Navalny Poisoning Weakens Russo German Relations

[ronwagn + 6,290]

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/09/03/navalny-case-poisons-ties-between-germany-russia-a71336

Putin and his cronies are losing touch with the Russian people. The people can see through them and know how rotten their government is. The riots in Siberia is a warning sign. The poisoning will not stop the people of Russia. RCW

 

Navalny Case Poisons Ties Between Germany, Russia

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

Is the Covid-19 craze an actual indication that the combined leadership of the free world knows of some other, more dastardly, plot to poison large swathes of the world, which was/is imminent and persistent?  That would make more sense than the so-called pandemic and the data coming to light about its realities.  Possible?

[Tomasz + 1,608]

18 hours ago, ronwagn said:

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/09/03/navalny-case-poisons-ties-between-germany-russia-a71336

Putin and his cronies are losing touch with the Russian people. The people can see through them and know how rotten their government is. The riots in Siberia is a warning sign. The poisoning will not stop the people of Russia. RCW

 

Navalny Case Poisons Ties Between Germany, Russia

Some inconvenient facts.
Navalny is a very popular YouTuber blogger and anti-corruption activist, and since corruption is a very serious problem in Russia, he is very popular as an activist and some kind of celebrity.
However, he is not popular as an opposition leader. The real leader of the opposition would rather be the leader of the communist party, Zyuganov, or the younger Grudninin, who won 15% of the vote.
Navalny is rather a licensed oppositionist with a few percent support who is trusted by 9% of Russians in the Levada survey and not trusted by 25%. This is a result of heavy black PR in mainstream, but almost certainly he will not become any new Russian leader. As a possibly dead person, he is IMHO more harmful than as a blogger who has exposed himself to thousands of people in Russia, especially recently Prigozhin - this is the gentleman responsible for the Twitter campaign in 2016 who creatively develops the Russian Blackwater, the Wagner Group.

I don’t know who poisoned Navalny. Maybe it was Putler, to eliminate or incapacitate the “leader of the opposition” (as he is presented, not entirely accurately but neither entirely inaccurately, in the Western media). Maybe it was rogue elements within the intelligence services. (Not sure any of them would willingly stick their necks out like that, though). Or maybe it was a faction within the Kremlin that happened to want to settle its own scores with Navalny. There are persistent rumors and some circumstantial evidence that Navalny is the sieve through which the siloviks keep liberal technocrats in line by spilling kompromat on them in the form of Navalny’s ceaseless “corruption investigations” (which have never rarely touched on Igor Sechin, long considered the #2 after Putin in Russia’s power structures). That’s not the world’s safest occupation, even if Putin is your secret BFF.

I also don’t know what will come out of it in the long run. On the one hand, a non-lethal poisoning that official Russia will deny had anything to do with it is not quite the same as a successful assassination. On the other hand, Navalny could well become the next big “Victim of the Regime”, replacing Magnitsky in that capacity. This is especially likely if Biden wins the US Presidency this November. Perhaps Germany could use this as a convenient pretext to finally shut down Nord Stream, after Russia has already invested $10 billion into it. Or perhaps it will be used in an attempt to cockblock Russia from annexing Belarus – much like, perhaps, grander plans for Novorossiya in 2014 may have been torpedoed by that unfortunate incident with the Malaysian airliner (there are rich conspiracy theories over what exactly Burkhalter communicated to Putin a day before he withdrew his authorization for the use of military force in Ukraine). Though the two goals would seem to rather go against each other – if Nord Stream is shut down, which would represent not just a significant financial loss but also a major political humiliation, then securing Belarus would become all the more important.

I just don’t know and neither do any of the high profile hacks writing about this and probably even many of the key players are not that clued in either.

However, the one concrete observation I would make, and one which I will admit is not even original to myself but which I first saw from Egor Prosvirnin, but which I have not yet seen made in the Anglosphere, is that this episode marks an end to Navalny’s political career. And not because he might still die, nor because he might become physically or mentally incapacitated, nor even because the kremlins, Ramzan Kadyrov, the CIA, the Jews, or the reptiloids (cross out as per your particular obsession) will have successfully intimidated him from further participation in political life. No, I am reasonably sure he will continue his corruption investigations, and I would even put better than 50/50 odds on him making a return to politicking in Russia.

Navalny’s big problem is that his entire image is built on him being a “man of the people” revealing how Russia’s oligarchs and regime insiders preach solidarity and “spiritual values” (духовные скрепы) within while maintaining Italian villas and holidaying in Courchevel and getting treated at elite European clinics without. This is the last remaining thing about Navalny that could potentially make him appealing to the popular masses in the event that Putin and his system somehow becomes massively discredited and delegitimized. His current “base” within Russia consist of radical SJWs who hate their own country and its cultural and religious traditions, and who are far more radical than Navalny himself on these questions (this is not an exaggeration – read the highly agitated Twitter replies to him wishing his flock a Happy Easter, or expressing condolences on the death of Russian nationalist Konstantin Krylov). He’ll get their support, but that’s ~2% of the population. Although Navalny used to express ethnonationalist rhetoric, infamously comparing Gastarbeiters to cockroaches in one video, that was more than a decade ago – only kremlinoid hacks still push the tired old propaganda that he is some kind of nationalist or even Nazi when all of his closest confidants have long become internationalist, multi-national neolibs. Certainly almost no Russian nationalists have considered him as one of their own since 2014, when he supported the Ukraine over Russia on Crimea (not that Ukrainians themselves appreciated the gesture, many of whose own nationalists bizarrely consider him a Russian imperialist little better than Putler and expressed approval of his poisoning in one of the many weird horseshoes you see in identity politics).

So again, I repeat, Navalny has no hardcore support amongst any major ideological Russian groups apart from very online schoolchildren, university students, and Western NGO employees. But what he does still have is his image as the consummate populist, living in an “ordinary” Moscow apartment, suffering the “hardships” of the common folk (if not with his daughter, whom he sent off to an American Ivy school) while pointing out the Russian elite’s manifold and undeniable hypocrisies and rootlessness. This might not be very relevant while the “Putin system” remains strong, but it could suddenly become very relevant in the event of its complete or even partial discreditation, as happened with Yanukovych in 2013-14 and with Lukashenko in 2020.

But here’s the problem. No ordinary Russian is ever going to be airlifted out of a run down hospital in a Siberian rustbelt city into one of Germany’s top clinics, paid for by a tycoon telecoms family (the Zimins) and at the personal invitation of Chancellor Merkel herself. And not just any ordinary Russian – not even any Russian high official. The closest example from amongst the Russian “elites” that would come to mind is… the DNR supporter and washed out Soviet-era crooner Kobzon. Hilariously, Navalny has de facto ended up far more “apatride” than any of the big targets of his political invective in the past decade.

Though TBH, this almost makes me sad for Navalny… he was in a comma, so the decision was hardly his own choice, but presumably belonged to his wife, Yulia Navalnaya. His situation at the Omsk hospital had stabilized, it was clear he was not going to die by the time he was medically evacuated. For better quality of care without too much damage in the way of optics, Navalny could have at least been evacuated to a private Moscow clinic, there are several of them that are at the level of Charité, the German clinic where he was subsequently treated and diagnosed with Novichok poisoning. But Berlin it had to be. In fulfilling her spousal duty of care to her husband, Navalny’s wife inadvertently – in all likelihood – torpedoed his future chances of becoming a second Yeltsin.

Incidentally, this is also the most succinct explanation for why the kremlins had no objections to sending Navalny to Germany.
Once I wrote about Navalny, I recommend that you familiarize yourself with his views, although they have probably been more liberal recently. But  I would not call him super western friendly .

Quote

 

At first glance, Alexei Navalny seems like exactly the sort of man the West would want to sit in the Kremlin. He’s anti-corruption, anti-oligarchy, anti-ballot rigging and – most importantly – anti-Putin. Many in the West believe his election would result in a seismic shift in Russian foreign policy – and perhaps even lead to historically unprecedented positive relations with Moscow.

The Western media have certainly reinforced this idea, as they’ve reported on Navalny’s attempts to break Putin's stranglehold on Russia and the many moves to silence him with a series of arrests, assaults, and poisonings – the most recent of which led to his hospitalisation last week. Perhaps influenced by the fact that many of those targeted by the Kremlin in the past (such as Boris Berezovsky, Anna Politkovskaya, Sergei Skripal, Sergei Magnitsky, and Alexander Litvinenko) have had pro-Western sympathies, the media have been keen to portray Navalny in a similar light. But while the coverage of Navalny as an anti-corruption and pro-democratic crusader is generally accurate, its implication that Putin's worst enemy would become the West's new best friend is definitely not.

Navalny has never, for instance, made any attempt to hide his Russian nationalist sympathies. In 2006, he openly said the Russian March (an ultra-nationalist, far-right demonstration) should take place, and a year later he founded a political organisation, The People, which aligned with the openly nationalist Great Russia and Movement Against Illegal Immigration movements. The Kremlin often attempts to discredit its internal opponents by claiming they are agents of the West. They have not been able to do this with Navalny, even though he briefly attended Yale university.

Navalny is not aligned with the West either when it comes to Russian military interventions. In 2008, conflict broke out in the Caucasus after Georgia sought to prevent Russian-backed separatists in the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia seceding from the country. After intervening to expel Georgian forces from the region, the Russian military then invaded Georgia proper. Tbilisi was bombed and Russian troops only halted their advance 20 miles from the city limits.

Since its independence from the Soviet Union, Georgia has been a staunch Western ally, contributing thousands of troops to Nato operations in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Navalny, though, did not support the West in the conflict. Not only did he back the invasion, he also called for the expulsion of Georgian people from Russia and called them ‘rodents’ (grizuni) – a common ethnic slur used by Russian nationalists. Although Navalny later said that he regretted his use of the racial insult, he does not appear to have changed his stance on the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia – territories recognised as integral parts of Georgia by the international community, with the obvious exception of Russia.

Georgia is not the only post-Soviet state where Navalny supports pro-Russian separatist movements. While Transnistria and Crimea are internationally recognised as belonging to Moldova and Ukraine respectively, in both cases Navalny has affirmed his support for pro-Russian movements. Indeed, in an interview with Ekho Moskvy, Navalny claimed that he would not return Crimea to Ukraine if he became President, and advised Ukrainians ‘not to deceive themselves [that Crimea is not part of Russia]’. He also said he did not see a difference between Ukrainians and Russians, a pan-Slavic trope common to ultra-nationalist Russians, and one that has been used on a number of occasions to justify Russia's military activities in the near abroad.

If Navalny is ever suspicious of Russian foreign interventionism it’s usually for economic rather than moral reasons. Navalny believes that the money used to fund wars in Ukraine and Syria could have been better spent on improving the lives of those at home.

Were Navalny or his party to ever win power, it is doubtless that the lives of the Russian people would improve exponentially. But by his own admission, Navalny is a 'democratic nationalist'. Given his demonstrable hostility to former Soviet states turning their eyes westward, and his many public expressions of Russian nationalism, a thawing of relations between Moscow and the West would not necessarily follow the ascendancy of a Navalny-led administration.

 

 

Edited September 4, 2020 by Tomasz

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

20 hours ago, ronwagn said:

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/09/03/navalny-case-poisons-ties-between-germany-russia-a71336

Putin and his cronies are losing touch with the Russian people. The people can see through them and know how rotten their government is. The riots in Siberia is a warning sign. The poisoning will not stop the people of Russia. RCW

Navalny Case Poisons Ties Between Germany, Russia

We'll know it's real when Germany cancels the Nord pipeline. Until then, just posturing. 

[Yoshiro Kamamura + 274]

Qui bono, eh? Any competent conspiracy theorist knows that since it did not benefit Russians, they probably did not do it. 

[Hotone + 412]

4 hours ago, Tomasz said:

Some inconvenient facts.
Navalny is a very popular YouTuber blogger and anti-corruption activist, and since corruption is a very serious problem in Russia, he is very popular as an activist and some kind of celebrity.
However, he is not popular as an opposition leader. The real leader of the opposition would rather be the leader of the communist party, Zyuganov, or the younger Grudninin, who won 15% of the vote.
Navalny is rather a licensed oppositionist with a few percent support who is trusted by 9% of Russians in the Levada survey and not trusted by 25%. This is a result of heavy black PR in mainstream, but almost certainly he will not become any new Russian leader. As a possibly dead person, he is IMHO more harmful than as a blogger who has exposed himself to thousands of people in Russia, especially recently Prigozhin - this is the gentleman responsible for the Twitter campaign in 2016 who creatively develops the Russian Blackwater, the Wagner Group.

I don’t know who poisoned Navalny. Maybe it was Putler, to eliminate or incapacitate the “leader of the opposition” (as he is presented, not entirely accurately but neither entirely inaccurately, in the Western media). Maybe it was rogue elements within the intelligence services. (Not sure any of them would willingly stick their necks out like that, though). Or maybe it was a faction within the Kremlin that happened to want to settle its own scores with Navalny. There are persistent rumors and some circumstantial evidence that Navalny is the sieve through which the siloviks keep liberal technocrats in line by spilling kompromat on them in the form of Navalny’s ceaseless “corruption investigations” (which have never rarely touched on Igor Sechin, long considered the #2 after Putin in Russia’s power structures). That’s not the world’s safest occupation, even if Putin is your secret BFF.

I also don’t know what will come out of it in the long run. On the one hand, a non-lethal poisoning that official Russia will deny had anything to do with it is not quite the same as a successful assassination. On the other hand, Navalny could well become the next big “Victim of the Regime”, replacing Magnitsky in that capacity. This is especially likely if Biden wins the US Presidency this November. Perhaps Germany could use this as a convenient pretext to finally shut down Nord Stream, after Russia has already invested $10 billion into it. Or perhaps it will be used in an attempt to cockblock Russia from annexing Belarus – much like, perhaps, grander plans for Novorossiya in 2014 may have been torpedoed by that unfortunate incident with the Malaysian airliner (there are rich conspiracy theories over what exactly Burkhalter communicated to Putin a day before he withdrew his authorization for the use of military force in Ukraine). Though the two goals would seem to rather go against each other – if Nord Stream is shut down, which would represent not just a significant financial loss but also a major political humiliation, then securing Belarus would become all the more important.

I just don’t know and neither do any of the high profile hacks writing about this and probably even many of the key players are not that clued in either.

However, the one concrete observation I would make, and one which I will admit is not even original to myself but which I first saw from Egor Prosvirnin, but which I have not yet seen made in the Anglosphere, is that this episode marks an end to Navalny’s political career. And not because he might still die, nor because he might become physically or mentally incapacitated, nor even because the kremlins, Ramzan Kadyrov, the CIA, the Jews, or the reptiloids (cross out as per your particular obsession) will have successfully intimidated him from further participation in political life. No, I am reasonably sure he will continue his corruption investigations, and I would even put better than 50/50 odds on him making a return to politicking in Russia.

Navalny’s big problem is that his entire image is built on him being a “man of the people” revealing how Russia’s oligarchs and regime insiders preach solidarity and “spiritual values” (духовные скрепы) within while maintaining Italian villas and holidaying in Courchevel and getting treated at elite European clinics without. This is the last remaining thing about Navalny that could potentially make him appealing to the popular masses in the event that Putin and his system somehow becomes massively discredited and delegitimized. His current “base” within Russia consist of radical SJWs who hate their own country and its cultural and religious traditions, and who are far more radical than Navalny himself on these questions (this is not an exaggeration – read the highly agitated Twitter replies to him wishing his flock a Happy Easter, or expressing condolences on the death of Russian nationalist Konstantin Krylov). He’ll get their support, but that’s ~2% of the population. Although Navalny used to express ethnonationalist rhetoric, infamously comparing Gastarbeiters to cockroaches in one video, that was more than a decade ago – only kremlinoid hacks still push the tired old propaganda that he is some kind of nationalist or even Nazi when all of his closest confidants have long become internationalist, multi-national neolibs. Certainly almost no Russian nationalists have considered him as one of their own since 2014, when he supported the Ukraine over Russia on Crimea (not that Ukrainians themselves appreciated the gesture, many of whose own nationalists bizarrely consider him a Russian imperialist little better than Putler and expressed approval of his poisoning in one of the many weird horseshoes you see in identity politics).

So again, I repeat, Navalny has no hardcore support amongst any major ideological Russian groups apart from very online schoolchildren, university students, and Western NGO employees. But what he does still have is his image as the consummate populist, living in an “ordinary” Moscow apartment, suffering the “hardships” of the common folk (if not with his daughter, whom he sent off to an American Ivy school) while pointing out the Russian elite’s manifold and undeniable hypocrisies and rootlessness. This might not be very relevant while the “Putin system” remains strong, but it could suddenly become very relevant in the event of its complete or even partial discreditation, as happened with Yanukovych in 2013-14 and with Lukashenko in 2020.

But here’s the problem. No ordinary Russian is ever going to be airlifted out of a run down hospital in a Siberian rustbelt city into one of Germany’s top clinics, paid for by a tycoon telecoms family (the Zimins) and at the personal invitation of Chancellor Merkel herself. And not just any ordinary Russian – not even any Russian high official. The closest example from amongst the Russian “elites” that would come to mind is… the DNR supporter and washed out Soviet-era crooner Kobzon. Hilariously, Navalny has de facto ended up far more “apatride” than any of the big targets of his political invective in the past decade.

Though TBH, this almost makes me sad for Navalny… he was in a comma, so the decision was hardly his own choice, but presumably belonged to his wife, Yulia Navalnaya. His situation at the Omsk hospital had stabilized, it was clear he was not going to die by the time he was medically evacuated. For better quality of care without too much damage in the way of optics, Navalny could have at least been evacuated to a private Moscow clinic, there are several of them that are at the level of Charité, the German clinic where he was subsequently treated and diagnosed with Novichok poisoning. But Berlin it had to be. In fulfilling her spousal duty of care to her husband, Navalny’s wife inadvertently – in all likelihood – torpedoed his future chances of becoming a second Yeltsin.

Incidentally, this is also the most succinct explanation for why the kremlins had no objections to sending Navalny to Germany.
Once I wrote about Navalny, I recommend that you familiarize yourself with his views, although they have probably been more liberal recently. But  I would not call him super western friendly .

 

Have you considered that it's the Americans who did this?  CIA or other death squads?

Add to that tortured and killed.

Edited September 4, 2020 by Hotone

[Strangelovesurfing + 737]

2 hours ago, Hotone said:

Have you considered that it's the Americans who did this?  CIA or other death squads?

Add to that tortured and killed.

I assuming you think the CIA has been behind every poisoning of Russian exiles?

[Hotone + 412]

18 minutes ago, Strangelovesurfing said:

I assuming you think the CIA has been behind every poisoning of Russian exiles?

No, just this one.  America has tried all kinds of actions to stop the Nordstream project, but it hasn't worked until now. Usually, America will do anything - lie, steal, cheat, torture, murder - to achieve its objectives.  I am not saying that it is right or wrong, but that's just how they are.

 

Edited September 5, 2020 by Hotone

[Yoshiro Kamamura + 274]

54 minutes ago, Hotone said:

No, just this one.  America has tried all kinds of actions to stop the Nordstream project, but it hasn't worked until now. Usually, America will do anything - lie, steal, cheat, torture, murder - to achieve its objectives.  I am not saying that it is right or wrong, but that's just how they are.

 

I am saying it's wrong. 

[Hotone + 412]

10 minutes ago, Yoshiro Kamamura said:

I am saying it's wrong. 

Yeah, you are correct - it's wrong.  But what to do?  Might makes them right.

Edited September 5, 2020 by Hotone

[Tomasz + 1,608]

 

I will not refer to who and whom murdered, that is, the opinion. I refer to the facts.

And the facts of the matter are (among others) as follows:

1.No one knows what the composition of noviczok has, but everyone can detect it.

2. It is extremely dangerous, although the death rate of its victims is Covid 19 ...

3. Navalny was in a critical condition, he was practically written down from the list of the living, and he rose after 3 weeks.

4. When he rose, it was said that the effects of poisoning would haunt him for years, he would never recover, and it was not even known if he would get out of bed. Unfortunately, on the same day he was probably caught by some reporter drinking around the room, so the next day miraculous awakening and healing was announced to the world.

5 It turns out that there will be no consequences and the rehabilitation, which was supposed to last for years, probably lasted less than a week.

6. Now they discover the person responsible for the attack and knowing it, he tells the caller the details of the attack, of course, we know that he was the one who sent fragments of his DNA via the GSM network, so we can exclude 93.5% that it is anyone else who was given 20 ojro 7 Here is also a picture of Nawali poisoned and his colleagues, not knowing that he had been poisoned (because it was only known that he felt unwell) immediately went to collect samples in his room. Of course, that they collected samples, they remembered only when Navalny ended up in a German hospital because it was obvious that Navalny was poisoned, so they collected samples, but somehow they forgot about them until there was a problem called "where to get the samples proving that the poison was given in Russia and not in Germany, for example.

8. There was also no suspicion of transporting Mr. N. in Bundeswehr military ambulances to a German military hospital, because it is a normal procedure to transport third-country nationals in this way. Of course, the fact that there are many better hospitals dealing with poisoning in Germany is not surprising ... Well, it is known that in a civilian ambulance and civilian hospital there would not be people who did not take the BSD oath, and who would see the kitchen of a terrible attack and then a miraculous healing of A.N. So the military ambulance in this case is a guarantee of the transparency of the whole matter

[Tomasz + 1,608]

There is a discussion how many will come tomorrow to protest

So I suggest a very good post by Anatoly Karlin  explaining that its not in the territory of color revolution

Quote

 

Plus ça change… Just like three years ago on March 26, 2017, the protest “Freedom to Navalny!” tomorrow is to start on Pushkin Square (see above) and march down the central Tverskaya Boulevard down to Manezh Square, which is right next to the Kremlin.

I attended that prior protest (as an informal observer, not a participants – though the distinction would have been theoretical had I been arrested), and confirmed for myself that the police estimate of ~7,500 was accurate:

The regime loyalist I was with estimated there were about 5,000 protesters. A guy with a Ukrainian flag lapel badge whom I asked for his opinion said 10,000. Taking the average estimate from supporters and detractors was a good strategy for estimating crowd size in 2011-12, and coincidentally enough, the resulting figure of 7,500 coincided exactly with the police estimate of 7,000-8,000 protesters. This is not altogether bad, thought quite insubstantial in a city of 12 million.

To be sure, this was an unsanctioned protest, and as I pointed out earlier, a lot of the risk-averse office plankton who form the bulk of Navalny’s support don’t turn up to such protests. They don’t want to run the risk of getting arrested, not when it could impact on their employment. Still, this is about 3x fewer participants than in the last big protest of the 2012 wave, which was also unsanctioned, the farcical “March of the Millions” of May 6 to which about 25,000 turned up.

Will there be more or fewer people now?

Certainly the events preceding this are much more dramatic – the poisoning of Navalny, direct accusations that this was attempted murder on Putler’s part, Navalny’s return to Russia on a sealed airplane, and a corruption investigation now targeting Putin himself (as opposed to his underlings). Certainly it is my impression from Le Reddit that Western normies, buoyed by the removal of Bad Orange Man, are expecting great things from this.

But in the world of reality, as opposed to wishful rhetoric, the best historical guide to how many people will come to these things is banally how many people say they will come on social media.

Here are the results for Moscow, which is ultimately the only part of the country that counts so far as “color revolution” risk is concerned.

Bolotnaya Protest in 2011 (the first one):

• 33,000 on Facebook and 18,600 on VK said they’d come. (A further 10,000 and 27,000, respectively, said they are interested and/or might come).
• Actual attendance: ~60,000 (~120% of expressed intent across the two platforms)

“Он нам не Димон” protest (2017, March):

• The historical pages indicate 5,000 on Facebook (3,900 interested) and 7,100 on VK (2,500 interested).
• Actual attendance: ~7,500 (~60%).

Constitution Day protest (2017, June):

• 4,000 on Facebook (4,000 interested)
• Actual attendance: Couple of thousands? (hard to say as he intentionally “crashed” a concurrent history festival in the center of Moscow)

Today, on the eve of “Freedom to Navalny!”:

• 5,300 say they’re going on Facebook (9,700 interested) and 13,300 on VK (4,400 interested).
• Actual attendance: ?

Naively extrapolating, this means that we should expect something like 20,000*60% or 120% = 12,000-24,000 people to turn up. There are, of course, divergences from this model that may favor greater turnout, lesser turnout, or have unclear effects.

Factors expected to decrease turnout:

• The penalties for unsanctioned protests have been progressively stepped up over the past few years, increasing their costs for normies with jobs or at university. Incidentally, this also has the effect of age shifting protests towards young people and, increasingly, schoolchildren.
• The most important difference is that the 2011 protest was legally sanctioned, which is not the case in either the 2017 one or nowso we should really privilege the ratio from 2017 as opposed to the one from 2011.
• There are more Russians on social media – especially Facebook – now than in 2011, though this is partially balanced out by zoomers migrating to strange new platforms.

Factors expected to increase turnout:

• The YouTube video about Putin’s palaces had already gotten about 3x the pageviews that the hit video on Dmitry Medvedev got in 2017 at the time of the protests (~60 million vs. ~20 million), suggesting greater public interest. However, this effect should be diluted by greater Russian familiarity with Navalny’s YouTube in 2021 (quintupling in subscriber numbers to 5 million), the highly dramatic events surrounding this “expose” of Putin’s corruption, and – especially – the much greater foreign interest expressed in it (it has been prominent on /r/worldnews for many days now).
• Putin’s approval rating was 80% in 2017, versus 65% today (which is far closer to his approval rating in 2011-12, when it neared 60%). Conversely, though, whereas discontent was strongly concentrated in Moscow a decade ago, today it is more dispersed. In fact, with 1,000 prospective attendees on Facebook and 8,300 on VK, almost as many people (~75%) say they will turn up in Saint-Petersburg despite that city having just ~40% of Moscow’s population. (Rage over massive electoral falsifications was the primary driving force of the 2011-12 protest wave in Moscow).
• Russian zoomers are much more oppositionist now than in 2017 (to say nothing of 2011), but they don’t hang out on Facebook or VK, but on newer platforms – most notably, TikTok. As such, attendance figures on boomer (>30 years) social media may not be capturing the protest potential in the youngest cohorts, who are also by far the most oppositionist.

Factors that have a neutral or unknown effect on turnout:

• Coronavirus continues to rage in Russia, but there are no significant lockdowns and children are imminently returning to schools. So I don’t expect this to have a major effect.
• Although Moscow was hit by a major cold speed the past week (-20C), the next few days are going to be much warmer, even sliding into positive territory. So weather won’t have an effect either.
• Personal observation: Many of the same people from my “Friends” who attended in 2017 are attending now, though sample is very low – it’s not like I have many Navalnycore acquaintances. Notably, one zoomer liberal who attended in 2017 has drifted in a nationalist direction since then, and will not attend now.

Probably the factors that increase turnout are somewhat stronger than those that decrease, so if I had to pick a number, I’d say 15,000 as opposed to 5,000 will turn up.

Either way, it’s safe to say that it will still be much fewer than during the Bolotnaya protests of 2011-12. I also expect it to be even more loaded towards students and especially schoolchildren even relative to 2017.

But, needless to say, this is not “color revolution” territory.

Lukashenko survived in the aftermath of a completely falsified election with an approval rating of just 30% and with protests of 250,000 in a country with fewer people than Moscow.

Putin retains an approval rating of 65% in a country where half the population says that Navalny was either poisoned by Western intelligence services or was faking the entire thing vs. just 15% who believe it was Putin’s regime.

To get a color revolution I have always maintained that you need a split within the elites. A few thousand schoolchildren surrounded by throngs of foreign journalists aren’t going to get that ball rolling.

 

 

[surrept33 + 612]

On 9/4/2020 at 2:47 PM, Tomasz said:

Some inconvenient facts.
Navalny is a very popular YouTuber blogger and anti-corruption activist, and since corruption is a very serious problem in Russia, he is very popular as an activist and some kind of celebrity.
However, he is not popular as an opposition leader. The real leader of the opposition would rather be the leader of the communist party, Zyuganov, or the younger Grudninin, who won 15% of the vote.
Navalny is rather a licensed oppositionist with a few percent support who is trusted by 9% of Russians in the Levada survey and not trusted by 25%. This is a result of heavy black PR in mainstream, but almost certainly he will not become any new Russian leader. As a possibly dead person, he is IMHO more harmful than as a blogger who has exposed himself to thousands of people in Russia, especially recently Prigozhin - this is the gentleman responsible for the Twitter campaign in 2016 who creatively develops the Russian Blackwater, the Wagner Group.

I don’t know who poisoned Navalny. Maybe it was Putler, to eliminate or incapacitate the “leader of the opposition” (as he is presented, not entirely accurately but neither entirely inaccurately, in the Western media). Maybe it was rogue elements within the intelligence services. (Not sure any of them would willingly stick their necks out like that, though). Or maybe it was a faction within the Kremlin that happened to want to settle its own scores with Navalny. There are persistent rumors and some circumstantial evidence that Navalny is the sieve through which the siloviks keep liberal technocrats in line by spilling kompromat on them in the form of Navalny’s ceaseless “corruption investigations” (which have never rarely touched on Igor Sechin, long considered the #2 after Putin in Russia’s power structures). That’s not the world’s safest occupation, even if Putin is your secret BFF.

I also don’t know what will come out of it in the long run. On the one hand, a non-lethal poisoning that official Russia will deny had anything to do with it is not quite the same as a successful assassination. On the other hand, Navalny could well become the next big “Victim of the Regime”, replacing Magnitsky in that capacity. This is especially likely if Biden wins the US Presidency this November. Perhaps Germany could use this as a convenient pretext to finally shut down Nord Stream, after Russia has already invested $10 billion into it. Or perhaps it will be used in an attempt to cockblock Russia from annexing Belarus – much like, perhaps, grander plans for Novorossiya in 2014 may have been torpedoed by that unfortunate incident with the Malaysian airliner (there are rich conspiracy theories over what exactly Burkhalter communicated to Putin a day before he withdrew his authorization for the use of military force in Ukraine). Though the two goals would seem to rather go against each other – if Nord Stream is shut down, which would represent not just a significant financial loss but also a major political humiliation, then securing Belarus would become all the more important.

I just don’t know and neither do any of the high profile hacks writing about this and probably even many of the key players are not that clued in either.

However, the one concrete observation I would make, and one which I will admit is not even original to myself but which I first saw from Egor Prosvirnin, but which I have not yet seen made in the Anglosphere, is that this episode marks an end to Navalny’s political career. And not because he might still die, nor because he might become physically or mentally incapacitated, nor even because the kremlins, Ramzan Kadyrov, the CIA, the Jews, or the reptiloids (cross out as per your particular obsession) will have successfully intimidated him from further participation in political life. No, I am reasonably sure he will continue his corruption investigations, and I would even put better than 50/50 odds on him making a return to politicking in Russia.

Navalny’s big problem is that his entire image is built on him being a “man of the people” revealing how Russia’s oligarchs and regime insiders preach solidarity and “spiritual values” (духовные скрепы) within while maintaining Italian villas and holidaying in Courchevel and getting treated at elite European clinics without. This is the last remaining thing about Navalny that could potentially make him appealing to the popular masses in the event that Putin and his system somehow becomes massively discredited and delegitimized. His current “base” within Russia consist of radical SJWs who hate their own country and its cultural and religious traditions, and who are far more radical than Navalny himself on these questions (this is not an exaggeration – read the highly agitated Twitter replies to him wishing his flock a Happy Easter, or expressing condolences on the death of Russian nationalist Konstantin Krylov). He’ll get their support, but that’s ~2% of the population. Although Navalny used to express ethnonationalist rhetoric, infamously comparing Gastarbeiters to cockroaches in one video, that was more than a decade ago – only kremlinoid hacks still push the tired old propaganda that he is some kind of nationalist or even Nazi when all of his closest confidants have long become internationalist, multi-national neolibs. Certainly almost no Russian nationalists have considered him as one of their own since 2014, when he supported the Ukraine over Russia on Crimea (not that Ukrainians themselves appreciated the gesture, many of whose own nationalists bizarrely consider him a Russian imperialist little better than Putler and expressed approval of his poisoning in one of the many weird horseshoes you see in identity politics).

So again, I repeat, Navalny has no hardcore support amongst any major ideological Russian groups apart from very online schoolchildren, university students, and Western NGO employees. But what he does still have is his image as the consummate populist, living in an “ordinary” Moscow apartment, suffering the “hardships” of the common folk (if not with his daughter, whom he sent off to an American Ivy school) while pointing out the Russian elite’s manifold and undeniable hypocrisies and rootlessness. This might not be very relevant while the “Putin system” remains strong, but it could suddenly become very relevant in the event of its complete or even partial discreditation, as happened with Yanukovych in 2013-14 and with Lukashenko in 2020.

But here’s the problem. No ordinary Russian is ever going to be airlifted out of a run down hospital in a Siberian rustbelt city into one of Germany’s top clinics, paid for by a tycoon telecoms family (the Zimins) and at the personal invitation of Chancellor Merkel herself. And not just any ordinary Russian – not even any Russian high official. The closest example from amongst the Russian “elites” that would come to mind is… the DNR supporter and washed out Soviet-era crooner Kobzon. Hilariously, Navalny has de facto ended up far more “apatride” than any of the big targets of his political invective in the past decade.

Though TBH, this almost makes me sad for Navalny… he was in a comma, so the decision was hardly his own choice, but presumably belonged to his wife, Yulia Navalnaya. His situation at the Omsk hospital had stabilized, it was clear he was not going to die by the time he was medically evacuated. For better quality of care without too much damage in the way of optics, Navalny could have at least been evacuated to a private Moscow clinic, there are several of them that are at the level of Charité, the German clinic where he was subsequently treated and diagnosed with Novichok poisoning. But Berlin it had to be. In fulfilling her spousal duty of care to her husband, Navalny’s wife inadvertently – in all likelihood – torpedoed his future chances of becoming a second Yeltsin.

Incidentally, this is also the most succinct explanation for why the kremlins had no objections to sending Navalny to Germany.
Once I wrote about Navalny, I recommend that you familiarize yourself with his views, although they have probably been more liberal recently. But  I would not call him super western friendly .

 

Why did the GRU/FSB poison him them? 

https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2020/12/14/navalny-fsb-methodology/

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2020/12/14/fsb-team-of-chemical-weapon-experts-implicated-in-alexey-navalny-novichok-poisoning/

^- Russia being very "leaky" is well documented. It'll be interesting to see what happens how governments deal with internet censorship (or even privileged information, or fake content) in coming years given that there is a possibility of almost near language to language universal translation with every passing year now.

I thought Navalny's strategy in trying to get non-Putinistas elected in every election seems to be very wise. Sad for Russia, they replaced one set of oligarchs with another set of oligarchs (those close to Putin).

It'll be interesting to see what happens in the arctic the next few decades:

https://www.militarytimes.com/digital-show-dailies/surface-navy-association/2021/01/11/us-navy-rolls-out-new-strategy-for-expanding-arctic-operations/

The "magnetic weather" has been hot recently:

https://phys.org/news/2019-02-compass-magnetic-north-pole.html

Edited January 22, 2021 by surrept33

[El Nikko + 2,145]

If the Russians wanted to kill someone they'd do it properly, this is political theatre as was the so called poisoning in the UK.

Why the focus on Russia which has a smaller military and influence but NONE on the Chinese?

Is it because the powers that be are scared to take on the Chinese? Or are bought off by them?

 

[surrept33 + 612]

6 minutes ago, El Nikko said:

If the Russians wanted to kill someone they'd do it properly, this is political theatre as was the so called poisoning in the UK.

Why the focus on Russia which has a smaller military and influence but NONE on the Chinese?

Is it because the powers that be are scared to take on the Chinese? Or are bought off by them?

 

I don't think anyone thinks the Chinese did this one. The Chinese are doing these ones:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/us/politics/trump-china-xinjiang.html

[El Nikko + 2,145]

Just now, surrept33 said:

I don't think anyone thinks the Chinese did this one. The Chinese are doing these ones:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/us/politics/trump-china-xinjiang.html

But why does anyone care? We wack people all the time and like I said the FSB wouldn't be such amateurs 

[surrept33 + 612]

1 minute ago, El Nikko said:

But why does anyone care? We wack people all the time and like I said the FSB wouldn't be such amateurs 

They could have been sending a message. Anyway, anti-cholineergics, especially a novel one, aren't exactly to have huge amounts of medical test data so no surprise it didn't "whack" him. Putin's party seemed to have started losing a bunch of municipal elections due to the effects of Navalny (he does seem to be a "change agent" "influencer"). If you look around the world, you see a lot of them-- hell, even Trump rode social media until he went too far and started huge internal debates at social media companies (which, given the pro free speech culture of most internet companies, was where he stepped over the red line. do you remember the day when the web went black in 1996?)

See also: https://time.com/5672235/putin-moscow-elections/

[El Nikko + 2,145]

1 minute ago, surrept33 said:

They could have been sending a message. Anyway, anti-cholineergics, especially a novel one, aren't exactly to have huge amounts of medical test data so no surprise it didn't "whack" him. Putin's party seemed to have started losing a bunch of municipal elections due to the effects of Navalny (he does seem to be a "change agent" "influencer"). If you look around the world, you see a lot of them-- hell, even Trump rode social media until he went too far and started huge internal debates at social media companies (which, given the pro free speech culture of most internet companies, was where he stepped over the red line. do you remember the day when the web went black in 1996?)

See also: https://time.com/5672235/putin-moscow-elections/

OK but I think we (in the west in general) have enough problems internally and we should fix those first. My issue is externalizing a threat we're creating for ourselves, much of what has happened in the US and Europe is because of us not anyone else.

When we get to that point and the west is something to be cherished again I'll care about other countries but right now we look like a laughing stock and also we look like we're in terminal decline. I am not proud of my country in the slightest at the moment and if the Russians want to do some small stuff (that is all they can do) in Ukraine or Syria I don't really care at the moment...they just don't seem to be our biggest problem.

We really had a chance to push back on all the marxist rubbish and fix our internal problems so we are a united group of countries again...instead we've got the opposite.

I know this isn't going to be popular but I like Putin, we need our own versions of him in the west but a bit different...maybe Trump was close to it I don't know but now he's gone and the west feels totally rudderless now.

I hope that might explain how I personally feel a bit.

[surrept33 + 612]

20 minutes ago, El Nikko said:

OK but I think we (in the west in general) have enough problems internally and we should fix those first. My issue is externalizing a threat we're creating for ourselves, much of what has happened in the US and Europe is because of us not anyone else.

When we get to that point and the west is something to be cherished again I'll care about other countries but right now we look like a laughing stock and also we look like we're in terminal decline. I am not proud of my country in the slightest at the moment and if the Russians want to do some small stuff (that is all they can do) in Ukraine or Syria I don't really care at the moment...they just don't seem to be our biggest problem.

We really had a chance to push back on all the marxist rubbish and fix our internal problems so we are a united group of countries again...instead we've got the opposite.

I know this isn't going to be popular but I like Putin, we need our own versions of him in the west but a bit different...maybe Trump was close to it I don't know but now he's gone and the west feels totally rudderless now.

I hope that might explain how I personally feel a bit.

The US being in terminal decline only looks that way to those who look at it like that. I see an era of great promise in the next decade (maybe like the '90s), though we have to catch up to China on wider application of things like artificial intelligence (but keep in mind hardware/software codesign are pretty globalized these days anyways, what "country" do they belong to?). But given that at least from a research sense, we're still the leaders of it, I'm sure we can push ahead as long as enough people are focused on commercialization and the operational details, which should open a ton of new jobs. 

I'm not sure how relevant "marxist rubbish" is in the developed world. I think economic inequality always causes problems. We are lucky to live in a social democracy, but there are many things we can improve on. 

[El Nikko + 2,145]

1 minute ago, surrept33 said:

The US being in terminal decline only looks that way to those who look at it like that. I see an era of great promise in the next decade (maybe like the '90s), though we have to catch up to China on wider application of things like artificial intelligence (but keep in mind hardware/software codesign are pretty globalized these days anyways, what "country" do they belong to?). But given that at least from a research sense, we're still the leaders of it, I'm sure we can push ahead as long as enough people are focused on commercialization and the operational details, which should open a ton of new jobs. 

I'm not sure how relevant "marxist rubbish" is in the developed world. I think economic inequality always causes problems. We are lucky to live in a social democracy, but there are many things we can improve on. 

What age are you if you don't mind me asking?

I'm not exactly old (only 48) but I do not recognize the world I live in and during my life things have got worse and worse and worse and by the way I am not American I am English but I have ben watching what I consider the social decline of the west for decades...that does not mean the west will not reign supreme later though...but it will not be the same west of the past ( and that is a bad thing in my opinion)

I can understand that if you are say around 30 years old or less (give or take a bit) you might believe what you've said but believe me society is falling to pieces.

Neither of own a time machine, we certainly cannot go back and we don't know what the future holds but all I can say is my own life experience has been that things are not getting better, and equality (the marxist rubbish if you would read about that) etc is destroying lives not helping them.

I have no problem expanding on this but I expect you will probably not like what I believe...which is fine but in todays society not agreeing seems to mean being frozen out of jobs and opportunities and being made a pariah....well I didn't grow up in a world where that happened unless you were really really extreme.

Not much I can do to change things, I think the world will be a worse place as we continue down this path but I'm just one guy...who apparently isn't even allowed an opinion lol

 

 

[surrept33 + 612]

18 minutes ago, El Nikko said:

What age are you if you don't mind me asking?

I'm not exactly old (only 48) but I do not recognize the world I live in and during my life things have got worse and worse and worse and by the way I am not American I am English but I have ben watching what I consider the social decline of the west for decades...that does not mean the west will not reign supreme later though...but it will not be the same west of the past ( and that is a bad thing in my opinion)

I can understand that if you are say around 30 years old or less (give or take a bit) you might believe what you've said but believe me society is falling to pieces.

Neither of own a time machine, we certainly cannot go back and we don't know what the future holds but all I can say is my own life experience has been that things are not getting better, and equality (the marxist rubbish if you would read about that) etc is destroying lives not helping them.

I have no problem expanding on this but I expect you will probably not like what I believe...which is fine but in todays society not agreeing seems to mean being frozen out of jobs and opportunities and being made a pariah....well I didn't grow up in a world where that happened unless you were really really extreme.

Not much I can do to change things, I think the world will be a worse place as we continue down this path but I'm just one guy...who apparently isn't even allowed an opinion lol

 

 

I'm 35. I was old enough to remember the .com bubble and recession after (almost left high school and got a job before that bubble burst), and I graduated college just in time for the financial shockwave where the world looked like it was melting down (I had a background in mathematical physics + computer science). I enjoyed working in the energy sector (I don't anymore, but the fracking revolution was very interesting) where I learned a lot about scenario planning. The commodity supercycle is hard. I think most jobs are translatable more so than people think. Just look at something like "remote sensing". The core methodology can be used as diverse as exploration seismology or internet advertising. 

[El Nikko + 2,145]

So to clarify...and it's very late here.

There was a time when it was normal for a man and woman to be able to marry and create a family of 2, 3 kids or even more and they would be able to live on a single wage. They could afford a modest house and live in a real community where people would look out for and police each other. The marriage was a partnership of two people who joined together to create the family and both of them worked together so that their children had a good life. They respected one another, they went to church etc and they followed age old traditions that only in the last few decades have been broken up. The family would spend time together when not working, the mother and father would have different but very important roles but it was the central basic for everything.

Today the 'norm' is quite the opposite of what I've just described, marriage is not so normal, single wage families are abnormal, families spend almost no time together and probably sit in different rooms of the house doing their own thing. Kids are being brought up by the state and social media and so on...and this is what I consider as the degradation of our society.

I'm sure I'm in a minority although the wealthy can still afford to do some of what I described above but this is not a good direction for society to take in my opinion. Today birthrates are so low that we have to import people who are not 'us' to replace the elderly and while I'm sure many of them are nice people it's not the foundations of what a high trust society is built upon...there is really no historical president for what we're doing.

It still shocks me how fast we've got to this point, yes the US and other countries will still exist but the societies that built them will not, they will become something totally different. 

If this direction is what people thinks will lead to a better life then good luck because I am 100% it won't but if you are young then I guess you/they won't know what they're missing. I know so many women who have never had children because they bought in to the lie that they should enjoy their younger years, party, work and then maybe settle down later only to find that they cannot have children...and they all regret it.

I could go on...but hey we're in a new world now

[surrept33 + 612]

3 minutes ago, El Nikko said:

So to clarify...and it's very late here.

There was a time when it was normal for a man and woman to be able to marry and create a family of 2, 3 kids or even more and they would be able to live on a single wage. They could afford a modest house and live in a real community where people would look out for and police each other. The marriage was a partnership of two people who joined together to create the family and both of them worked together so that their children had a good life. They respected one another, they went to church etc and they followed age old traditions that only in the last few decades have been broken up. The family would spend time together when not working, the mother and father would have different but very important roles but it was the central basic for everything.

Today the 'norm' is quite the opposite of what I've just described, marriage is not so normal, single wage families are abnormal, families spend almost no time together and probably sit in different rooms of the house doing their own thing. Kids are being brought up by the state and social media and so on...and this is what I consider as the degradation of our society.

I'm sure I'm in a minority although the wealthy can still afford to do some of what I described above but this is not a good direction for society to take in my opinion. Today birthrates are so low that we have to import people who are not 'us' to replace the elderly and while I'm sure many of them are nice people it's not the foundations of what a high trust society is built upon...there is really no historical president for what we're doing.

It still shocks me how fast we've got to this point, yes the US and other countries will still exist but the societies that built them will not, they will become something totally different. 

If this direction is what people thinks will lead to a better life then good luck because I am 100% it won't but if you are young then I guess you/they won't know what they're missing. I know so many women who have never had children because they bought in to the lie that they should enjoy their younger years, party, work and then maybe settle down later only to find that they cannot have children...and they all regret it.

I could go on...but hey we're in a new world now

For most of humanity, people lived in subsistence farming (near rivers) or in hunter/gathering types of situations with terrible fighting, sanitation, and diseases like smallpox. There were a wide variety of kinship arrangements, even between fellow clans and tribes. We can at least observe this in aboriginal people, the few that are left (in fact, a lot of the $ the unicode consortium, an effort originally started @ xerox), is to hire ethnographers to learn how aboriginals communicate. 

I've read these books in the last year and I think they helped me contextualize "fighting" (which we are all prone to) and "culture" (which moves much faster than people realize. but people in general are very adaptable), but the dehumanizing spreads like wildfire when recommendation algorithms "echo chamber" that stuff (see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recommender_system) 

https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0745695760/ref=rdr_ext_sb_ti_hist_1 

also interesting: https://www.amazon.com/Energy-Civilization-History-MIT-Press/dp/0262035774 (but I disagree with him somewhat)

Any new form of mass media can paradoxically lead to mass empowerment or the spreading of mass propoganda/counterfacts. Just look at the latest case of genocide/ethnic cleansing (in Myanmar), for example, just a few years ago, which mostly happened because Myanmar was in isolation for such a long time and never switched to Unicode, and companies with legit moderation couldn't detect a Tutsi/Hutu (or Serb/Bosnian-like) calls for violence: https://www.theregister.com/2018/11/06/facebook_myanmar_report/

It's sad that the internet has made it easier to organize violence. But I think cultural exchange always makes us smarter overall. For example, Leonardo Fibonacci learning the Arab/Indian number system probably helped Europe escape the dark ages when the "intellectuals" of the day were trying to count how many angels danced on pins. Muhammad al-Khwarizmi, along with all of the mixture between the Byzantines and the Arabs gave us the algebra and algorithms (and help preserve knowledge about greek geometry that declined with the Great Library of Alexandria). It was a lot of people looking at the stars and noting stuff down and comparing notes that let us reach *space*. I do think that figuring out sustainability is important. This was once not a partisan issue, and I don't think it should be one in the future. Teddy Roosevelt started the department of the interior because he was such a outdoorsman. I don't have all the answers but if the developing world develops like the developed world did, I suspect we'll have a lot of future volatility (and with countries in the middle east where they have not sufficiently diversified). 

[El Nikko + 2,145]

4 minutes ago, surrept33 said:

For most of humanity, people lived in subsistence farming (near rivers) or in hunter/gathering types of situations with terrible fighting, sanitation, and diseases like smallpox. There were a wide variety of kinship arrangements, even between fellow clans and tribes. We can at least observe this in aboriginal people, the few that are left (in fact, a lot of the $ the unicode consortium, an effort originally started @ xerox), is to hire ethnographers to learn how aboriginals communicate. 

I've read these books in the last year and I think they helped me contextualize "fighting" (which we are all prone to) and "culture" (which moves much faster than people realize. but people in general are very adaptable), but the dehumanizing spreads like wildfire when recommendation algorithms "echo chamber" that stuff (see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recommender_system) 

https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0745695760/ref=rdr_ext_sb_ti_hist_1 

also interesting: https://www.amazon.com/Energy-Civilization-History-MIT-Press/dp/0262035774 (but I disagree with him somewhat)

Any new form of mass media can paradoxically lead to mass empowerment or the spreading of mass propoganda/counterfacts. Just look at the latest case of genocide/ethnic cleansing (in Myanmar), for example, just a few years ago, which mostly happened because Myanmar was in isolation for such a long time and never switched to Unicode, and companies with legit moderation couldn't detect a Tutsi/Hutu (or Serb/Bosnian-like) calls for violence: https://www.theregister.com/2018/11/06/facebook_myanmar_report/

It's sad that the internet has made it easier to organize violence. But I think cultural exchange always makes us smarter overall. For example, Leonardo Fibonacci learning the Arab/Indian number system probably helped Europe escape the dark ages when the "intellectuals" of the day were trying to count how many angels danced on pins. Muhammad al-Khwarizmi, along with all of the mixture between the Byzantines and the Arabs gave us the algebra and algorithms (and help preserve knowledge about greek geometry that declined with the Great Library of Alexandria). It was a lot of people looking at the stars and noting stuff down and comparing notes that let us reach *space*. I do think that figuring out sustainability is important. This was once not a partisan issue, and I don't think it should be one in the future. Teddy Roosevelt started the department of the interior because he was such a outdoorsman. I don't have all the answers but if the developing world develops like the developed world did, I suspect we'll have a lot of future volatility (and with countries in the middle east where they have not sufficiently diversified). 

I'm not really sure what you are talking about, I was talking about a better time and you are bringing up organizing violence etc?

Have you travelled much? I've worked all over the world...do you think I have violent or monstrous ideas or something?

Humanity is and never has been about fighting, it's about living and procreating. War is what happens when diplomacy and politics fails.

Homogenous societies are the best functioning...that is why we have problems in the west because we've tried a new approach...sure it can work in part where the is enough money and jobs to go around but you will see the truth if you go to a diverse and poor area...you will always end up with tribalism.

Anyway good luck with your future...my advice would be to get married and have some kids...you will not find anything more satisfying, not even that latest Iphone.

 

[surrept33 + 612]

21 minutes ago, El Nikko said:

I'm not really sure what you are talking about, I was talking about a better time and you are bringing up organizing violence etc?

Have you travelled much? I've worked all over the world...do you think I have violent or monstrous ideas or something?

Humanity is and never has been about fighting, it's about living and procreating. War is what happens when diplomacy and politics fails.

Homogenous societies are the best functioning...that is why we have problems in the west because we've tried a new approach...sure it can work in part where the is enough money and jobs to go around but you will see the truth if you go to a diverse and poor area...you will always end up with tribalism.

Anyway good luck with your future...my advice would be to get married and have some kids...you will not find anything more satisfying, not even that latest Iphone.

 

That wasn't necessarily directed @ you, more so the vitriol that tends to be spewed online, rather than good debates about ideas rather than ideologies. I have traveled quite a bit (mostly in Europe and Asia), but no where near as much as I'd like, actually COVID stopped me this year. 

I tend to agree with this book: https://www.amazon.com/Rule-Makers-Breakers-Tight-Cultures/dp/1501152939

Sometimes even climate tends to select for certain types of culture (for example, look at the "individuality"-metric of say Scandanavia vs near the Equator) in a first order estimate.

But then again, technology also change this rapidly. Hell, any *content* in English probably has an outsized influence via (auto translation services on the internet) because it is like greek or latin in being the lingua franca of our times. Cheap smartphones and cellular will probably blanket the entire earth soon, so provided there isn't too much government censorship (for example, in Russia and China, the tech savvy just get around the "great firewalls", you'd need North Korea-like physical disconnection for that to really work. 

Good luck! I hope your kids and mine see a better world with limitless opportunities instead of being tunnel visioned into anything. 

Edited January 23, 2021 by surrept33