Author Archives: RomanInUkraine

Youth at War

I heard more accounts about the Ukrainians who lived under artillery bombardments of up to 12 hours at a time, some first hand, some second hand. This was common earlier in the war in the areas near the Russian border. They’d get shelled from across the border and denied permission to fire back.

Younger soldiers would break psychologically, climb out of their holes and get killed, particularly when no older men were present to keep them under control.

I’ve encountered this idea of younger men’s psychological fragility before.

In the history of Outward Bound, an American outdoor education program, is the observation that during WWII, when an American ship was destroyed, younger sailors drowned at a much higher rate than older ones, despite their likelihood of being more physically fit.

Also, Ranger School. When I went through in 2001 (in fucking January), it had a 40% graduation rate. It seemed to me that younger students (meaning 19-22) would defeat themselves psychologically. Instead of facing challenges one at a time, one moment at a time, one exhausted step at a time, they’d face the whole of Ranger School, the whole two month program of food and sleep deprivation, cold, exhaustion, and it would be too much. They would break and find a reason to quit.

Lastly, the book “On Killing” whose premise about men’s recluctane to kill, I think, is grossly exaggerated, nevertheless includes some data on how younger men were more likely to suffer post traumatic stress. There must be more modern studies, but I haven’t been able to find them.

Google to close engineering office in Russia: WSJ

Google Inc has plans to shut down its engineering office in Russia amid a crackdown on internet freedoms and a law regarding data-handling practices, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The Journal said that the internet search engine company might retain some employees to assist in sales, business partnerships, user support, marketing and communications.

In July, Russia’s parliament passed a law to force Internet sites that store the personal data of Russian citizens to do so inside the country, a move the Kremlin says is for data protection but which critics see as an attack on social networks.

The law was passed soon after new rules were established requiring blogs attracting more than 3,000 daily visits to register with a communications watchdog and a regulation allowing websites to be shut without a court order.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/12/us-russia-internet-google-idUSKBN0JQ03E20141212

QUESTION: If we contain Russian barbarism, then who will contain American barbarism? (CURT)

QUESTION: If we contain Russian barbarism, then who will contain American barbarism?

ANSWER: Well that is not an honest statement right? It posits a false moral equivalency rather than the truth that each party is half-right. Moreover, it is easier to correct the half-right anglo island dweller political ideology, but very difficult to correct half-right russian-steppe low trust and pervasive corruption. The answer of course is to close borders, and bring capital to people rather than people to capital, and cause internal reformation through capitalism, trade, and prosperity, rather than export of cancerous low trust behavior to higher trust countries.

So, if you mean, who will correct American perception of the value of extending democracy – which requires a high trust society – rather than just limiting protecting property rights (borders, human rights/liberty, capitalism/property rights)? Then that is an honest question.

If you mean that you think that the world will naturally adopt borders (common property), human rights(mind and body), and capitalism (private-property), that is possible. But then again, we cannot have any of these things unless we insure others and they insure us – by intervention when asked.

Russia is correct in its criticism of american ideological error in failing to understand the importance of authority in heterogeneous low trust polities with complex borders. More primitive people require more authoritarian governments. More advanced peoples require less authoritarian governments. Democracy is a luxury good of advanced, high trust homogenous societies with absolute nuclear families. I

As far as I know the USA largely plays sheriff, and is incorrect only in the sense that (a) we do not require Europe(Germany) to carry its own water, (b) we are wrong that democratic governments are superior to authoritarian governments.

Why? Because democratic and authoritarian governments are mere reflections of the demands of homogeneity-high trust and diversity-low trust societies, not reflections of good intentions.

We are also wrong in that we should support the formation of more governments into smaller polities to solve problems due to artificial or legacy borders that prevent the formation of higher trust polities. So we should support secession. The problem is that if we support secession that will be also supported at home and the ability of the government to finance playing sheriff to the world will dissipate even more quickly.

My preference is to increase awareness of the fallacy of borders/democracy and the importance of property/liberty, and to advocate separatism and secessionism at home so that we may incrementally lose the ability to project wars.

I suspect the opposite will happen: that new redistribution of economic power will cause existing large states to attempt to expand privilege (influence) and control (rents) and that the world will continue on its present course toward Huntington’s conflict.

Libertines should try to keep in mind that the purpose of the cosmopolitan movement was to retain Jewish separatism, identity, law, ethics, morality and custom, while justifying their expansion into any and all economies and walks of life, without paying the high costs of land-holding that host populations constantly pay and whose narratives place upon them so many obligations. And we also forget that that the purpose of the anglo-puritanical movement was religious anti-statism using the same jewish model, but that by divorcing it from militialism, and associating itself with more easily seduced women and socialists, that the puritanical movement could overtake academy and state and create the Cathedral.

The way to fix this, which I argue in propertarianism I think fairly persuasively, is to return to science and action from belief and verbalism, and make each of us accountable for the rights that we must pay for in order to possess them.

Learn: Jury, Testimony, Law, Property-en-toto, and Evolutionary Strategy. The reliationship between family structure and trust; and between homogeneity and borders and trust. The relationship between trust and economic velocity. The relationship between the evolution of free riding, the rate of evolution of law, trust and economic velocity.

The relationship between homogeneity, property, family, law, truth, trust and economic velocity.

Curt Doolittle

Detailed Genetic Study of Russians

This is a very technical article. I think the take-away is that Russia consists of people radically different from one another in terms of genetics. So, as I said: a state searching for a culture (nation).

The results obtained demonstrated genetic heterogeneity of populations living in the region studied. Russians from the central part of European Russia (Tver, Murom, and Kursk) exhibited similarities with populations from central–eastern Europe, and were distant from Russian sample from the northern Russia (Mezen district, Archangelsk region). Komi samples, especially Izhemski Komi, were significantly different from all other populations studied. These can be considered as a second pole of genetic diversity in northern Europe (in addition to the pole, occupied by Finns), as they had a distinct ancestry component.

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2013/03/genetic-structure-of-european-russia.html

Putin’s Libertarians still at work — Ron Paul’s statement

House Chooses New Cold War With Russia by Ron Paul: http://original.antiwar.com/paul/2014/12/07/house-chooses-new-cold-war-with-russia/

Curt on Intervention

ON INTERVENTION
(reposted from fb/paleolibertarian)

If we wish to extend property rights to others we must always intervene, else when we need intervention ourselves, no one is likewise obligated to intervene on our behalf.

No man is an island. Britain, North America, and Australia temporarily can act as islands due to luck of geography, and the diasporic peoples can always run to hide in another ‘tent’. But as a general rule – a theory of human action, we cannot take exceptions and under the pretense of rules.

The question is not whether we intervene, but whether our intervention increases property rights, and whether those we assist in obtaining property rights enter into a contract for mutual defense of property rights.

There exist no other circumstances under which property rights can be brought into existence by human action, other than by contractual exchange. and there exist no opportunities to bring them into existence other than offers of intervention. Because offers of intervention constitute offers of reciprocal contract.

Aristocracy expanded to the lower classes by adopting the price of entry: reciprocal defense of property. And that is the only means by which liberty has ever, and shall ever, be obtained.

Liberty cannot be had at a discount. One pays for it, or one seeks to obtain it by fraud. Period.

Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute

Ron Paul’s crazy statement about the House Resolution

I continue to be disappointed. This paragraph is completely ridiculous and full of Kremlin talking points:

> “accuses Russia of an invasion of Ukraine and condemns Russia’s violation of Ukrainian sovereignty. The statement is offered without any
proof of such a thing. Surely with our sophisticated satellites that
can read a license plate from space we should have video and pictures of
this Russian invasion. None have been offered. As to Russia’s violation
of Ukrainian sovereignty, why isn’t it a violation of Ukraine’s
sovereignty for the US to participate in the overthrow of that country’s
elected government as it did in February? We have all heard the tapes
of State Department officials plotting with the US Ambassador in Ukraine
to overthrow the government. We heard US Assistant Secretary of State
Victoria Nuland bragging that the US spent $5 billion on regime change
in Ukraine. Why is that OK?”

You can even look up the $5 billion dollar accusation on politifact. You can make an argument against US intervention, but it would be all about cost and the need for Ukrainian self-reliance. No need to include this BS.

RP’s full statement:

Reckless Congress Declares War on Russia
by Ron Paul

Today the US House passed what I consider to be one of the worst pieces of legislation ever. H. Res. 758 was billed as a resolution “strongly condemning the actions of the Russian Federation, under President Vladimir Putin, which has carried out a policy of aggression against neighboring countries aimed at political and economic domination.”

In fact, the bill was 16 pages of war propaganda that should have made even neocons blush, if they were capable of such a thing.

These are the kinds of resolutions I have always watched closely in Congress, as what are billed as “harmless” statements of opinion often lead to sanctions and war. I remember in 1998 arguing strongly against the Iraq Liberation Act because, as I said at the time, I knew it would lead to war. I did not oppose the Act because I was an admirer of Saddam Hussein – just as now I am not an admirer of Putin or any foreign political leader – but rather because I knew then that another war against Iraq would not solve the problems and would probably make things worse. We all know what happened next.

That is why I can hardly believe they are getting away with it again, and this time with even higher stakes: provoking a war with Russia that could result in total destruction!

If anyone thinks I am exaggerating about how bad this resolution really is, let me just offer a few examples from the legislation itself:

The resolution (paragraph 3) accuses Russia of an invasion of Ukraine and condemns Russia’s violation of Ukrainian sovereignty. The statement is offered without any proof of such a thing. Surely with our sophisticated satellites that can read a license plate from space we should have video and pictures of this Russian invasion. None have been offered. As to Russia’s violation of Ukrainian sovereignty, why isn’t it a violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty for the US to participate in the overthrow of that country’s elected government as it did in February? We have all heard the tapes of State Department officials plotting with the US Ambassador in Ukraine to overthrow the government. We heard US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland bragging that the US spent $5 billion on regime change in Ukraine. Why is that OK?

The resolution (paragraph 11) accuses the people in east Ukraine of holding “fraudulent and illegal elections” in November. Why is it that every time elections do not produce the results desired by the US government they are called “illegal” and “fraudulent”? Aren’t the people of eastern Ukraine allowed self-determination? Isn’t that a basic human right?

The resolution (paragraph 13) demands a withdrawal of Russia forces from Ukraine even though the US government has provided no evidence the Russian army was ever in Ukraine. This paragraph also urges the government in Kiev to resume military operations against the eastern regions seeking independence.

The resolution (paragraph 14) states with certainty that the Malaysia Airlines flight 17 that crashed in Ukraine was brought down by a missile “fired by Russian-backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine.” This is simply incorrect, as the final report on the investigation of this tragedy will not even be released until next year and the preliminary report did not state that a missile brought down the plane. Neither did the preliminary report – conducted with the participation of all countries involved – assign blame to any side.

Paragraph 16 of the resolution condemns Russia for selling arms to the Assad government in Syria. It does not mention, of course, that those weapons are going to fight ISIS – which we claim is the enemy — while the US weapons supplied to the rebels in Syria have actually found their way into the hands of ISIS!

Paragraph 17 of the resolution condemns Russia for what the US claims are economic sanctions (“coercive economic measures”) against Ukraine. This even though the US has repeatedly hit Russia with economic sanctions and is considering even more!

The resolution (paragraph 22) states that Russia invaded the Republic of Georgia in 2008. This is simply untrue. Even the European Union – no friend of Russia – concluded in its investigation of the events in 2008 that it was Georgia that “started an unjustified war” against Russia not the other way around! How does Congress get away with such blatant falsehoods? Do Members not even bother to read these resolutions before voting?

In paragraph 34 the resolution begins to even become comical, condemning the Russians for what it claims are attacks on computer networks of the United States and “illicitly acquiring information” about the US government. In the aftermath of the Snowden revelations about the level of US spying on the rest of the world, how can the US claim the moral authority to condemn such actions in others?

Chillingly, the resolution singles out Russian state-funded media outlets for attack, claiming that they “distort public opinion.” The US government, of course, spends billions of dollars worldwide to finance and sponsor media outlets including Voice of America and RFE/RL, as well as to subsidize “independent” media in countless counties overseas. How long before alternative information sources like RT are banned in the United States? This legislation brings us closer to that unhappy day when the government decides the kind of programming we can and cannot consume – and calls such a violation “freedom.”

The resolution gives the green light (paragraph 45) to Ukrainian President Poroshenko to re-start his military assault on the independence-seeking eastern provinces, urging the “disarming of separatist and paramilitary forces in eastern Ukraine.” Such a move will mean many more thousands of dead civilians.

To that end, the resolution directly involves the US government in the conflict by calling on the US president to “provide the government of Ukraine with lethal and non-lethal defense articles, services, and training required to effectively defend its territory and sovereignty.” This means US weapons in the hands of US-trained military forces engaged in a hot war on the border with Russia. Does that sound at all like a good idea?

There are too many more ridiculous and horrific statements in this legislation to completely discuss. Probably the single most troubling part of this resolution, however, is the statement that “military intervention” by the Russian Federation in Ukraine “poses a threat to international peace and security.” Such terminology is not an accident: this phrase is the poison pill planted in this legislation from which future, more aggressive resolutions will follow. After all, if we accept that Russia is posing a “threat” to international peace how can such a thing be ignored? These are the slippery slopes that lead to war.

This dangerous legislation passed today, December 4, with only ten (!) votes against! Only ten legislators are concerned over the use of blatant propaganda and falsehoods to push such reckless saber-rattling toward Russia.

Here are the Members who voted “NO” on this legislation. If you do not see your own Representative on this list call and ask why they are voting to bring us closer to war with Russia! If you do see your Representative on the below list, call and thank him or her for standing up to the warmongers.

Voting “NO” on H. Res. 758:

1) Justin Amash (R-MI)
2) John Duncan (R-TN)
3) Alan Grayson, (D-FL)
4) Alcee Hastings (D-FL)
5) Walter Jones (R-NC)
6) Thomas Massie (R-KY)
7) Jim McDermott (D-WA)
8 George Miller (D-CA)
9) Beto O’Rourke (D-TX)
10 Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA)

Subconscious hatred of Ukrainian’s is a villian’s hatred of being discovered

There’s a well-known expression from Vynnychenko, that states, “Where the Ukrainian question begins, the Russian democrat disappears.”

Has no one ever wondered why this is so?

I came to an interesting conclusion on this after I had a conversation with a guy, who is a history major; he was coming back from the ATO on furlough to Kyiv, to his wife and small child. Returning from my lecture tour, I picked him up in Cherkasy and took him to Kyiv.

He told me an interesting story from a village in the Luhansk region. He used to buy milk from this very old woman who was well over 80 years. He went to her on purpose, precisely because she had a furious attitude toward Ukrainian soldiers, but nevertheless money came in handy for her, so she sold milk to those whom, in reality, she truly hated.

This old woman was herself from Russia. She was brought to this village when she was still very little by her parents, who were deliberately transported here by the Soviet regime. People were relocated to this village where over 90 percent of the villagers died of starvation during the Holodomor period. Russians were settled in those exact homes where Ukrainian peasants used to live, and where they died of starvation along with their entire families. And this old lady hated with passion everything Ukrainian, because she understood that at one time, her parents were given that which originally belonged to Ukrainians. They did what looters do; appropriated from those killed by them.

That’s why such a subconscious hatred developed in this old woman, of those who may be considered descendants of Ukrainian villagers who were victims. This hatred is based on fear of exposing the previously committed crimes.

We are seeing the same thing happening on a subconscious level to the vast majority of Russians. They understand that – by their own [Russian] grandfathers – at one time for Ukrainians their history was stolen from them, the name of their people, and all that is the foundation of the nation. And that’s why there is such hatred for everything Ukrainian–a denial of Ukrainian traditions, language, and cultural heritage.

Because if they admit that all of it was stolen, then it becomes clear that most of what Russians now call “historically Russian,” does not belong to them. It’s just something that they seized from other nations at some point in a very brutal and cunning manner. It’s the hatred of villains, who are afraid that one day the crime will be called a crime, and what was stolen, as stolen.

It’s no wonder that so often one can hear from totally intelligent Russians, this emotional thought that the question in general is not about Ukraine or Ukrainians, which on a subconscious level they have never recognized as a distinct nation. The question now lies in Russia itself. If they recognize Ukraine and Ukrainians, it will become inevitable to admit that they themselves are the descendants of those who once lived in Kyivan Rus–Ukraine. And then the whole concept of the “Russian world” will crumble to dust. That in reality, they have nothing of their own. Everything [they have] was at some point violently taken from others.

That’s why right now the fate of the Russian empire is really being decided. If Ukrainians preserve their sovereignty, then the final collapse of this prison of nations is only a matter of time. Moreover, I’m convinced that we are not talking decades. It’s a matter of several years.

http://maidantranslations.com/2014/12/04/subconscious-hatred-for-ukrainians-a-little-story-from-a-village-in-luhansk/