Michael Tsarion on Race, Jordan Peterson, and Why Conspiracy Work is Spiritual Work |372|

Honestly people should just ignore the media and academia when it comes to their race baiting. This whole white/non-white hard dichotomy is not real at all.

Ideally people would ignore Race and judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.

They don't. Media and academia whip up hated against White People and we are attacked in the streets, beaten, robbed, and killed simply for the color of our skin.

Your assertion that it's "not real" is an insult to every White Person who is beaten, spat upon, verbally abused, and killed by race haters.
 
"Government" is just the title we bestow on the biggest baddest organized crime gang.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/115545.Smedley_D_Butler

Smedley D. Butler quotes (showing 1-24 of 24)
“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
― Smedley D. Butler, War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier​

I stand corrected. There is a bigger badder organized crime gang than the government. It is "Big Business, Wall Street, and the bankers".
 
I have been meaning to respond in this thread for a while now - the semi-compulsive research I mentioned in another thread is the main reason I have not yet done that, along with low energy levels.

Thank you for the interview, Alex and Michael, you guys covered some very interesting ground without fear of its controversial nature.

This post is essentially just to stake out my position on the many issues related to race as raised in the interview and the discussion in the thread.

I can see the appeal in denying the existence of race: if race does not exist, then nor does (can) racism. Nevertheless, reality is immune to being defined out of existence: racists will continue to be racist, whether or not the concept of "race" has been semantically excised from consensus reality. Denying the existence of race is, rather than an act of benevolence, a perpetuation of harm by proxy: in the absence of a valid concept of "race", and thus of a coherent concept of "racism", those particularly mass and systemic injustices committed on the basis of race(ism) are no longer coherent either; to deny race is to deny the harm done by colonialism and imperialism as well as the possibility of and need for remedy and restoration.

Like Michael Patterson, I live in Australia, and I think the dilemma he poses has a clear answer: that...



..this is, always has been, and always will be indigenous land, never ceded. An invasion is no more justified than an illegal settlement; in fact, being an act of unprovoked and one-sided aggression, it is less justified. There can be fruits of an unprovoked invasion, but there cannot be rightful fruits. The effective dispossession of this land from its rightful owners is an as-yet unresolved crime from which we non-indigenous occupants continue to benefit at the expense of its victims.

The resolution is simple: return effective sovereignty to the land's rightful owners. If they feel that they have benefitted from colonisation, then grant them the choice to continue to reap its rewards; if not, then grant them equally the choice to determine the destiny of their land on their own terms.

We are all complicit to some extent; guilt is a reasonable though not a necessary response: more important than how we feel is that we recognise that an ongoing wrong is being perpetuated, and support the process of righting it.

-----

Vortex, in post #74, you solicited a response, so I will offer one. As I think is clear from the above, I answer the questions you posed to Charlie in criticising his position differently than you do, but I agree that his position is untenable for - I think - similar reasons as you do.

In the rest of your post, you identify "three groups of people who are still desperately clinging to racist assumptions and racist thought", all three of which you oppose. I am not sure whether you would slot my views, as expressed above, into any one of them. Perhaps the closest fit is this:



However, my position is not at all based on "lust for revenge" but on righting wrongs; on restorative justice. There is a principle in Western law, which I think reflects a corresponding principle of natural justice: that the rights of the original owner of stolen property are in no way invalidated by the transfer of that stolen property from the thief to other parties; that no matter how many hands through which that stolen property passes, justice is served only when it is returned to its rightful owner. My position is that this principle be respected at the group level at which land has been stolen by imperialists from its indigenous custodians.

I do not think either that this is an "authoritarian" position; I think that the reverse is instead true: to continue to impose upon rather than to be led by the rightful owners of the land, and moreover to refuse to even involve them in decision-making in any meaningful way, is the truly authoritarian approach.

-----

Regarding the general question of whether there is anything wrong or unethical with a racially (and/or culturally) homogeneous group of legitimate occupants of a particular region maintaining that racial (and/or cultural) homogeneity, I say: no, there is nothing wrong with that. I say this because I believe in the right - where it causes no harm - to self-determination at not just an individual but at a group level. It is also consistent with the position that I outlined above: that the legitimate custodians of Australia (and other invaded indigenous nations) have that right to self-determination meaningfully returned to them.

Personally, as a member of a racially and culturally heterogeneous society, I prefer multiculturalism - but different people have different preferences, and if any currently homogeneous society with legitimate right to its land prefers to remain homogeneous, then so be it; that is its members' right, and, in my view, it is not necessarily (although it can be) racist, for two reasons: (1) it need not at all involve disrespect for other races and cultures, but could rather be based in respect for racial and cultural diversity, and in a desire to maintain that racial and cultural diversity by not diluting it, and (2) it is a valid defence against the McDonaldisation of the planet.

I do, though, see a problem with forcing out of a heterogeneous society - in order to create or return to a homogeneous society - people who have themselves or by virtue of their ancestors been invited into that country, or arrived, by legitimate means. All bets are off if their presence is illegitimate in the first place though, as is that of those of us non-indigenous residents of countries like Australia.

Thanks for your long and detailed reply, Laird - I was asking for it indeed, and here it is.

Now I want to issue a reply to your reply.

Your idea of returning effective sovereignty of particular lands to the indigenous people (e.g., the the original, earliest inhabitants of the land) does have some strong moral basis (much unlike Charlie's one!), and does contain an important part of truth, yet it is incomplete - not wrong, but incomplete. Let me explain.

What I will write below is based on my understanding and interpretation of your position, Laird. Feel free to correct me if you think I misunderstood and misinterpreted you.

Your position is based on a principles of restorative justice - principles that I'm aware of. Effectively, they (among other things) mean that the people have the right for the restoration of the benefits which were denied to them because of someone's violence against them - such as the return of the stolen goods - or the proportionate compensation if restoration is not fully possible. Such restoration / compensation may require engagement of the third parties that were not initially the participants of the violent act, either as its perpetrators or its victims: for example, if a person has stolen the other person's belongings and then sold (or gifted) them to the third person who was not aware that these items are stolen, the first person has a right to demand the return of the stolen things from the third one, without implying the the third person is somehow guilty or complicit. In this case, it would not be a punishment of the third person, but just a restoration of unjustly broken ownership of the third one.

Such position is good and understandable, but it has its crucial limit; without it, it may lead to injustices that may be even worse than the original ones. I may call it the generational limit, and formulate it thus: all restorative and compensatory efforts may be enacted only as long as at least some of the original participants of the situation that require restoration or compensation is still alive.

Let's return to the example above: let's suppose that we are talking about not the original participants - the Theif, the Victim, and the Unaware Buyer - but about their great-great-grandchildren. Let's assume that the stolen item has since turned into a beloved family heirloom for the descendants of the Unaware Buyer, now being owned by his great-great-grandson. And then, a great-great-granddaughter of the Victim appears at his door and demands that his family heirloom should be given back to her, since it was stolen from her great-great-grandmother more than a century ago and than sold to the great-great-grandfather of its original owner, who was unware of its stolen nature.

Should her demands be fulfilled immidiately? I don't think so - several generations has passed since then, and now the item rightfully belongs to the the great-great-grandson of the Unaware Buyer. These two people, of course, still can negotiate the situation between themselves; they can ask someone to mediate between them, and to assist them in the negotaiation process; but the Victim's great-great-granddaughter now can only ask, controvertibly, not demand, incontrovertibly, to return the long-ago-stolen-by-a-long-dead-person item to her. The right to the obligatory demand to the return of the stolen goods ceases when all the participants of the initial situation are deceased.

Now, let's suppose that the person from whom the heirloom is demanded back is not desdendant of the Unaware Buyer, but of the original Thief. Wouldn't the original Victim's great-great-granddaughter have a right to demand it back, then? No, she wouldn't: the generational limit which I described above will remain intact.

Let's now return from our relatively simple example outlined above, which at least involves only specific persons, to the situation of the lands the violently robbed from the indigenous populations centuries ago, which involves the whole populations.

In such a case, our situation become as hard and complex as one can imagine. Let's have a pair of examples...

1) How would one separate the indigenous peoples from non-indigenous ones, given that inter-ethnic / inter-racial sex, coupling and childbirth are common events, an became more and more common as time passes? Are people whose blood are the mixture of the indigenous and non-indigenous ones have a right to call themselves "indigenous"? Or they have not - only a pureblood indigenous people may apply? Or it depends on the cultural preference and social neighbourhood they have themselves chosen during their lifetimes? Then what about the people who may be not indigenous by blood at all, but have lived with the indigenous ones for a long time and got deeply immersed in their culture?

2) What about the descendants of the slaves who were brought on the originally-indigeous lands against their will, such as black people in the Americas (I mean both North and South America, taken together - South America had its own share of the black slaves)?

And so on... But let's concentrate on the clear decendants of the colonisers / invaders, such as white and Latin Americans (don't forget, Latin Americans are also descendants of the European colonisers - Spanish and Porteguese ones, who were pillaging the Americas before white Englishmen and French, who arrived some time later), and the (descendants of) willing immigrants such as Asians, Italians, Jews or Irish. Do they have a right to call the land of the Americas their homeland?

My answer is plain and simple: YES, THEY DO. They, and generations of their ansestors, have lived and worked and played on this land, and now it is theirs - equally with all other people who inhabit it. Someone's ansestors may have lived here for 20000 years and someone's ones only for 200, but it does not change the right for their descendants who how share not just the land and what was built on it, but also, to some extent, culture and, most importantly, society. Their primary moral duty nowadays is to overcome the painful legacy of the mutual hostility and mistrust, and learn how to coexist, cooperate and communicate in the way of mutuality and solidarity. No group of these peoples has the right to claim these lands as their exclusive property and then to drive away (or, as Charlie has proposed, to discriminate away...) other groups of peoples. This work not only to the white and Latin descendants of the violent colonisers, or even (the descendants of) the willing Asian, Italian, Jewish and Irish immigrants, but also for the descendants of the unwilling slaves and even if the first, indigeous inhabitants of the lands. The history, as it was enacted by all their ansestors taken together, has brought them into the society they they live toghether now, provided them with the culture with that they live and the land and constructions on it by that they live. Oftentimes it was an ugly, bloody, cruel history - but it also granted us all the positive legacy we enjoy, from the principles of freedom to the spirtual practices to the material wealth.

And we cannot separate the "good" history from the "bad" one; it is all ours. Yet we can, and should, learn from it so we can choose wisely the parts of our legacy that deserve to be maintained and preserved (such as the principles of freedom, or great works of art, or scientific discoveries, or religious sites and relics) and the ones that must be rejected and given away (such as initiatory warfare, or torture, or slavery, or human sacrifice). And we should not repeat the acts and practices of our ansestors that we now justly reject as cruel and oppressive.

Some old wrongs cannot be righted. Sometimes it is simply too late for any meaningful restoration or compensation - we cannot reverse and replay our shared history, even we would painfully like to. What is humanely possible for us is to learn from both mistakes and achievements of all ansestors - and act to each other in the way that the former ones would not be repeated and the latter ones would be not only preserved, but surpassed and excelled.

This is what I sincerely think about the issue.
 
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we cannot reverse and replay our shared history, even we would painfully like to. What is humanely possible for us is to learn from both mistakes and achievements of all ansestors - and act to each other in the way that the former ones would not be repeated and the latter ones

That's what I said earlier in this thread with 1,278 less words.

I'm glad we agree.
 
Vortex, I appreciate that you are taking a principled approach. I think though that the application of your principle is flawed, as explained below.

What I will write below is based on my understanding and interpretation of your position, Laird. Feel free to correct me if you think I misunderstood and misinterpreted you.

No need for correction; that all (which I've elided) seems agreeable to me, albeit that my advocacy in the case of Australia at least is focussed on restoration of political/cultural/land rights and sovereignty rather than on financial/material compensation - which is not to say that I would not support such a thing.

I appreciate that you have paid enough attention to be able to accurately paraphrase my position.

I may call it the generational limit, and formulate it thus: all restorative and compensatory efforts may be enacted only as long as at least some of the original participants of the situation that require restoration or compensation is still alive.

I do not think that this principle applies to the case in point, for at least three reasons, ordered from least significant to most:

  1. I do not think that you have provided an adequate justification for it in general. Maybe it is applicable in at least some cases, but I think that this needs better clarification.
  2. Your justification of its applicability to the case of Australia in particular (and to the USA, amongst other lands) rests on an analogy that is weak and lacks correspondence in at least two senses (it is also sub-optimal, but for the sake of brevity I won't offer a more optimal analogy):
    1. It considers only the significance (as a "beloved family heirloom") of the stolen goods to the descendants of the receiver of those stolen goods, and not to the descendants of the original custodian.
    2. It fails to take into account the amount of time in which the stolen item was in the possession of its original custodian and his/her ancestors compared to that in which it has been in the possession of the descendants of the receiver of the stolen item.
    We can clarify the analogy to emphasise these two important issues: the stolen item is the ornately crafted, dazzlingly bejewelled crown of a monarch, the origins of which (the crown) lie millennia into the past, and which is revered more than anything else by that monarch's line (and, of course, by the monarch's subjects). The family which received it as stolen goods and which has turned this item into their "heirloom" has (1) been in possession of it for no more than a few generations versus the millennia of the line of monarchs, and (2) pulled off various of its embedded jewels and sold them for profit, and otherwise defaced and disrespected that which was always treated with the highest reverence by its original custodians. With this more apt analogy, I do not think that it is reasonable to say, as you do, that "now the item rightfully belongs to the the great-great-grandson of the Unaware Buyer". Moreover, in the case of Australia: is it really plausible anyway that the "buyer" is/was "unaware" given that Australia's colonial past is even taught to children in school?
  3. Most importantly: it mistakenly conflates the case where the "original participants" of the situation are individual human beings with that in which the original participants are an entire racial-cultural group, and thus it mistakenly assumes that the original participants are no longer alive. That is to say that when we talk about original participants with respect to the case in point - especially Australia, but also similar cases such as the USA - we are talking not about a static set of individuals alive at a particular point in time and now no longer alive, but about the ongoing, hereditary, racial-cultural group that comprises indigenous Australians as a continuing whole. In this sense, this original participant is very much still alive - it "dies" only through genocide, which, it must be said, was attempted for some time by the original participant who is the thief in your analogy: the European colonialists.

So, I stand by my advocacy for the return of effective sovereignty to the rightful custodians of this land and others like it.

That said, I accept that there are difficult - albeit non-fatal - questions to answer, and you raise two (sets of) important ones:

1) How would one separate the indigenous peoples from non-indigenous ones, given that inter-ethnic / inter-racial sex, coupling and childbirth are common events, an became more and more common as time passes? Are people whose blood are the mixture of the indigenous and non-indigenous ones have a right to call themselves "indigenous"? Or they have not - only a pureblood indigenous people may apply? Or it depends on the cultural preference and social neighbourhood they have themselves chosen during their lifetimes? Then what about the people who may be not indigenous by blood at all, but have lived with the indigenous ones for a long time and got deeply immersed in their culture?

Whilst acknowledging that these questions are fraught (and for more than just the obvious reasons, but which for brevity I won't go into), and whilst I don't propose definitive answers to them (I think instead that they would be up for discussion in the course of a public debate on restoration of indigenous sovereignty) I think we do have a reasonable starting point in the current legal definition of an indigenous Australian in mainstream Australian law, which is comprised of three criteria:

  • The person is of indigenous descent (of some degree), and,
  • The person self-identifies as indigenous, and,
  • The person is accepted/recognised as indigenous by the indigenous community (in which they live or from which they originate).

2) What about the descendants of the slaves who were brought on the originally-indigeous lands against their will, such as black people in the Americas (I mean both North and South America, taken together - South America had its own share of the black slaves)?

It is not for me to suggest to indigenous people what their position should be with respect to the descendants of slaves brought to indigenous lands against their (the slaves') will. I can speculate as to what indigenous people might do, but I don't see the need to at this point. Suffice it to say that I think that indigenous peoples across the world have shown a great capacity for forgiveness for the crimes committed against not only them but also against people like them.

Someone's ansestors may have lived here for 20000 years and someone's ones only for 200, but it does not change the right for their descendants who how share not just the land and what was built on it, but also, to some extent, culture and, most importantly, society.

This - as with the remainder of your post, which for brevity I won't quote - comes back to a matter of principle, and I have explained above why I don't think that the principle that you advanced is a valid exception to the one that I proposed (and which you accepted as "good and understandable").

Again, I appreciate your engagement on the level of principle, which is, I think, the way in which this matter should be engaged - and which, perhaps, is something like that which Michael Patterson is trying to get at with "honour".
 
Think about the almost instinctive aversion to "strong men" leaders you find historically among Americans, this hysteria aout Putin, Gaddafi, etc. Strong men leaders remind the Anglo Saxons of William the conqueror, the Norman conqueror who took over England. They are basically chasing phantoms that remind them of William, many of them don't even know who William is or the Normans. This is all genetic stuff.
Unfortunately there seems to be a need for strong (i.e. pretty brutal) leaders in the Middle East. Over and over again, if you topple these leaders, the result gets far more brutal.

As far as President Putin is concerned, I quite like the guy! For all the waffle, he has taken the following military actions abroad:

1) Intervened to stop the Georgian government shelling Russian speaking regions of that country.

2) Intervened to stop an unelected Ukrainian government attacking regions that wished to separate from that country. Imagine for a moment, if the UK chose to shell Scotland if at some point it chose to leave the union!

3) Intervened in Syria to try to stop a civil war that was started by the US by arming various extremist groups - many of which were essentially ISIS in outlook.
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/3...iven-to-syrian-rebels-ended-up-in-isiss-hands

For these actions he is treated as a pariah. I hope one day President Trump will be able to put the Russia slur behind him, and actually negotiate sensibly with President Putin. Everyone seems to forget that right now one false move will result in billions of deaths, radioactive pollution of the planet, and a possible nuclear winter. It is far more fun to forget all that tedious stuff, and bait the hell out of President Putin.

After WWIII, if there are people left on the planet, life will be dog eat dog, I can assure you!

David
 
As far as President Putin is concerned, I quite like the guy!

Try living in Russia for some time and we'll see if you'll be able to preserve your sympathy.

For a good description of what the political climate in Russia is like, watch this video by Mikhail Svetov, a leader of the Libertarian Party of Russia. I disagree with his pro-capitalist politeconomic views, yet I appreciate his stance for personal freedom - stance which is quite unpopular in Russia nowadays, and may be seroiusly dangerous for one's wellbeing if made public:

 
That's what I said earlier in this thread with 1,278 less words.

I'm glad we agree.

Charlie, I have one - most probably, the last one for this thread and this discussion - question for you. Do you consider the structural discrimination and systemic segregation - that is, a deliberately enacted set of policies that is aimed into complication, abridement or even outright refusal of the social involvement, economic engagement and political participation for some groups of people - to be the violation of the Non-Aggression Principle you seem to defend? Since, if I understood correctly some of your previous words (feel free to tell me if you think I misunderstood you), the "White People's Polity" envisioned by you would employ the the structural discrimination of non-whites, and systemic segregation between whites and non-whites, to drive non-white people away in the fashion that you - apparently - do not consider to be violent. So, did I interperet you correctly?
 
Try living in Russia for some time and we'll see if you'll be able to preserve your sympathy.

For a good description of what the political climate in Russia is like, watch this video by Mikhail Svetov, a leader of the Libertarian Party of Russia. I disagree with his pro-capitalist politeconomic views, yet I appreciate his stance for personal freedom - stance which is quite unpopular in Russia nowadays, and may be seroiusly dangerous for one's wellbeing if made public:

Well possibly I should have focussed my comments on his foreign policy. However, I mean what would happen if he became head of state and he opened the place up to pure capitalism? Perhaps the situation there is a bit like the Middle East - better to have a strongman as the head of state, than a complete power vacuum.

Tell me honestly - how would you feel if this guy became president of Russia?

David
 
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Do you consider the structural discrimination and systemic segregation - that is, a deliberately enacted set of policies that is aimed into complication, abridement or even outright refusal of the social involvement, economic engagement and political participation for some groups of people - to be the violation of the Non-Aggression Principle you seem to defend?

No. Refusing to interact with people is not a violation of NAP.

You could probably manufacture some kooky life-boat scenario where it is, but as a general principle it's not.
 
I think it is natural for people to think their own culture is best. Most people love what they grew up with. And most cultures have something unique to admire. But where some people go wrong is when they start generalizing, demonizing and dehumanizing members of other groups.
 
No. Refusing to interact with people is not a violation of NAP.

You could probably manufacture some kooky life-boat scenario where it is, but as a general principle it's not.

What about discrimination, e.g. the systemic, structurally-maintainained refusal of possibilities and positions to specific groups of people? You haven't answered this part of the question.
 
However, I mean what would happen if he became head of state and he opened the place up to pure capitalism?
This already happened, it's what put Putin in power in the first place. Some hot shot young libertarian economists advised the previous government to open their markets with no regulations up to foreign trade since communism had been a failure, in came a handful of very big fish billionaires who gobbled up all the property in Russia in a couple years. When Putin came to to power he jailed all these guys.

sorry I'm too tired to provide a source right now, I think I remember seeing it in a documentary though possibly by the guy who did century of the self.
 
When Putin came to to power he jailed all these guys

And then installed his own oligarchs.

But you're 100% right regarding Russia's 90s 'shock therapy'.

Some facts:

[RUSSIAN] SHOCK THERAPY
  • During the Great Depression in the US 1929-1933, production dropped by 30%. In Russia, with shock therapy underway, it dropped by 83%.
  • During the first 3 months of 1992, Russian government expenditure was reduced by 40%.
  • Even in deregulated USA, the public sector accounts for 1/4 of the economy. In Russia today, the corresponding figure is 1/8.
  • The law on privatization that was passed in the Russian Duma in 1992 prescribed that already the very same year, half of the State-owned Russian companies should be privatized, and 20% more before 1995.
  • The proceeds of the whole gigantic privatization plan during the years 1992-96 amounted to only 0.15% of State revenues. The whole of Russia was auctioned off for a few billion dollars.
  • 324 factories were sold for less than 4 million dollars apiece, among these industrial giants like Uralmasj and the Chelyabinsk Metallurgy Combine. While international telephone companies bought networks in Hungary for 2,083 dollars per subscriber, they got the Russian network for 117 dollars per subscriber. Tractor factories were sold for the price of a bakery or a sausage factory in Switzerland, according to the privatization report of the Duma.
  • An energy company with the capacity of UES would have cost 49 billion dollars in the US. In Russia, it was sold for 200 million.
  • The oil companies cost 4 cents per barrel produced yearly in annual capacity. In the US, the corresponding figure is over 7 dollars.
  • Money is so scarce in Russia that bartering is back on a grand scale. Gas giant Gazprom, for instance, gets only 10-17% of its income in money, the rest in the form of products. A 1998 investigation indicates that 73% of all transactions between big companies are made by exchanging debts or products.
  • 70,000 factories have been shut down during the Russian "reform period".
  • Industrial production has decreased 81%.
BEFORE AND AFTER
  • Already in Soviet times, there were vast differences between classes, definitely greater than in Sweden. And yet, the new Russian elite have made those gaps widen dramatically.
    In 1995, the difference between the richest and poorest 10% was already as large as in the US.
    Eventually the Latin American level was reached, where the richest 10% of the population make 16 times as much money as the poorest 10%.
  • At the end of the 1980's, the seven richest men in Russia today owned at most a summer cottage and an old Lada. Today, five of them are on the Forbes list of the richest men in the world.
  • Real wages have diminished by 78%, pensions by 67%.
  • 13 million Russians are unemployed.
  • 800,000 Russians with a higher education have left the country.
  • The Russian population has been shrinking for some years by about half a million a year. The current figure is 147 million, 4 million less than in 1990.
  • The shorter life-span in Russia is a result of, among other things, the return of cholera, diphtheria, syphilis and tuberculosis.
  • In Stalin's Russia, political adversaries risked execution. In today's Russia, the death penalty is no longer needed. 20% of prisoners in Russian jails have contracted tuberculosis, largely of an incurable variety. In all, 2 million Russians are infected with tuberculosis a figure increasing by 80,000-150,000 people a year.
  • Causes of death that are increasing the most in Russia are: heart and vascular disorders (particularly heart attacks and strokes), murder, suicide and alcoholic poisoning.
  • Russian murder statistics definitely have surpassed those in the US. Russia is approaching the extreme level of violence prevalent in countries like South Africa and Colombia. [Ours here in South Africa is half what it was in 1994, btw]
Source: http://josefsson.net/artikelarkiv/51-shock-therapy-the-art-of-ruining-a-country.html
 
What about discrimination, e.g. the systemic, structurally-maintainained refusal of possibilities and positions to specific groups of people? You haven't answered this part of the question.
Refusing to interact or associate with people is not a violation of NAP.

If I don't wish to bake a cake with a big Swastika on it for Aldolf Hitler's birthday, I should not be forced to do so.

If I run a school that accepts only Black Muslim students, I shouldn't be forced to accept White Christians.

If I own an auto body shop and want to hire only women with big boobies to work there, that's my business.
 
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I think I remember seeing it in a documentary though possibly by the guy who did century of the self.
You are probably thinking of this documentary Human Edge with Ian Brown.

It was pretty good. It describes how Putin threw out the Oligarchs who looted Russia in the chaos following the fall of Soviet Union.

It has a similar look and feel to Adam Curtis (Century of Self) documentaries, but I don't think it's by him.

Very educational. Explains why London and New York are demonizing Russia at this very moment:

 
This already happened, it's what put Putin in power in the first place. Some hot shot young libertarian economists advised the previous government to open their markets with no regulations up to foreign trade since communism had been a failure, in came a handful of very big fish billionaires who gobbled up all the property in Russia in a couple years. When Putin came to to power he jailed all these guys.

sorry I'm too tired to provide a source right now, I think I remember seeing it in a documentary though possibly by the guy who did century of the self.

And then installed his own oligarchs.

But you're 100% right regarding Russia's 90s 'shock therapy'.

Some facts:

[RUSSIAN] SHOCK THERAPY
  • During the Great Depression in the US 1929-1933, production dropped by 30%. In Russia, with shock therapy underway, it dropped by 83%.
  • During the first 3 months of 1992, Russian government expenditure was reduced by 40%.
  • Even in deregulated USA, the public sector accounts for 1/4 of the economy. In Russia today, the corresponding figure is 1/8.
  • The law on privatization that was passed in the Russian Duma in 1992 prescribed that already the very same year, half of the State-owned Russian companies should be privatized, and 20% more before 1995.
  • The proceeds of the whole gigantic privatization plan during the years 1992-96 amounted to only 0.15% of State revenues. The whole of Russia was auctioned off for a few billion dollars.
  • 324 factories were sold for less than 4 million dollars apiece, among these industrial giants like Uralmasj and the Chelyabinsk Metallurgy Combine. While international telephone companies bought networks in Hungary for 2,083 dollars per subscriber, they got the Russian network for 117 dollars per subscriber. Tractor factories were sold for the price of a bakery or a sausage factory in Switzerland, according to the privatization report of the Duma.
  • An energy company with the capacity of UES would have cost 49 billion dollars in the US. In Russia, it was sold for 200 million.
  • The oil companies cost 4 cents per barrel produced yearly in annual capacity. In the US, the corresponding figure is over 7 dollars.
  • Money is so scarce in Russia that bartering is back on a grand scale. Gas giant Gazprom, for instance, gets only 10-17% of its income in money, the rest in the form of products. A 1998 investigation indicates that 73% of all transactions between big companies are made by exchanging debts or products.
  • 70,000 factories have been shut down during the Russian "reform period".
  • Industrial production has decreased 81%.
BEFORE AND AFTER
  • Already in Soviet times, there were vast differences between classes, definitely greater than in Sweden. And yet, the new Russian elite have made those gaps widen dramatically.
    In 1995, the difference between the richest and poorest 10% was already as large as in the US.
    Eventually the Latin American level was reached, where the richest 10% of the population make 16 times as much money as the poorest 10%.
  • At the end of the 1980's, the seven richest men in Russia today owned at most a summer cottage and an old Lada. Today, five of them are on the Forbes list of the richest men in the world.
  • Real wages have diminished by 78%, pensions by 67%.
  • 13 million Russians are unemployed.
  • 800,000 Russians with a higher education have left the country.
  • The Russian population has been shrinking for some years by about half a million a year. The current figure is 147 million, 4 million less than in 1990.
  • The shorter life-span in Russia is a result of, among other things, the return of cholera, diphtheria, syphilis and tuberculosis.
  • In Stalin's Russia, political adversaries risked execution. In today's Russia, the death penalty is no longer needed. 20% of prisoners in Russian jails have contracted tuberculosis, largely of an incurable variety. In all, 2 million Russians are infected with tuberculosis a figure increasing by 80,000-150,000 people a year.
  • Causes of death that are increasing the most in Russia are: heart and vascular disorders (particularly heart attacks and strokes), murder, suicide and alcoholic poisoning.
  • Russian murder statistics definitely have surpassed those in the US. Russia is approaching the extreme level of violence prevalent in countries like South Africa and Colombia. [Ours here in South Africa is half what it was in 1994, btw]
Source: http://josefsson.net/artikelarkiv/51-shock-therapy-the-art-of-ruining-a-country.html

LetsEat, DpDownSouth, what are you writing here about 1990s Russia is true, but incomplete - in fact, it is exactly HALF true.

The full truth that 1990s was BOTH wonderful and horrible, beautiful and ugly, blissful and miserable epoch. All in the same time.

Effectively, the 1990s Russia was close to the "anarcho-capitalism" which is so eagerly defended by some Americans (and a few Europeans, as well as a very few Russians) nowadays. State was formerly there, but effectively it was largely non-existent.

The great and positive side of this situation was an unlimited and unrestrained personal freedom - intellectual, creative, religious, spiritual, sexual, somatic, social, communal, any other kind one can imagine. Anyone can learn what one willed, say what one willed, create what one willed, sleep with anyone who willed it, believe and worship anything one willed, try any spiritual practice one willed, use any substance one willed, befreind anyone who willed, live with anyone who willed, etc. There were no restrictions and limitations whatsoever, one's will being free to fulfill itself fully. And it was great.

What was not so great - and what destroyed the 1990s social experiment in the end - was the painful fact that no economic provision, political protection or environmental preservation were available. State that could grant them was dysfuctional, and there was no highly-developed network-type social organisation that could provide them, thus taking the positive role of the state while rejecting its negative - violent and restictive - side. So, all the negative events that you describe above took place - people starved to death or was killed by gangsters; employers exploited the workers, didn't pay them and hired the aforementioned ganagsters to deal with the protesting employees; cultural relics and sites was ruined, or stolen and sold, and since organisation sustaining them could not survive on a commercial basis; air, water and soil were poisoned since no environmental regulations were working; etc., etc.

Unfortunately, most people prefer economic provision, political protection or environmental preservation to the personal freedom and fulfillment of one's will. So, when Putin and his company of largely (former-)intelligence-services-police-and-military supporters came and proposed Russians a dark bargain - to sacrifice one's freedom and will for sake of safety and support - most people agreed enthusiastically.

Since then, Russia was an authoritarian state under the control of a life-long dictator and his clique. Yet, these rulers did kept their part of the bargain - economic support, end of mass gangsterism, some attention to ecology etc. A lot of people's lives did became more safe and prosperous under Putin. Yet the payment was the freedom these people once enjoyed.

Recently, however, the bargain between power and populace that maintained Putin's rule for so long became to crubmle - being drunk with the imperialistic and shauvinist propaganda about "the greatness of Russia" that was the ideological justification of the regime, the rulers apparently believed in it themselves and became aggressive on the international arena. This lead them to the global clash with the currently-dominant Western states, lead by the USA, and problems at home and abroad. In home, particularly, Putin' rule, that may be initally characterised as (relatively) "soft" dictatorship, became "harder" and even "harder" still, increasing level of suppression and repression of any sign of dissent, as economic prosperity waned. This day, I can't say what will be next for Russia, but the perspectives are quite grim, since Russian economy is weakening and Russian politics grow more and more oppressive internally, and more and more confrontational externally, literally every year (if not every month)...
 
LetsEat, DpDownSouth, what are you writing here about 1990s Russia is true, but incomplete - in fact, it is exactly HALF true...

Thank you for taking the time to write your reply.... I found it very informative, and I hadn't before thought of the feelings that must have accompanied liberation from a totalitarian state.

Just to clarify, my initial post was not an attempt at support for Soviet Communism or Putin.

[EDIT: I've deleted the second section of this post as I feel it could potentially continue the drift into off-topic political conversations. When did Skeptiko turn into Politiko?]

Thanks again.
 
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