Categories
The Intermarium – politicalbetting.com
The Intermarium – politicalbetting.com
On this day, 160 years ago, the uprising of 1863 began, the uprising of the liberation of the peoples of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland from the Russian Empire. Today, the war with the Russian Empire still continues. pic.twitter.com/kESq1hq09x
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
I did chuckle at this line, as I feel many elections end this way.
Merkel’s Chancellory wended to its weary end, never challenged but spasmodic and reflexive. In 2021 the Germans went “whatever” and voted in Olaf Scholtz, possibly just for the variety
Some odd question marks auto inserted as the text was copied over I assume.
Poland has a rich history, but i must say I wouldn't advocate it becoming a regional superpower until it makes some substantial social and intellectual changes. The prevailing climate, and a good half of the population, as demonstrated by the state broadcaster, are still susceptible to highly nationalist anti-semitism , and various forms of cultural reaction. There is a large group of people making up a different Poland, but it struggles to be heard sometimes.
“I'm not a fan of the song personally.“
This is borderline transphobic antisemitic racist QAnonT flat Earth Trumpism. How can you NOT like Mmmbop? You are skirting a lifelong ban
Here’s a doo-wop version. For the record, MmmBop was inspired by Doo-wop, so this is apt
https://youtu.be/iEejfq1KhkU
As for who is going to pay for Ukraine's reconstruction, having contributed handsomely to its destruction, I am not looking forward to our share of the bill for putting it all back up again. Russia should pay most of it but I don't see that happening unless they hold the territory that is being repaired.
Pi?sudski = Piłsudski = Pilsudski
Kaczy?ski= Kaczyński = Kaczynski
Jaros?aw = Jarosław = Jaroslaw
Credits
The text and most links were created or gotten by @Viewcode. However others also contributed: @MattW provided links to the Telegraph Ukraine podcast and two others, @Nigelb gave a very useful link to "The_Reconstruction_of_Nations" and the tweet that graces the top of the article. They and @SeanF also offered suggestions. Thanks to all: any mistakes or omissions are mine.
Why on Earth do you think JKR is referring to “all trans people” and not just “violent duplicitous rapists”?
Germany is not the militaristic country that it was, nor does it particularly look as if that is going to change. The profound defeat in 1945 and soul-searching afterwards, particularly by the German baby boom generation transformed the country.
It would be useful for Russia to have the same cultural transformation against militarism as Germany or Japan, but rather difficult to see the route to the profound defeat required. There might have been that opportunity in the nineties, but we squandered it.
If you have any questions add them here and I will address them fully in the discussion forum
As an aside: "when Lech died in a plane crash in 2010". That was the Smolensk air disaster, which has proved fertile ground for conspiracy theorists ever since (and given Russia's actions before and since, and Lech's attitude towards Russia, that ground is fairly fertile). But accidents do happen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smolensk_air_disaster
I am not averse to a bit (a lot) of musical fromage, but that song is a bit too gamey for me. A lot of that sort of acne rock pop genre of the mid late 90s hasn't aged well. Avrille Lavigne, Busted (sorry I know they're your faves), that Teenage Dirtbag song. It's not that I hate the sound, I like Two Princes by Spin Doctors which sounds very similar. But it really curdled when Hanson etc. came in. It gives me the ick.
I am very glad you're enjoying a feeling
of satisfaction though. I'll drink to that.
My favourite cheesey song is Cliff's 'Wired for sound' - complete with its roller skating video set in Milton Keynes. So by all means shoot me down for that.
https://twitter.com/parody_pm/status/1619630224160993281?s=46&t=SG-nilYLF8wGXszIf9jWDg
His explosive reaction at the end as he realises he has spilled the beans to the world, and by the by self destructed his own career is quite intense
https://twitter.com/jamesokeefeiii/status/1619128293684580352?s=61&t=gYB78yAx9sKbGxkBWXXUOVy3Q3U5C3YUSIi6hHVJIVs
“Like, it makes no sense that the virus popped out of nowhere”
NO FUCKING KIDDING, SHERLOCK
SA are on course to thrash England here.
Correct.
Forget ‘il sorpasso’, here comes ‘proszkowanie’.
But you lack joy if you can’t appreciate MmmBop. For me it is up there with Mozart Vespers - eg Dixit Dominus - as an expression of human jubilation in simply being alive
https://youtu.be/ej-8mG6dTio
This is very off topic but a great piece by John Harris.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/29/elitist-leadership-zahawi-schools-britain
We have some architecture fans (and snobs...) on here, so I thought I'd post Network Rail's new 'flow' footbridge design.
https://twitter.com/MrTimDunn/status/1619367271406923778
To be brief: I like it!
And, for the record, I have had 2 small G&Ts. I am just feeling quite Mmmmboppy
Militarily, it will very probably be more powerful than all its near neighbours in the near term. Whether it can sustain that depends upon what happens with its economy, and perhaps on how close its relationship with postwar Ukraine.
https://twitter.com/MrTimDunn/status/1619367841467371521
I like it, too.
And the design could also be done in an extended wheelchair accessible version by the look of it.
It was only a few years later that I realised - on hearing it again with a clear head - that it is one of the greatest pop songs ever written
Since I don't see Biotwitter commenting on this, let me give my take on what Pfizer might have been trying to do. Disclaimer - my entire PhD research project was directed evolution.
https://twitter.com/AppleHelix/status/1619128579635412995
This history of Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainain relations is complex and not completely friendly.
Take that with this admission from Pfizer: Fuck, of course it came from the lab
I think we can conclude it almost certainly came from the lab. Indeed is anyone sane now claiming otherwise?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11687651/IAN-BIRRELL-experts-say-lab-leak-likely-cause-Covid-19.html
The claims of cover up are now 100% irrrefutable
I suppose the brain-dead will take that as proof of a cover-up ...
https://mobile.twitter.com/AppleHelix/status/1619138811203829760
I think I knew him when I was at BCG hahahah. He was in my orientation batch. I also very much agree that MDs do not actually understand biology well.
https://mobile.twitter.com/varma_ashwin97/status/1619471307288227840
On each subsequent visit the progress being made, economically if not always politically, was obvious. More traffic each time, more shops, signs advertising the significant injections of funds from the EU into improving infrastructure. They’ve done wonders with the housing, insofar as that was possible, essentially giving away the publicly-owned blocks to housing association type organisations that have refurbished them, dramatically, inside and out.
On my last visit, to Wrocław in western Poland, I realised that from the general appearance of the place - the prosperity evidenced by the retail offering, the types of cars on the street, people’s clothing - it was only the Polish writing on the shop fronts that gave away the location; without that you could guess you were in any southern European country.
Yes, there are still significant issues - embedding liberal western politics remains a challenge, and the benefits of change have fallen toward the principal towns and to the more prosperous west of the country, with the rural east benefitting the least.
But, in the round, Poland’s transition is one of our lifetime’s genuinely inspiring success stories - the EU’s leading role explaining why Ukraine is so keen to join - and you don’t have to read very much of Poland’s tragic history to realise that such a miraculous happy ending is both less than they deserve but more than they expected.
Poland + Ukraine + neighbours will dominate any future European military organisation, probably.
Coincidentally I have been listening to The Invention of Russia and The Invention of Poland by Misha Glenny on BBC Sounds which cover some of the same ground.
If printing his name and photograph is a form of doxing, he's going to be furious with his election agent.
https://twitter.com/LevinsLaw/status/1619687540071727105
After centuries of misrule by its own wretched nobility, and Russia, in Tsarist or Soviet form, it’s good to see Poland back on the rise.
Historically that is a goldmine to invest in. Providing corruption can be reined in.
A zillion examples of that - Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Poland, Bulgaria, to name but a few.
They, and some of the other Central European countries (excepting the Czechs, who have inherited long memories) were our natural allies within the EU, and it is to our and their loss that we are no longer members.
Incidentally, banning horses off main roads may have led to another scandal, in an example of negative consequences from well-meant actions
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2013/02/14/the-romanian-horse-cart-ban-thats-probably-behind-europes-horse-meat-scandal/
However, the US now (if not before) as good as owns them, by virtue of all their military aid being loans. Ukraine must have racked up several times its yearly budget in US military equipment now. The US will award reconstruction contracts, primarily to US companies, and recalling the reconstruction of Iraq, being a staunch ally did not get you first dibs even on what was left.
It amused me that you could see when communism started and ended in the architecture, from a distance.
I wish I knew where that was, as I wouldn't mind looking at it in Google Maps.
Poland is economically growing mainly because is is receiving huge EU subsidies. There is no amazing economic miracle
“In 2004-2021, Poland received EUR 210 billion and paid just EUR 69 billion to the EU budget, PIE said in its weekly bulletin on Thursday, quoting Finance Ministry data.“
https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/polands-receipts-from-eu-budget-far-outweigh-payments-says-think-tank-31274
Meanwhile its population is shrinking and ageing due to low birth rates and migration
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Poland
The idea it is going to magically emerge from this to be the most powerful nation in Europe, or an intergalactic hyper nuclear warrior empire or whatever, is just fucking farcical. What a stupid thread. Next
The Near-Term Outlook for COVID-19 Therapeutic Treatments
MAY 08, 2020
By Ciarán Lawlor, Ahad Wahid, MD, Jordon Walker, and Josh Kellar
https://www.bcg.com/publications/2020/outlook-for-covid-19-therapeutic-treatments
His photo is at the bottom of the paper.
Doesn't mean he wasn't bullshitting / exaggerating to his date, but he isn't some false flag PV actor.
It was such a sad, grim, miserable place, with people trying to live their lives with very few of the freedoms we take for granted. No food in the shops, and surrounded by patently absurd state propaganda. It’s why I get annoyed when the likes of ex-MP Nick of this parish are so blasé about their communist-supporting past.
Obviously he’s real. And, equally obvious, there have been fairly lame attempts to hide him on the internet (taking down his LinkedIn page for example) - presumably this is him doing it himself, or his concerned colleagues/friends/family. And I can empathise with their concern
What he admits/claims in that video - even if it WAS bullshit to impress a date - is enough to destroy a career and a life
I feel for him. He did something stupid. But he said what he said and now it is out there
For me the most interesting part is the casual acceptance that Covid almost certainly came from the lab. “Like, of course it did, we all know that.” He’s not even trying to impress at that point. It is his honest opinion as a Pfizer insider (seconded from BCG, it seems)
So ~7% of government spending.
Spending money is a big part of creating wealth, as Adam Smith and JM Keynes (and indeed Milton Friedman) would have noted.
However, it isn't enough on its own, or Africa and especially Nigeria would be wealthy. You have to have a strong economy and society underpinning it to share it round rather than end up in the back pocket of whatever random criminal is running the country, and that's what Poland has had.
And fits in with the tweets I posted upthread.
They bootstrapped themselves into serious prosperity. These countries were peasant-level poor at the end of WW2
Incredible
Imagine if this had been a Russian lab, doing research that had been banned as unsafe in Russia, and I argued that there was no firm evidence for lab leak, and it was probably the wet market. The ordure that would be heaped on me every time I made such a claim would run to pages.
I do find it slightly odd that the normal repost is that they use deceptive practices to get this undercover films. Isn't that what every investigative journalist does? The lady who investigated the dog breeding for Panorama last Monday pretended to be somebody she wasn't for months in order to get access and film the breeders.
Blair was closer to a 19th century Liberal PM like Palmerston than he was to the other Labour PMs of the 20th century or indeed Gordon Brown who succeeded him in the 21st
Look at his reaction when he realises that 1. He has been filmed and 2. He has fucked Pfizer snd 3. His career is likely over
i feel for him. But this is not fakery or clever editing
https://twitter.com/thenancypeelosi/status/1618886446206840832?s=61&t=byfcuBUVTOTx3bUpWKef4g
At the moment, the war is giving the west rewards far in excess of what we are spending. One of the two big powers we've spent countless trillions over decades to counter, is being worn down, and potentially defeated, for around $50 billion (and that's a maximum figure via rather creative accounting).
The US spent about $2 trillion on the Iraq war alone, and lost thousands of soldiers and contractors.
The bang-for-buck that the US and west are getting from this war is incredible 'value'. Not that we wanted it, but it is turning the feared Russian army into very much a third-tier military, whose only unusual power is nukes.
However the UK has never taken a leading role in Eastern Europe, it has been part of the Holy Roman Empire, the Austro Hungarian Empire and fought over by them, the Ottoman Empire and Turks and Russians and part of the Prussian and then German Empires too. In WW1 it was again divided between the Russians, Germans and Austro Hungarians and in WW2 by the Nazis and Soviet Union (who then took over most of it until the end of the Cold War).
The UK's European focus has always been on containing the power of Spain and the France and ultimately Germany ie western Europe. Eastern Europe has not been a major concern for it
CEO > President > EVP > SVP > VP > Senior Director > Director
Salisbury wouldn't be much better pleased, nor would Lloyd George. As for Neville Chamberlain...
Palmerston would also be slightly surprised given he became PM during the Crimean War.
IMV the idea that there is a form of Communism that is soft, cuddly and will work is sadly an foolish one, and one that is often used to hide the evils of red-in-tooth-and-claw communism that has always been tried.
Didn't someone in the media call themselves a 'liberal communist' or somesuch?