Another quiet day in Samaria. A few cars were stoned and the drivers and passangers hurt, a kindergarden was attacked with stones, and many other non-newsworthy incidents. One item made me wonder:
"Officers who searched a pair of Palestinians as a routine road check process found grenades and firebombs.
They also found a letter in Arabic claiming responsibility for an attack on Elon Moreh in the name of the Fatah-linked Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terrorist gang.
Since no attack had yet been perpetrated on the town, it is believed that the two were on their way to carry it out.
The declaration of responsibility was written on official Al Aqsa Brigades letterhead. The two terrorists have been charged with planning to attack the town and are being held in custody."
My question is: How will this incident presented in tomorrow's HaAretz? (1) Silence, (2) Israeli stormtroopers brutally search, humiliate and kidnap innocent Palestinians that did nothing at all, or (3) the European Union and the United Nation's Human Rights Committee strongly condemn the jailing of two Palestinian peasants. The UN Human Rights Emergency Legal Defense Team is on its way "to ensure they are not tortured or crucified as it is known to have happened in the past".
88 comments:
I myself have washed my hands of responsibility for these people.
K
Perhaps they were but innocent emissaries from the Obama administration, coming to bring to bring his message of peace and joy in the Middle East.
But as Hillary says, what does it matter?
Anon.
The Romans killed Jesus. If Jews are forever cursed, it seems you Arabs are also. Think of Arab afflictions - stupidity, ugliness, backward third-worldness everywhere but a few places that have oil.
The Ringworm Children:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nsOpLcSDFo
I find it amusing when the Arab troll on this blog butts in with Hitler praise (as many Arabs love to do), completely unaware that AH ranked Arabs BELOW Jews on his racial totem-pole. We love the man who considered us dirt worse even the the evil juden. Ok then.
Arab Christians are actually quite intelligent. Something about the Islamic religion that stunts the Arab brain development.
Cousin marriage is a good candidate.
Anon.
All these degrade the brain:
1) cousin marriage
2) banging middle of forehead 55+ times/day (>20,000 blows/year)
3) prenatal vitamin D deprivation
r
Arabs are beatiful people, stop mistreating us!!
Jews and Arabs are semitic brothers.
Rashid, Would you please stop throwing stones at my car when I'm driving to work?
Gave us jobs and relationships!
Haaretz works within the limits of a doctrine.
It's interpretation has to be somehow correlated to some class issues.
Only problem is that they have to describe tribal warfare through class warfare glasses. Results are sometimes ridiculous as you pointed out J.
Middle class carrying the burden of defence reminds me of ancient Athens. I do not know what to do with the comparison. I shall think it over.
Athens and Sparta became irrelevant very quiclky after the Peloponnesian War.
Macedonia with a traditional power structure saved the Greek World.
We want Peace for all
Thanks
can you share more information about Samaria? Thank you
Why Google don't like youe blog?
To Rashid: Present yourself at the Ariel or Jerusalem checkpoint at 0400 AM and some Israeli Arab contractor will pick you up. If you have no specialization you may get 250 shekel and go home at 2 PM, if you are a specialist like floor tile layer, you get more than 1000. If you are good, next time you will be picked up.
About relationships, getting laid uyou mean, there are plenty in Israel. I dont know the current price but you will find about easily.You will find that your money is as good as anyone's.
If the police catches you, nothing will happen to you but you will be turned in the nearest Palestinian police station, where you will spend a day or two sweeping the officer's home and weeding his garden.
I dont know why Google did not like my blog. Somebody complained. Probably because I used a picture without permission. And they are not perfect, they may have mistaken me for something other than I am. I am not important enough to believe that Ahmedenijad ordered to take me down.
teo
Up to the French revolution, it was always the middle class who fought the wars. In Athens and Sparta you had to own your weapons to be accepted as a foot soldier or hoplite, and those who owned a horse were the elite. The poor did not have weapons (Xantippa sold Socrates's weapons as last resource to feed his hungry children) and were ignored, and the slaves were forbidden to carry weapons.
The Christian kingdoms of Spain paid the horse-owning nobles (caballeros) a subsidy to maintain their horses in war condition and only they were called to the King's army. War was the best road to fame and wealth.
Things changed with the universal conscription of Napoleon.
Hitler considered the Arabs as subhuman but the Mufti of Jerusalem (Arafat's uncle) was a big admirer. Eichmann took him on a tour of some of the camps so he could see the good work the Germans were doing in killing Jews.
Arabs have always believed that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" (at least for today).
K
J,
The European (and Ottoman) cavalry were upper class, not middle. The infantry, skirmishers, etc. were typical scum of the earth. I suppose the English yeomen were rural middle class. I have the impression that in Israeli secular society serving as a kravi is becoming less prestigious, with the slack being taken up by daati leumi.
Rashid,
Don't spend the money you make laying tile on whores and a nice car-I know it's tempting, but you'll need it when you get transferred to Saudi Arabia. Your Arab brothers are assholes to the unfortunate, and only a bribe will get them to treat you well.
Young Arabs use their earnings to build a house, because only when it is complete they can marry. Till that point they have to do with she-goats. It may be a goodintentioned advice to our friend Rashid not to spend his money on whores and hashish, but then he may become overstressed and start throwing stones to passing cars.
We are brothers! Arabs and jews will stand together when Europe try to invade Israel with black soldiers like they did in Mali.
Wow! Thanks!
Jews are amzing and beatiful people. Arabs love the jews!
>Young Arabs use their earnings to build a house, because only when it is complete they can marry.
You must have different Arabs-here, the whole clan throws together to build a newlywed member's house.
>Arabs love the jews!
It's mutual.
Just imagine the new israel, full of arabs and jews ith their hands together and hugging each other>
It seems the old approach with aristocracy and middle class - land owning free people - defending a society was rather normal.
The ones who benefit from the structure should defend it. They own it, it's their business to defend it.
Once lower classes got to be conscripted they were on their way towards citizenship. It took generations but now we understand it was an inevitable social process.
Political power is strictly connected to bearing arms.
Of course sometimes during times of change disconnections appear.
Like in early 1800s. People becoming soldiers of Austrian or Russian emperors but being still political non entities. That was meant to change.
In western world we see the reverse now. Citizens have lost their military use. So logically they are turning now into subjects.
They still keep appearence of citizenship but the notion is losing it's content.
Quite interestingly due to its very particular strategic position Israeli citizens have military use. And was seems at first glance to be a curse might be a blessing. Israelis will get to keep their full citizenship rights.
On our planet everything has to be earned. And citizenship is earned through military service. And kept the same way.
Long before the 1800s, peasants served as cannon fodder for the European monarchies, with no corresponding citizenship rights.
>ith their hands together and hugging each other
Are you saying the chest pressure plate activator for SVBIEDs will be the future industry standard?
Israel will have a Arab Obama was Prome-minister! Will be beatiful
Arabama ? Right thinking, Rachid.
BTW, is there a cure for cousin marriage?
The jews also pratice endogamy, is normal and healthy.
>Long before the 1800s, peasants served as cannon fodder for the European monarchies, with no corresponding citizenship rights
Actually no. Rather not exactly.
The lower classes used in armies were mercenaries or professionals like in US today. can use both terms , they have the same meaning.
I was talking about mass armies of conscripts - a la Athens. Not about hired enforcers.
Completely different concepts. And their impact is profound.
Can't have citizenship without military service.
Neither Ancient Greece nor modern world can dissociate those 2 concepts.
There is a time lag between working class becoming the army or getting out of it like it is happening today and the switch citizen-subject. Once Greeks stopped having a conscript army citizenship rights went out. It took time and it was a slow process.
Rome went through the same process.
Professional mercenary armies spell the end of citizenship.
By the way. About an older discussion.
California's Hispanic population to outnumber whites by end of 2013
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2265134/California-Hispanic-population-exceed-whites-end-2013.html
I am enthusiastic about it. I am very interested in social experiments and the Reconquista of the Southwest is a great historic development. I believe it is quite similar to the Russian colonization of Central Asia. It was an incomplete process. And now just like in Russia it went into reverse. Fast. These type of processes have the tendency to accelerate over time.
Glad to be able to observe it in real time.
Identical to Central Asia raw numbers do not tell the story of the population dynamic. Like Russians , the Anglo colonists were/are very old. And the natives - spare me the details about native Americans not being actually native and Scottish and Norwegian colonists being the real natives :) - are now very young. Plus of course like in Russian Central Asia the colonists are moving out at an increase speed.
Texas is next.
I am not making any moral judgements. Ethnicities are formed or absorbed , they move around etc it is a dynamic system. In the Southwest is just a movement back from Anglo-Africans( rather Germanic - Africans ) to Spanish-Native Americans (south European - native Americans). Not the profound changes as in Central Asia but still nice for an observer.
So is the mexicanisation of the Southwest a good thing for the Jews living there or not? There are still plenty in the LA area - Ashkenazi, Persians, expat Israeli's. I think they'll stick around tbh. The Jewish community in Mexico City seem to be doing just fine.
The next mayor of LA will probably be a jew, Eric Garcetti...
LA alone have more than 500.000 jews, there is only some 50.000 in the whole Mexico.
Is it good for the Jews?
It's probably good for the Jewish elite, who do quite well in Latin America. For the Jewish middle class, who can't afford their own armor plated limos, not so much.
Democrats have now found an iron-clad strategy for electoral success - elect a new people. Republicans are in a box - block "immigration reform" and lose the existing Hispanic vote or support it and lose power forever. Almost every newly amnestied illegal alien turned citizen will be a Democrat.
K
"Immigration reform" is coming...
"Immigration reform" is coming...
still nice for an observer
It is an illusion. You Sir are inside the pressure cooking pot together with all of us.
The process you pretend to observe is not so. California was almost empty when the Anglo people arrived, and the native mestizos remained. Therefore, the Mexicans arriving are not "repopulating" a territory they lost but colonizing new "living room" that is spontaneously being emptied by its demographically weak occupants.
On another note, Egypt is falling apart, Syria is already shattered. The Arab Spring may not be so great for Obama and Hilary but I'd say that it's favorable for Israel to have two of its principal historic enemies in tatters. It will be decades if ever before either of these countries is again able to constitute a credible military threat against Israel. Hamas is a joke that can send little toy rockets that Israel can bat out of the air, but once upon a time Egypt and Syria could mount a two front war with real tanks and planes and so on, that had a least a chance on paper of rolling into Tel Aviv. Those days are over.
K
The Foreign Legion paradroped over Timbuktu of all places, wonder if there is any jew in the Legion.
>The lower classes used in armies were mercenaries or professionals like in US today.
Right.
>I was talking about mass armies of conscripts - a la Athens. Not about hired enforcers.
But citizenship is not necessary to have mass armies of conscripts. It is much better to have them be slaves dying for their masters' goals, with the chance of loot and rape thrown in for incentive. If you let the slaves think they're something more as they're getting mowed down by the thousands, all the better, but letting them actually have a say in the running of government is ill-advised.
>Can't have citizenship without military service.
But you can have mass military service without political participation.
"You Sir are inside the pressure cooking pot together with all of us."
Of course I am. But I have decided it's better for my peace of mind to consider myself an observer of events I have no power to influence. i can not just stop thinking so this is the best I could do.
"The process you pretend to observe is not so."
The idea is to have a wider view. People colonized North America coming from the north. The kaboom a big biological warfare brought by new participants from the Old World.
They multiply etc take over and populate the Eastern coast and due to a great inertial momentum reach the western one. But they run out of steam. It's a bridge sorry coast too far. So now we got the home boys making a big come back. In a rather modified form but it's still at least partially the home team.
Just like the very small local groups from Central Asia are taking back the area from the western colonists. it was a frontier too far.
Can also be viewed as a continuation of the fight between Anglos and Spanish started some 5 centuries ago.
It is a rather complex phenomenon.
Where do you put an Austrian like Arnie?
He is historically part of the Habsburg catholic side.
Where do you put his wife or the catholic Irish political elite?
It seems clear to me that they'd rather side with their Hispanic brethren.
The huge Europoid-African under Anglo protestant cloth wave which swept the continent is in retreat now. In front of a Mongoloid - Europoid come back in Hispanic or rather catholic cloth.
All these happen in the same time.
In the end everyone is from the Old World.
Meeting again on the other side.
The small development I described before was just the change of the frontier between the structures King Filip and Queen Elizabeth put on a colision course many centuries ago.
Now different types of new recruits, coming from Central Europe or Ireland or Poland or Mayans are continuing the fight.
For a time English speaking Germans mating with Scots and bringing hired help from Africa - trying to define Anglos - pushed the frontier southwards. Now Spanish speaking mixed Spanish and Aztecs helped by Polish thinkers like Princess Poniatowska are pushing it back. Of course the offensive team also benefits from African participation.
See? Complex story.
"But citizenship is not necessary to have mass armies of conscripts. It is much better to have them be slaves dying for their masters' goals, with the chance of loot and rape thrown in for incentive."
But it brings political partipation. Boss has got to share. It brings status.
You start with peons and get citizens. of course society remains a hierarchical system. But aristocracy shares with armed people. It is a matter of who has the weapons.
'But you can have mass military service without political participation."
Yeap. For a time. But afterwards either aristocracy shares or get replaced. Armed people have rights, you know?
(I am not talking in any way about the debate from US about the rights to own guns.)
"It is much better to have them be slaves dying for their masters' goals, with the chance of loot and rape thrown in for incentive."
Everyone who tried had problems with the system. No way of balancing worked.
The best known and quite extreme example is the one involving Mamluks.
From India to Egypt masters lost control of their hired enforcers. If they are armed, they are not going to remain peons or slaves for long.
Mamluks are not a good example because brown Egyptians hired smarter whites - of course the whites ended up running things. In Mexico & Latin America the browns don't run anything either - Slim is Lebanese Christian.
The "Hispanic" leaders in America are distinctly pale also. On public TV here is a program called "Pati's Mexican Cooking". There are maybe 100,000,000 mestizos in Mexico and good number of them are very skilled in the cuisine that they have prepared for centuries, but the only Mexican they could find to teach it to Americans is an Ashkenazi Jewish Mexican whose family arrived in the '30s.
K
The next mayor of LA will probably be a jew, Eric Garcetti.
Garcetti is half-Jewish and half-Mexican/Italian.
>Boss has got to share. It brings status.
Only relative to the other peons. E.g.-a Soviet conscript had no status. A Soviet officer had some, increasing exponentially with rank, but was far below his KGB or Party equivalent.
>It is a matter of who has the weapons.
No-it is a matter of who can fire or arrest those who have the weapons.
>Armed people have rights, you know?
Only those they are willing to use those arms to secure. Which usually just means the right to eat.
>Everyone who tried had problems with the system
The Communist states didn't. The Japanese didn't. For that matter, the massive British and American conscript armies were no political threat whatsoever.
"The "Hispanic" leaders in America are distinctly pale also."
Yes they are. Very pale.
Irish and German and Poles and Spanish - all from the same cultural matrix. Plus Italians and Ashkenazi - small numbers now, Mexico City lost the competition with NY/Washington before the massive Jewish migration wave to North America.
Natural home for people like Ted Kennedy is together with his brethren. And they are not baptist rednecks. European civilization has many subgroups. This is one of them.
It just got cultural and biological
particularities when it got implanted in the Americas. That is quite normal. And the former cultural/biological entities existing there got absorbed and provided those particularities.
It is a mix. Both the Aztecs and Conquistadores - plus the Italians, Mayans etc - are moving North to reclaim the land. And to reclaim preeminence on the continent. According to numbers they got the first chance.
Counting poor Mayan emigrants from Yucatan does not cover the subject. Neither mr. Fox/Slim nor the Kennedys are Mayans. Nor is Bobby Jindal.
Concentrating on minute details regarding minor ethnical/racial differencies between people inside gigantic continental spanning civilizations is a different subject.
Well built and coherent from a cultural point of view social structures have a tendency to span across ages. And to continue to exist even if the ones who put them on the path to growth have disappeared or have become irrelevant.
Both Filip and Elizabeth are gone. Their family lines extinct. Nothing remains of the former Habsburg Empire in a formal way. Nothing.
And yet the Ostmark is moving again in the Balkans and Central Europe. And Mexico City again in North America.
Stolen lands like Bavaria have not only been recovered. Bavaria and Baden Wurtemberg own Germany now. It is not as if they came back to the fold. They came back with the whole country.
That is why there is a distinct possibility that there will be no seccesion - formal or not, in the Southeast of US. Why separate formally or not when you can take over the entire show?
I am happy to see changes as fast as possible because I want to witness the social/political evolutions. I want to see which of the possible future lines will be the one happening for real. The opportunity to see such tectonic changes is unique for humans. To be able to witness in real time how such events unfold.
I think our understanding of these events is greatly affected by our incomplete analysis of identities. Ideological structures like US or USSR have the tendency to obfuscate ethnic and religious identities.
We don't talk much about this subject these days.
That Ashkenazi blonds speaking a Germanic language - thinking about Yiddish - and arab speaking brunettes from Yemen , Amharic and Tigrinya speaking black people from Eastern Africa are all brothers. And they are willing to risk their lives for each other.
When Slavs speaking the same language and having an identical genome had a family fight in Bosnia, for the very secular theoretically Muslim ones a lot of people from Austronesian languages speakers from South East Asian islands cared for.
Our brothers from the BAlkans are under attack. Caucasians from Daghestan and Ingushetia thought the same. Turkic speakers from Iran - Azeris - volunteared to go there and help the attacked brothers.
So when thinking about reconquista I was not only referring to Amerindians moving back North - that is the area they anyway migrated from towards the South.
" but the only Mexican they could find to teach it to Americans is an Ashkenazi Jewish Mexican whose family arrived in the '30s."
Yeap. Or to represent them politically new converts like the Bush family. At least their Hispanic catholic branch. No problem there.
Nahuatl speakers got assimilated and maybe English speaking Europeans will be also. At least a part of them clearly desires this.
They will clearly provide a disproportionate percentage of the upper classes. Hmmm sorry they already do.
http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e372/tlthe5th/bush/37926441.jpg
No former Nahuatl - those were the Azteks, speakers in the picture.
But it makes no difference. The one doing the kissing is Nancy Pelosi. Wy should she consider her poor brethren from the South as enemies?
It would make no sense whatsoever. The subject of identity is very much avoided in public debates. But it is very much alive in real world. Just like in USSR. Under the formal Homo Sovieticus cloth very real and deep identities were alive and well.
Now of course Protestants have very much success. So successful they are that they managed to become less then 50% in US population. Of course some are formally Protestants, parents were, just that they don't declare that.
Of course in top universities leadership they managed to get wiped out completely, just like in the Supreme Court. Still s a strong presence in Congress. Less then 50% but it decreases. No doubt about that.
That is a part of the same issue.
>Only relative to the other peons. E.g.-a Soviet conscript had no status. A Soviet officer had some, increasing exponentially with rank, but was far below his KGB or Party equivalent.
Yes you are right.
But.
Soviet system had a great degree of legitimacy. The peons were very poor peasants which received education - according to abilities, entrances were strictly test based.
Received housing, not the US style one but far better then the UK style. Somewhere in between. Not bad I'd say.
Kids were very well taken care of. A very extended daycare, kindergarten system with full coverage.
Food consumption was in the same range as Western Europe. Just now Russia managed to increase consumption to the soviet levels.What do ya know, same as in Western Europe.
And Soviet citizens had rights. Not political ones in the former Western way of seeing them. But there was not much that bosses could do against a citizen. Very easy to change jobs. Soviet turnover was very high. Lots of opportunities in many places - like Siberia. High wages etc.
And one could always appeal to the party if managers got too bad.
Perestroika broke the back of the system. The second half of the 80s brought increased liberties - whatever that means - but less bacon.
What I mean is that Soviet citizens had a lot of rights and benefits.
They were in no way peons in a South American way. Leadership shared, that's the idea.
And keeping control of the Army was a constant thought for leadership.
That is why it was full of political activists. Always spied upon by the other power structures like the MVD and KGB. Both MVD and KGB had a military arm also. They understood the nature of the problem and took the appropriate measures.
> No-it is a matter of who can fire or arrest those who have the weapons.
Yeap. It is always the problem. It is solved by making many mutually hostile/competitive groups out of the power structure. The enforcers have to guard each other. Sometimes is works for long times. Sometimes not. But then end is usually the same.
In US it took 2 centuries. But in the end the guys with guns managed to take over the system. Seems to me US power structures envied the Soviet ones for their magnificent performance of taking down a superpower.
Not only the army. Some 1.5 mil KGB employees for example. Now the around 1 mil people with top security clearence from the US will have their chance to show that they are just as good as their Soviet counterparts. Even better because US is far richer and it has an empire it can milk. Hard job. But not impossible.
USSR had many political activists. US had more and far greedier.
I have great faith that the very competent military - security structure + the armies of activists(lobbiest are in the same group) will manage to take down a far larger and healthier animal then their soviet counterparts. Incredibly resilient the US was if they still could not put it down. No problem. They will try harder.
Main idea.
They took over. In order to suck dry o society means you got the power to do that.
>> >Armed people have rights, you know?
Only those they are willing to use those arms to secure. Which usually just means the right to eat.
> I do not understand exactly what you mean. The guys with guns never stop. Until they take everything.
We are witnesses to a real time process now. I think I already answered above.
>>>>
>Everyone who tried had problems with the system
The Communist states didn't. The Japanese didn't. For that matter, the massive British and American conscript armies were no political threat whatsoever.
> Euro commies I already talked about.
Japanese? The state was the army. What problems? It was just admirals against generals. They managed to find a modus vivendi. Not efficient but hey feudalism is never efficient. It is stable but efficiency is not it's strong point. The guys with guns were so strong that Japan didn't even have a separate security service. The Kempeitai, what we consider to be the Japanese security was military police. There existed also the Tokkeitai but that smaller competitor wasn't either a Gestapo or CIA or KGB or whatever. It was the military police of the navy :):).
The massive US armies were formed of citizens. What political threat?
It is like todays Israel. The conscripts/reservists ARE THE POLITICAL BODY OF THE COUNTRY.
Like in Athens. Political threat against whom?
And because they had political power - talked above - they got a raise. A bigger share of the pie then before they were needed as conscripts. Now they are no longer needed so their share will become smaller. Heyyyy it is already happening. Who might have thought that as soon as citizens are disconnected from the military they bosses will try to steal their share of the pie. because they are no longer citizens in full. Like their Roman of Hellenistic counterparts the notion is loosing it's original meaning. The are still called citizens but they are becoming subjects.
I think you overestimate how well off the average Soviet citizen was. Those apartment blocks looked ok from a distance, but when you got up close, the construction was very shoddy - they were prefabs and there would often be gaps between the panels, etc. Soviet cities had central steam systems and in the spring they would shut them down for "maintenance" so there was no hot water for a month or two. Maybe they supplied enough calories but years would go by between bananas. Basic consumer goods - toilet paper, blue jeans - were in short supply and were treated as if they were rare treasures. You could move to Siberia but not to Moscow (where the availability of goods was somewhat better). If you complained they might decide that you were mentally ill and lock you up and medicate you. Etc. Only filtered thru Soviet propaganda and rose colored spectacles was this a tolerable way of life. Of course this did not mean that things could not get even worse later.
K
- About the apartments. I live in one. It's very nice. Not very much space but this also means utilities are cheap.
I can very easily move. But it means either a house - we are instead trying to convince mu father in law to move to an apartment, or a new one. But those built after communism fell are not reliable. I work in a close field and so I know the subject. Regulations were very strict. You can not put the buildings from the communist era - especially 80s, down.
Suburbs are a no no of course. If Zulus threaten your physical safety like in US of course moving to the suburbs is a logical option. But if level of violence is statistically insignificant you got no reason to part with the city.
Installing a gas heated central is very easy. But is not worth the effort. I haven't done that either. Maintenance means - meant - few days of no hot water. When weather gets warm. Of course it is quite unpleasant and everybody complains a lot but not having hot water from Monday to Thursday is not a problem.
And an individual heating plant means a lot more problems. All my friends who have one have problems with them in winter. They stop working. usually minor problems, but you need an installer to look at it. Solving such problems is not profitable for them - how much can you ask for that?, so they are not in a hurry to help. Centralized system means any problem is their problem. So as an end user you do not have anything to worry. Never had any problems until now.
Bananas were not very often seen.
But except the second part of the 80s the rest of goods were pretty OK supplied. Of course I considered this a problem then. Propaganda maybe in my case. But now I do understand that having many colored packets of something means pretty much nothing. Less color do not change in any substantial way your quality of life. It was not like in propaganda. Those horror stories are in the same category with the Viagra filled Gadhafi mercs wondering around raping innocent freedom loving girls. In fact it was provided by the same organisations. Same department produced the Iraqi troops throwing premature babies out of incubators in 1990.
After Stalin you had to be very very active in order to bring the system hard on your head. Complains meant nothing. They didn't even affect ones carrier. of course a clear and public political stance affected ones carrier. But I have noticed the same in the West.
At first I thought that the free world breads imbecility. I could not understand why everyone spoke only about sport and beer. Weather was OK also.
After making friends and getting to know people better I understood they were afraid. Saying the prime minister is stupid it's OK.
But saying that his policies of replacing you and the ones like you or helping him export your job and livelihood means hmmmm lets see : racism, antisemitism - it is always brought in I do not know why, xenofobia, etc and well it means you lose your job.
That means you can not pay utilities and rent/taxes so you get thrown out of your house. What comes after is anyones guess like wife leaving such a dumb imbecile, losing kids etc.
So it is much better to talk about football. Democracy is OK, just like the supposed soviet happy free people but at a closer look it's not much different.
By the way I do believe that the Western world lived through very good times during 60s-90s. Never visited myself then. But everyone who did said so, and numbers add.
Of course that all started to change when USSR fell. Before, the loyalty of the people had to be bought by the upper classes. After there was no need to do that any more. So consequently their share of the pie got well taken away from them. Increasingly so. In social evolutions everything is gradual. It takes time for changes to even be observed. The middle and working classes of the West should have wept when USSR fell. But who might have thought about that?
Their upper classes no longer had any need of their loyalty. We can now see what happened.
The fact that we hit peak conventional oil a few years ago and EROEI started to decrease rapidly did not help either. But that is another story. I have to connect many ideas when taking about a subject. Can't help it. Reality is complex. Many things happen in the same time.
What I write is of no help to anyone. And it is not a good way of describing events if you want people to listen.
If you want them to listen you need simple ideas. Like a very successful politician from the 30s: Jews did it. Much better.
Bosses don't share anymore. Hmmm lets see. Jewish conspiracy to rob us.
Energy becomes unaffordable, suffocating economy and lowering living standards.
Hmmmm Jewish conspiracy to rob the people.
Just trying to explain why the post is so long and touches so many apparently different particular issues.
By the way about the description of former communist times.
My family was very much opposed back then.
Some branched lost a lot of property when the communist takeover took place.
Afterwards it was OK for the ones who were able to have a good school record. Nobody in my family had any problems with that so social it was OK afterwards also.
We had it quite OK after communism fell. I am in no way a nostalgic or anything.
But I was trying to be objective.
Gas fired furnaces are very reliable, at least in the US. Very few moving parts and nowadays they use corrosion resistant materials for heat exchanger, etc. Run for decades without needing service calls. And when they do break, there are service people available. Mostly they try to sell you a brand new one, where the profit is, but they will fix the old one if you insist. At least your destiny is in your own hands.
K
The past was always better, except that there were no bananas? No, friends, life under Stalin and after was full of privations and fear. Some was caused by the destruction of WWII, but it was the stupid communist system, where you could be jailed for trading in post stamps. No fake nostalgy please. We truly were the elite and my parents bought salami by the gram - ten grams, 15 grams.
What can be more humiliating than weighing salami by thin slices? I didnt need bananas because never saw one till age ten in Austria. Only in Argentina we filled ourselves with bananas and oranges and meat.
J - remember you were in Hungary where the food situation was better than in the Soviet Union - at least there was salami to buy. To a Soviet, visiting Hungary was almost like a visit to the West. OTOH, you were there in an earlier period - I think Teo is speaking more of the 70s/80s or so, when the situation was somewhat better. Soviets were buying large quantities of grain from the US at that point, so they did not have to worry about the "crop failure" that happened every year. Funny that in every year before and after the Soviet period, the crops never failed but I guess 1917-1989 was a period of bad weather.
K
K you are absolutely right about the chronology.
"Soviets were buying large quantities of grain from the US at that point, so they did not have to worry about the "crop failure" that happened every year."
They bought for animals. Production did not cover all needs. And they ate - really, a lot of meat. 300 mil at western consumption levels. A lot.
Now of course Russia - and the rest, are exporters.
But I was not talking about efficiency here. It was not so low as propaganda makes it seem like. But it war a war. Between Eurasia and the global System. they lost. Could break Nazi Europe. But global System was too much.
Anyway the idea was that industrial urbanized societies are very very similar. No matter the names and definitions they give.
I had the opportunity to travel around. People talk about how you do this and how you do that. And you seem quite interested in the differences etc.
I saw the eastern industrial structures - I'd say corporate, state corporations in this case, from the inside because father was part of the system and the western shape because I am part of it. Differences are not very big. Details vary. But shape and essence do not.
By the way I hated the system before because of many things.
For example. Hated activists.
Now there are more of them. Even more useless - could not imagine something like this being possible, much more aggressive and dangerous for society-subjective opinion of course. But now I am wiser and do not mind them. I understand that activists are inevitable. Like rain. Just that sometimes they proliferate too much but that is a fact of life.
Who might put them out of business? Other activists?
Well I think we should rather stick to the ones we already have. New ambitious activists coming to prey on us are not a blessing.
A lot of things in the Soviet Union resembled the West because they copied them part for part and line for line or they bought the whole production line from the West or carted it back from Germany after the war. Did not worry about patents and such. So they would have state of the art technology of 1939 but in the West it was now 1950, 60,70, 80. The only place where they tried to keep up was military technology.
A lot of Soviet organizations mimicked real businesses in the way that animatronic robots mimic humans - close but not quite. In a Western corporation, in the end if there are no profits, eventually the assets will be taken away from you in bankruptcy and redeployed more efficiently. Soviets when they set up their mimic machines forgot to include a subroutine for bankruptcy - this makes all the difference.
Having a perpetual shortage economy helped - in the West you could not have sold a car like the Trabant after the early 1960s. If you tried to put it in the showroom you would sell literally not one. But in the E. Bloc consumers kept buying them and there was even a long waiting list - it was that or nothing. So even the factories that were not literally broke were only able to operate because of the command economy. When the system fell these businesses disappeared overnight. Now maybe some of them actually made worthy low-tech products - candy or such, but the wrappers were plain and old fashioned, they did not know how to advertise, how to lure distributors with discounts, etc. and so they disappeared anyway.
K
I do agree to what you wrote K.
Just that the issue is not so simple.
According to propaganda inefficient bankrupt corporations like US auto ones should have been taken over by more efficient competitors or by investors willing to provide the cash. Did not happen like that.
Does that mean that US corporate world is mimicking real business?
I haven't even mentioned the huge FIRE sector.
Apparently it does. See? More complicated.
Large industrial corporations - be they Soviet or Western - received the bulk of the capital resources of their societies. Way of channeling those resources had different names and administrative shapes, In Japan differed from USSR, and In US of course from the before mentioned duo, and in China is quite different from the Italian case. But the essence is identical.
And things change all the time. The only dumb ones who believed in Western theory were the Soviets. Barely survived the experience. Now of course understood the essence of market economy.
US corporate structure was quite efficient for some time. Then stoped providing net value as before. Japan came but now is almost out of the game - in a few years nobody will have any doubt about it.
Who is mimicking what?
According to theory wise smart Russian companies should now run at least Opel if not the entire GM. Because US corporations and banks are mimicking "real businesses in the way that animatronic robots mimic humans - close but not quite". Well it seems Americans are far smarter then Soviets and do not believe such...(you can put the right word.) That is why US did not have a premature collapse. It will because an empire is a machinery which always destroys the empire building society and ethnic group. We know quite well the stages and steps.
Anyway debates on the subject have now a theoretical value just like theologians speaking about angels. USSR is no longer around.
But after a meltdown the Eurasian Union is coming back. We can consider it a reformed USSR.
And we can see how it is evolving. The only really dangerous issue Russians had - as the backbone of Eurasia I mention them, was demography. The capital lost was replaceble. They are wealthy. They can swallow the huge capital losses brought by the collapse of USSR and make a strong come back.
Now as they are recovering very fast and are going on the positive side - I think that now Russia has the best demographic status in the developed world, data based, economic developments start to become interesting to notice.
The reformed shape has all the trappings of a superpower and pretty soon the economic stable base to really be one.
This is as close as possible to a reality based analysis of USSR. Study the succesor. They were so dumb - commies controlled information, so rather uninformed, as to believe the neo liberals and IMF. Now much wiser - a beaten man is worth two, they are moving very fast.
The auto market is quite an interesting case study. The rapidly expending Russian Federation represent already 1/4 of European market. 3 mil versus 12 mil. And the EU is going to compress and Russian one to expend. With integration the former republics will also become important markets. Not as important as Russia, rather similar to weak economies like Spain but the numbers will add.
Our problem when debating about social economic systems is that we use time frames. And results are dissapointing. Because we are talking about dynamic systems.
Interesting case study former USSR is.
All the traditional problems Russia always had plus some more.
Very large international obligations on all continents. Lots of "brothers " to help.
Huge military pressure on all frontiers.
And an unreformable internal administrative structure. I am not talking about state corporate one per se. Big population increases in Central Asia.
So how do you direct the capital flows?
They expected to have the same treatment as the ones from Eastern parts of the Union. So what was to be done? Poor capital there?
Or move them out?
But then why should the Uzbeks move? The Union was supposed to provide adequate housing, schooling, health care and living wages. Otherwise Union lost legitimacy.
In the same time local elites took over the levels of power in the republics. So center had very limited ability to control anything in the republics. In the 80s that control ability got tested. Pretty unpleasant results. The Union had already become a confederation by then. Some cases like Georgia were almost impossible to ignore. It became a sort of independent pirate republic. Sucking the center for resources and suppling only the black market of the empire.
A comparison can be made for real now. Caucasian republics of RF are exactly the same as the cases I mentioned. But they are small, representing only around 5% of the total population of the present day federation. So the former arrangement can work in this case. No solution but the amounts of money needed to keep status quo are well within the means of the RF.
So a reorganisation was inevitable one way or another. And it took place. Worse case scenario but the center of the Eurasian Empire managed to survive.
So now...
(Adminstrative organisation of industrial companies, of financial flows etc were mentioned before).
No brothers to carry around on Russian backs.
Military pressure is much lower, so the defence expenses are much lower.
And now mating people and capital can be made much easier. Uzbecks and Tadjiks move where there is work. Need constructions in Far East. They go there. That is all.
And now they do not ask anymore for apartments and schools and jobs. No need to think about ways to supply them will beef and fish. It is their problem now. Move to where workforce needed means eating. Making noise at home means well not eating.
Efficient capital - labor mating.
Bankruptcy involves government (the courts) in any case. Before I owe you money and then a judge signs a paper and now I don't. Auto companies were too big to go thru normal bankruptcy procedures - who is big enough to buy GM except the government? Chrysler bankruptcy was more or less normal - FIAT ended up with the assets and seems to be doing a better job with them. It was not textbook ideal but we live in the messy real world, not in an economics textbook.
The difference between the US and the USSR was not just one of degree. The US is like a moderately observant Jew who knows what the commandments are and somewhat tries to keep them, but sometimes he give in to temptation and eats something that is not kosher. The USSR was like a devil worshiper - its goal was to BREAK as many commandments as possible. The problem is that the laws of economics, while perhaps not as firm as those of physics, come pretty close and you cannot really repeal them - as you say, Nature will catch up to you.
K
>The US is like a moderately observant Jew who knows what the commandments are and somewhat tries to keep them, but sometimes he give in to temptation and eats something that is not kosher.
What?
Please show me some examples of the US keeping some of the commandments over the last decade.
OK, like a Reform Jew.
K
Who eats ham.
K
A lot.
K
...while announcing that this is what G-d wants, and doing all he can to convince his friends and neighbors to have some ham.
Hahaha! To resist ham is easy, to resist lobsters is more difficult. Thanks G-d alcohol is allowed!
I can tell you that grasshoppers taste like shrimp, so all you need to do is find some Teimanim and get you some kosher locusts.
Thanks B. Cockroaches - how do they taste?
Cockroaches are treyf but (certain) grasshoppers are kosher. The Ashkenazi rabbis did not know which ones (taxonomy was not their specialty) so unfortunately we Ashkenazim cannot eat them according to our minhag.
Bees are treyf but honey is kosher.
K
I don't hold by this minhag.
J-I don't know how cockroaches taste. What's the difference between a locust and a shrimp or a lobster, other than kashrut?
What's the difference between a locust and a shrimp or a lobster, other than kashrut?
Is this a test? One is an insect and the other is a crustacean? One lives on land and the other in water? Lobsters are a lot bigger (and meatier) than locust? That you usually eat only the flesh of a crustacean but locusts are too small to shell so you eat the whole thing?
I think it was a mistake for Ashkenazi Jews to have reinvented themselves wholesale in Israel - getting rid of their names, their pronunciation, their minhagim, etc. Any time you deny who you really are and pretend to be something else is not healthy.
K
I mean, taste-wise. They're pretty close evolutionarily, and there is probably less difference taste-wise than between chicken and alligator.
The Ashkenazi world hit a dead end in the 19th and 20th centuries. When your choices are to be a Woody Allen-type nebbish or a black hat, it's time to come up with a third choice. There is no point in avoiding lentils on Pesach because 500 years ago in Europe they might have come in the same sacks as wheat.
And we live in the time of the geulah, where the distinctions of the galut are becoming irrelevant. If my Teimani neighbors have an authoritative minhag that this locust is kosher, why wouldn't I trust them?
I'm the first in 4-5 generations to be religious. What minhag should I keep, joining the Komsomol? And if you say there are the minhagim of my ancestors before all this, I can tell you that there is a reason their children left Judaism-obviously, their paradigm had some problems.
All Jewish minhagim have problems. The most major is that Judaism cannot be proven true and makes claims that defy reality or contradict evidence-backed science, so all customs and practices in support of it are not worthwhile. Then there is the relative attractiveness of various non-Jewish ways of life relative to the observant Jewish way of life. Being born ethnically Jewish is no guarantee that Orthodox Judaism will be a good fit for a person.
There is no point in avoiding lentils on Pesach because 500 years ago in Europe they might have come in the same sacks as wheat.
You know, it's funny. All my life I ate Wolff's kasha and never saw any grain in it, so I thought the rabbis were full of it and were just doing their usual overkill. Then I bought a package of buckwheat from Lithuania, and guess what - there were wheat grains mixed in the kasha. So they weren't BSing after all.
K
I don't live in Lithuania.
No but this helps to make it understandable why minhagim differ according to local conditions and why the rabbis took this into account (even though responsas went back and forth across the globe even in the Middle Ages).
It a globalized world it becomes harder to justify though. AFAIK, buckwheat doesn't grow in Israel and your package of kasha could come from anywhere.
K
And for Pesach I will look through it, ensuring no wheat grains are present. But there is no reason for me to follow that minhag, especially now that I live here. Or to choke on cardboard matzah, or to spaz out about gebrochts.
They say that Sephardim must check their rice (and I assume other permitted kitniot) three times for the presence of hametz.
I must say it is a little mind bending to see rice from Israel in the supermarket with a Kosher L' Pesach hecksher on it, since it so "engrained" in Ashkenazim that rice is out on Passover. What's next - kosher bacon?
K
Of course. Kosher bacon from turkey and duck fat. Guaranteed to cause atheriosclerosis just as real bacon.
Turkey bacon is revulsive. On the other hand, duck might work. The real stuff is fat tail sheep tail fat. But there aren't any fat tail sheep outside of central asia (as one Haitian/Brooklynese US Marine Corps Staff Sergeant exclaimed in awe while our lunch was being led past us one day-"damn, that sheep got a fat, jiggly ass!")
Maybe buffalo bacon might work.
Buffalo is very lean. Smoked duck comes close in taste and fat if not texture.
K
Post a Comment