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more commentReader comment on item: Uncovering Early Islam Submitted by the Grand Infidel of Kaffiristan (Australia), Jun 30, 2012 at 05:16 GIK: So the fact that Stalin blamed the Germans for his massacre of 20,000 Polish officers is inconsequential? .....<< Ianus:" Indeed, he lived on it for a couple of weeks.The West has been living on it for a couple of decades now, and seems to be living on it for a couple of centuries yet." My question was not about Nazis opinion or their use of propaganda - but what do Poles in general and you in particular think about a) the actual summary executions of the Polish officers by fellow Slavs and b) the following deception by Stalin in the service of his propaganda and aims.. > "You e.g. repeated anti-communist slogans I had read in Nazi literature without any pangs of conscience." GIK : "You mean me personally - I have repeated anti-Communist slogans found in Nazi literature? Amazing, as I've never,ever read any Nazi anti-Communist propaganda in my entire life. I will admit to having more than a teaspoon of German blood in my veins - so perhaps it's a genetic thing then - the ability to spot a crock and say so? What was it I was alleged to have repeated that is so offensive to communists?< "No, I didn't mean you personally , of course , nor did I suspect you of having read Nazi literature. It would be too heretical and dangerous for a Westerner to do it. " ??? We are free to research and'read whatever we like - so you hold other incorrect assumptions. "A scandal flared up due to the incident with an icon portraying Joseph Stalin put up in the Church of Grand Princess St. Olga, Equal-to-the-Apostles, in Strelna, u......The absurd situation attracted "Communists of St. Petersburg" who took the news of Father Evstafy as a sky-sign and printed about three thousand icons depicting the Kremlin tyrant alone and with a halo above his head [above- MK] and distributed the icons in the city." Perfect.< Ianus :"I would call it "different perspectives" if they added also as detailed opinions of those who had the icons painted and hung in the church as their opponents'.But this would not be politically correct." The different perspectives are diametrically opposed - and good on those Russians who found it obscene and made it known howthey really felt. GIK "Jungian psychology will show you we see the world how we are - and not as it is. We project our own clarity - or confusion and frustration - onto the outside world and other people. ....the most logical thing to do is to change how you experience it.< "Do you know the proverb "Doctor, heal thyself!"? yes, of course. "The above probably describes your own psychoanalytical situation. " I don't think that you're so terminally unique that universal truths don't apply to you. "As to me on reading your well-meant comment I thought about your earlier statement that the communist system was a failure suggesting the present one isn't ." I will wager that 70 years under non-communism (and non-Islam) will have a better outcome for Poles than a further 70 years under communism. Better than that drive up to Estonia, Latvia and next door Lithuania - and ask the people there what they think. "The total estimated number of the poor in the eighteen countries has risen twelvefold from nearly 14 million before the transition or about 4 percent of the population, to 168 million in 1993-95, or approximately 45 percent of the population." (p. 67)" "So first, you call the system that created 4% poverty a failure while the system that creates 45% poverty seems to you to be a "success"? " I don't recall saying any system was a 'success'. I can say centrally controlled command economies are a failure - the only one left that is doing OK is China - simply because of the 700 million potential slaves they have - which they will use to invest in capital to control production (i.e. out and out capitalists) to sell cheaply made goods too capitalist countries. That is when they are not buying up resources around the world . "Interesting. Well, for some clever speculators that got rich quick in those years it must have been a big time "success" looting income that had belonged previously to 168 mln people !" Although I know about Khodorkovsky etc I have no first hand knowledge of these clever speculators in ex-Soviet countries apart from Estonia. I know there are Russian consortiums digging for diamonds and oil in Siberia - i.e. using capital to create new ventures to produce goods. I'm sure there are many, many others who bought disused factories to start new ventures. And I'm sure there are disused factories right now that are still sitting there derelict - because no one is inspired to do anything with them. In Estonia - I know that (5 years ago at least) that you could have bought a disused agricultural 'commune' relatively cheaply. Anyone could have bought them - local villagers did in many cases. Ianus: "Now given the incredible fact that objective reality does exist " Of course it exists - but only in a relative sense. Where is the world of Russian peasants in 1917 - all that fervor and hope and belief for the system that was going to transform mankind? Nearly everything from that period has vanished, turned to dust. Same with the dreams and hopes, houses, horses, equipment and the people in the Californian Gold Rush . Where is that reality -that was so 'real' to them - as real to you as the room you are sitting in and the thoughts you are having right now? This 'reality' - when you put it under a (scanning electron) microscope is 99.9% empty space - and what remains , is not made from what was thought to be the discrete indivisible particles of Newtonian physics - but from a soup of energy which can pop in and out of existence from nowhere "...and is not a figment of my imperfect soul , the Jungian psychology and any recommendations based on it do need a serious reconsideration, I am afraid." Actually - it's the other way round - 'reality' needs to be reappraised. "It depends. This is a crucial element if the applied theory of chaos is to work with all its destructive energy. " Freedom is freedom - people should be free to make the wrong choices. Otherwise you end up with straight-jacketed societies like Singapore - where conformity and self-censorship is encouraged. i.e.people don't connect with themselves properly. "A country with a healthy, nationally-minded, patriotic and morally and demographically sound population cannot be manipulated and exploited at all by outside forces, e.g. predatory finance capitalism." Iceland and Ireland spring to mind here - both were indeed subject to those forces. And Germany pre WW2 was 'healthy, nationally-minded, patriotic and morally and demographically sound population' but able to be manipulated massively by Internal forces. "What you need therefore is undermine and desintegrate such a population with its pride, history, mentality and identity. How ? With a hostile immigration you will depict as a great luck and wisdom while in fact it will turn out to be a source of great and irreparable evil as all hostile immigration to the West clearly shows." Ok, I can speak from a country where there has been a huge amount of immigration into a relatively stable and homogenous population since WW2. Large numbers of Italians, Poles, Greeks, Yugoslavs and Dutch migrated here immediately after WW2. Have they undermined 'such a population with its pride, history, mentality and identity. '? i.e Anglo-Saxon-Celtic population and culture . Not at all. Both parties have benefitted - and they have blended into the population. Not so with Islam - the followers of which set themselves apart (except for the nominal-only muslims). However - where their real loyalties lie is open to question. GIK: "I'm not sure how we go from my statement i.e. 'the past is unchanging' to 'nothing has consequences' .Can you explain your reasoning?< Ianus: "And I was not talking about ALL the evil in the world. " Good. I was almost beginning to picture you as a poster boy of 1950's Russia, praying to Saint Dzhugashvili of Gori for his help in the restoration of pan-Slavic glory. Cuique suum. I was talking about "the destroyed and desecrated churches of Northern Cyprus and Kosovo and Islamization of the Balkans" . Blame the arrogant and bellicose Turks for Cyprus . And Clinton and the EU media for the unfair bias in the Balkans. "Any alternative ideas based on quantum physics or any other science as to who is to blame for that ?A butterfly fluttering its sinister wings on a Russian military base in Kaliningrad ?" It's Ok to make light of quantum physics - you sort of have to - because if you really understood it - as Neils Bohr said : "For those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it. ". ' another of Wheeler's quotes: "We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance. " "According to you there should have been no Soviet troops on the territory that was the most likely direction of a NATO attack in an expected war against the USSR? " So NATO was going to withdraw its forces to the top of the Baltic Sea and attack Russia via Estonia and presumably Finland? I've never heard of that one. I can write tonight and ask an Estonian who lived in those times and whose area of employment would have allowed him to know about such things - whether this was an expectation of the Russian military. GIK : "The Chinese almost use this as a matter of policy - yet you make no mention of that.< Ianus: In fact they are building in the vicinity a carpet factory. Curious, isn't it?" but not surprising at all. GIK > I have seen this happen here as well - in fact today I'm going to a factory that has been shut down - nearly completely due' to lack of insight by its former American owners. They are the ones who lost out big time - not the locals.< Ianus : "Are you sure? No locals work in the factory?Have the Americans already shifted to slave/coolie labour yet ?" The Americans ran the local business for the last ten years and complied with all our industrial laws. Imported slave labour , in fact any sort of slave labour is illegal in this country. The Americans made a bad business decision which has resulted in millions of dollars worth of materials and equipment no longer being used. Ianus: "What a contrast to the two decades before 1970. In 1946 - 929 000 ; in 1970 - 1 350 000! Incredible 69% ! If everything was so bad in the USSR for the poor Estonians as you and they assert, then why was their demography so good ?" GIK: Quite simple - internal Soviet migrations - primarily from Russia - followed by Ukraine. Does the figure you give include the 80000 Estos deported to gulags? Ianus: "Where did you get those "80 000" from ? I..... 20,000 Estonians were forcibly deported either to labor camps or Siberia" . .... (estimates as many as 80,000) chose to either retreat with the Germans or flee to Finland or Sweden.Didn't you mix up figures to look more dramatic ?" If they are the real figures then I must have mixed them up - but never deliberately . Still, 20,000 people sent to gulags for not thinking nice things about the Georgian dictator , or thinking about things the Georgian dictator didn't like them thinking about - is pretty dramatic. 20,000. That would equate to probably everyone in your suburb. In any case - population growth from X to X +dX does not indicate how happy they were with their lives. Poplation growth in muslim countries/enclaves exceeds the Estonian figures by a mile - I don't see them in ecstatic bliss. Ianus:"And internal immigration was necessary as Estonia under the Soviet regime changed from agrarian to industrialized economy. " Da, tovarich. But if you asked most Estonians (or Latvians, or Lithuanians) in the 1950's or 60's - 'given the chance - with no strings attached - would you like Estonia to be a fully free and independent republic - who can freely trade with Europe and whose citizens are free to travel to anywhere in the world " - what reply do you think they would give you? 'Jah' or 'Ei'? "Who could build factories and power plants in Estonia ? Estonian peasants ?" The shale oil plant at Narva? If they had been allowed to trade and communicate freely with Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Finland - any one of those countries could easily have invested in Estonian infrastructure - as they do now. You're not seriously suggesting only the Russians could are you? The Russians did - because the Russians were told to by their central planners. "Note also that Estonia's short-lived economic "rise" was a bubble that burst in 2009 making Estonia one of the hardest hit economies of Europe." 2009? Read a little further - they are quite happy to accept austerity measures - because they were totally used to them under Soviet rule! Let's look at more recent figures from Eesti Pank - people who are intimately involved with Estonian finance. And 3.1% growth in 2010? Not what I would call a hard hit economy. Poland is doing better then? "Who in Europe needs Estonia's production " Sweden, Finland - all the Nordic countries buy Estonian products - forest goods, tech products etc "while for political reasons it closes its borders on its only natural market - Russia ?" What is so 'natural' about the Russian market? It is a completely contrived market. Were Estonians - who also have very strong historic and genealogical links with Swedes , Danes ,Germans and Finns allowed to have traded frreely with those counjtries since WW2 - those markets would be as large as any markets with Russia. "In your "most prosperous economy in Europe" it is more profitable to clean latrines in Australia or the UK than work in an Estonian office" GIK >Why does the world seem so bleak to you - why do you always picture the worst outcome?< Ianus "I don't care about 'bleak or bright" "the worst outcome or the best outcome". What I care about is truth." Truth is infinite - so where do you actually stop? If you care about truth - then , whether you interpret it as bleak or bright - know that there are little to no Estonians cleaning toilets in Australia. Ianus: "Now why must the truth be identical with "bright" or "the best outcome" to your mind ?" I never said it did. Why do you suggest that I would make that assertion. Truth is what is - but to us humans with our limited senses and miscomprehension of reality - we often settle for a good-looking approximation - and for many - it becomes truth when it coincides with their biases. A favourite quote ' The truth has never denied the seeker…only the seeker who has denied the truth." Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments". Reader comments (588) on this item
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