News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1300]


You are feeding the American antisemitic cohort.

There is no "your people".

They are Americans.

Why is it considered an ultimate injustice that Americans put Japanese in concentration camps during WW2? Why did Clinton apologize for this?

Why can Japanese, Germans, Russians - all become 100% Americans with no substitute, while Jews always have to have some kind of extra landing strip to land on?

History / Where did Poles spend summer vacations in the PRL era? [63]


Somehow, China managed to co-opt Albania, turning it into Mao's little outpost in Europe. Truly bizarre.

Muslim Communists, in the heart of Europe, supported by a patron half a world away with an agrarian economy.

My grandma also travelled with my grandpa to Saddam's Iraq, shortly after he seized power in a coup. My grandpa was one of the men involved in setting up a factory, ostensibly for putting together tractors from kits shipped from the Soviet Union, but in reality to make an Iraqi copy of the T-72 tank using Polish and Czech parts. I believe this tank was called the Babylon tank.

She told me, that she saw Saddam's political enemies hanging from lampposts. But also that it was the freest she had ever felt in her life, up until that point. A level of glamor which she had never seen before. Hotels with swimming pools, and smart waiters. Exotic fish and fruits. Lots and lots of Americans and Brits (Saddam was fighting Iran at the time, or getting ready to, and as such was friend of both the USSR and USA).

But that's not tourism, but work.

This was my "tractor" grandpa. The other, maternal, grandpa was a lifelong trade unionist. He went on lots of trips, like Italy and Japan, where he met with local communists and trade unionist leaders. He brought back one of the first VCR's in our neighborhood, from a trip to Tokyo. Then my mom sold it, and it helped finance the purchase of an apartment for the young family (yes this is how expensive VCRs were in the USSR).

History / Where did Poles spend summer vacations in the PRL era? [63]


Not exactly true. My grandparents and parents generation travelled - not much, but on several occasions.

It was considered a prestigious thing to do. Also, an opportunity to make lots of money buying Czech/German/Polish goods and then reselling them back home.

You first had to come up with a reason for why you were going. Most often, these trips were linked to party exchanges, student delegations, scientific cooperation, or some kinda heavily chaperoned group tours. Through bribery and favors, you could get yourself "written into" some delegation.

After some Googling now, I found a blog article with numbers for internal and external Soviet tourism.

Internal Soviet Tourism: 100 million people annually. Main destinations: Sochi, Crimea, Lake Baikal, the Caucasus, and the Baltic States.
Purpose: Most trips organized through work, by the Trade Union.

External Soviet Tourism: 500-700k annually (1980s).
Main Destinations: Bulgaria (the lion's share), GDR, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania.

What's curious is that Poland was low in the ranking, second from the bottom from Romania. Apparently, this was due to Solidarity and the overall complicated political climate. The Soviet government did not want citizens exposed to this.

Romania - surprisingly - simply had a bad reputation as an uninteresting and deeply unfriendly country. Caecescu's government did not particularly welcome Soviet tourists, and there was a huge language barrier. In addition, the author writes that Romanians came across as "aloof" and "deeply nationalistic" to Soviet tourists raised on the idea of Internationalism.

Albania left the Warsaw Pact in 1968 and was off limits to Soviets.

Yugoslavia was semi-accessible, but trips there were tightly controlled. The favorite destinations there were along the Adriatic coast.

The real Soviet "elite" could of course travel to places like New York and Geneva, as "members" of various UN delegations.

If you were some kind of untouchable star like Vysotsky, you could even live in Paris with your girlfriend.

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1300]


No, Mississippi! I was writing about it above.

My friend was getting a history degree at Ole' Miss and I visited him a couple times there.

News / Presidential elections 2025 - the race has commenced!!! [665]


Yes this!

Also, to Paulina - regarding drug trafficking. A lot of skinheads/punks were/are famously straight edge. They take zero drugs, and zero alcohol - and it's all about physical fitness. Personally, these guys scare me. A former one of these married one of my cousins recently, and he is a partner now at White & Case - a white shoe law firm. As respectable as can be.

Personally I don't understand how you can go to a concert, and stay totally sober for hours, while doing somersaults off the mezzanine. Weird people.

News / Presidential elections 2025 - the race has commenced!!! [665]


Skinheads are not Nazis. Some are, but most aren't. In fact, most of the OG skinheads were Leftists. Some skinheads are antifascist, some are instead fascist. Many are completely apolitical - which was kind of the point of being a skinhead originally.


I'm not defending anything, just explaining the truth as I see it. Hooligans (as in, organized fans of a sporting team, that travel around with the team, and frequently get into fights with the other side) are not usually stupid people. They have a good memory for dates and names. Usually a pretty historical bent of mind. Use complex structures to argue the validity of their points of view.

Nearly always, its a phase that people grow out of and then carry on to be responsible adults.

They get exploited by organized crime, in the same way that boxing clubs or judo gyms do. You have a bunch of impressionable young guys that are physically fit and full of testosterone - an easy force to direct. But an absolute minimum of hooligans actually get involved with organized crime. I would say, only those, that were headed that way anyway - either through family problems or some other misfortune.

It's just people trying to have some fun - 99% of cases.

There's always some idiot that takes things very seriously, and will go chop someone's arm off with a machete and make everybody else look like an idiot. Like in your story.

News / Presidential elections 2025 - the race has commenced!!! [665]


First of all - you don't have to be smart to get a PhD in history. You have to be very good at sucking your professor's penis. You have to find some obscure subject nobody has ever cared to write about. And you have to be able to live on a very small budget, and not care about it. That's it.

Second - I never said Trump is stupid, or that Nawrocki's similarities with Trump indicate he is some kind of idiot.

No man that has more than a billion dollars and is President of the United States can be called stupid.

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1300]


Unfortunately for this I do not have a link - just my eyes and my ears.

In this part of the United States, you have a lot of weird Evangelical denominations. These poor people, earn very small salaries, barely get by - and still donate like hell to support Israel. When you ask them, why they are sending money to support a state in the Middle East, they give the most entertaining explanations.

Many of these explanations are probably not very pleasant for a Jew to hear. A lot of them involve the Apocalypse, and the total destruction of Israel.

News / Presidential elections 2025 - the race has commenced!!! [665]


Some people might argue that people fighting for the right to gender reassignment surgeries are "normalizing pathology".

Kania here, has mentioned several times his skinhead past. He seems a level headed guy to me.

In my professional circle in New York, you also have a lot of former punks, skinheads, hooligans (Europeans, not a thing really here). Usually very smart people. Like - almost you could treat it like an indicator if the person is interesting.

Leave alone, that "wall on wall" fights, are a big part of Slavic tradition - going back a thousand years. It's part of the culture.

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1300]


Hello


What's the problem? You don't like being more Jewish than the Jews?

The world's most rabid zionists live in Mississippi, and have surnames like Smith and Miller.

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1300]


I know man - I can't believe it myself.

What a time to be alive!

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1300]


Wow I agree with Lyzko for once!

And he is a Jew!

Food for thought.

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1300]


I am always right Iron - here, there, and everywhere.

Jokes aside - this has been a revelation to me.

Russia is a pretty antisemitic country. Poland I imagine is very antisemitic too.

So then I arrive in the United States, and everybody loves Jews - especially Conservative Evangelical Christians.

In the beginning I was scratching my head trying to understand what was going on. Maybe... Americans really are just amazingly good natured people living in some New World paradise, while we in Europe are just disgusting troglodytes? Why do we feel this deep hatred for Israel, while America seems to be willing to lay down its own life for its survival?

Then after many years of living here I finally understood. They just hate brown people. Mexicans, Muslims, Africans, Indians - doesn't matter. They hate them. Israel is a little White Island surrounded by ugly brown masses. Like a white virgin, making her way past the hoodlums of the ghetto.

Their noble Christian hearts soar at its chivalric example. The heart of a Crusader beats in the chest.

Doesn't matter that they don't know anything about Israel, or have never seen a Jew in their life. This is not important, because what is important is narratives.

You kill Arabs? Good. Let's be friends.

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1300]


This - while the Israeli conflict is many times more brutal.

I recently read in an academic paper that the Russo-Ukrainian War is an absolute anomaly when it comes to the ratio of military to civilian casualties. The ratio is close to 100:1.

I think this same ratio is 1:100 in Gaza.

Reasons:

1) Ukrainians have blonde hair and blue eyes, and are Christians

2) Gazans are brown and Muslim

3) Many Western voters (like BB) are tired of living under siege by Muslim immigrants that don't want to integrate. There is no safe place to vent this hatred, so they vent it by proxy. In the brutal tactics of Israel, they see the decisiveness that is absent in their own governments.

News / Presidential elections 2025 - the race has commenced!!! [665]

How come nobody mentioned that Nawrocki went on television, in disguise, with blurred out image and altered voice, to discuss his own book about the criminal underworld and to praise its author (himself)?

This is like the final brushstroke, to complete this man's list of similarities with Trump. Trump famously used the name "John Barron" to leak favorable news stories about himself to the press. He even called into TV shows, as John Barron.

Very impressive. Bobko is intrigued!

A poll from AxelSpringer does not look good at all, for friends of PO. They needed the elections to be held a week ago, but now every coming day leads to a bump for Nawrocki and a decline for Trzaskowski.

It seems the Tusk anchor is dragging the mayor down, and fast.

For this - one has to blame only Tusk, I imagine. Biden did something similar last year, when he told Kamala as she was preparing to run: "Not an inch of daylight, kiddo." That is, Biden provided his blessing on only one condition, that Kamala hew as close as possible to the policies his administration had pursued - and publicly "own" them. This pretty much doomed the poor lady, who already had very sh*t chances.

I think something similar is going on here. This mayor guy needs to desperately distance himself from Tusk - at least for the crucial week or two between elections. Instead, not realizing how unpopular he is, Tusk keeps popping out of every corner with some nasty sound bite about Kaczynski and some words about what a very nice boy Rafal is.

Lock Tusk up in a box, and don't show him to anyone for a few weeks. How hard is that? Let Trzaskowski have a bit of space and breathing room to show why he is not Tusk 2.0.

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News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1300]


If the Kingdom of Judaea (which as I explained orchestrated the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel - read the Bible, it's your friend) - is a modern nation state... then we definitely don't have much to discuss.

With this logic, the Mongols can claim Baghdad, and Moroccans can take back Spain.

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1300]


There never was a Jewish nation state either. In fact, the modern nation state only appeared after the Peace of Westphalia.

The Kingdom of Judaea collapsed in 70 BC, destroyed by the future emperor Titus. It was not a modern nation state, but rather a theocratic monarchy. It was defined by dynastic rule, religious rites, and tributary systems. Not by civic nationalism, borders, or mass participation in some collective identity.

All of its institutions, political coherence, and EVEN POPULATION was dismantled. No modern state would accept such a 2,000 year gap as constituting "continuity" for legal or diplomatic purposes.

The population part is especially important when discussing the Palestinians, and why I want to bring up biology. Logically - I'm sure you will agree BB - every living person is concrete proof of an unbroken chain of survival and reproduction stretching back to the emergence of Homo sapien, let's say roughly 300,000 years ago. If even one of your grandpas failed, you would simply not exist today. So... with this resolved, let us first establish that Jews and Palestinians are equally old biologically. That is, the Palestinians did not arrive from Mars in 1948.

Now let's return to the collapse of the Jewish population in Judaea. It literally collapsed, to a tiny fraction of what it had been before. Who continued living there instead? That's right, Palestinians. They are the product of millennia of adaptation, reproduction, and continuity... whether under Canaanite, Philistine, Israelite, Roman, Byzantine, Islamic, Ottoman, or British rule.

Since their little piece of real estate happened to be the most desirable real estate in the world, they did not have the good fortune of carving out their own little place, and instead spent their entire time living under massive empires.

Do you think the Jews would have better success than the "Palestinians" at ejecting the Roman or Ottoman Empires? Something tells me, no.

So this argument of no "Palestinian state" is completely ahistorical gibberish deployed by Israeli propaganda. The simple fact is there was no Israeli state either (in fact ancient Israel was destroyed by Assyria, on Judaea's request), and that Jews had not lived there for a much longer time than the amount of time the Soviet Union has not existed. Nonetheless, your Ukrainian allies view these 35 years as being as wide as the galaxy. I wonder what Ukrainians would say if we made claims that were 2,000 years old - hahahaha!

News / Presidential elections 2025 - the race has commenced!!! [665]


It is - hugely - but it still has to play the notes which are acceptable to the Russian people's ear. Blunt propaganda won't give shoots, if you plant it in barren ground. It still is, in the end, a job of reading the Russian people's desires correctly. Putin is a master at this, at giving people exactly what they crave. He reads the emotions of the Russian people like some savant.

People that hate Putin, that spent their entire career fighting him, and have been locked up in jail for it - still admit that Putin has some Mephistopheles level of ability to understand the people.

So in the end - you can only mold opinion so much, in the end you still have to provide the items that are most in demand.

News / Presidential elections 2025 - the race has commenced!!! [665]


This is not true. Putin is a slave to Russian public opinion. In many scenarios, he acts not with the confidence of a leader with a bulletproof mandate, but like the "mediator in chief". A sort of Don Corleone role, where it's his job to sit everyone down and work out some kind of ugly compromise.

The people that oppose Putin are a genuine minority, confined to the large cities, and politically impotent. Ignoring them constitutes no serious effort on Putin's part. But when Putin's base is upset about something, then he reacts with lightning speed - down to flying out to some remote factory and negotiating on the spot.

He really is a "man of the people". A populist - and I don't mean it in a bad way. Orban, Trump, Le Pen, Modi, Xi are all copying this new model that Putin invented. Putin's long term ideologue, Surkov, calls it Sovereign Democracy.

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1300]


First - let's begin with the fact that Hamas is a child of Netanyahu. Grew up on his corrupt teat.

Here's a link to an article in the Times of Israel, with the nifty headline of "For Years Netanyahu Propped Up Hamas, Now It Has Blown Up In Our Faces":

timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/

Another illustration:

"'Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,' he told a meeting of his Likud party's Knesset members in March 2019. 'This is part of our strategy-to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.'"

A genius strategy. Prevent the formation of a Palestinian state, by fostering enmity between the secular Fatah in the West Bank and the Islamist Hamas in Gaza. Let's forget, that Hamas even first appeared, because of elections on which Netanyahu insisted.

Netanyahu understood full well, that Hamas is an "unsupportable" entity, and did everything in his power to strengthen them. This included negotiating with the Qataris for a infusion of billions of dollars into Gaza - a lot of which surely went into tunnel construction.

Netanyahu made his own bed, and now he has to sleep in it.

News / Presidential elections 2025 - the race has commenced!!! [665]


Of course!

The Kremlin has many blind spots. For example, I spent about 8 years telling people on Russian online forums to stop laughing at the Ukrainians, and instead pay closer attention to their preparations. Absolute xenophobia towards Ukrainians blinded practically everybody else to what was happening in their society. A typical Russian military-engaged "patriot" - had such a low estimation of Ukrainians, that he scarcely thought they could wipe their own ass without external help.

This is a long line through Russian history - "shapkazakidatelstvo" (literally 'hat throwing') - a sort of cavalier attitude towards the enemy and his abilities ("Whatever! If things go hard, there are so many of us - we can bury them with our hats alone!"). It bites Russia in the ass - every single time.

That is, you could have thousands of people whose sole profession is to study and understand Ukrainians, and still... as a whole... the Institution could not understand them. But I could, from thousands of kilometers away, being engaged in a completely unrelated field.

What blinds Russia is arrogance and hubris, just as with the United States.

News / Abortion still under control in Poland - part 2 [177]


Anybody who knows anything about American politics, knows a Democrat president cannot do anything with a Republican controlled House. Nonetheless, Democratic Party voters became increasingly angry at Obama - and contenders further on the left capitalized on this... including Bernie Sanders and others. In this way, many people think enraged leftists delivered the presidency to Trump, in 2015.

If voters always understood why something can't be done, we'd be colonizing Mars and Pluto by now - but they don't.

So you are very smart, but many people don't have time or energy to familiarize themselves with the political landscape.

News / Presidential elections 2025 - the race has commenced!!! [665]

You should read about how the Russian intelligence services (FSB, GRU, SVR, etc) understand and evaluate the soundness and integrity of political regimes, and how they identify points of fragility.

Once you can see politics through the eyes of a Russian "silovik", all becomes simple. We may not have a rich political scene in Russia, but we understand how things work in other places.

News / Presidential elections 2025 - the race has commenced!!! [665]


Human beings are tribal creatures. Cultural alignment or perceived shared identity are prioritized over policy specifics. When a candidate feels like "ONE OF US", they generate loyalty - even if their positions are unpopular with the electorate.

In every place in the world, from Moscow to Mogadishu, average people value something they call "saying what he actually thinks". That is, voters prioritize PERCEIVED authenticity, even if they don't agree with what is said. A candidate that is seen as transparently flawed,, but at the same time consistent... may inspire more trust than one perceived as quite polished but ultimately insincere. This is another feature built into Homo Sapiens through hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.

Further yet - many people have a "results oriented" mindset - "I don't care that he's a criminal, as long as he gets the job done". This is especially strong among voters who feel culturally or economically "under siege". They see norm-breaking behavior as a good rather than evil, because traditional politicians have already failed them.

Some people have simply lost all faith in institutions. Widespread cynicism about mainstream media, elite universities, the government leads many voters to reject what can be called "elite consensus". In this twisted world - a criminal investigation can in fact be perceived as proof that a candidate threatens the "System" and that he needs your helps fighting all the dragons.

...and back to what I started with - myth and narrative. People love stories. God knows I love, love, love stories. Voters also love stories, and they are always in search of some symbolic vessel onto which they can project these myths. You have many myths to chose from: (1) the outsider hero, (2) the rebel against corrupt systems, (3) the builder or destroyer of old orders, (4) the Icarus.

News / Presidential elections 2025 - the race has commenced!!! [665]


Yep.

Right here - what Ptak wrote.

That's what people are voting about. Not because Putin gave them money to elect Trump or Nawrocki.

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1300]


Yes and here in America they talk more often of the Pogroms their grandparents ran from, than the Holocaust.

Centuries of hatred from Poles and Russians is harder to forget than a brief episode of total slaughter from the Germans - I guess.

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1300]


Of course Hamas never harbored hopes of winning such a war.

Instead, they were strongly aware that the attention of the world had moved on from their plight. The glitz and glamor of being a mediator between the Israelis and Palestinians had worn off, while their Arab neighbors became increasingly interested in normalizing ties with Israel.

They calculated that they could trigger a war with Israel, where Israel would lose all sense of proportion and act like a wild gorilla. This would make it impossible for the largest country in the region (Saudi Arabia) to continue on the path of normalizing relations with Israel. It would strengthen Nasrallah in Lebanon, and Khamenei in Iran. It would give Erdogan - reasons to rally his Islamist electorate. It would bring the United States back, as an eager mediator - instead of being distracted by Ukraine and places like Mali.

Their calculation worked perfectly. Israel took the bait, and followed its worst instincts.

The result? Netanyahu judged a war criminal by the ICC. His hopes of Trump saving him from Biden - dashed - he still got tariffed like everyone else. Trump didn't even stop in Israel on his tour of the Middle East, and even announced a plan to negotiate with Iran. Israel itself is becoming an international pariah - on par with Russia (country that started the worst war in Europe since WW2). The Israeli economy is in a recession, and there are daily protests against Netanyahu's government pressing him to do a deal where the hostages return home immediately.

Hamas already lived in a dump. Now they live in a dump full of construction rubble. But they won a much bigger moral victory - converting hundreds of millions of new believers to their cause, and isolating Israel.

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1300]


To me - it's obvious what's going on.

Germany was a super powerful industrial state that steamrolled practically all of Europe. The British, Russians and Americans were genuinely afraid of it. When you are afraid of something - it is difficult to sympathize.

In the same way - Israel is a 1000X more powerful than Gaza. Homo Sapiens - evolutionarily - are predisposed to cheering for the underdog.

Even a child understands that what Israel is doing is utterly disproportional. As it would be, if an older brother thrashed his younger brother half to death, for breaking his toys.

Even a child understands basic mathematics - even though it is unpleasant to apply it to human lives. That is: 1000 dead Jews, and 40,000 dead Arabs.

Germany and Israel get no sympathy because they are strong and technologically advanced. Different behavior is expected from them.

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1300]


Yeah so unsuccessful - that it's the best f"*cking university in the world. The smartest kids in China and in India are ready to disembowel themselves for a chance to study there - and America does not see this as an all-powerful weapon.

Idiots.

This will do much more damage to America, over the long term, than any tariff will.

Targeting Harvard kids is not the same as deporting strawberry pickers from Texas.

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1300]


As much as I hate that institution up North, have to stand up for them here...

They survived the King of England and the American Revolution. They are older than the country itself. The level of disrespect, to what is an American engine of excellence - is disturbing.

Today they are anti-semites. Yesterday they were Communists. They have this right - so long as they do not betray America.

Is supporting Palestine a betrayal of America?