Last year, Tucker Carlson scandalised America by travelling to Russia and interviewing Vladimir Putin. As US viewers denounced the idea that one ought to speak to an enemy such as Putin, Tucker strolled around Moscow, filming himself taking the subway, buying a burger from the new Russian McDonalds, and going grocery shopping in a Moscow supermarket. Behaving, in fact, like he was in the West.

Back home, Tucker had some good things to say about Putin, as well as some bad things. But it was the streets and shops of Moscow that really “radicalised” him. The West likes to paint Russia as poor, miserable and oppressed, but Tucker described a perfectly ordinary modern society. The discrepancy between what Tucker had been taught to expect and what he actually saw in Russia didn’t just unnerve him — it made him angry.

Of course, one might point out that Moscow and St Petersburg are Potemkin villages of sorts, covering up the reality of deep poverty in much of the rest of the country. But none of this is ultimately a matter of facts. The conflict between the West and Russia today is now seen as ideological and existential, just as the conflict between communism and capitalism once was. To say something nice about the Russian enemy is to take his side; to say something nice about him that also happens to be true is seen as even more treasonous. 

https://unherd.com/2024/10/would-you-move-to-mother-russia/

The Oxford English Dictionary records the phrase "soft power" (meaning "power (of a nation, state, alliance, etc.) deriving from economic and cultural influence, rather than coercion or military strength") from 1985.[4] Joseph Nye popularized the concept of "soft power" in the late 1980s.  For Nye, power is the ability to influence the behavior of others to get the outcomes you want. There are several ways one can achieve this: one can coerce others with threats; one can induce them with payments; or one can attract and co-opt them to want what one wants. This soft power – getting others to want the outcomes one wants – co-opts people rather than coerces them.

Soft power contrasts with "hard power" - the use of coercion and payment. 

barcode 

gen.    штрих-код (gramota.ru рекомендует слитное написание: "штрихкод" Alexander Demidov)
automat.    штриховой код
comp., MS    штрихкод (The special identification code printed as a set of vertical bars of differing widths on books, grocery products, and other merchandise. Used for rapid, error-free input in such facilities as libraries, hospitals, and grocery stores, bar codes represent binary information that can be read by an optical scanner. The coding can include numbers, letters, or a combination of the two; some codes include built-in error checking and can be read in either direction)

North Korea's constitution now defines the South as a "hostile state", according to state media, in the first mention of what Pyongyang's recent constitutional revisions entailed.

State newspaper Rodong Sinmun reported the change as an "inevitable and legitimate measure", at a time when tensions between the Koreas are at their highest point in years.

The North on Tuesday blew up roads and railways connecting it to South Korea - a move which state media described as "part of the step-by-step implementation to thoroughly separate [the Koreas]".

The Neologism: "Blue Zones" was coined by National Geographic

A child born in the country in 1960 was only likely to live (at the time) to 65, but a child born in Singapore today can expect to live to more than 86 according to estimates. In addition, the number of centenarians in Singapore doubled over the 10-year period from 2010-2020.

This huge leap in longevity has largely been driven by intentional government policy and investment. The distinction even was enough to have the country named the world's sixth "Blue Zone" in August 2023. Though recently questioned for their accuracy by demographers, the Blue Zones were discovered and coined by National Geographic journalist Dan Buettner, who claimed to identify regions where people lived longer, healthier lives, in large part due to a combination of culture, lifestyle, diet and community.

Singapore was the first new region to be added to the Blue Zones in decades (dubbed a "Blue Zone 2.0" by Buettner) and stands apart from the other Blue Zones in part because the longevity of its people comes more from forward-thinking policies than long-established cultural traditions in other Blue Zone communities like Ikaria, Greece or Nicoya, Costa Rica. 

Greene, Robert Lane. Talk on the Wild Side: Why Language Can’t be Tamed. – New York: PublicAffairs, 2018. – 232 p.

“Catalonia and Quebec share an unusual situation: in the region, speakers of French and Catalan feel surrounded and poorly treated by speakers of the bigger national language, English and Spanish. But at the same time, both regions have local minorities who are members of the national majority: speakers of Spanish in Catalonia and of English in Quebec. English speakers in Quebec, and Spanish-speakers in Catalonia, cannot freely educate their children in the family language, and in some cases cannot even get access to public services like health care in their language,” [Greene, 2018: 148-149]

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Early Tuesday morning, the U.S. Senate approved $60 billion in additional aid for Ukraine in a vote of 70-29. All but three of the no votes were from Republicans, including Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who on Wednesday voiced his continued opposition to sending any more aid to Ukraine.

“I was totally against this Ukraine funding that we voted on, we stayed up all night the other night and voted like 5:30 a.m. in the morning,” Tuberville said, speaking at a Montgomery Chamber of Commerce event. 

“Why was I against that? First of all, I’m not voting for a dime to Ukraine, I see what’s happening: it’s like a junior high playing an NFL team in football. They can’t win.”

Pushing NATO into a war with Russia

Ukraine is trying desperately to entangle NATO into a war with Russia. The mentality that stands behind the actions of the provocateur is brilliantly described in Kipliing’s poem “A Pict Song”.

It is an amazing poem in which despair of the oppressed Picts makes them choose a cynical and opportunistic strategy as a last resort to protect themselves from Rome. The Ukrainian government in its war with Russia pursues a strategy similar to that of the Picts in Kipling’s poem. The accuracy and force of the similarity that I found between the Picts of the past and the Ukrainians haunted by the Maidan, reveals itself in a metaphor, which is a powerful mechanism in the description of history.

  In a face-off with a powerful nation a weak country is sometimes ready to sell its most precious commodity – independence. – to those allies which are capable of destroying its enemy.

In Kipling’s poem, the Picts are portrayed as a people who, despite their own weaknesses, are determined to use the strength of others to defeat their Roman oppressors. On the way to this objective the Picts are ready to embrace even slavery, for all the means are good if they see Rome destroyed. The last stanza of the poem is a cynical and shameless consent of the Picts to accept as masters the people capable of defeating Rome:

No indeed! We are not strong,

   But we know Peoples that are.  

Yes, and we’ll guide them along

   To smash and destroy you in War!

We shall be slaves just the same?

... Читать дальше »

Russian victory over Ukraine is clear to every sober-minded person who is familiar with the conflict. However, the red tape will yet take some time before the stage of resurrection, recovery, rebuilding and revival sets in.  

In full accord with Wilson’s famous “14 points” Putin is sure to conclude a deal in such a way, so that the losing side should be provided with the face-saving trade-off:  The West will not any longer have to strain its conscience and its budget over Ukraine; Ukraine will be allowed to have a state, a democratically elected government, free mass media, the rule of law and an opportunity to work for the benefit of its citizens.

Istanbul agreements, concluded between Russia and Ukraine in March of 2023, must be regarded as a realistic basis for the future peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.

“Istanbul is Ukraine’s commitment to condemn the Maidan and the ideology of the Maidan. Everything else is a lie and a provocation, or an entourage,” as a popular Ukrainian journalist Mikhail Chaplyga said.

I feel strongly about Lincoln’s wise maxim:

“The ballot is stronger than the bullet.” 
I do not like either revolutions or revolutionaries who always come up with fancy names to cover up violence, crime and blood-shedding. The successful operation of German secret services, which catapulted Vladimir Lenin to power by means of a Petrograd coup in 1917, went into a history under the Bolshevik title “The Great October Socialist Revolution”. The American-paid and masterminded coup in Kiev toppled in 2014 the constitutionally elected, though corrupt, President Yanukovycg and showcased itself before the world as “The Revolution of Dignity”. Both revolutions are great historical fakes and manipulations.
Yes, change must come with evolution, not revolution.