This is a “half full” / “half empty” article. The unnamed authors gets some things right, but totally botch others.
Russia’s intervention was a principled response to aid an historic ally, the Syrian Arab Republic.
That’s an example of pure nonsense. Putin & Company made a hard-headed calculation that allowing the US to continue destroying enemies of the Apartheid state was going to end up hurting Mother Russia.
Yet many sentences which follow that stupid quote are spot-on in describing the situation. The piece manages to avoid mentioning Lebanon at all, but that’s a key for both the Empire and the pissant state. Hezbollah was created as a shield for both Lebanon and Iran, and is doing an amazing job at both tasks. Allowing ISIS and the “Democratic Rebels” to destroy Syria would have isolated Lebanon and threatened the long eastern flank of that nation. Both resupply and defense would have become extraordinarily difficult. With Hezbollah neutered, Iran is in very sad shape. With Iran gone, God’s Favorite Thieves and Murders would have accomplished a major goal. And the US of A would soon be building bases on another of Russia’s flanks.
T***p no longer cares what his Bible Base people thing about him cussing on a nationally broadcast show. The man has twice avoided going to the mat with Iran, but back then he wasn’t on mood-altering drugs. Point #1: he’s on those drugs now, and Point #2: the man is in a very bad way financially.
If Billionaire Bloomberg can spend hundreds of millions of dollars to take out Sanders and to remove T***p from office, any number of Zionist Billionaires can do the same to try to buy themselves a war for the Apartheid state.
A potential Loser who is on drugs, who badly needs money – AND who controls the US military. Not at all a good situation. The man is in a very tight spot, and like cornered rats everywhere, might do anything.
The Orange POTUS has shown he can bulldoze his doctors, but for some reason he didn’t bother with this previous ‘miracle cure’. Maybe it’s good enough for the peasants, but most certainly not for his precious self.
Of course HCQ doesn’t work for mid stage severity, you use MATH+ Protocol at that stage or Ivermectin. This isn’t new and we have been saying this for months now.
You use HCQ with Zinc early before you’re hospitalized.
That being said.
Ceasefire for 72 hours in Azerbaijan after 2 weeks of Armenia having its ass beaten and its outer defenses in Nagorno Kabarakh broken. It will fall apart quickly and the Azei Army will liberate its occupied territories thanks to gaining an insurmountable technological edge in its drone arsenal which Armenia lacks the EW capabilities to counter.
Thank you Thomas. The full court press on HCQ to discredit its use has been appalling. Put simply, it’s very effective when used early, and in conjunction with Zn and Azithromycin.
The ongoing hit job against HCQ will surely go down as one of the greatest disinformation hoaxes of all times.
The funny thing is, we have overwhelming evidence from Asian and African Countries that HCQ and Zinc works early. Africa has largely dodged the bullet as HCQ is an OTC due to Malaria’s prevalence and Asia goes with whatever works.
This is what stands for “journalism” these days? The author neglects to differentiate fracking for natural gas and fracking for oil which are often two separate endeavors. Yes, fracking shale for oil is not economical but fracking shale for natural gas is economical. It’s precisely the reason for the precipitous fall of coal as the go-to source of fossil fuel for American power plants. Natural gas, due to fracking, became a more economically competitive alternative with the added benefit it could be touted as “Green” when it’s anything but. Natural gas prices are not predicated on oil prices. Gasoline prices are, obviously, because gasoline is manufactured from oil, but natural gas is mutually exclusive from oil and not manufactured from it. So, the author is wrong. Economics won’t curtail fracking for natural gas. It will continue unabated and that’s because the natural gas lobby is into Biden as much as it’s into Trump and dumb ass fat ass pickup-driving yocals in Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin and Minnesota enjoy drinking methane to wash down their bovine growth hormone gmo burgers and fries.
In the Democratic leaning states of Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, a 2019 poll found 54% of swing voters were opposed to a ban on fracking.
Fracking in these states is fracking shale for natural gas, not oil, and therefore is economical and will be for the foreseeable future. More than half of the numb nuts in the locales mentioned support their own annihilation and certainly the annihilation of their children and grandchildren. Without fresh untainted groundwater, these fools will be forced to move to urban areas. Fracking is also a way of enclosing the Commons by tainting and poisoning the Commons. The ghettos await the refugees. And more than half of these imbeciles support it. There is no escaping Omelas. There is no need for microchipping when it’s this easy to get people to vote for their own annihilation.
One day the US and the rest of the Anglosphere for that matter will have to face the 800-pound gorilla in the room that is the Zionist lobby, it’s bilionaires and organizations that have a death grip on Washington politics.
c19study.com, which has been aggregating hydroxychloroquine studies, but now also has sections on Vitamin D, Ivermectin, Remdesevir, and a couple of other things, states that out of 133 HCQ studies, 100% of early treatment studies are positive (and 64% is the median improvement)
It’s been widely known and discussed (including in this blog) that HCQ is far more effective when used EARLY (and along with things like zinc, by famous proponents Raoult and Zelenko). So, for anybody who is interested in truth, as opposed to just spewing or repeating propaganda, an obvious question is, “What is the quality of these studies? And did they give early treatment, or not?”
Unlike you, apparently, I looked at the actual report. I now know the median number of days before hydroxychloroquine was administered, from time of symptom onset.
I could just tell you, but I want to see if you have enough integrity to negate your own distorted view. Or will you just keep repeating a lie, for whatever nefarious reason compels you to do so? The main title of your nbcnews.com article says, “The ‘evidence is clear’: Hydroxychloroquine doesn’t help Covid-19 patients”. This would be a bald-faced lie-by-omission, (which didn’t prevent you from quoting that much) except that the sub-title says, “The latest evidence shows no benefit to the drug when used in VERY SICK PATIENTS.” (emphasis mine).
(BTW, the randomization aspect seems to have been quite on the up and up. E.g., median age for HCQ arm was 65.2; median age for Usual Care arm was 65.4).
This study wasn’t completely worthless, because it does, indeed, seem to show that late administration of HCQ, without zinc, is a worthless treatment.
To Plague Species: The states of Wisconsin, Minnesota have zero hydrocarbon reserves to frack and Michigan has almost nothing. People in these states have not seen what fracking does to the environment and they won’t if they don’t move. To them, fracking is a fuzzy concept that doesn’t affect them, thus they shrug their shoulders and and “fine.” You may think they’re crazy, but most of them are not.
Let’s enshrine the two Parties and the credentialled medicos as tools of the Deep State and we will never have to have a messy election. Just mail in your ballots, while “we” keep your norms warm near the crackling cremation fire of democracy.
I have posted “Trump “Hail Mary” Re-election Strategy Proposal” to the /r/benshapiro sub-reddit. While I’ll (probably) eventually repost to my vanity sub-reddit /r/the_donald_goodandbad, I only have 7 subscribers, and the needle never seems to go past 15 readers.
So, I made an executive decision! I have about 30 net upvotes, which is probably 15 more upvotes than total, non-bot readers would have ever seen in my playpen.
How’s the quality of living in Russia compared to the USA?
7 Answers
Andrey Rzhevskiy, lives in Saint Petersburg, Russia
Answered August 1, 2016 · Author has 269 answers and 260.3K answer views
As a Russian, born and bred, who moved to US in 2000 and back to Russia in 2013, I feel I have enough taste and feel of US to answer this question.
First, the quick summary. If you focus your life on making money, life is better in America. If you want the sense of freedom, Russia is better for you.
Some details:
1) in US, it’s easier to make the necessary minimum to live a low profile life, relatively carefree, that is – practically locked in your home town. To that point, the working adults of the lowest range of Russia’s middle class have significantly greater options than those among US residents.
2) Free education in Russia, even small towns is significantly higher than compared to most private schools in US. To that point, Russians are generally more aware of the world, science, politics, history and are more curious than the Americans. It also gives Russians the edge l, so to speak, to work in other countries while remaining culturally Russians, eventually returning back home. According to IETS examination stats, only about 25% of Americans have sufficient educational background to compete in global economy with the locals abroad the US. Of that number, only 40% passed English language exam with sufficient grade to be eligible to work in *english speaking countries*, such as UK, Canada, Australia and Nee Zealand. Only about 15% of Americans are fluent in a foreign language sufficient to work abroad.
3) American historical and architectural heritage is rather unimpressive. Even the top cities, such as San Francisco, Dallas, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Washington DC, Seattle, New York severely lack the grandeur of Russian cities of the same scale. As far as small towns go across US, it can be compared to Russian villages deserted in late 19th century. For that reason, the concentration of Russian speaking communities of US can be found predominantly at or in the proximity of large coastal towns. Nearly all of the inhabitants of such communities frequently visit their home towns for despite lucrative jobs and businesses, Russians generally find US boring.
4) Politics. The scientific, political and geopolitical awareness of Americans is so despicably low, it makes one wonder if the lack of generally available education in terms of history, geography and science is a schemed design in USA to prevent emigration and make the general population more susceptible to perfectly tuned brainwashing machine of US political media conglomerate.
5) Freedoms. While there is more freedom that is supposedly guaranteed by the constitution of USA, there is incomparably more de facto individual freedom in Russia. The comprehensive comparison report on this subject can easily make a 300 pages soft cover, so, suffice it to say, in any area, from taxation to politics, to nature camping, to general behavior on the streets of cities and towns, Russians are incomparably less regulated than their American counterparts. All for all, it is entirely possible to make an average American salary in Russia with comparable amount of effort and enjoy 10 times better life, in all aspects of it than you can possibly afford in US.
6) Racism and international relations. Russians judge people by character. You can be framed upon for looking like an outcast in the morning and make good friends just based on your personality by the end of the same day. At that, you would be widely accepted in variety of circles of Russian society based on association with whom you came with and general feel of your behavior. Many of those who moved from former soviet republics enjoy great respect around Russia despite their physical appearance. On the contrary, US is still a deeply divided society that is, (based on political trends) represents a deep rooted problem that will likely never be solved.
7) The entire infrastructure of Russia is bent on social interaction. On the contrary, in US, it is my job, my car, my house, my family, and my circle of very select individuals whom I associate with. Russians, from Moscow to St. Pete to Varkuta to Sevastople intermingle on daily basis. As the result, Russia is significantly more cosmopolitan, yet patriotic than US has a chance to ever become
8) Communication networks and transportation. You can live 70 km away from Moscow Centre, work near VDNH and only drive a car when you go on vacation. In 90% of US, you live 20 I’m from your office and you are stuck helpless if for whatever reason you can’t drive. As far as communication networks – there’s a better cellular coverage in Siberia than it is in DC metro. Internet speed is 3–5 times faster than anywhere in average US and costs $7-$15 a month. Enough said
9) Media. There are about 500 news and entertainment networks around Russia and only 9 of them are government controlled. All mainstream mass media in US is a subsidiary of PBC, one way or another, and as such is a subject to blackout censored by US government.
10) Nature and travel. Russia is the largest country in the world. Aside of minuscule fraction under control of private organization and classified installations, all land is accessible by general public at their discretion and without a time limit. You can shove a tent and a backpack into the trunk of your car, drive 50 km from your town and live there as long as you want. Good luck with that in US anywhere outside of designated campgrounds that come with a fee and strict regulations. You can be a poor student in St. Pete and you can still afford railroad through Russia to its Bering Straight shores. Conbined with Russian curiosity, you would find Russian students, professionals and families of any income from Spain to Japan year around. As far as US, travel is fracking expensive. 65% of US population never went farther than their immediate neighbors to north and south, namely Canada and Mexico. Only about 40% made that trip more than twice in their life. 35% of adult US population has never been farther than next state. Sad
11) Education and science. Russia breeds its own science. US “buys brains” from abroad. While some may make an argument “oh, that’s because we have money”, the reality is something that the tremendous percentage of americans simply don’t comprehend – if there are 2 things that a government of any country can do for its own future those are: free high quality education and free medicine at least some deficient to survive. At that, Russia is centuries ahead of US.
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Comments? Looking at some of the other author’s posts, he definitely has an anti-American streak (but that’s understandable) but having been abroad myself (though never to Russia), a lot of what he says rings true.
Plague Species wrote: ‘This is what stands for “journalism” these days?’
Yup.
(Incidentally, good on you for understanding the difference between fracking for oil and fracking for methane, something which eludes Yves Smith at NC.)
A few more mosquitoes out today. I suspect the Deep State.
And is Trump, McConnell, and the Republicans’ jamming through another reactionary Supreme Court justice no matter what the rest of the country wants Deep State or not?
Thanks for posting this. I especially enjoyed this part: The scientific, political and geopolitical awareness of Americans is so despicably low, it makes one wonder if the lack of generally available education in terms of history, geography and science is a schemed design in USA to prevent emigration and make the general population more susceptible to perfectly tuned brainwashing machine of US political media conglomerate.
As for the rest, I wouldn’t want to be gay in Russia, but a friend of mine who lives in Moscow as an American reported an increase in his standard of living for fewer working hours each week.
“The ‘evidence is clear’: Hydroxychloroquine doesn’t help Covid-19 patients…when used in very sick patients.” – Zachary Smith
I think the headline, when edited for brevity, is self explanatory…to all but the most limited minds.
Yes Zachary, thank you for repeating old “news”. Indeed, it is “news” that is, at least, 6 months old. Were paper still around, it would be sitting at the bottom of a bird cage. As a recent and highly partisan commentator, you do make yourself look rather silly when you pompously announce that you are ill informed.
Hydroxychloroquine, USED EARLY ENOUGH, in combination with other low cost treatments including, but not limited to, 25-OHD, Zinc, [I forget the antibiotic] has yielded incredibly good results in studies of hospitalized patients. A study in Spain, which I posted here to benefit ill informed people like yourself, showed that of 50 people upon hospitalization who received the aforementioned treatment recovered completely, with only one patient requiring ICU treatment.
A treatment of hospitalized patients that produces 0% mortality, with only a 2% admission to ICU, from which the patient recovered completely is damned good and it beats the shit out the USA’s batting average on hospitalized patients.
==============================
Zachary, I realize you wish to climb the “journalistic” latter to a higher perch in one of the USA’s propaganda organs but, might I suggest, you be a little less obvious and a bit more sophisticated? When trying to make the big jump, I am not sure your willingness supplicate yourself in public is enough to overcome your sophomoric reasoning skills. Perhaps, you could comment someplace like Vox, run by the worlds greatest known supplicant, the EverReady to please, EZ-Rah Klein. If not Vox, perhaps some other similar internet propaganda organ, perhaps, such an institution would be more accustomed to your vacuous postings?
‘Education and science. Russia breeds its own science. US “buys brains” from abroad. While some may make an argument “oh, that’s because we have money”, the reality is something that the tremendous percentage of americans simply don’t comprehend.’
Very true. Pretty much the entire staff of MIT who have kids has farmed out their maths tuition to private Russian tutors.
This is despite in some cases paying $50-plus grand annually per kid at the best private local schools in Boston and Cambridge. I listened to a Boston VC rage about that: “I’m paying $50 grand a year to have them teach my kid about the Gender Fairy, as far as I can tell.”
Central Moscow is incredibly prosperous and its already vast, first-rate transit system is undergoing a massive expansion. That’s hardly typical of the country as a whole. Leningrad, home of St Petersburg, Russia’s second city, might boast (order of magnitude) half the typical household income of Moscow. St Petersburg still manages a certain cosmopolitan glamour and, yes, there’s a long-established gay scene.
Overall, incomes and the degree of development vary to extremes across Russia. The main tendency puts Russian median household income roughly on par with Poland or Hungary. All of Eastern Europe seems caught in the “middle-income trap”, unable to graduate into the 1st tier of economic development.
Russians usually do not pay anything like what Americans pay in urban areas for rent and what might seem like a very low income translated at market exchange rates would not necessarily indicate an impoverished standard of living. The Russian economy, held back by low prices for gas exports and Western financial sanctions, has stuck for several years in a no-income-growth plateau, but there is a lot of in-fill and import substitution going on, behind the “protectionist” wall of capital controls, a weak ruble and an active infrastructure and industrial policy.
Crimea, annexed from Ukraine, has been the beneficiary of infrastructure development to integrate the territory with Russia and incomes have risen rapidly, as Crimea has transitioned from being a neglected territory of a very poor and badly run country to being the favored child of a middle-income state with vast resources. First-rate rail and road connections have driven a huge expansion of tourism and made Crimean titanium dioxide production quite profitable.
No American should remark on the Oligarchs without embarrassment, first by the American role in creating them and second, by the dubious American achievement of more numerous Billionaire Oligarchs and an even more unequal overall distribution of income, not to mention the self-destructive non-policy of exporting jobs and expertise to China willy nilly.
I have doubts about the accuracy of characterizing Putin as “a dictator”. He’s a cautious politician, who calculates his chances to very fine degrees and, like any politician, he must manage conflicting interests and factions. The Czarist and Soviet past have left legacies that can be hard to manage.
Hugh does not like anyone to characterize Putin as “a statesman” but that is exactly what he is, a role that he often fulfills skillfully, at home and abroad. The Russian intervention in Syria, for the economy of force applied and for balancing of an alliance with Syria against an alliance with Israel (yes, the Russians regard Israel with its large Russian-speaking population, as a kindred nation and valuable ally) and historically (and recently) hostile relationships with Iran and Turkey, has been a diplomatic and military tour de force through treacherous terrain.
That said, I could not begin to fathom the Russian penchant for heavy-handed and scandalous “incidents” abroad — including the long, long string of poisonings with exotic agents including Alexei Navalny most recently. You would have to be incredibly ignorant of the dynamics of Russian politics to think Putin would want to poison Alexei Navalny, Navalny being a long-time useful idiot for Putin, ineffectual non-threatening “opposition” liberal who is even more nationalistically Russian than Putin. And, what to make of the Skirpal case? Putin put the perpetrators on humiliating display on a Russian teevee talk show — but to what end I could not tell you. The now legendary status of the mythical “Novichok” makes me as suspicious of the western intelligence services and their allies in the servile mass media as it does Putin — what game of fools are they all playing together?
You are master of the strawman argument, we mere mortals stand in awe of your obsequious display of sycophantic groveling before the mainstream’s media’s Russian memes. They must look down upon your masterful fawning and be most pleased.
Perhaps a palace eunuch position will open up? With your servile manners you could become one of the lucky guardians of some lower lords harem? Best of luck to you, from what I’ve seen, I think you will make it!
on rt.com, currently: “FOREIGN MEDDLING? Greta Thunberg urges US voters to support Joe Biden, not the Green Party candidate”
BWA HA HA HA HA!
I guess Joe Biden “listens to the scientists”, the Green Party not so much!
This girl may blossom into a great tool of the plutocrats – and probably get rich, in the process! I can’t wait to get her scientist-informed views of the Great Barrington Declaration! The globalists need to arrange another speech for her in the UN, before the election, so she can berate Trump, and give him the stink eye – for his handling of covid, not climate!
I think it would go like this: “How dare you, Mr. Trump! Send all those children to their deaths in schools, which you – YOU! -failed to make safe. If only you had listened to the scientists! At least they won’t be dying in the climate apocalypse, which isn’t due for another year or so!”
Oh, wouldn’t it be interesting to be a fly on the wall of her handlers?
Oops! The useful idiots are out in force. The far-seeing Putin has managed to engineer a whole slew of sanctions that even a dupe like Trump can’t undermine. That makes him a statesman? Then there’s SB’s cane waving. Way to go, guys. Right wingnuts hate this group and love that one, applying double standards and no standards as needed. This is completely different from their progressive wingnut counterparts who hate that group and love this one, applying double standards and no standards as needed. See the difference? Me either.
At the risk of being called a disingenuous lying weasel by our esteemed S. Brennan (a Biden and gun control supporter), I present the Where-to-be-Born Index (previously known as the quality-of-life index) provided by the Economist Intelligence Unit (ultimately owned by the Economist group of newpapers).
Now before anybody goes off proclaiming the information has been nefariously tainted by neoliberals, the Deep State or the multibillionaire Putin oligarchy club, may I say that I find the rankings and differences between the 2020 rankings and the 1988 rankings interesting.
Does anybody else have a different quality of life index from a different institution (such as it may be) worth presenting?
10/3 background: “When the Food and Drug Administration gave emergency use authorization for Abbott’s ID Now test, it made clear that it was to be used “within the first seven days of symptoms.” When it is used in people who don’t have symptoms, it can give a false negative in as many as 1 in 3 cases, notes the New York Times.” (headline was “White House Completely Misused Rapid COVID-19 Tests to Avoid Face Masks”)
10/5 headline: Amy Coney Barrett Let Her Kids Sit In The Rose Garden Without Masks & People Have Thoughts
10/9 headline: Two students and a teacher at school attended by Barrett children test positive for coronavirus
No smoking gun, but it seems to me the woman was mighty careless in bringing along her kids if they weren’t going to be masked.
Russia is approximately twice the size of the USA [including Alaska] at far less than half the US population, it’s NEED to expand is, how shall we say…limited.
The reason the USA and Russia are in conflict,* [at this point in time], has nothing to do with how Russian conducts itself it’s more to do with the elite .01% of the USA coveting** the resources of Russia, most certainly not any legitimate “strategic thinking” by those dirty denizens of DC’s “think tanks”. For further details please google “war is a racket”.
*I say this as happy warrior during our “cold-war” with the Soviet Union who resents non-servicemen/women advocating for wars that they would never consider fighting in.
Have anyone read the article by Hillary Clinton in Foreign Affairs?
She calls for no cold war with China, seemingly equating the rise of Chine with global warming as similar ‘threats’. She calls for cuts in military spending and elimination of the centerpiece military hardware, such aircraft carriers, F-35, tanks, and switching to AI and propaganda. Ha ha…
If the US were to challenge China, who’s gonna pay for it? The oligarchy pays no taxes, as we know from Trump.
I think I argued here as well as elsewhere that the majority of the US oligarchy has no interest in the empire.
Some selections:
“The country is dangerously unprepared for a range of threats, not just future pandemics but also an escalating climate crisis and multidimensional challenges from China and Russia”
— China and Russia, climate, pandemics are all the same…
“Modernizing the military would free up billions of dollars that could be invested at home in advanced manufacturing and R & D. … it would also blunt some of the economic pain caused by budget cuts at the Pentagon.”
— What will most likely happen is cuts in the military and no increases in R&D
“Although it is a mistake to use national security as a catchall justification for blanket protectionist trade policies, as Trump has done, policymakers should widen the range of industries and resources deemed vital to it. It’s not enough anymore to prioritize materials and technologies used for weapons systems and semiconductors; the United States’ security also depends on the control of pharmaceuticals, clean energy, 5G networks, and artificial intelligence. That’s one reason it’s crucial to reverse the long-term decline in the federal share of spending on R & D.
— Roll back of the protectionist policies
“Nor should the United States spend $1 trillion over the next 30 years on its nuclear arsenal,”
— We should not let the nuclear arsenal rot, cause in 2-3 easy decades, we may be no different that North Korea, an isolated state protecting itself through nuclear weapons.
I will believe in R&D investment when I see it. Until then, this is just a copout to start cutting military spending and rolling back expansionist policies.
StewartM PERMALINK
“As a Russian, born and bred, who moved to US in 2000 and back to Russia in 2013,”
This says it all. The guy tried it in the US and did not fit, went back and is now trying to justify why we went back. This kind of comparisons are not very insightful. By and large (excluding cases of war, famine, climate change and such), people like the place where they were born and grew up.
If I were to choose between Norway and Italy, I would go with Italy, because it is warmer and sunnier and more similar to my ‘home’ place. Still, we do not see Norwegians migrating to Italy in large numbers.
“11) Education and science. Russia breeds its own science. US “buys brains” from abroad. While some may make an argument “oh, that’s because we have money”, the reality is something that the tremendous percentage of americans simply don’t comprehend – if there are 2 things that a government of any country can do for its own future those are: free high quality education and free medicine at least some deficient to survive. At that, Russia is centuries ahead of US.”
This part demonstrates how the writer has a communist era mentality and simply does not understand the US and Anglo-American way of life. Here, it is your own responsibility to provide EVERYTHING for yourself, including your kids’ education and your healthcare. The government is a problem and not a solution. Those guys at MIT obviously understand this and spend money on expensive baby-sitting called a school and on actual education. Unfortunately, there are Russian math weekend schools only in NY and New England.
Final item:
“It’s a time of accelerating change, reflected in the polarizing fortunes of billionaires.
Those that are the innovators and the disruptors, the architects of
creative destruction in the economy, are still increasing their wealth. Other billionaires, on the wrong side of economic, technological, societal and environmental trends
are becoming less wealthy. Contrast this polarization with most of the past decade, when steady growth and buoyant asset prices lifted billionaire wealth in
all sectors. Most of the decade was a time of exceptional prosperity for billionaires regardless of sector, but in the last two years those using technology to change their business models, products and services have pulled ahead. The COVID-19 crisis just accentuated this divergence.”
Goes well my thesis of an upcoming ‘bloodbath’ among the oligarchy, with the oligarchy becoming smaller numerically, while the winner becoming more wealthy.
From UBS-PwC-Billionaires-Report-2020.pdf — available online.
This part demonstrates how the writer has a communist era mentality and simply does not understand the US and Anglo-American way of life. Here, it is your own responsibility to provide EVERYTHING for yourself, including your kids’ education and your healthcare. The government is a problem and not a solution.
Are you joking? I hope so.
We don’t in fact put the responsibility for “EVERYTHING” on the backs of the parents–well, at least not yet. We still have public K-12 schooling, and even public college and universities which are still in part subsidized by the government. Although the cost of college is inexcusably high we still do deliver at least a decent (though not great) K-12 education, at least measured by test scores—and most of the failing there is due to our way of funding it (by school district, allowing wide gaps in education inequality).
As a Southerner, I can tell you what having no public schooling is like, because in many Southern states there were no public schools until late in the Antebellum South. The reason why Southerners got a reputation as backward and stupid is because of this; and it also was the reason why so many southern cadets at West Point struggled with the academic curriculum.
If you look at the data here on test scores (which I admit are an imperfect way to assess educational success):
US K-12 education while not outstanding, isn’t that bad. In some areas, it outdoes Russia’s. Yet what the Russian (Andrey Rzhevskiy) wrote about many Americans being ignorant about history, geography, an science rings true. The reasons why, I can think, this seemingly contradictory data can be reconciled are many, but they start here:
The US public education system, despite its shortcomings, isn’t terrible. But in some places in the US, fewer than half complete it. Add to that in many of the social sciences in grades K-12, you don’t learn facts but comforting myths (else parents will storm the schoolhouse doors) and that goes a long way to reconcile Mr. Rzhevskiy’s observations with the data.
Add to top of that, only 33 % of the US population has had post-high school education (college, university degree, adult education, vocational or trades training). More than half of Russian adults have that.
This says it all. The guy tried it in the US and did not fit, went back and is now trying to justify why we went back. This kind of comparisons are not very insightful.
Well, he’s lived in (and not just visited, but lived and worked here) both Russia and the US. Have you? Sure, his opinion is only one data point, but as a general rule, the best opinions to consult about “this vs that?” questions are those from people who are quite familiar with both “this” and “that”. People who have only experience “this” but not “that” or vice versa are less qualified to be experts. From what I’ve read about Mr. Rzhevskiy’s posts, he was born in the old Soviet Union in c. the mid-1970s, which doesn’t make him old, and he was young (like in high school) when Gorbachev started his reforms. So he’s not some old Stalinist. Admittedly, people have axes to grind, but you’d think if life in the US was simply worlds better than life in Russia, he’d be another Yakov Smirnoff.
To me, as a student of Russian history, a lot of what he says does have at least a partial ring of truth to it. Dmitry Orlov, who has predicted an American collapse, said it will be worse here than in Russia, and one of the reasons is what Mr. Rzhevskiy says–here everything is privatized, where there most of it was still public. Americans who can’t pay rent or mortgages will end up homeless, while Russians could still stay in their public housing units.
The other thing that I thought was interesting was his remarks on Russian’s being “freer”–this made me think of all these tales of Russians behaving badly, even atrociously badly, even during the reign of Stalin, from many sources (including Solzhenitsyn). What, wasn’t Stalin’s dictatorship the very model of a totalitarian police state, the model for Orwell’s 1984? Well, I think yes, but maybe not a very efficient one, as it seems one could get habituated to repeatedly doing some outlandishly bad behaviors and getting away with it until the apparatus noticed and cracked down. Here you tend to be caught and punished for smaller transgressions far quicker. That’s one of the reasons we lead the world in incarceration, our police state is more efficient.
“Virtually every aspect of the Syrian opposition was cultivated and marketed by Western government-backed public relations firms, from their political narratives to their branding, from what they said to where they said it.
The leaked files reveal how Western intelligence cutouts played the media like a fiddle, carefully crafting English- and Arabic-language media coverage of the war on Syria to churn out a constant stream of pro-opposition coverage.
US and European contractors trained and advised Syrian opposition leaders at all levels, from young media activists to the heads of the parallel government-in-exile. These firms also organized interviews for Syrian opposition leaders on mainstream outlets such as BBC and the UK’s Channel 4.
More than half of the stringers used by Al Jazeera in Syria were trained in a joint US-UK government program called Basma, which produced hundreds of Syrian opposition media activists.
Western government PR firms not only influenced the way the media covered Syria, but as the leaked documents reveal, they produced their own propagandistic pseudo-news for broadcast on major TV networks in the Middle East, including BBC Arabic, Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, and Orient TV.
These UK-funded firms functioned as full-time PR flacks for the extremist-dominated Syrian armed opposition. One contractor, called InCoStrat, said it was in constant contact with a network of more than 1,600 international journalists and “influencers,” and used them to push pro-opposition talking points.
Another Western government contractor, ARK, crafted a strategy to “re-brand” Syria’s Salafi-jihadist armed opposition by “softening its image.” ARK boasted that it provided opposition propaganda that “aired almost every day on” major Arabic-language TV networks.
Virtually every major Western corporate media outlet was influenced by the UK government-funded disinformation campaign exposed in the trove of leaked documents, from the New York Times to the Washington Post, CNN to The Guardian, the BBC to Buzzfeed.
ARK is an intelligence cutout that functions as an arm of Western interventionism… its “focus since 2012 has been delivering highly effective, politically-and conflict-sensitive Syria programming for the governments of the United Kingdom, United States, Denmark, Canada, Japan and the European Union…it took the lead in developing a massive network of opposition media activists in Syria, and openly took credit for inspiring protests inside the country.”
[T]he documents [also] shine light on the British government program to train and arm rebel groups in Syria…many of these Western-backed opposition groups in Syria were extremist Salafi-jihadists…Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and its fanatical offshoots.”
The article is long and documents the planned overthrow of Assad, from soup to nuts, was a western operation meant to secure the resources of Syria for multinational stockholders. It demonstrates that those on this board who support[ed] Obama/Hillary/Biden’s “regime change” in Syria were either dupes or active participants in a propaganda operation bent on the neocolonization of Syria.
Let’s all remember that Bashir al Assad, the current murderous dictator of Syria for the last 20 years is the son of Hafez al Assad who was the murderous dictator of Syria for the 29 years before that. Well old Hafez actually was in control a couple of years before that (1969).
I guess the question here is how many decades does it take for dictators who seize power and hold joke elections to become the “legitimate” regime. The Assads have run a police state in Syria for 50 years. For some, this makes them legitimate no matter what. For me, not so much.
“Virtually every aspect of the Syrian opposition was cultivated and marketed by Western government-backed public relations firms, from their political narratives to their branding, from what they said to where they said it.
The article is long and documents that the planned overthrow of Assad, from soup to nuts, was a western operation meant to secure the resources of Syria for multinational stockholders [ie…the .01%].
It demonstrates that those on this board who support[ed] Obama/Hillary/Biden’s “regime change” in Syria were either dupes or active participants in a propaganda operation bent on the neocolonization of Syria.
Re: Russia. A bit of googling on the”Integrity Initiative” and MI6 will prove most enlightening.
Having lived in the Czech Republic for about 7 years, much of the Russian’s account rings true. Prague is notably cosmopolitan,so the experiences of the rural and small town residents might be different.
Everyone had a second or third language besides Czech. The education system is free and excellent, though people who can afford it often send their kids to English tutors. Mass transit was so good even wealthy people used it rather than driving. The pay wasn’t much by US standards but living was so cheap you didn’t notice. I wound spending a week in the hospital in the ICU and at discharge owed them about $4.50.
Let’s all remember that Bashir al Assad, the current murderous dictator of Syria for the last 20 years is the son of Hafez al Assad who was the murderous dictator of Syria for the 29 years before that.
Smiling and democratically elected people like Bill “monica’s boyfriend” Clinton voluntarily and needlessly killed far more people than has the Assads. George “codpiece commander” the product of a Supreme Court coup, surely topped Clinton’s body count. The jury is still out, but I won’t be surprised if the black Nobel Prize winner, along with his giggling psychopath Secretary of State, didn’t out-do Dumbya in the dead people category. Even the current Orange Tweeter has a body count piling up – “he kills his own people”. Not to mention his multitude of “sanctions” killing foreigners.
What mideast nation and/or leader do you consider to be a shining example of non-murderous and democratic? It surely isn’t the Apartheid state or Saudi Arabia.
Continuing the theme of what happens to the trade policy.
A senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations claims that the Biden group of oligarchs will continue trade war with China, but there are these pieces:
“Former President Barack Obama, after running as a trade skeptic in 2008, fell in line with his predecessors in pursuing an ambitious agenda to expand trade, especially with Asia,”
“Biden wants a $400 billion “Buy American” scheme focused on U.S.-made infrastructure and clean energy technology. That would cut out many highly competitive European and Asian suppliers. Polls suggest this is extremely popular:”
–Populism, ha, that is extremely dangerous…
” Biden should work to preserve and revitalize the World Trade Organization”
Clinton, Obama, Biden – figureheads for the same oligarchic grouping that has benefited from trade with China. I agree with Goldman/Spengler at Asia Times that the Biden administration will be ‘soft’ on trade with lots of sound and fury and no action.
American citizens want a benevolent tyrant to protect them from the oligarchy but the oligarchy has so far successfully frustrated their demands. There will be no FDR ver 2.
This is how it works: companies like Amazon (but I don’t want to pick on them here as they are just an example in this case and stand in for many others) have BLM promotions where they give to various black organizations including the NAACP. NAACP is INCREDIBLY INCREDIBLY regressive in the policies it wants. The NAACP supports every regressive ballot measure in California (and that’s in the ballot guide). The NAACP is with Uber, with the Bail Bond companies, against social funding etc. etc.. They endorse every radically regressive measure on the ballot.
Hiding under a rock so he could be a useful idiot in 2020? Possible but, let’s face it, not probable. No, more likely one of these paid for step-n-fetch-its, a media whore willing to publicly fellate the “Deep-State” in the hopes of peeling off those who can’t hit triple digits on the IQ scale?
StewartM PERMALINK
October 11, 2020
“We still have public K-12 schooling”
I am going to sidestep the discussion of whether our or Russian schooling (K-12) is better. They are different. US schools teach American citizens – wealthy and poor – to the American standards and needs of what is essential to know and of ethics, good life, success and failure, being a good citizen, etc. Russian school do the same to the Russian standards. Personal responsibility and self-reliance is an American standard of ethics. The guy wants a nanny state, and on top of that, a nanny state that tailors to his demands. I am not saying that a nanny state is bad (although it may be), I am only saying that he expects not what he can get in the US.
Kids who completed only K-12 will be by an large toiling in their routine relatively low skilled jobs, those who will go to college may get exposed to a more international level of competition and so college (and especially post graduate) education has to be different and has to keep an eye on training in other countries. STEM graduate schools routinely overproduce postsecondary graduates, because as students and something called postdocs these trainees are no different from apprentices (i.e., cheap and highly motivated labor). STEM schools take these postsecondary graduates from abroad, use them for ~10 years and in a majority (some manage to stay) send them back home. It is not all exploitation for them, because they get to do cutting edge training and could at least until recently command premium in the home labor market. With the Western world in a total crapper, China now sees 600-800K per year in these returnees. The oligarchy can save money on raising (children from socially and economically depressed families don’t do well in school; so families have to be relatively well off) and educating its citizens and can still boast of advanced technology and innovation. I can see the time when advanced tech will become a luxury item that the oligarchy could no longer afford. Trumpists call this flow of postgraduate students in and out of the US ‘stealing American knowhow”. But the quintessential American question is who’s gonna pay for raising and educating American citizens to do tech? Not Trusmpists. So, the students stop coming and America-based professors, many of whom are from abroad, leave, that’ll be the end of tech.
The oligarchy gets the students that it wants, and it does not need STEM students, for now there is an excess of them abroad. The students have skills that they suppose to have and know what they need to know. This, by the way, covers both poor and wealthy children. Each group has their illusions. Now, whether as an individual, you want your children to be educated this way, it is for you to decide.
“Well, he’s lived in (and not just visited, but lived and worked here) both Russia and the US. Have you?”
I am making a general argument that applies to any country, not just Russia. I want to make arguments that are general and not particular to my circumstance. My understanding of what is happening in Russia is that they (a majority) are regretting loss of the Soviet Union. Well, they have no one to blame but themselves. But Soviet Union 2061 will not happen, notwithstanding the futuristic art. They need to imagine a different society.
“Dmitry Orlov, who has predicted an American collapse, said it will be worse here than in Russia”
Well, many “predicted” demise of America out of spite, others had more ‘solid’ theories. Progress arises from contradiction between two opposites, take one of the opposites out (Soviet Union), the other can not exist (the US) — that’s a dialectic materialism argument. Oligarchy is the most unstable and ruinous political system — here’s an argument from ancient Greece. There are arguments from population dynamics, ecology, natural resources and other fields. So, it was not that difficult to predict demise of the US even in 1992. Orlov is probably talking about agrarian capitalism, enclose movement and that in Russia people retained access to land and hence famine was prevented in the 1990s. Don’t know about Russia, but in Ukraine in 1990s, land was given free to city dwellers to grow their own food. Something like this is happening in the US, except there are usually laws preventing chicken farming in your yard. But yeah, food prices go up and these laws will go out. If you want to know how bad things can get in the US, read ‘The conditions of the working class in England”. Maybe collapse of the US in 1990s was not as bad as England of the early 1880s, but Soviet industrial revolution of 1930s was probably close to that. I don’t know whether the experience of Russia can give a good suggestion as to the reforms in the US.
useful idiot in 2020? Possible but, let’s face it, not probable. No, more likely one of these paid for step-n-fetch-its, a media whore willing to publicly fellate the “Deep-State” in the hopes of peeling off those who can’t hit triple digits on the IQ scale?
You actually think that’ll work? LOL.
Your references never mentioned Obama or Biden. This one does:
Zachary Smith
Russia’s Strategic Intervention in Syria Five Years On – An ‘Unpardonable Blow’ to U.S. Empire
This is a “half full” / “half empty” article. The unnamed authors gets some things right, but totally botch others.
That’s an example of pure nonsense. Putin & Company made a hard-headed calculation that allowing the US to continue destroying enemies of the Apartheid state was going to end up hurting Mother Russia.
Yet many sentences which follow that stupid quote are spot-on in describing the situation. The piece manages to avoid mentioning Lebanon at all, but that’s a key for both the Empire and the pissant state. Hezbollah was created as a shield for both Lebanon and Iran, and is doing an amazing job at both tasks. Allowing ISIS and the “Democratic Rebels” to destroy Syria would have isolated Lebanon and threatened the long eastern flank of that nation. Both resupply and defense would have become extraordinarily difficult. With Hezbollah neutered, Iran is in very sad shape. With Iran gone, God’s Favorite Thieves and Murders would have accomplished a major goal. And the US of A would soon be building bases on another of Russia’s flanks.
T***p warns Iran: Don’t ‘f-ck around’ with US
T***p no longer cares what his Bible Base people thing about him cussing on a nationally broadcast show. The man has twice avoided going to the mat with Iran, but back then he wasn’t on mood-altering drugs. Point #1: he’s on those drugs now, and Point #2: the man is in a very bad way financially.
If Billionaire Bloomberg can spend hundreds of millions of dollars to take out Sanders and to remove T***p from office, any number of Zionist Billionaires can do the same to try to buy themselves a war for the Apartheid state.
A potential Loser who is on drugs, who badly needs money – AND who controls the US military. Not at all a good situation. The man is in a very tight spot, and like cornered rats everywhere, might do anything.
Anything.
Zachary Smith
The ‘evidence is clear’: Hydroxychloroquine doesn’t help C***d-19 patients
The Orange POTUS has shown he can bulldoze his doctors, but for some reason he didn’t bother with this previous ‘miracle cure’. Maybe it’s good enough for the peasants, but most certainly not for his precious self.
Thomas B Golladay
@Zachary Smith
Of course HCQ doesn’t work for mid stage severity, you use MATH+ Protocol at that stage or Ivermectin. This isn’t new and we have been saying this for months now.
You use HCQ with Zinc early before you’re hospitalized.
That being said.
Ceasefire for 72 hours in Azerbaijan after 2 weeks of Armenia having its ass beaten and its outer defenses in Nagorno Kabarakh broken. It will fall apart quickly and the Azei Army will liberate its occupied territories thanks to gaining an insurmountable technological edge in its drone arsenal which Armenia lacks the EW capabilities to counter.
jeremy
Thank you Thomas. The full court press on HCQ to discredit its use has been appalling. Put simply, it’s very effective when used early, and in conjunction with Zn and Azithromycin.
The ongoing hit job against HCQ will surely go down as one of the greatest disinformation hoaxes of all times.
Thomas B Golladay
@jeremy
The funny thing is, we have overwhelming evidence from Asian and African Countries that HCQ and Zinc works early. Africa has largely dodged the bullet as HCQ is an OTC due to Malaria’s prevalence and Asia goes with whatever works.
Plague Species
https://qz.com/1914793/why-is-the-biden-harris-campaign-fine-with-fracking/
This is what stands for “journalism” these days? The author neglects to differentiate fracking for natural gas and fracking for oil which are often two separate endeavors. Yes, fracking shale for oil is not economical but fracking shale for natural gas is economical. It’s precisely the reason for the precipitous fall of coal as the go-to source of fossil fuel for American power plants. Natural gas, due to fracking, became a more economically competitive alternative with the added benefit it could be touted as “Green” when it’s anything but. Natural gas prices are not predicated on oil prices. Gasoline prices are, obviously, because gasoline is manufactured from oil, but natural gas is mutually exclusive from oil and not manufactured from it. So, the author is wrong. Economics won’t curtail fracking for natural gas. It will continue unabated and that’s because the natural gas lobby is into Biden as much as it’s into Trump and dumb ass fat ass pickup-driving yocals in Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin and Minnesota enjoy drinking methane to wash down their bovine growth hormone gmo burgers and fries.
Fracking in these states is fracking shale for natural gas, not oil, and therefore is economical and will be for the foreseeable future. More than half of the numb nuts in the locales mentioned support their own annihilation and certainly the annihilation of their children and grandchildren. Without fresh untainted groundwater, these fools will be forced to move to urban areas. Fracking is also a way of enclosing the Commons by tainting and poisoning the Commons. The ghettos await the refugees. And more than half of these imbeciles support it. There is no escaping Omelas. There is no need for microchipping when it’s this easy to get people to vote for their own annihilation.
Chiron
@Zachary Smith
One day the US and the rest of the Anglosphere for that matter will have to face the 800-pound gorilla in the room that is the Zionist lobby, it’s bilionaires and organizations that have a death grip on Washington politics.
metamars
@Zachary Smith
c19study.com, which has been aggregating hydroxychloroquine studies, but now also has sections on Vitamin D, Ivermectin, Remdesevir, and a couple of other things, states that out of 133 HCQ studies, 100% of early treatment studies are positive (and 64% is the median improvement)
It’s been widely known and discussed (including in this blog) that HCQ is far more effective when used EARLY (and along with things like zinc, by famous proponents Raoult and Zelenko). So, for anybody who is interested in truth, as opposed to just spewing or repeating propaganda, an obvious question is, “What is the quality of these studies? And did they give early treatment, or not?”
Unlike you, apparently, I looked at the actual report. I now know the median number of days before hydroxychloroquine was administered, from time of symptom onset.
I could just tell you, but I want to see if you have enough integrity to negate your own distorted view. Or will you just keep repeating a lie, for whatever nefarious reason compels you to do so? The main title of your nbcnews.com article says, “The ‘evidence is clear’: Hydroxychloroquine doesn’t help Covid-19 patients”. This would be a bald-faced lie-by-omission, (which didn’t prevent you from quoting that much) except that the sub-title says, “The latest evidence shows no benefit to the drug when used in VERY SICK PATIENTS.” (emphasis mine).
(BTW, the randomization aspect seems to have been quite on the up and up. E.g., median age for HCQ arm was 65.2; median age for Usual Care arm was 65.4).
This study wasn’t completely worthless, because it does, indeed, seem to show that late administration of HCQ, without zinc, is a worthless treatment.
Preston
To Plague Species: The states of Wisconsin, Minnesota have zero hydrocarbon reserves to frack and Michigan has almost nothing. People in these states have not seen what fracking does to the environment and they won’t if they don’t move. To them, fracking is a fuzzy concept that doesn’t affect them, thus they shrug their shoulders and and “fine.” You may think they’re crazy, but most of them are not.
bruce wilder
How about Pelosi’s 25th Amendment Commission?
Let’s enshrine the two Parties and the credentialled medicos as tools of the Deep State and we will never have to have a messy election. Just mail in your ballots, while “we” keep your norms warm near the crackling cremation fire of democracy.
metamars
I have posted “Trump “Hail Mary” Re-election Strategy Proposal” to the /r/benshapiro sub-reddit. While I’ll (probably) eventually repost to my vanity sub-reddit /r/the_donald_goodandbad, I only have 7 subscribers, and the needle never seems to go past 15 readers.
So, I made an executive decision! I have about 30 net upvotes, which is probably 15 more upvotes than total, non-bot readers would have ever seen in my playpen.
StewartM
Stumbled across this interesting post on Quora:
https://www.quora.com/Hows-the-quality-of-living-in-Russia-compared-to-the-USA
How’s the quality of living in Russia compared to the USA?
7 Answers
Andrey Rzhevskiy, lives in Saint Petersburg, Russia
Answered August 1, 2016 · Author has 269 answers and 260.3K answer views
As a Russian, born and bred, who moved to US in 2000 and back to Russia in 2013, I feel I have enough taste and feel of US to answer this question.
First, the quick summary. If you focus your life on making money, life is better in America. If you want the sense of freedom, Russia is better for you.
Some details:
1) in US, it’s easier to make the necessary minimum to live a low profile life, relatively carefree, that is – practically locked in your home town. To that point, the working adults of the lowest range of Russia’s middle class have significantly greater options than those among US residents.
2) Free education in Russia, even small towns is significantly higher than compared to most private schools in US. To that point, Russians are generally more aware of the world, science, politics, history and are more curious than the Americans. It also gives Russians the edge l, so to speak, to work in other countries while remaining culturally Russians, eventually returning back home. According to IETS examination stats, only about 25% of Americans have sufficient educational background to compete in global economy with the locals abroad the US. Of that number, only 40% passed English language exam with sufficient grade to be eligible to work in *english speaking countries*, such as UK, Canada, Australia and Nee Zealand. Only about 15% of Americans are fluent in a foreign language sufficient to work abroad.
3) American historical and architectural heritage is rather unimpressive. Even the top cities, such as San Francisco, Dallas, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Washington DC, Seattle, New York severely lack the grandeur of Russian cities of the same scale. As far as small towns go across US, it can be compared to Russian villages deserted in late 19th century. For that reason, the concentration of Russian speaking communities of US can be found predominantly at or in the proximity of large coastal towns. Nearly all of the inhabitants of such communities frequently visit their home towns for despite lucrative jobs and businesses, Russians generally find US boring.
4) Politics. The scientific, political and geopolitical awareness of Americans is so despicably low, it makes one wonder if the lack of generally available education in terms of history, geography and science is a schemed design in USA to prevent emigration and make the general population more susceptible to perfectly tuned brainwashing machine of US political media conglomerate.
5) Freedoms. While there is more freedom that is supposedly guaranteed by the constitution of USA, there is incomparably more de facto individual freedom in Russia. The comprehensive comparison report on this subject can easily make a 300 pages soft cover, so, suffice it to say, in any area, from taxation to politics, to nature camping, to general behavior on the streets of cities and towns, Russians are incomparably less regulated than their American counterparts. All for all, it is entirely possible to make an average American salary in Russia with comparable amount of effort and enjoy 10 times better life, in all aspects of it than you can possibly afford in US.
6) Racism and international relations. Russians judge people by character. You can be framed upon for looking like an outcast in the morning and make good friends just based on your personality by the end of the same day. At that, you would be widely accepted in variety of circles of Russian society based on association with whom you came with and general feel of your behavior. Many of those who moved from former soviet republics enjoy great respect around Russia despite their physical appearance. On the contrary, US is still a deeply divided society that is, (based on political trends) represents a deep rooted problem that will likely never be solved.
7) The entire infrastructure of Russia is bent on social interaction. On the contrary, in US, it is my job, my car, my house, my family, and my circle of very select individuals whom I associate with. Russians, from Moscow to St. Pete to Varkuta to Sevastople intermingle on daily basis. As the result, Russia is significantly more cosmopolitan, yet patriotic than US has a chance to ever become
8) Communication networks and transportation. You can live 70 km away from Moscow Centre, work near VDNH and only drive a car when you go on vacation. In 90% of US, you live 20 I’m from your office and you are stuck helpless if for whatever reason you can’t drive. As far as communication networks – there’s a better cellular coverage in Siberia than it is in DC metro. Internet speed is 3–5 times faster than anywhere in average US and costs $7-$15 a month. Enough said
9) Media. There are about 500 news and entertainment networks around Russia and only 9 of them are government controlled. All mainstream mass media in US is a subsidiary of PBC, one way or another, and as such is a subject to blackout censored by US government.
10) Nature and travel. Russia is the largest country in the world. Aside of minuscule fraction under control of private organization and classified installations, all land is accessible by general public at their discretion and without a time limit. You can shove a tent and a backpack into the trunk of your car, drive 50 km from your town and live there as long as you want. Good luck with that in US anywhere outside of designated campgrounds that come with a fee and strict regulations. You can be a poor student in St. Pete and you can still afford railroad through Russia to its Bering Straight shores. Conbined with Russian curiosity, you would find Russian students, professionals and families of any income from Spain to Japan year around. As far as US, travel is fracking expensive. 65% of US population never went farther than their immediate neighbors to north and south, namely Canada and Mexico. Only about 40% made that trip more than twice in their life. 35% of adult US population has never been farther than next state. Sad
11) Education and science. Russia breeds its own science. US “buys brains” from abroad. While some may make an argument “oh, that’s because we have money”, the reality is something that the tremendous percentage of americans simply don’t comprehend – if there are 2 things that a government of any country can do for its own future those are: free high quality education and free medicine at least some deficient to survive. At that, Russia is centuries ahead of US.
————————————————————————————
Comments? Looking at some of the other author’s posts, he definitely has an anti-American streak (but that’s understandable) but having been abroad myself (though never to Russia), a lot of what he says rings true.
Mark Pontin
Plague Species wrote: ‘This is what stands for “journalism” these days?’
Yup.
(Incidentally, good on you for understanding the difference between fracking for oil and fracking for methane, something which eludes Yves Smith at NC.)
Hugh
A few more mosquitoes out today. I suspect the Deep State.
And is Trump, McConnell, and the Republicans’ jamming through another reactionary Supreme Court justice no matter what the rest of the country wants Deep State or not?
Joan
@StewartM,
Thanks for posting this. I especially enjoyed this part: The scientific, political and geopolitical awareness of Americans is so despicably low, it makes one wonder if the lack of generally available education in terms of history, geography and science is a schemed design in USA to prevent emigration and make the general population more susceptible to perfectly tuned brainwashing machine of US political media conglomerate.
As for the rest, I wouldn’t want to be gay in Russia, but a friend of mine who lives in Moscow as an American reported an increase in his standard of living for fewer working hours each week.
S Brennan
“The ‘evidence is clear’: Hydroxychloroquine doesn’t help Covid-19 patients…when used in very sick patients.” – Zachary Smith
I think the headline, when edited for brevity, is self explanatory…to all but the most limited minds.
Yes Zachary, thank you for repeating old “news”. Indeed, it is “news” that is, at least, 6 months old. Were paper still around, it would be sitting at the bottom of a bird cage. As a recent and highly partisan commentator, you do make yourself look rather silly when you pompously announce that you are ill informed.
Hydroxychloroquine, USED EARLY ENOUGH, in combination with other low cost treatments including, but not limited to, 25-OHD, Zinc, [I forget the antibiotic] has yielded incredibly good results in studies of hospitalized patients. A study in Spain, which I posted here to benefit ill informed people like yourself, showed that of 50 people upon hospitalization who received the aforementioned treatment recovered completely, with only one patient requiring ICU treatment.
A treatment of hospitalized patients that produces 0% mortality, with only a 2% admission to ICU, from which the patient recovered completely is damned good and it beats the shit out the USA’s batting average on hospitalized patients.
==============================
Zachary, I realize you wish to climb the “journalistic” latter to a higher perch in one of the USA’s propaganda organs but, might I suggest, you be a little less obvious and a bit more sophisticated? When trying to make the big jump, I am not sure your willingness supplicate yourself in public is enough to overcome your sophomoric reasoning skills. Perhaps, you could comment someplace like Vox, run by the worlds greatest known supplicant, the EverReady to please, EZ-Rah Klein. If not Vox, perhaps some other similar internet propaganda organ, perhaps, such an institution would be more accustomed to your vacuous postings?
Mark Pontin
‘Education and science. Russia breeds its own science. US “buys brains” from abroad. While some may make an argument “oh, that’s because we have money”, the reality is something that the tremendous percentage of americans simply don’t comprehend.’
Very true. Pretty much the entire staff of MIT who have kids has farmed out their maths tuition to private Russian tutors.
This is despite in some cases paying $50-plus grand annually per kid at the best private local schools in Boston and Cambridge. I listened to a Boston VC rage about that: “I’m paying $50 grand a year to have them teach my kid about the Gender Fairy, as far as I can tell.”
Hugh
Wow, Russia, paradise on Earth, no oligarchs, no dictator, no pollution, everybody is happy, happy, happy. Mindless propaganda, much?
bruce wilder
Re: Russia
That does seem like a very slanted view.
Central Moscow is incredibly prosperous and its already vast, first-rate transit system is undergoing a massive expansion. That’s hardly typical of the country as a whole. Leningrad, home of St Petersburg, Russia’s second city, might boast (order of magnitude) half the typical household income of Moscow. St Petersburg still manages a certain cosmopolitan glamour and, yes, there’s a long-established gay scene.
Overall, incomes and the degree of development vary to extremes across Russia. The main tendency puts Russian median household income roughly on par with Poland or Hungary. All of Eastern Europe seems caught in the “middle-income trap”, unable to graduate into the 1st tier of economic development.
Russians usually do not pay anything like what Americans pay in urban areas for rent and what might seem like a very low income translated at market exchange rates would not necessarily indicate an impoverished standard of living. The Russian economy, held back by low prices for gas exports and Western financial sanctions, has stuck for several years in a no-income-growth plateau, but there is a lot of in-fill and import substitution going on, behind the “protectionist” wall of capital controls, a weak ruble and an active infrastructure and industrial policy.
Crimea, annexed from Ukraine, has been the beneficiary of infrastructure development to integrate the territory with Russia and incomes have risen rapidly, as Crimea has transitioned from being a neglected territory of a very poor and badly run country to being the favored child of a middle-income state with vast resources. First-rate rail and road connections have driven a huge expansion of tourism and made Crimean titanium dioxide production quite profitable.
No American should remark on the Oligarchs without embarrassment, first by the American role in creating them and second, by the dubious American achievement of more numerous Billionaire Oligarchs and an even more unequal overall distribution of income, not to mention the self-destructive non-policy of exporting jobs and expertise to China willy nilly.
I have doubts about the accuracy of characterizing Putin as “a dictator”. He’s a cautious politician, who calculates his chances to very fine degrees and, like any politician, he must manage conflicting interests and factions. The Czarist and Soviet past have left legacies that can be hard to manage.
Hugh does not like anyone to characterize Putin as “a statesman” but that is exactly what he is, a role that he often fulfills skillfully, at home and abroad. The Russian intervention in Syria, for the economy of force applied and for balancing of an alliance with Syria against an alliance with Israel (yes, the Russians regard Israel with its large Russian-speaking population, as a kindred nation and valuable ally) and historically (and recently) hostile relationships with Iran and Turkey, has been a diplomatic and military tour de force through treacherous terrain.
That said, I could not begin to fathom the Russian penchant for heavy-handed and scandalous “incidents” abroad — including the long, long string of poisonings with exotic agents including Alexei Navalny most recently. You would have to be incredibly ignorant of the dynamics of Russian politics to think Putin would want to poison Alexei Navalny, Navalny being a long-time useful idiot for Putin, ineffectual non-threatening “opposition” liberal who is even more nationalistically Russian than Putin. And, what to make of the Skirpal case? Putin put the perpetrators on humiliating display on a Russian teevee talk show — but to what end I could not tell you. The now legendary status of the mythical “Novichok” makes me as suspicious of the western intelligence services and their allies in the servile mass media as it does Putin — what game of fools are they all playing together?
S Brennan
Wow Hugh,
You are master of the strawman argument, we mere mortals stand in awe of your obsequious display of sycophantic groveling before the mainstream’s media’s Russian memes. They must look down upon your masterful fawning and be most pleased.
Perhaps a palace eunuch position will open up? With your servile manners you could become one of the lucky guardians of some lower lords harem? Best of luck to you, from what I’ve seen, I think you will make it!
metamars
on rt.com, currently: “FOREIGN MEDDLING? Greta Thunberg urges US voters to support Joe Biden, not the Green Party candidate”
BWA HA HA HA HA!
I guess Joe Biden “listens to the scientists”, the Green Party not so much!
This girl may blossom into a great tool of the plutocrats – and probably get rich, in the process! I can’t wait to get her scientist-informed views of the Great Barrington Declaration! The globalists need to arrange another speech for her in the UN, before the election, so she can berate Trump, and give him the stink eye – for his handling of covid, not climate!
I think it would go like this: “How dare you, Mr. Trump! Send all those children to their deaths in schools, which you – YOU! -failed to make safe. If only you had listened to the scientists! At least they won’t be dying in the climate apocalypse, which isn’t due for another year or so!”
Oh, wouldn’t it be interesting to be a fly on the wall of her handlers?
Hugh
Oops! The useful idiots are out in force. The far-seeing Putin has managed to engineer a whole slew of sanctions that even a dupe like Trump can’t undermine. That makes him a statesman? Then there’s SB’s cane waving. Way to go, guys. Right wingnuts hate this group and love that one, applying double standards and no standards as needed. This is completely different from their progressive wingnut counterparts who hate that group and love this one, applying double standards and no standards as needed. See the difference? Me either.
Willy
At the risk of being called a disingenuous lying weasel by our esteemed S. Brennan (a Biden and gun control supporter), I present the Where-to-be-Born Index (previously known as the quality-of-life index) provided by the Economist Intelligence Unit (ultimately owned by the Economist group of newpapers).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where-to-be-born_Index
Now before anybody goes off proclaiming the information has been nefariously tainted by neoliberals, the Deep State or the multibillionaire Putin oligarchy club, may I say that I find the rankings and differences between the 2020 rankings and the 1988 rankings interesting.
Does anybody else have a different quality of life index from a different institution (such as it may be) worth presenting?
Zachary Smith
Speculation:
10/3 background: “When the Food and Drug Administration gave emergency use authorization for Abbott’s ID Now test, it made clear that it was to be used “within the first seven days of symptoms.” When it is used in people who don’t have symptoms, it can give a false negative in as many as 1 in 3 cases, notes the New York Times.” (headline was “White House Completely Misused Rapid COVID-19 Tests to Avoid Face Masks”)
10/5 headline: Amy Coney Barrett Let Her Kids Sit In The Rose Garden Without Masks & People Have Thoughts
10/9 headline: Two students and a teacher at school attended by Barrett children test positive for coronavirus
No smoking gun, but it seems to me the woman was mighty careless in bringing along her kids if they weren’t going to be masked.
Chuck Mire
Our Grifter-In-Chief:
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/10/05/pattern-of-deception-from-trump-family-business-to-grifter-in-chief/
“The Real Donald Trump”
Stirling S Newberry
The country has decide to get rid of the GOP Prez.
We still see whether donk will seem new and shiny in 4 years.
S Brennan
Russia is approximately twice the size of the USA [including Alaska] at far less than half the US population, it’s NEED to expand is, how shall we say…limited.
The reason the USA and Russia are in conflict,* [at this point in time], has nothing to do with how Russian conducts itself it’s more to do with the elite .01% of the USA coveting** the resources of Russia, most certainly not any legitimate “strategic thinking” by those dirty denizens of DC’s “think tanks”. For further details please google “war is a racket”.
*I say this as happy warrior during our “cold-war” with the Soviet Union who resents non-servicemen/women advocating for wars that they would never consider fighting in.
**wanting to make obscene profits from
NL
Have anyone read the article by Hillary Clinton in Foreign Affairs?
She calls for no cold war with China, seemingly equating the rise of Chine with global warming as similar ‘threats’. She calls for cuts in military spending and elimination of the centerpiece military hardware, such aircraft carriers, F-35, tanks, and switching to AI and propaganda. Ha ha…
If the US were to challenge China, who’s gonna pay for it? The oligarchy pays no taxes, as we know from Trump.
I think I argued here as well as elsewhere that the majority of the US oligarchy has no interest in the empire.
NL
Some selections:
“The country is dangerously unprepared for a range of threats, not just future pandemics but also an escalating climate crisis and multidimensional challenges from China and Russia”
— China and Russia, climate, pandemics are all the same…
“Modernizing the military would free up billions of dollars that could be invested at home in advanced manufacturing and R & D. … it would also blunt some of the economic pain caused by budget cuts at the Pentagon.”
— What will most likely happen is cuts in the military and no increases in R&D
“Although it is a mistake to use national security as a catchall justification for blanket protectionist trade policies, as Trump has done, policymakers should widen the range of industries and resources deemed vital to it. It’s not enough anymore to prioritize materials and technologies used for weapons systems and semiconductors; the United States’ security also depends on the control of pharmaceuticals, clean energy, 5G networks, and artificial intelligence. That’s one reason it’s crucial to reverse the long-term decline in the federal share of spending on R & D.
— Roll back of the protectionist policies
“Nor should the United States spend $1 trillion over the next 30 years on its nuclear arsenal,”
— We should not let the nuclear arsenal rot, cause in 2-3 easy decades, we may be no different that North Korea, an isolated state protecting itself through nuclear weapons.
I will believe in R&D investment when I see it. Until then, this is just a copout to start cutting military spending and rolling back expansionist policies.
NL
StewartM PERMALINK
“As a Russian, born and bred, who moved to US in 2000 and back to Russia in 2013,”
This says it all. The guy tried it in the US and did not fit, went back and is now trying to justify why we went back. This kind of comparisons are not very insightful. By and large (excluding cases of war, famine, climate change and such), people like the place where they were born and grew up.
If I were to choose between Norway and Italy, I would go with Italy, because it is warmer and sunnier and more similar to my ‘home’ place. Still, we do not see Norwegians migrating to Italy in large numbers.
NL
“11) Education and science. Russia breeds its own science. US “buys brains” from abroad. While some may make an argument “oh, that’s because we have money”, the reality is something that the tremendous percentage of americans simply don’t comprehend – if there are 2 things that a government of any country can do for its own future those are: free high quality education and free medicine at least some deficient to survive. At that, Russia is centuries ahead of US.”
This part demonstrates how the writer has a communist era mentality and simply does not understand the US and Anglo-American way of life. Here, it is your own responsibility to provide EVERYTHING for yourself, including your kids’ education and your healthcare. The government is a problem and not a solution. Those guys at MIT obviously understand this and spend money on expensive baby-sitting called a school and on actual education. Unfortunately, there are Russian math weekend schools only in NY and New England.
NL
Final item:
“It’s a time of accelerating change, reflected in the polarizing fortunes of billionaires.
Those that are the innovators and the disruptors, the architects of
creative destruction in the economy, are still increasing their wealth. Other billionaires, on the wrong side of economic, technological, societal and environmental trends
are becoming less wealthy. Contrast this polarization with most of the past decade, when steady growth and buoyant asset prices lifted billionaire wealth in
all sectors. Most of the decade was a time of exceptional prosperity for billionaires regardless of sector, but in the last two years those using technology to change their business models, products and services have pulled ahead. The COVID-19 crisis just accentuated this divergence.”
Goes well my thesis of an upcoming ‘bloodbath’ among the oligarchy, with the oligarchy becoming smaller numerically, while the winner becoming more wealthy.
From UBS-PwC-Billionaires-Report-2020.pdf — available online.
StewartM
NL
This part demonstrates how the writer has a communist era mentality and simply does not understand the US and Anglo-American way of life. Here, it is your own responsibility to provide EVERYTHING for yourself, including your kids’ education and your healthcare. The government is a problem and not a solution.
Are you joking? I hope so.
We don’t in fact put the responsibility for “EVERYTHING” on the backs of the parents–well, at least not yet. We still have public K-12 schooling, and even public college and universities which are still in part subsidized by the government. Although the cost of college is inexcusably high we still do deliver at least a decent (though not great) K-12 education, at least measured by test scores—and most of the failing there is due to our way of funding it (by school district, allowing wide gaps in education inequality).
As a Southerner, I can tell you what having no public schooling is like, because in many Southern states there were no public schools until late in the Antebellum South. The reason why Southerners got a reputation as backward and stupid is because of this; and it also was the reason why so many southern cadets at West Point struggled with the academic curriculum.
If you look at the data here on test scores (which I admit are an imperfect way to assess educational success):
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/15/u-s-students-internationally-math-science/
US K-12 education while not outstanding, isn’t that bad. In some areas, it outdoes Russia’s. Yet what the Russian (Andrey Rzhevskiy) wrote about many Americans being ignorant about history, geography, an science rings true. The reasons why, I can think, this seemingly contradictory data can be reconciled are many, but they start here:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d2/d2/16/d2d216c3352cd3c531f5dc91e398b60c.png
The US public education system, despite its shortcomings, isn’t terrible. But in some places in the US, fewer than half complete it. Add to that in many of the social sciences in grades K-12, you don’t learn facts but comforting myths (else parents will storm the schoolhouse doors) and that goes a long way to reconcile Mr. Rzhevskiy’s observations with the data.
Add to top of that, only 33 % of the US population has had post-high school education (college, university degree, adult education, vocational or trades training). More than half of Russian adults have that.
This says it all. The guy tried it in the US and did not fit, went back and is now trying to justify why we went back. This kind of comparisons are not very insightful.
Well, he’s lived in (and not just visited, but lived and worked here) both Russia and the US. Have you? Sure, his opinion is only one data point, but as a general rule, the best opinions to consult about “this vs that?” questions are those from people who are quite familiar with both “this” and “that”. People who have only experience “this” but not “that” or vice versa are less qualified to be experts. From what I’ve read about Mr. Rzhevskiy’s posts, he was born in the old Soviet Union in c. the mid-1970s, which doesn’t make him old, and he was young (like in high school) when Gorbachev started his reforms. So he’s not some old Stalinist. Admittedly, people have axes to grind, but you’d think if life in the US was simply worlds better than life in Russia, he’d be another Yakov Smirnoff.
To me, as a student of Russian history, a lot of what he says does have at least a partial ring of truth to it. Dmitry Orlov, who has predicted an American collapse, said it will be worse here than in Russia, and one of the reasons is what Mr. Rzhevskiy says–here everything is privatized, where there most of it was still public. Americans who can’t pay rent or mortgages will end up homeless, while Russians could still stay in their public housing units.
The other thing that I thought was interesting was his remarks on Russian’s being “freer”–this made me think of all these tales of Russians behaving badly, even atrociously badly, even during the reign of Stalin, from many sources (including Solzhenitsyn). What, wasn’t Stalin’s dictatorship the very model of a totalitarian police state, the model for Orwell’s 1984? Well, I think yes, but maybe not a very efficient one, as it seems one could get habituated to repeatedly doing some outlandishly bad behaviors and getting away with it until the apparatus noticed and cracked down. Here you tend to be caught and punished for smaller transgressions far quicker. That’s one of the reasons we lead the world in incarceration, our police state is more efficient.
S Brennan
“Docs expose massive Syria propaganda operation by Western Government/Media”
The code name for the overthrow of Assad was “Timber Sycamore”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timber_Sycamore But to continue with Ben Norton’s Greyzone article:
“Virtually every aspect of the Syrian opposition was cultivated and marketed by Western government-backed public relations firms, from their political narratives to their branding, from what they said to where they said it.
The leaked files reveal how Western intelligence cutouts played the media like a fiddle, carefully crafting English- and Arabic-language media coverage of the war on Syria to churn out a constant stream of pro-opposition coverage.
US and European contractors trained and advised Syrian opposition leaders at all levels, from young media activists to the heads of the parallel government-in-exile. These firms also organized interviews for Syrian opposition leaders on mainstream outlets such as BBC and the UK’s Channel 4.
More than half of the stringers used by Al Jazeera in Syria were trained in a joint US-UK government program called Basma, which produced hundreds of Syrian opposition media activists.
Western government PR firms not only influenced the way the media covered Syria, but as the leaked documents reveal, they produced their own propagandistic pseudo-news for broadcast on major TV networks in the Middle East, including BBC Arabic, Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, and Orient TV.
These UK-funded firms functioned as full-time PR flacks for the extremist-dominated Syrian armed opposition. One contractor, called InCoStrat, said it was in constant contact with a network of more than 1,600 international journalists and “influencers,” and used them to push pro-opposition talking points.
Another Western government contractor, ARK, crafted a strategy to “re-brand” Syria’s Salafi-jihadist armed opposition by “softening its image.” ARK boasted that it provided opposition propaganda that “aired almost every day on” major Arabic-language TV networks.
Virtually every major Western corporate media outlet was influenced by the UK government-funded disinformation campaign exposed in the trove of leaked documents, from the New York Times to the Washington Post, CNN to The Guardian, the BBC to Buzzfeed.
ARK is an intelligence cutout that functions as an arm of Western interventionism… its “focus since 2012 has been delivering highly effective, politically-and conflict-sensitive Syria programming for the governments of the United Kingdom, United States, Denmark, Canada, Japan and the European Union…it took the lead in developing a massive network of opposition media activists in Syria, and openly took credit for inspiring protests inside the country.”
[T]he documents [also] shine light on the British government program to train and arm rebel groups in Syria…many of these Western-backed opposition groups in Syria were extremist Salafi-jihadists…Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and its fanatical offshoots.”
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/09/23/syria-leaks-uk-contractors-opposition-media/
The article is long and documents the planned overthrow of Assad, from soup to nuts, was a western operation meant to secure the resources of Syria for multinational stockholders. It demonstrates that those on this board who support[ed] Obama/Hillary/Biden’s “regime change” in Syria were either dupes or active participants in a propaganda operation bent on the neocolonization of Syria.
Hugh
What does it mean to know or be ignorant of history? Whose history? Written by whom, for whose benefit?
Same thing about science and math. To what end? Being literate in these is good in theory but no guarantee of much of anything.
Hugh
Let’s all remember that Bashir al Assad, the current murderous dictator of Syria for the last 20 years is the son of Hafez al Assad who was the murderous dictator of Syria for the 29 years before that. Well old Hafez actually was in control a couple of years before that (1969).
I guess the question here is how many decades does it take for dictators who seize power and hold joke elections to become the “legitimate” regime. The Assads have run a police state in Syria for 50 years. For some, this makes them legitimate no matter what. For me, not so much.
Willy
Those ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it, especially that one percent who didn’t vote for the dictator.
S Brennan
The code name for the overthrow of Assad was “Timber Sycamore”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timber_Sycamore But to continue with Ben Norton’s Greyzone article:
“Virtually every aspect of the Syrian opposition was cultivated and marketed by Western government-backed public relations firms, from their political narratives to their branding, from what they said to where they said it.
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/09/23/syria-leaks-uk-contractors-opposition-media/
The article is long and documents that the planned overthrow of Assad, from soup to nuts, was a western operation meant to secure the resources of Syria for multinational stockholders [ie…the .01%].
It demonstrates that those on this board who support[ed] Obama/Hillary/Biden’s “regime change” in Syria were either dupes or active participants in a propaganda operation bent on the neocolonization of Syria.
DMC
Re: Russia. A bit of googling on the”Integrity Initiative” and MI6 will prove most enlightening.
Having lived in the Czech Republic for about 7 years, much of the Russian’s account rings true. Prague is notably cosmopolitan,so the experiences of the rural and small town residents might be different.
Everyone had a second or third language besides Czech. The education system is free and excellent, though people who can afford it often send their kids to English tutors. Mass transit was so good even wealthy people used it rather than driving. The pay wasn’t much by US standards but living was so cheap you didn’t notice. I wound spending a week in the hospital in the ICU and at discharge owed them about $4.50.
Willy
So Obama/Hillary/Biden were actually neocons?
Zachary Smith
https://www.ianwelsh.net/open-thread-77/#comment-118379
Smiling and democratically elected people like Bill “monica’s boyfriend” Clinton voluntarily and needlessly killed far more people than has the Assads. George “codpiece commander” the product of a Supreme Court coup, surely topped Clinton’s body count. The jury is still out, but I won’t be surprised if the black Nobel Prize winner, along with his giggling psychopath Secretary of State, didn’t out-do Dumbya in the dead people category. Even the current Orange Tweeter has a body count piling up – “he kills his own people”. Not to mention his multitude of “sanctions” killing foreigners.
What mideast nation and/or leader do you consider to be a shining example of non-murderous and democratic? It surely isn’t the Apartheid state or Saudi Arabia.
Who?
NL
Continuing the theme of what happens to the trade policy.
A senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations claims that the Biden group of oligarchs will continue trade war with China, but there are these pieces:
“Former President Barack Obama, after running as a trade skeptic in 2008, fell in line with his predecessors in pursuing an ambitious agenda to expand trade, especially with Asia,”
“Biden wants a $400 billion “Buy American” scheme focused on U.S.-made infrastructure and clean energy technology. That would cut out many highly competitive European and Asian suppliers. Polls suggest this is extremely popular:”
–Populism, ha, that is extremely dangerous…
” Biden should work to preserve and revitalize the World Trade Organization”
Clinton, Obama, Biden – figureheads for the same oligarchic grouping that has benefited from trade with China. I agree with Goldman/Spengler at Asia Times that the Biden administration will be ‘soft’ on trade with lots of sound and fury and no action.
American citizens want a benevolent tyrant to protect them from the oligarchy but the oligarchy has so far successfully frustrated their demands. There will be no FDR ver 2.
js
Do you ever wonder how grift works?
This is how it works: companies like Amazon (but I don’t want to pick on them here as they are just an example in this case and stand in for many others) have BLM promotions where they give to various black organizations including the NAACP. NAACP is INCREDIBLY INCREDIBLY regressive in the policies it wants. The NAACP supports every regressive ballot measure in California (and that’s in the ballot guide). The NAACP is with Uber, with the Bail Bond companies, against social funding etc. etc.. They endorse every radically regressive measure on the ballot.
S Brennan
“So Obama/Hillary/Biden were actually neocons?” – Willy – October 11, 2020
I can’t believe anybody in 2020, [on this board] could be so effing stupid as to ask this question. WTF?
1] What was this guy been doing during the Clinton years [see Madeleine Albright on the subject of killing 500,000 Iraqi children – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0WDCYcUJ4o%5D?
2] What was this guy been doing during the Bush 2nd years [See Dick Cheney on the subject of falsifying intel – https://www.newsweek.com/2015/05/29/dick-cheneys-biggest-lie-333097.html%5D?
3] What has this guy been doing during the Obama years [Hillary Clinton on the subject of falsifying intel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlz3-OzcExI ; Obama/Biden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timber_Sycamore%5D?
Hiding under a rock so he could be a useful idiot in 2020? Possible but, let’s face it, not probable. No, more likely one of these paid for step-n-fetch-its, a media whore willing to publicly fellate the “Deep-State” in the hopes of peeling off those who can’t hit triple digits on the IQ scale?
NL
StewartM PERMALINK
October 11, 2020
“We still have public K-12 schooling”
I am going to sidestep the discussion of whether our or Russian schooling (K-12) is better. They are different. US schools teach American citizens – wealthy and poor – to the American standards and needs of what is essential to know and of ethics, good life, success and failure, being a good citizen, etc. Russian school do the same to the Russian standards. Personal responsibility and self-reliance is an American standard of ethics. The guy wants a nanny state, and on top of that, a nanny state that tailors to his demands. I am not saying that a nanny state is bad (although it may be), I am only saying that he expects not what he can get in the US.
Kids who completed only K-12 will be by an large toiling in their routine relatively low skilled jobs, those who will go to college may get exposed to a more international level of competition and so college (and especially post graduate) education has to be different and has to keep an eye on training in other countries. STEM graduate schools routinely overproduce postsecondary graduates, because as students and something called postdocs these trainees are no different from apprentices (i.e., cheap and highly motivated labor). STEM schools take these postsecondary graduates from abroad, use them for ~10 years and in a majority (some manage to stay) send them back home. It is not all exploitation for them, because they get to do cutting edge training and could at least until recently command premium in the home labor market. With the Western world in a total crapper, China now sees 600-800K per year in these returnees. The oligarchy can save money on raising (children from socially and economically depressed families don’t do well in school; so families have to be relatively well off) and educating its citizens and can still boast of advanced technology and innovation. I can see the time when advanced tech will become a luxury item that the oligarchy could no longer afford. Trumpists call this flow of postgraduate students in and out of the US ‘stealing American knowhow”. But the quintessential American question is who’s gonna pay for raising and educating American citizens to do tech? Not Trusmpists. So, the students stop coming and America-based professors, many of whom are from abroad, leave, that’ll be the end of tech.
The oligarchy gets the students that it wants, and it does not need STEM students, for now there is an excess of them abroad. The students have skills that they suppose to have and know what they need to know. This, by the way, covers both poor and wealthy children. Each group has their illusions. Now, whether as an individual, you want your children to be educated this way, it is for you to decide.
“Well, he’s lived in (and not just visited, but lived and worked here) both Russia and the US. Have you?”
I am making a general argument that applies to any country, not just Russia. I want to make arguments that are general and not particular to my circumstance. My understanding of what is happening in Russia is that they (a majority) are regretting loss of the Soviet Union. Well, they have no one to blame but themselves. But Soviet Union 2061 will not happen, notwithstanding the futuristic art. They need to imagine a different society.
“Dmitry Orlov, who has predicted an American collapse, said it will be worse here than in Russia”
Well, many “predicted” demise of America out of spite, others had more ‘solid’ theories. Progress arises from contradiction between two opposites, take one of the opposites out (Soviet Union), the other can not exist (the US) — that’s a dialectic materialism argument. Oligarchy is the most unstable and ruinous political system — here’s an argument from ancient Greece. There are arguments from population dynamics, ecology, natural resources and other fields. So, it was not that difficult to predict demise of the US even in 1992. Orlov is probably talking about agrarian capitalism, enclose movement and that in Russia people retained access to land and hence famine was prevented in the 1990s. Don’t know about Russia, but in Ukraine in 1990s, land was given free to city dwellers to grow their own food. Something like this is happening in the US, except there are usually laws preventing chicken farming in your yard. But yeah, food prices go up and these laws will go out. If you want to know how bad things can get in the US, read ‘The conditions of the working class in England”. Maybe collapse of the US in 1990s was not as bad as England of the early 1880s, but Soviet industrial revolution of 1930s was probably close to that. I don’t know whether the experience of Russia can give a good suggestion as to the reforms in the US.
Zachary Smith
Did Deutsche Bank Leak Trump’s Tax Returns?
In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I found this to be a convincing presentation.
Willy
useful idiot in 2020? Possible but, let’s face it, not probable. No, more likely one of these paid for step-n-fetch-its, a media whore willing to publicly fellate the “Deep-State” in the hopes of peeling off those who can’t hit triple digits on the IQ scale?
You actually think that’ll work? LOL.
Your references never mentioned Obama or Biden. This one does:
https://original.antiwar.com/mbenjamin/2020/07/01/trumps-record-on-foreign-policy-lost-wars-new-conflicts-and-broken-promises/
Zachary Smith
Thanks for the very good Antiwar link – I’d forgotten they existed.