Pur si simplu ne impuscam singuri in picior cu chestia asta. Avem nevoie de gaze si gata. Tehnologia asta, frackingul, ca toate tehnologiile din lume, e intr-adevar potential periculoasa. Solutia este sa o aplicam corect, acolo unde se poate aplica cu costuri minime si sa ii despagubim pe cei care sufera efectele unor eventuale accidente. Daca nu o aplicam de loc singurii castigatori vor fi rusii. Pe de alta parte nu ne impiedica nimeni sa negociem conditii comerciale civilizate cu alde Chevron si altii ca ei. Avem si politicieni corupti care ne-ar vinde pe la spate? Hai sa-i schimbam, asta nu e motiv sa nu exploatam gazele de sist. Daca astora le e a fura, o sa fure cu orice prilej, nu rezolvam nimic alungandu-i pe cei cu gazele de sist.
Treziti-va ba! Sa nu-mi veniti acuma cu argumentul ca melodia asta a fost folosita in campania electorala a lui Basescu. Asta nu schimba cu nimic faptul ca Morometii au pus degetul pe rana:
Have you ever heard of ‘be careful what you wish for, lest it come true’?
Besides this being apparently false and nothing but a piece of propaganda I have a huge problem with: “Russia does not need minorities!”
Really? At one time or another every mainstream idea of today has been promoted by a minority. What if people along the history would have agreed with the ‘Putins’ of this world? Would we still proudly inhabit our old caves and feed on raw meat hunted down with bare hands? Would the Sun be still circling around the the Earth?
I understand the urge to find and follow a fatherly figure every time we get into trouble but shouldn’t we remember what happened last time when things were run by people who had so much confidence in their judgement as to refuse any advice?
How many times must history replay itself before we finally understand ‘live and let live’ and ‘ultimately you are solely responsible for yourself’?
My son, three years away from voting age, is nevertheless aware of what’s going on.
Yesterday he recounted me an exchange he had witnessed on Ask.fm:
– Hey dude, are you going to vote? (“Dude” has just turned 18, the first in their gang to be able to vote)
– No! The way I see it nowadays going to vote is like being asked to choose what kind of shit you’ll be served for dinner. Why bother?
– I think understand what you mean. You compare a country with a bunch of guys having to eat at the same cafeteria who finally have an opportunity to choose between chefs/menus but only to discover that the available candidates are unpalatable. Rather pertinent comparison, specially after finally understanding that ‘negative voting’ (voting for the challenger only as a punishment for the incumbent, knowing from the beginning that both are equivalent) is not really a punishment for the incumbent but a carte blanche for the next incumbent and a shot in his own foot for the voter.
– That’s exactly what I feel. Finally someone who understands me…
– Well, I might understand you but I’d still go to the polling station. Mainly because I don’t agree with you about all candidates being worthless – even if you don’t get to vote for the winner nor for the second best by choosing someone in earnest your vote conveys a clear message, ‘this is exactly what I want’.
Even if I didn’t like anyone I’d still go there and strike out everybody on the ballot box, just to send everyone of them a stiff warning: ‘I don’t trust anyone of you but since I care strongly about my fate I’m going to watch closely whatever you’ll do from now on!’
Going back to your example with the cafeteria forfeiting the chance to express your opinion is beyond letting others to decide what kind of shit you’re going to enjoy.
After all not voting is a cross between a ‘blanket approval’ for what ever is going to happen and admitting that ‘I don’t care enough to move my butt to the polling station’. And in this case you shouldn’t be asking yourself anymore ‘what happened to these politicians that made them so callous?’
Excellent analysis.
One two pronged mistake though.
Putin was raised in a completely different environment than Nixon and the Russian Silent Majority is rather different than the American one. Not that different as some might think but nevertheless different enough as to accept a lot more authoritarianism from Putin than their American counterpart accepted from Nixon. And Putin is only happy to deliver.
So no, I don’t think leaving him alone may accomplish much. If anything, this would reinforce Putin’s conviction that the West is nothing but a bunch of degenerated pussies. He is wrong, of course, but the fact that he makes again the same mistake Hitler did 70 years ago doesn’t bode well for anybody. East or West of the Urals.
And yes, it is extremely unfortunate that “intelligentsia liberals and Moscow yuppies are elitist snobs on a scale that would turn anyone into a Bolshevik. They even named their go-to glossy “Snob”— and they meant it. It’s not just the new rich who are elitist snobs — liberal journalist-dissident Elena Tregubova’s memoir on press censorship interweaves her contempt for Putin with her Muscovite contempt for what she called “aborigines,” those provincial Russian multitudes who occupy the rest of Russia’s eleven time zones. Tregubova flaunted her contempt for Russia’s “aborigines,” whom she mocked for being too poor and uncivilized to tell the difference between processed orange juice and her beloved fresh-squeezed orange juice. I’m not making that up either.”
You see, this is the real problem that needs fixing, And not only in Russia.
Horthy and Antonescu, his Romanian counterpart, did some successful balancing during WWII and saved indeed some precious time for the many Jews that happened to live in those two countries. Also, by doing so, they avoided their countries being invaded twice, by both the Germans and the Russians, as Poland and Czechoslovakia were
But, unfortunately, the longer term results were horrendous.
No, not that what happened in Hungary in 1956 was far worse than the 1968 occupation of Prague or that present day Romania is in a lot worse, economical and political, shape than Poland despite having many more natural resources…
The real problem is that both people lost their self-esteem precisely because they didn’t put up any real resistance against neither of those two aggressors. And this is the explanation for what is going on right now!
PS European Union is not a failure. Yes, sometimes it does appear like one only so did the League of Nations to Hitler. And in the end it was the countries from the old Europe, with some American help, that succeeded in defeating Hitler and containing Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev.
First about Marx being a dialectician. He was one alright. Only there is a small problem with dialectics. In order to work they need at least two equivalent proponents, one on each side. You cannot have proper dialectics by talking to yourself, eventually you’ll take sides and the whole exercise loses its scope.
At this point I’ll make a short break and let you in on one of my moments of shame. As a high school student (Romania under communist rule) I had to participate in a compulsory class about ‘dialectical and historical materialism’ – the ‘scientific formula’ used by communists to describe their creed in those times. At one point the teacher asked me “What are the reasons for ‘dialectical’ materialism being ‘better’ than all other forms of materialism?”. “‘Dialectical materialism’ constantly checks its concepts against the reality and adjust them as the reality changes. By doing this its practitioners constantly deepen human knowledge and build an ever improving understanding of the world.” The teacher congratulated me for this answer and I felt very proud at that moment. But only momentarily. Very soon I started to understand that the theory was fine indeed but that it couldn’t be put into practice.
Precisely because of how Marx had envisioned the communist society:
In fewer words he had stated that the communists were the sole guardians of truth and that that truth was unquestionable. Hence everybody else was wrong and the communists had an obligation to bring everybody back to the ‘straight and narrow’!
And where are the symptoms of his alleged ‘schizophrenia’? Read the manifesto. It is comprised of a ‘theoretical’ introduction, in which Marx exposes his view on what had happened until the dawn of mankind till his days, and a ‘to do’ part which contains Marx’s recomandations about what people should have done from there on. I find it extremely baffling that a person who gathered such a complex understanding about a certain situation could come up with such completely erroneous ideas about how to proceed from there on. Quite a lot of people entertain the notion that Marx was right only Lenin got it wrong and hence the failure of Russian/European communism. No! Marx was right only when he described and explained what had happened. What he had said about the ‘conquest of political power by the proletariat’ was plain wrong. There is no such thing as a ‘good’ or ‘right’ dictatorship, no matter how dialectical it pretends to be.
You see, bona fide dialectics is about people freely, but considerately, contradicting each-other. In no way about ‘sheeple’ submissively caving in to peer pressure or crushing authority.
And here we have ‘it’: under communist rule, in order to save both their mortal beings and their inner souls quite a lot of people apparently toed the line but nevertheless kept a mental reserve about what was going on around them. Not clinical/proper schizophrenia indeed but how else would you call it?
PS. I still have to explain where my shame came from. When I eventually did understand the unbridgeable contradiction between my fine theoretical demonstration about the relative superiority of ‘dialectical materialism’ above over all other forms of materialism and the day to day tragic consequences of that specific brand of materialism being put into practice I remembered how proud I was about the praise I received on that day. Remembering that moment is a fail proof method to prune down my pride!
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As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
So 27 American Navy personnel were scarred shitless by an extremely powerful experimental device soon to be deployed on ‘all the advanced Russian planes’!
OK, let’s get this straight. I’m no privy to any military secrets, Russian or American. For all I care/know this might have taken place ‘as advertised’. But there is one thing I know for certain, the Russians have actually published this article. So lets see what we can gather from this, undeniable, fact.
Actually yes. It makes some sense.
Judging by the fact that somebody took the trouble to translate and disseminate the article in other languages than Russian and English means that that somebody thinks the effort is worthwhile. People have forwarded it so, at least apparently, the whole thing got some traction. After reading the comments on the original link that impression is beefed up even more.
But what if we dig a little deeper?
To me at least it starts to smell like desperation. Do you remember how much hype Hitler made about his ‘secret weapons’ towards the end of WWII? No I won’t dismiss altogether the Russian military establishment, it still is very capable of throwing a hefty punch. The problems arise, exactly as they did in Hitler’s case, from the extreme concentration of decision power in present day Russia. Dictators tend to become elongated from the real world and to see nothing but enemies everywhere they look around. Enemies that have to be frightened into submission, no matter how, no matter what. In fact it’s more about alleviating one’s own fears (dictator’s own fears) than anything else. Hiding desperation under a blanket of extreme aggression.
One other thing. Romania suffered for some 40 years the rigors of communist rule. During 25 of those years if somebody would have disseminated news about how strong the Americans were and how they had humiliated the Red Army that person would have gotten a hefty prison term for defeatism and propaganda favorable to the enemy. Nowadays bashing America is …. you find the right word… No, the Americans are not whiter than Snow White but piling on their heads things that don’t belong there isn’t helpful for any of us.
Humans do that too and equally on their own.
The fact that tardigrades do it based on their resilience while humans are able to do it because of their ingenuity and willingness to cooperate doesn’t obliterate the fact that both ‘have it in them’, neither need any outside assistance.
“Ren Alexandria:Complaining about a problem that HAS a solution is called “Whining” Complaining about a problem that does not have a solution is called “Grief” “
The way I see this is that here is no such thing as a problem without a solution. If you can’t get out of somewhere you are in a situation, not in a problem.
‘Solving a problem’ and ‘grieving’ are both human reactions to outside inputs, ways to cope with a specific set of conditions, but have different outcomes. Trying to ‘solve a problem’ will eventually set you free, even if through ‘death by exertion’ while ‘grieving’ will finally get you accustomed with the situation.
So this is more about individual choices than the specific set of conditions that generated the whole situation.
nicichiarasa 