This melting of the Arctic ice is NOT good news.

We’re all gonna die. It’s the end of the world. And it must be true. I was watching the TV last night and they told me global warming was all true, so it must be.

Of course they also told me that multiculturalism works and that Donald Trump is Hitler, but I’m sure they’re telling the truth about global warming.

This melting of the Arctic ice is NOT good news. You may go swimming in the White Sea but higher temperatures may destroy the crops in southern Russia and elsewhere. Killer heat waves will appear in the warmer regions of the earth. Don’t think you will be growing wheat on the Kola Peninsula. Tundra soil will not support crops of wheat, corn, soy much less rice. have a nice swim but don’t count on dinner or that porridge breakfast.

Back to the roots, fellow mammals.

They were strange days at the beginning of the age of mammals. The planet was still hungover from the astonishing disappearance of its marquee superstars, the dinosaurs. Earth’s newest crater was still a smoldering system of hydrothermal vents, roiling under the Gulf of Mexico. In the wake of Armageddon our shell-shocked ancestors meekly negotiated new roles on a planet they inherited quite by accident. Before long, life settled into new rhythms: Earth hosted 50-foot-long boas sliding through steam-bath jungles, birds grew gigantic in imitation of their dearly departed cousins, and mildly modern mammals we might squint to recognize appeared. Within a few million years, loosed from under the iron heel of the vanished giants, they began to experiment. Early whales pranced across a Pakistani archipelago on all fours, testing out life in the water. The first lemur-like primates leapt from the treetops, and hoofed things of all varieties dashed through the forest.

But the most striking feature of this early age of mammals is that it was almost unbelievably hot, so hot that around 50 million years ago there were crocodiles, palm trees, and sand tiger sharks in the Arctic Circle. On the other side of the blue-green orb, in waters that today would surround Antarctica, sea-surface temperatures might have topped an unthinkable 86 degrees Fahrenheit, with near-tropical forests on Antarctica itself. There were perhaps even sprawling, febrile dead zones spanning the tropics, too hot even for animal or plant life of any sort.

This is what you get in an ancient atmosphere with around 1,000 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide. If this number sounds familiar, 1,000 ppm of CO2 is around what humanity is on pace to reach by the end of this century. That should be mildly concerning.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/earths-scorching-hot-history/566762/

It’s hard to imagine the spread and evolvement of Christianity without his input.

Isn’t that a bit of a contradiction with the fact that JC would indeed be the incarnate Word if God? If the latter is a true, then why would the success of spreading the true religion of God hinge on the personal merits of a mere mortal?

I’m not getting how this could be logical.

Seems unlikely considering they are descendants of the founding population

“Out of Africa” is a political ideology, not science. There’s no reason to believe that bantoids are somehow older genetically than other humans.

(Most likely humans originally radiated out from somewhere in the Middle East. As usual, the account in Genesis is more scientific than the bullshit the liberal media’s popsci arm feeds us…)

???

I have never seen people denounce vegetarianism on TV.

But remember, herbivores are still herbivores, no matter how intelligent they are.

It’s a pity he has been demoted to a seagull.

http://tass.com/society/1016131

You hate vegetarians because television tells you to hate vegetarians and you obey.

It’s one of the things that it is still permissible to bad-mouth on TV. And so you go right along with it. Because TV told you so.

Ok sir, I will get to that right away.

What sort of fucking sociopathic filth jokes about this? Sometimes I regret that I have become attached to the commenters of this blog over the years, even if I comment little myself.

I can’t see what harm it does to joke about something that isn’t going to happen anyway. If climate change was a real thing it might be poor taste to joke about it.

Compare the population of Africa 6000 years ago to now, Africa is a continental idiocracy, the people that make arguments like “all the world can live in Texas and be ok” are clueless just how bad blacks are at running an efficient society.

Besides that, assume that all will be magically well and that a warming Africa is a blessing, the problem is that everyone in Africa has a smartphone and they are fully aware of the liberal narratives being preached in the news, if the narrative is that global warming harms Africa (regardless if it is true or not) then the African hordes will obviously take advantage of that and try enter other lands.

I’ve heard of the first and remain skeptical, I was more referring to sub-Saharan mutational load. Seems unlikely considering they are descendants of the founding population (missed the migration bottlenecks) and live in extremely disease and virus-ridden environment.

what do you want sources for, the blacks part or the fact that our species as a whole is doomed? I can assure you that the latter isn’t even remotely controversial amongst geneticists.

Honestly I was sure you were referring to world Jewry at first.

The human genome is degenerating so rapidly that even if we successfully colonize the galaxy, genetic entropy means humans will be extinct in 6000 years no matter what (blacks even sooner because they have 2x the mutation load as the rest of humanity).

Sources please.

Except those climatic changes occurred a period of thousands of years, not in little more than a century or two, as is happening now. I fail to see how worldwide ecological devastation and the associated Permian-tier mass extinction and the creation of the largest refugee crisis in human history is anything to be welcomed.
Even if one is tempted by the attitude of ‘who will miss Indians?’, you need to be realistic and ask yourself whether any population peacefully accepted their own extinction. Terrorism will correspondingly grow to exponential levels of severity across the entire globe.
What sort of fucking sociopathic filth jokes about this? Sometimes I regret that I have become attached to the commenters of this blog over the years, even if I comment little myself.

The reason for China would be to conduct live tests of its weapons systems. It’s a serious problem that their military has no experience fighting an actual war since 1979. (There might be some other considerations, like their complex relations to the US, Russia, or Iran. I don’t know enough to comment whether it’d make any sense from that perspective.)

Regarding the name, the source is an Arab language newspaper. I tried to search the English web for the name of the Chinese military attache to Syria, but I couldn’t find anything. Probably the journalists reading the interview found no information on the romanization either, and so they romanized the name from the Arabic transliterated version. Do you know anything about the rules of Arabic transliterations of Chinese names? I think it’s vaguely phonetic, so it might be the case that when changing it to (a plausible vaguely Chinese sounding) English transliteration, the result could be what you see.

But of course it could be fake news.

Yes – uncomfortableness is just psychological and easily surpassed. Well, beyond “no inappropriate weather- only inappropriate clothing” if it’s -10° degrees.

Only have to see how in developed hot countries, people sometimes seeming more psychologically weak to heat than Northerners, as they became so dependent on air conditioning everywhere. Also in midday, often streets are empty of locals as they hide under air conditioning, but tourists being tougher and even enjoying the weather outside.

Fake news is fake. I don’t know who keeps repeating this nonsense, but the Chinese are entirely uninterested, and rightfully so, in taking an active part in someone else’s civil war.

Also you can tell that whoever the original source (lie) was, he wasn’t particularly knowledgable enough about the Chinese to keep his story consistent.

Wong Roy Chang is simply not a name you’ll find in a PLA military attache. Mainland Chinese romanizations are standardized around pinyin which is standardized around standard mandarin pronunciation. So the military attaches name would be written as Wang Rui Zhang in English. Wong Roy Chang could possibly written that way by someone from Hong Kong or maybe Taiwan where romanization standardization is perfunctory at best, but no one in the mainland would choose to write their name that way.

I would never go swimming in the Gulf of Finland. The sea is so filthy it’s just asking for health trouble.

It is a phobia. Many people swim in the Gulf of Finland – and there is no harm to their health. But as an alternative to the Gulf of Finland, in the North-West of Russia (as well as in Finland) there are many very clean forest lakes .

It’s our mission to be resistant to changes in external temperature. A real man should be able to survive both cold and hot weather. Well, I usually prefer cooler nights, and that’s the problem with heat waves in Europe, because until September or maybe late August nights are too short to provide any significant relief. But our bodies should be told to adapt.

OT

China is considering sending troops to Syria to help cleanse Idlib province.

https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/china-military-officials-help-syrian-army-retake-idlib

Thanks, I watched the Mammoth Park video – with the eye of the photogrpher, I have to admit. Beautiful. An abundance of beauty.

Thanks. I’ll check it out sometime, but I usually only go to Patriarshie Prudy when there’s an out-of-town visitor who wants to chat with Woland.

July in Tromso, Norway

The graph shows long term statistics for monthly temperature. The dots indicate the monthly average each year, whereas the line shows 10 year Gaussian distribution. The bars show maximum and minimum observed temperature.

The most trusted truly global temperatures (monthly averages) from the beginning of the age of satellite global temperature measurements.

As you can see temperature increased by about 0.45C since 1980 (38 years). This year July global temperature is not outstanding.

A guy named Russ George has been doing iron dumping experiments recently and they’ve been quite successful, resulting in large algae blooms and consequent huge increases in fish population:

“Two Years After Russ George Illegally Dumped Iron in the Pacific, Salmon Catches Are Up 400%”

http://www.planetexperts.com/two-years-russ-george-illegally-dumped-iron-pacific-salmon-catches-400/

Unlike the neoliberal dogma, I do not only consider public debt to be relevant, but also look at private debt.

It all depends on what kind of private debt and how high is the interest rate and who benefits form the interest. The lowest private debt have countries with populations that are not credit worthy. Debt in itself is not bad if it is payable, i.e., if the debtors can generate income to pay it off as long as interests are not usurious. Private debt money is a new money that must be repaid. It differs form Keynesian approach where the new money does not have to be repaid and where there is no interest. The interest is the biggest problem because it mathematically guarantees that X% of loans will not be repaid unless the system expands by adopting more player who will contribute to the interests by taking new debts. The new players come from positive demographic expansion which now means mostly immigration. The bottom line is that the interest rates are the key to everything.

The epic battle between plankton and clathrate collapse is about to begin.

Anatoly,

What do you think about iron fertilization of the ocean to lower temperature? Apparently, just a small amount of iron dumped in the ocean is enough to trigger another ice age.

http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/fertilizing-the-ocean-with-iron

“Give me half a tanker of iron, and I’ll give you an ice age” may rank as the catchiest line ever uttered by a biogeochemist. The man responsible was the late John Martin, former director of the Moss Landing Marine Laboratory, who discovered that sprinkling iron dust in the right ocean waters could trigger plankton blooms the size of a small city. In turn, the billions of cells produced might absorb enough heat-trapping carbon dioxide to cool the Earth’s warming atmosphere.

Never mind that Martin was only half serious when he made the remark (in his “best Dr. Strangelove accent,” he later recalled) at an informal seminar at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in 1988. With global warming already a looming problem, others were inclined to take him seriously.

At the time, ice-core records suggested that during past glacial periods, natural iron fertilization had repeatedly drawn as much as 60 billion tons of carbon out of the atmosphere. Laboratory experiments suggested that every ton of iron added to the ocean could remove 30,000 to 110,000 tons of carbon from the air. Early climate models hinted that intentional iron fertilization across the entire Southern Ocean could erase 1 to 2 billion tons of carbon emissions each year—10 to 25 percent of the world’s annual total.

Things will only start getting really problematic in Africa with 4-5C of warming.

But isn’t that what’s likely to happen? iirc 2° C is considered to be only the lower limit of global warming and will be surpassed without drastic cuts to carbon emissions (which seem rather unlikely).

Hahaha.

Are there any good ones? I remember one in China run by Buddhists, near one of the old Confucian academies in Changsha; it was pretty good. My girlfriend at the time, who was a bit of animal fanatic, complained about the “mock duck” and “mock pork” because apparently she thought it was morally wrong to eat analogues of meat and rejection of meat should be pure in mind. The virtue spiral truly never ends.

I’ve also had the misfortune of briefly having a vegan doctor. Trust me, going in for anything and getting told “have you thought about a plant-based diet?” and getting the same printout to watch “forks over knives” as the answer to everything gets old real quick.

do you have the instinct to eat roadkill?

Haven’t heard that one before.

Since I often find myself traveling during Orthodox Christian fasting periods, I have made a sampling
of the vegan restaurants of Europe. The weirdest one that I’ve stumbled upon is “Loving Hut”, which is a chain owned by some wacky Vietnamese guru:

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

The food wasn’t very good, and the vibe was very cultish.

Well, he did come from the very top of the top of Jewish society of his day. He had impeccable credentials and an education second to none. Because he was an ‘insider’ that betrayed his caste, he was unceremoniously castigated from his former kinsmen. For this, he was persecuted, but I’m sure that his former ‘patrician’ background helped form his perceived narcissism. It’s hard to imagine the spread and evolvement of Christianity without his input.

Yeah, I don’t really care about what people eat themselves. Hardcore vegans are just creepy as they will sometimes attempt to convert you with arguments like “humans are not actually carnivores, do you have the instinct to eat roadkill? We are mutated herbivores..” and so on. Its just creepy.

I am firmly against cruelty to humanity.

Without humans, there can be no more cruelty to humans.

No, but some years ago she became very upset about meat eating after watching some film about factory farms. However, there’s an easy solution: spend a little more for higher quality meat raised on smaller farms. Anyway, if people don’t want to eat meat, that’s there own business. The problem
is if they refuse to talk about it rationally.

Anyway, she’s a good friend, and we cooperate on a lot of important community projects, so her dietary qualms are not very relevant. I’m was just trying to paint my personal impressionistic picture of Navalny fans.

I would never go swimming in the Gulf of Finland. The sea is so filthy it’s just asking for health trouble. Beaches in Helsinki fill up with sunbathers but most people don’t actually want to go into the smelly dirty sea.

Between Sweden and Finland it’s somewhat less polluted, the better the further north you go and there are beach resorts all the way to the northern edge which is almost at the Arctic Circle.

What do you have against Paul?

I find his writings appallingly arrogant. He not only had an exalted view of himself but also had an insufferable persecution complex. In his epistles it’s always everybody against poor ol’ Paul and he himself is blameless for the way that he alienated people.

His letters are all “I, I, I” and “me, me, me”. I don’t think I would have liked him.

He was a brilliant man though, not denying that.

That sounds like you’re trying to top that Bronze age pervert guy.

What do you have against Paul? If not for him, the message of salvation would be imperceptible.

I fully agree with you that the global warming that Karlin gleefully writes about is a great bane for humanity. Because of his rather dry writing style, I’m not able to discern whether he’s being facetious as some have suggested, or not?

Russians can go swimming and sunning in the Baltics

Well, we even without global warming swimming and sunning in the Baltics

maybe it’s good for Germans

I don’t think so, I certainly suffer quite a lot from the 35° C we’re having here, and climate change won’t be benficial for German agriculture. Even more importantly, it will make resistance to the African invasion even harder when countries like Niger actually become uninhabitable.

No I don’t see the Apocalypse coming for at least 100 years or so, since you asked. Sometimes I wish it would hurry up though, I’m tired of working and the IRS is on my balls big time.

? What does that mean? End times approaching?

I’m just saying that Paul was right about the impermanent nature of creation. Every year 30 million tons of sediment from the continents erode and are dumped in the bottom of the oceans. The earth is literally wearing out. The human genome is degenerating so rapidly that even if we successfully colonize the galaxy, genetic entropy means humans will be extinct in 6000 years no matter what (blacks even sooner because they have 2x the mutation load as the rest of humanity).

And now we got this global warming stuff to deal with. I guess it’s good for Anatoly and all the Russians here, maybe it’s good for Germans, Poles, and Scandinavians, but it’s bad for everybody else.

Not a fan of Paul, but credit where credit is due: he called it.

Is she a hardcore vegan?

Is it a joke? I get the impression that AK is serious and regards global warming as a great chance. And maybe for Russia it is. For other regions (unfortunately ones with massive and exploding populations) it will of course be catastrophe.

It’s all playing out for us.

? What does that mean? End times approaching?

Navalny’s liberals, who are themselves of course hardcore neoliberals

The Navalny fans I know don’t really have coherent positions, let alone principles, but are rather simply operating on the idea that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. Some of them are well-meaning but overly emotional people and you can’t reason with them. One of my wife’s friends is of this sort. I recommend also not talking to this one about vaccinations or vegetarianism.

Russian high officials and bureaucrats are visibly and grossly corrupt.

You should make a list of who’s been naughty or nice.

Immediate benefits: Russians can go swimming and sunning in the Baltics or even the White Sea. A couple more degrees, and it might become competitive with southern resorts during summer.

The Baltic Sea needs much more than temperature for that competition. For starters you need to tell Saint Petersburg to stop dumping all that poop into the sea.

This heat wave is the worst that I can remember. There have been long waves of 25 C in the past but not ones that bring Helsinki consistently to 30 C. I can’t stand anything above 20 C and this is pure hell.

I notice that the North-Western reaches of Russia is not dramatically cooler than the rest of Europe in AK’s pic. Sad! Well, here’s today’s weather:

Back to normalcy. My half-serious/half-joking thought of buying some cheap land there and build myself a summer home limps on.

OT: Tens of Thousands of Russians Protest Retirement Age Hikes

I admit to being impressed by Putin’s fiscal instincts and I hope he won’t flinch despite the protests. Russia in general is shockingly solvent. Unlike the neoliberal dogma, I do not only consider public debt to be relevant, but also look at private debt. Case in point: Denmark’s debt-to-GDP is around 37%. However, it’s private debt-to-GDP is a shocking 220%. Russia, by contrast, has low private and public debt. The major weak point, the pension system, is now being amended. The latest fiscal rule, which caps the budget at the assumption of a $40 oil barrel price (in 2017 dollars), will also help.

By comparison, PiS’ irresponsible populism by scrapping necessary pension age hikes would lead some to conclude that democracy is at fault here, and that Russia’s one-man rule approach is preferable. But that isn’t necessarily the case. The Nordics and the Netherlands have reformed their pension systems in a sustainable way, despite being democracies. Oil-wealthy Venezuela, ruled by a strongman, is a complete disaster. I think it is less the governance system rather than the general culture. Poland has still not produce a single year of a budget surplus, though we are usually outgrowing our deficit so our debt still either falls or stays put.

One could be tempted to say that Putin’s impressive fiscal discipline is not representative of the nation he leads. But if a clown like Yeltsin was drawn from the people, then so obviously was Putin. If Yeltsin was used to disparage Russia and its people, then why should Putin’s fiscal discipline be downplayed lest he be used in a positive manner. AK may have endorsed some blunt stuff about Russians, but for me, it is hard not to be impressed by the economic stewardship of the nation.

And, as I pointed out, it isn’t just the government. Russia’s private debt is also very low. So perhaps it is a mentality which isn’t isolated to the leader alone. Impressive.

This recurring joke of yours is in extremely bad taste.

The apostle Paul said “the world wears out like a garment”.

It’s all playing out for us.

At one time I was pondering on emigrating somewhere north because I can barely suffer the summers here as they are, but now that it’s becoming hot even there, my only hope against all odds is that the real space age begins during my lifetime so I can move my ass to some O’Neill cylinder in orbit with a nice temperate climate.

More warming and higher humidity sounds like abject hell.

Interesting video on the topic

– about the experiment on restoration of mammoth steppes conducted in Northern Siberia (as a response to warming)

Anatoly,

These Arctic warming conditions may not be as anomalous nor as recent as usually thought.

You are respectfully referred to the famous picture of the US Submarine Skate surfacing at the North Pole on 17 March 1959 in virtually ice-free water.

Watts Up With That (“Ice at the North Pole in 1958 and 1959”, April 26, 2009) offers a compendium of pictures and explanations for these ice-free conditions.

So that these Arctic warming conditions are not only of very recent vintage.

Don’t you think that any sort of widespread implementation of agriculture in the deglaciated lands of the Arctic would happen far beyond 3000 A.D? It would take hundreds of years for the decay of colonizing plant species to build up just a few inches of topsoil.

Good post – what is missing is technology— human mind is linear technology is exponential… Your analysis is linear and assume technology will follow same trend. but in 1000 year technological progress might be unimaginable.trasport to other planets, terraforming mars, cooling earth temperature by transforming co2 into o2, agriculture productivity are just examples… The real problem is not 3000 but between 2000 and 2050 where environmental damage might not be offset by technological discoveries…

If you mean with rest of the world Africa and India than yes, Rednecks are smarter than average.

Unlikely, Caste societies can only develop if groups don’t interbreed. That is why the US has a Caste society between whites and blacks but not between Wasps and low IQ emigrants like Italians, Greeks and Eastern European Jews.

The only Somalis you see here could afford to get here, That requires serious money, especially in such a poor country. I would even argue that their high unemployment is due to being upper class

The average pole is also much younger than the average Pole back home. Add in a minority of elite Poles and you get on average better educated. Besides it is not like the bottom 10% is hicks. They all are.

1. There is something called maths. It allows you to calculated for example how high the birthrate needs to be for a 10% minority to pull up the average birthrate from 1.5 to 1.8. That would be 4.5. Problem is those groups are way less than 10% and maximum normal family size of those groups were 5/6 20 years ago, now less.

2 I used Eastern European Jews and Italians because when they landed they were considered dumber than average. If i would now make a joke about how Italian Americans as dumb than people would look funny at me and not because it would be racist. Doing it with Jews and i would be considered an idiot

Iraq Upper class + Christians
Afghanistan Upper class
Poland Hicks
Somalia Serious Upper class
Thailand Some Southerners but mostly North East (not good)
Iran Upper class
Eritrea Upper class
China probably the normal Chinese emigrant.
Syria Christians
Turkey Anatolian and Kurdish Hicks

I would go for the upper class

3. So it is Georgia USA

4. There has to an incredible amount of upheaval for property rights to seriously break down. But there is a problem with minorities, like for example the Turkish, that will be significantly richer than the average Norwegian.

I believe that people in Scandinavia and Finland enjoy quite generous social benefits that include maternity and paternity leave. Social welfare and family policies that encourage high female work participation, gender equality and family support translate into a high fertility rate.
http://www.nikk.no/Gender+Equality+and+Fertility.9UFRzO43.ips

The lowest fertility rates in First World countries (Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain) are often associated with social policies that present women with either/or options (they can work and stay single OR they can marry / have children and drop out of work BUT they can’t work and marry / have children) and which reflect strong conservative religious or social attitudes in those countries.
http://www.ipss.go.jp/webj-ad/webjournal.files/population/2008_4/01billari.pdf

BTW fertility rates in Muslim countries have been falling though the media hardly talks about this. Iran carried out a family planning education program in the 1980s/90s and that country is now regarded as a model of how family planning education should be done as fertility rates have crashed there.
http://www.lifenews.com/2012/07/05/underpopulation-muslim-world-faces-devastating-fertility-decline/

1. “Nordic people have a high fertility rate due to their cohabitation ways.
The share of migrants is even to low to have that much of an influence.
The fast breeders are almost extinct. No migrant group still has 10+ kids. 4 is about maximum, especially in a car centric society as Scandinavia.”
Source? Links strongly preferred.

2. “Low IQ immigrants? I know the type In the 1920′s it was Jews and Italians.”
Yeah, and immigrants to the US at the time were mostly from Europe. Therefore that must mean most immigrants to the US today are from Europe! *Sarcasm* However, if we assume that employment correlates with group IQ, this source would suggest that on average immigrants to Sweden, at least, have a little less on the ball than the average native:
http://www.thelocal.se/37584/20111126/
It’s not conclusive, of course, but it does make one wonder.

and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden#Ethnicity

“The fastest growing groups of foreign-born residents in Sweden between 2010 and 2011 were the following nationalities:
Iraq (+ 3738)
Afghanistan (+ 3069)
Poland (+ 2612)
Somalia (+ 2319)
Thailand (+ 2235)
Iran (+ 1708))
Eritrea (+ 1693)
China (+ 1659)
Syria (+ 1599)
Turkey (+ 1382)”

With the exceptions of Poland and Thailand, which are both decent on IQ, and China, which scores quite well, these are not ethnicities known for their overwhelming intellectual process, at least not of late. And my point was to also take into consideration future immigration of refugees of the environmental cataclysm Anatoly was predicting. Since this would overwhelmingly be from more equatorial regions, which tend to produce a lot of the low IQ populations, it stands to reason that many of these future migrants would be lower than the average Scandinavian in IQ.

3. “They are still obviously dumber than Rednecks.
No need to be rude.

4. “Land is valuable because of population pressure. No people no value.”
I understand that. My point was that if inequality grows to such an extent that social upheaval occurs and property rights break down, having legal title to land is worthless. Read carefully before making condescending remarks.

South Pole landmass is mostly under water. Removal of Ice would lift it but that takes millennia. But even the melting of the ice would take decades. But AK is wrong on South Africa and Southern South America

Nordic people have a high fertility rate due to their cohabitation ways.
The share of migrants is even to low to have that much of an influence.
The fast breeders are almost extinct. No migrant group still has 10+ kids. 4 is about maximum, especially in a car centric society as Scandinavia. Low IQ immigrants? I know the type In the 1920’s it was Jews and Italians. They are still obviously dumber than Rednecks.
Land is valuable because of population pressure. No people no value.

ps. Which of the low IQ place is it. Georgia USA or Georgia USSR

“China encroach on the Russian Far East?”

South pole instead. Antarctica as a colony for Chinese?

How much of the (relatively) high fertility of the Nordic countries is currently due to fast-breeding, low-IQ refugees? I think that the flood of third-world immigrants moving into the ARCS countries, with the promise of more to come as the climate shifts, would doom those countries to a dark future. I certainly wouldn’t want to buy land in any country likely to become a haven for third-worlders, with rising inequality and an underemployed lower class positioned to result in social upheaval.

Hey have you read Lawrence Smith – he stole the march on the Arctic World paradigm anacronym on you, I think with NORCS (2010). Though ARCS certainly has a nicer ring to it 🙂

http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/geog/downloads/297/396.pdf

First Chinese ship makes trip to Atlantic via Arctic route
AFP Aug 17, 2012, 05.29PM IST

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-08-17/news/33249671_1_northern-sea-route-ship-arctic

REYKJAVIK: The first Chinese ship has travelled from the Pacific to Atlantic via the Arctic along the Russian coast, an Icelandic scientist who participated on the expedition said Friday.

The Chinese icebreaker Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, docked in Iceland after having sailed the so-called Northern Sea Route from the Pacific, Egill Thor Nielsson told AFP.

“This is the first Chinese ship to sail this route and of course it is important because it’s a more than 40 percent shorter route to Europe,” he said.

The Chinese are even more interested in this route after having found the passage relatively easy.

“It took almost ten days to sail from the East Siberian Sea and through the Barents Sea, and during that time there was real pack ice for only seven days,” he said.

Climate change is opening the prospect of commercial shipping via the Northern Sea Route or the Northwest Passage north of Canada.

More and more ships are travelling via the Northern Sea Route. Four made the passage in 2010, 34 last year and the figure will be higher this year, said Nielsson.

The Snow Dragon, bought from Ukraine in 1993, is currently China’s only ice breaker. A second being built in China with the help of a Finnish company, should be completed in 2014.

Sounds interesting but the key is keeping out third world refugees/immigrants.

Here is a link to a very interesting article in the Independent that says that secret discussions are underway between the leading oil producers including the Gulf States, the BRICS countries (lead here by China) and ominously Japan and Brazil to replace the dollar by a basket of currencies in the international oil trade. This basket will include both the renminbi and the rouble. Apparently the long term objective is to conduct the oil trade in an entirely new currency.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-demise-of-the-dollar-1798175.html

If this is true (and the article seems very well informed) and if it does indeed happen then the dollar’s days as the world’s reserve currency are well and truly numbered with all the colossal geopolitical and economic implications that go with that.

Recent polls show the ‘Yes’ vote hovering around around the 52-53% mark. Here are the official results

Yes – 66%

No – 33%

Turnout 43%

99% of votes counted

http://www.izbori.hr/2012Referendum/rez … ltati.html

I was surprised at hearing the evening news on SBS TV that Croatia has indeed voted to join the EU in 2013. Results were that two-thirds voted for membership and one-third voted against in the referendum but the voter turnout was low.

There were protests on the day before the referendum took place (22 January 2012) and a poll done very recently showed that 40% of Croatians weren’t in favour of joining the EU. That’s quite a big minority.

Nearly all political parties if not all of them were in favour of joining the EU which might suggest that they don’t see any other alternative to joining which won’t involve being pressured by Germany to yield their resources to German companies or buy German arms. And bear in mind also that Germany was the first country to recognise Croatia as an independent state when it broke away from Yugoslavia back in 1991.

Horvat, are you Croatian and if so, are you able to find out if Croatia has demanded an opt-out option regarding the adoption of the euro? My understanding is that when Croatia becomes a full member on 1 July 2013, it doesn’t have to accept the euro then but the country should demand the option not to join the eurozone as Denmark and the UK have.

I personally don’t think that joining the EU is a good move for Croatia as the country is in bad economic condition and has been receiving about 150 million euros in assistance every year since 2007. Corruption is bad with former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader charged with two counts of corruption,. His trial was supposed to have started last November after a rescheduling because of “health issues”. Some things never change! Croatians see what’s been happening in Hungary (that country may default on its debts) and in Romania (under pressure from the EU to cut back on the already meagre social services the country offers, plus women and girls are trafficked as prostitutes to EU countries) and are afraid they’ll go down a similar path.

Croatia is about to join the EU is this a bad move for the country?

Minor correction: Romney will probably win Virginia, by default, because Gingrich isn’t on the ballot there. So he will not lose the entire South.

Thanks. I consider that a compliment!

Dear AP,

I agree with all of this.

I think that some people forget that culture, history and nationalism are more important factors in terms of voter choice, than economics or party/class ideology and identification. This is why the workers of the world, rather than uniting in 1914, slaughtered each other.

The US South is its own particular culture, much more different from the US North than the North is different from Canada. Gingrich crafted a campaign that appealed to southern US nationalism. As brillliantly described by Anatol Lieven in his book about US nationalism, much of the US South was settled by protestant peasants, Scotch-Irish followers of Oliver Cromwell. They hated the British monarchy (beheading the king), aristocracy and elites in general, who were seen as decadent and exploitative. This hatred, on American soil, became a hatred for the coastal cosmpolitan elite and the wealthy. The Scotch-Irish also had a proud tradition of fighting enemies, be they Irish Catholics (originally), Indians in the New World, Germans, Commies, or Muslims in order to carve out and preserve or safeguard their homeland.

Just as they have preserved some old Scottish folk songs that have disappeared in Scotland itself, Lieven notes that they have also preserved a pre-Enlightened 17th century worldview with respect to religion, war, etc.

Gingrich crafted his SC campaign to appeal to these people’s anti-elitist nationalist sentiments. Using democratic language about evil corporations was completely logical when it was used by Gingrich as a weapon against the evil exploitative elite Romney, portrayed as a rapacious Yankee northeasterner invading Southern factories and shutting them down. His flipflops on abortion, an affront to simple peasant Protestant morality. Gingrich’s coded racism (Obama the food stamp president) and the supportof Tea Party people fearful of Obama the closet Muslim appealed to their traditional xenophobia.

This approach won’t work outside the South. Florida’s Republicans are mostly either Cuban (who apparently support Romney) and many retirees from pro-Romney Michigan or the Northeast. Romney should double Gingrich’s delegates in that state alone. His Mormon faith will help him win the mouintain West and California, and he’ll take the Northeast. IMO Romney will be the nominee without winning any of the southern states.

I’m not sure about the general election. If the economy improves, Obama will probably win. If not – the southerners will still take Romney over Barak Hussein Obama. Romney will put the Northeast and Michigan in play…so he’ll have a good chance of winning. Picking a popular northern Repubican such as Christie as running-mate might help him. This tax thing probably came up early enough that he will have a chance to diffuse it by the time of the general election.

Dear Yalensis,

This truly is turning into a dismal election.

Obama has disappointed and disillusioned his supporters and is obviously vulnerable. A strong Republican candidate should be in a good position to finish him off. Yet the Republican party it seems cannot find anybody it can enthusiastically unite behind.

I still think Romney is the most likely contender to emerge as the Republican candidate. He is certain to win the primary in Massachusetts were he was governor and I suspect that this will give him the momentum he needs. South Carolina is one of the most conservative states and not very typical. Having said this there is no enthusiasm for him. How can there be given that he is a multi millionaire financier who made his money in the same financial services sector that is widely blamed for the current crisis (not to mention also the way he avoids paying tax)?

I think in a straight contest Romney could beat Obama but this is not an election I can easily predict because the Republican field is so weak. I suspect a lot will depend on how the economy turns out between now and the election.

One prediction I do make is that if the eventual Republican candidate is Romney he will choose a very right wing running mate (Rick Santorum?).

Based on the results of the South Carolina Republican Primary election last night, I would like to officially retract my prediction that Mitt Romney will the next Prez of USA. When I made this prediction, Romney seemed like a shoe-in for Republican nomination, just based on the simple fact that there was nobody else; and from there it seemed like he would probably beat Obama, based on the poor U.S. economy and Obama’s record of incompetence. However, what I did not take into account, and could not have known, is there there is some kind of problem with Romney’s taxes. He has refused to release his tax returns, and this badly hurt him with the primary voters, thus giving the victory to Gingrich.
You have to wonder about a guy who has planned for the last 10 years to run for President, but did not take into account that he needed to have clean tax returns in order to qualify.
Speculations include the following: (1) Mitt never paid any taxes over the past few years, or (2) He paid some taxes, but not enough, or (3) Voters would be turned off to discover that Mitt pays 10% of all his earnings to Mormon Church, or, more sinisterly, and my personal favorite (4) Mormon church establishment will discover that Mitt has been skeeving THEM as well as U.S. treasury! That could be a terrible catastrophe for Romney, because he would have to either pay up or risk ex-communication.

I see a new article on Putin featured on the popular http://www.aldaily.com/ :
“Putin and the Uses of History”
by Fiona Hill, Clifford G. Gaddy
http://nationalinterest.org/article/putin-the-uses-history-6276?page=show

AP you wrote:

“Hunter,

Sorry, my post was directed towards Alexander, not towards you. That was clear when I started my post, “Alexander.” If he chooses to put your ideas in his posts I will address them.”

Oh please, at no point in Alexander’s post did he explicitly mention Rwanda, but you did. Alexander referred generally to my examples and then talked about Jim Crow. Since you had said good bye and good luck to me, why are you bothering to address issues raised between Alexander and myself? If you can address a section of Alexander’s post that started out as “@Hunter” (note it didn’t say “”) why is that you are now using the defence that your post started out as “Alexander”? Doesn’t that strike you as hypocritical? You are allowed to address a section of the post that was not directed towards you, but others cannot address a post of yours that was not explicitly directed towards them? Or is it that you genuinely believe you are allowed to do some things while others should not?

“It’s unfortunate that despite by disengagemrnt you decided to keep up the swiftboating, though. Multiple false accusations,”

You’ve yet to deny my stated observations and just above you seem to have proven at least one of them (hypocrisy).

“and the gem here, actually comparing Yushchenko’s disbanding of parliament in order to call new free and fair elections, to Southern states’ denials of black rights!”

I was only using your own words as it applied to another situation. If you don’t like the comparison why make justifications for Yushchenko breaking the law in order to satisfy the will of the majority? In so doing by the way he denied the minority (those who did not vote for the Orange parties) their right to have their own will respected for the life of the parliament. But apparently minority considerations don’t factor into what you consider democracy hence, observing laws (which are one of the ways in which minority rights are expected and if violated can be redressed) is considered separate by you from democracy.

“I only quoted wikipedia about ochlocracy to show that you were seemingly confused about the meaning of the term. An ochlocracy is a democracy. A bad, spoiled form of democracy, but still a democracy. Rule by the people.”

Sure you did. So now you are saying that ochlocracy is democracy in the same way that grape juice and wine are the same. So now wine is just grape juice right? Just a bad, spoiled form of grape juice. Since nobody ever uses wine as a synonym for grape juice or vice versa unless they are playing around then you must be playing around with the terms ochlocracy and democracy.

“Now what the mob (or, at least, 60% of the population according to opinion polls) wanted in Ukrane was free and fair elections, not racist laws. And this is what Yushchenko gave them, even though doing so was unconstitutional. Free and fair elections. A point worth remembering.”

Nice way to sidestep the uncomfortable comparison I was able to make using your own words to show that in theory nothing was wrong with Jim Crow according to your own logic. You are basically implying that the “mob” wanted the trappings of elections more than it did the rule of law. Hence they wanted ochlocracy.

“Anyways, I’d really rather not take this further with someone like you who does not seem to be capable of honesty or civility with those who have an opinion different from your own. I write this with the understanding that you will probably try to provoke another response, which is what trolls do.”

Given that you have apparently demonstrated your own hypocrisy this can’t mean much coming from you. I note that you are still unable to account for how the November 2005 Razmukov Cenrte poll Razumkov Centre poll (reproduced below) fits into your hypothesis even though you seem willing to address other points which I raise. Is it that it is inconvenient and therefore ignored? Or that you didn’t see it?

Anyway here is the poll and election results four months later:

Ramzukov Centre poll conducted between November 3-13, 2005:

PoR – 17.5%
BYuT – 12.4%
OU – 13.5%

Final election result four months later:

PoR – 32.4%
BYuT – 22.3%
OU – 14%

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you American presidential candidate Ron Paul: Wrong about a lot of things, but right about Libya:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrRIpx8cKqA&feature=youtu.be

A brief addition. Alexander, you mentioned the British Liberal Democrats. I’m not familiar with British politics, but AFAIK the Liberal Democrats did not have an explicitly anti-Conservative platform (also9, I suspect, British society is not as polarized as is Ukrainian society). So their joining the Conservatives is not really that comparable to the Socialists joining the Party of Regions.

Alexander,

Thank you for clarifying further. We seem to agree on the facts (including constitutionality and legality of the events under discussion, etc.) but differ on the label of some events. You prefer the legalistic definition of democracy/democratic (based on laws) – and in such terms you are probably correct – whereas I use that word in its standard or perhaps colloquial form (defined as power to the people, laws not necessary), in which case I am correct.

An important point I’ll repeat here is that a vote does not exist in a vacuum. That is, people do vote based on assumptions and expectations. They do not just vote for X, they vote for X specifically because they expect X to do something. If X gets voted in based on the assumption that he will do that thing, and then does the complete opposite (essentially, committing fraud), then X’s presence is clearly not the will of the people. Their vote was basically stolen, even if nothing illegal occurred. In Ukraine’s case, X were of course the Socialists.

So this was Yushchenko’s dilemna. He was faced with a parliament that (legally) reflected the opposite of what the people wanted, and which (legally) would act against the interests of the people for four years. He chose the interests of the people – I will call it democracy, you may call it something else – above the Law. He returned the power to the people in the form of free and fair elections, and erased the theft fo their vote and their voice using illegal means.

The issue here, to emphasize, is more than merely popularity of the Socialists. It is more of fraud. The people did not vote for a prty, and then change their mind or started to dislike it, as has happened with respect to the US congress. They voted for a party expecting one thing and then discovering that they were completely tricked and got the oppositie of what they had voted for. They voted for the Socialists because the Socialists were an ORange party whose platform was very much anti-oligarch, and soon after they got into the parliament based on their Orange status and anti-oligarch position, they completely joined the Blue/oligarch coalition. It was fraud.

An analogy to the US would seem utterly fantastical: the US elects a democratic congress which promises to underdo Republican policies, then soon after the elections the democrats all change their party affiliation to Republican and state they will take orders from Boehner and/or Gingrich. Something completely bizarre in an American context, but reality in the Ukrainian one.

In terms of dissolution of parliament and subsequent elections – it is not only that the latter follow from the first, but the first was done for the sole purpose of having the latter. The people wanted new elections, and Yushchenko dissolved the unpopular parliament specifically in order to have them and for no other purpose. It was one event.

Anyways, best wishes. An interesting conversation.

Dear AP,

I thought I had answered your questions. Apologies if I was not clear. Let me have one last go:

1. It is democratic for parties in a democratically elected parliament to form coalitions if this is done in a constitutional way. Individual actions may be criticised on political grounds but that does not make them undemocratic. That applies to what the Socialists did in 2006;

2. It is undemocratic to dissolve a democratically parliament unconstitutionally. The fact that one of the parties elected to that parliament has gone into an unexpected coalition with another party does not make that unconstitutional act democratic for the reasons I have discussed previously and for the reason I touched on in 1.

3. No one can say when dissolving unconstitutionally a democratically elected parliament that one is acting in accordance with the will of the people since what is being dissolved is a parliament the people have themselves elected freely and democraticatically in accordance with their constitution and their laws.

4. It is not democratic to dissolve illegally and unconstitutionally a parliament that has become unpopular. Many parliaments including at the moment the US Congress are unpopular but that is not grounds for illlegally dissolving them. As I have previously said it is possible for something to be both popular and undemocratic and there are many historical examples of this.

I do insist that the dissolution of the parliament and the subsequent elections are separate events even if the second follows from the first. I do not accept that because the elections were democratic that made the dissolution of the parliament or the attack on the independence of the Constitutional Court democratic.

There, I am done!

Alexander,

Thank you again for the civil discussion. We are obviously far apart on some issues but not others. We seem to agree that what Yushchenko did was illegal, and wrong, though the issue of whether it was democratic divides us. Specifically, whether it should be labeled democratic. I don’t think you doubt that what he did expressed the will of the majority of the people of Ukraine, as confirmed by an opinion poll giving 60% support for disbanding parliament. We seem to differ on the label of that action.

I wish you would have directly answered the questions I asked, but it is of course your right not to do so.

I will address your specific points later, when I am less busy.

Hunter,

Sorry, my post was directed towards Alexander, not towards you. That was clear when I started my post, “Alexander.” If he chooses to put your ideas in his posts I will address them.

It’s unfortunate that despite by disengagemrnt you decided to keep up the swiftboating, though. Multiple false accusations, and the gem here, actually comparing Yushchenko’s disbanding of parliament in order to call new free and fair elections, to Southern states’ denials of black rights!

I only quoted wikipedia about ochlocracy to show that you were seemingly confused about the meaning of the term. An ochlocracy is a democracy. A bad, spoiled form of democracy, but still a democracy. Rule by the people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ochlocracy

Ochlocracy (“rule of the general populace”) is democracy (“rule of the people”) spoiled by demagoguery, “tyranny of the majority” and the rule of passion over reason.

Now what the mob (or, at least, 60% of the population according to opinion polls) wanted in Ukrane was free and fair elections, not racist laws. And this is what Yushchenko gave them, even though doing so was unconstitutional. Free and fair elections. A point worth remembering.

Anyways, I’d really rather not take this further with someone like you who does not seem to be capable of honesty or civility with those who have an opinion different from your own. I write this with the understanding that you will probably try to provoke another response, which is what trolls do.