players than soldiers sent their awesome military over to the Ukraine to train the neo Nazis (how to throw moose turds at innocent civilians?), and a few others whose media and so called leaders are apparently completely controlled by the neocons and their interests back here in the soon to collapse USA.

Now the latest...something about that haircut in search of a brain Kerry and that witch Nuland supposedly trying to persuade their oligarch (all of a sudden)Poroshenko to act in a civilized manner and adhere to some Minsk agreement and stop shelling apartments, hospitals, and other civilian areas. Again, not a word out of the ever so complacent western media about their real motives. Europe is about to consider dropping the sanctions against Russia which are so counter productive to their own well being. The sudden transformation into desiring peace is suspicious at best and is likely a face saving gesture to get reluctant European dupes to stay on the demonize Russia bandwagon and maintain the sanctions against that fictitious enemy, the country gobbling Russian Federation. All the blood on their hands and all of a sudden they want peace. Bullshit. Does anyone actually believe anything these puppets say anymore? You would think most rational people in the world would have caught on to their games by now.

All some childish, vain effort to scapegoat Russia and hope that they can break them apart and make them vassal states of the US, like their European satellite countries. Russia isn't having it. Last I read, the energy returned on energy ratio of the 2/3 of energy the US needs to import was a rather abysmal 8:1-13:1. That was a few years ago, I am sure the ratio has diminished. The world is losing faith that the US dollar can be trusted as a medium of exchange. The US is facing an energy cataclysm. Oil exporting countries will want commodities or currencies that have value for their declining exports, not worthless federal reserve notes. Russia is the next energy superpower and along with China and BRICS nations, have ditched the dollar out of their bilateral trade. So the US stages a coup, demonizes Russia, and sends billions of dollars to these mercenaries and avowed neo Nazis to attack innocent civilians (google the victims of Lugansk on youtube and see the after math of their sneak attacks) all in some childish, desperate attempt to maintain their hegemony and try to blackmail them into being yet another vassal state of the US. It isn't going to work. Not a word out of every so honest, fair and balanced, western media. No wonder they want to actively squelch voices of truth and go after people that can see through their veil of deception.

seraphim said...

@ acceptance of same-sex relationships hasn't led to an explosion of Conchita Wursts or outrageous public behavior

Really? What about Mardi Grases, Pride Parades? Are they "biological"?
And how do same sex couples to have children? And how would you explain the instinctive revulsion that homoeroticism provoked all along history? Don't give me the bonobo stuff.

seraphim said...

@the New Atlantis, the ''Exceptional Nation'

Is there more than a coincidence between the publication of the "Nova Atlantis" of the Rosicrucian Sir Francis Bacon in 1627 and the establishment of The Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630?
"The colony was founded by the owners of the Massachusetts Bay Company, which included investors in the failed Dorchester Company, which had in 1623 established a short-lived settlement on Cape Ann. The second attempt, the Massachusetts Bay Colony begun in 1628, was successful, with about 20,000 people migrating to New England in the 1630s. The population was strongly Puritan, and its governance was dominated by a small group of leaders who were strongly influenced by Puritan religious leaders".(Wiki).
It was meant to become the "City upon a Hill", the New Jerusalem, the New Israel, endowed with a "Manifest Destiny".

But was not the 'New Atlantis' of Bacon the island of "Bensalem", somewhere in the Pacific, but not far from Peru? Was not the people of Bensalem descended from Abraham and their laws were given by Moses? And "the very eye of this kingdom" was, in the words of Bacon:
"Ye shall understand (my dear friends) that amongst the excellent acts of that king, one above all hath the pre-eminence. It was the erection and institution of an Order or Society, which we call Salomon's House; the noblest foundation (as we think) that ever was upon the earth; and the lanthorn of this kingdom. It is dedicated to the study of the works and creatures of God. Some think it beareth the founder's name a little corrupted, as if it should be Solamona's House. But the records write it as it is spoken. So as I take it to be denominate of the king of the Hebrews, which is famous with you, and no stranger to us."
A main character in the New Atlantis is the Jew Joabin. But he is not a Jew like the European Jews, no, siree. He is a descendant of Joab one of King David’s generals, whose most important role was in retrieving the Ark of the Covenant from the Philistines. The Ark’s recovery and subsequent placement in the Temple were essential elements of the establishment of Jerusalem as a religious and political center for the Jewish people (that the Ark disappeared forever after the destruction of the first Temple is of no consequence in the utopian world of New Atlantis). Interestingly, the laws of Bensalem includes the secret teachings revealed to Moses during the 40 days on Mount Sinai i.e. Kabbalah. From the Middle Ages into the Renaissance there was a widespread tradition that the secret teachings given to Moses were preserved in the Ark of the Covenant and transmitted to Solomon and from Solomon to all magicians, wizards, astrologers, alchemists, who coagulated in the Rose-Croix Order and then in the Masonic Order of which Francis Bacon was precursor.
The motto of the Rosicrucians was: "sub umbra alarum tuarum Jehova". OMG.


Unknown said...

For the average Westerner, the
international community is the US,EU, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
For the rest of the world, the aforementioned stands for US and its vassal states.
Viewed in this context, it should come as no surprise that Victoria Nuland's comments came as serenade to the fearless leaders of the European Union.

michigan native said...

Gay rights, Bruce Jenner....most of your lives are ready to fall apart on a hand basket and you concern yourselves with horse shit like this....

Speaking of truth and real media issues, why has anyone forgotten about the raw act of terrorism that resulted in the murder of 298 civilians that various useful idiots (the so called leader of Australia, Cameron, Kerry, Obama, Nuland, McCain, etc etc)(might as well include Merkel and Hollande because apparently they have no balls, let alone any moral integrity, so continue to bark for their masters up until their dying day) and all the rest of you who allow your hearts and souls to be kidnapped by these lying, murdering SOBs? Shame on you. Here is an update from WikiLeaks on the passenger jet that the neocons deliberately shot down to create a justification or reason to get reluctant European dupes to jump on the demonize/sanction Russia bandwagon. Watch how their spokes witch seems to back peddle and hide under the predictable cloak of "national security".http://crimesofempire.com/2014/08/08/mh17the-life-and-death-of-a-psyop/ All this time later and still no answers? Clearly they have something to hide, to put it in Ron Paul's words. If anything is allowed to come out, it will be either fabricated or highly sanitized. Does precious little to bring back the lives of those innocent people or the thousands more that were killed with bombs, rockets, mortar, and artillery in the so called "separatist" republics, the "insurgents" as the western media to this day erroneously refers to them

Again, how many times can these lying mass murderers keep playing the same tricks, pulling the same rabbits out of their dirty trick bags before any thinking person can catch on to them?

Spleen said...

I'm what used to be known as a 'hyphenated American'. In my experience, when the subject of ethnic background came up, a lot of WASPs would usually say something like, 'Me? Why I'm just a boring old white American. Nothing special.' It was as though their ethnicity was not an ethnicity at all, but rather some sort of non-ethnic default state. There was also the curious way that they would use terms like 'white-ethnic' or 'ethnic American', as though they themselves had no ethnicity. (In our PC age, all this kind of talk is now a thing of the past. But you still heard this stuff 30 or 40 years ago.)

I have long wondered whether this has anything to do with the typically American propensity to assume that their values (political and moral ones especially) are not merely cultural traditions, but rather universal aspects of human nature.

Think about it: what usually happens when Americans are forced to confront a foreign civilization, people or culture that differs in some respect from their own? Well, it seems that a lot of the 'conservative' types here simply regard them as sub-human, while most of the 'liberal' types act on the assumption that the vast majority of those people don't really want to be that way--that it's just some oppressive 'regime' or 'religion' that forces them into it against their will.

Has it ever occurred to them that America's own political/cultural values are not much more than just another regime or religion among many others? Has it ever occurred to them that ours aren't predestined to dominate the entire globe? Has it ever occurred to them, in short, that Anglo-Saxon Protestant (including post-Protestant) values are not--and probably never will be--universal?

Unknown said...

The attitude of the so called Western leaders against Putin can perhaps be summed up with just one word describing the emotion that is common to us all
" Jealousy".

Dmitry Orlov said...

Amid a few good comments, lots of people decided to go completely off-topic and rant off about homosexuality or gay rights or some other issue they like, ignoring all the points I made.