kojinshugi

why is the blog in reverse order?

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That is all.

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I’m not dead, just a ghost running back to my corpse with a 50% movement speed bonus.

Yeah, I did the dumbest thing and installed that free 14-day trial of World of Warcraft I’d had lying around for over a year, back in October.

So between my new full-time job, my freelance job, WoW, and whatever scraps of real life left over from those three, I’m finding zero time to blog. Not only that, there’s not so much to say these days. But if I have something to say, I will.

As for my double life in the Kingdom of Azeroth, you can find me on the EST PvE server Arygos, trying hard to adjust to my recently respecced prot warrior, Unigolyn. I’ve also got some alts but they’re mostly for quiet time, plus the highest is only lvl 16.

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Went fishin’. Back now.

Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union New Reformed Russia:

BBC: Russia restarts Cold War patrols

Russia is resuming a Soviet-era practice of sending its bomber aircraft on long-range flights, President Vladimir Putin has said.

Mr Putin said the move to resume the flights permanently after a 15-year suspension was in response to security threats posed by other military powers.

Uh-huh. “Other military powers”. Gotta love the US response though:

“If Russia feels as though they want to take some of these old aircraft out of mothballs and get them flying again, that’s their decision,” [State Department spokesman Sean McCormack] told reporters.

Heh.

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Why can’t this be my real portfolio, instead of my pretend one? AAPL looks to be heading towards $150 and a split.

Oh, yeah, I don’t have a 100K lying around anywhere.

Man, if I’d bought $1,000,000 worth of AAPL in September 2002, right now my stock would be worth $15,733,000. A guy could live out his days on a tropical island for that kind of cash.

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Peteris Cedrins writes about Russian historical revisionism. An excerpt:

Again, look at the language that’s once again au courant. Not only did Estonia “desecrate” a tomb (by moving unmarked graves from a well-trodden bus stop to a cemetery following identification of the bodies and a church service?) — Estonia is “rehabilitating fascism.” Just for fun, I perused my collection of old Soviet history books this morning. I’m afraid that many of those who lacked the sacred privilege of indoctrination don’t realize that “fascist” in the Soviet lexicon, and in the Russian lexicon today, is practically a synonym for “Balt.” It might be difficult for the uninitiated Western European to distinguish between the broad terms that make Soviet historiography unreadable in their density — “bourgeois,” “anti-Soviet,” “enemy of the people,” “fascist.” Maybe that’s because the definitions are indeed indistinct. Let’s move to verbs — “rewriting” history. “Revising” the outcome of the War. Excuse me, but should we, in some perverse allegiance to the “theocratic dimension of the Soviet system,” stick to Stalin’s scriptures? The outcome of the War has been revised, Gott sei dank. The outcome of the War was the enslavement of half of Europe by forces directed from the Kremlin, where Lt. Col. Putin, a proud KGBeshnik who thinks the collapse of the USSR was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th C” rules today — perhaps we should also pretend to see the fall of the Soviet Union as a catastrophe, here in the Baltics?

Read the whole thing.

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If you ask me where I lie on the political spectrum, I will unhesitantly say that I’m a liberal. I believe in the individual’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of whatever emotional state they feel compelled to follow. The name of my blog, in fact, is (ironically, since it is an anathema in their culture) Japanese for “individualism”.

But I am also a nationalist. This word is poorly defined in English. The Estonian word, “rahvuslane”, derives from the word “rahvus”, meaning “ethnicity”. The English word, “nation”, is something more cold and calculating, a political entity. In Estonian, it is most aptly understood as someone who believes in the right of a people to exist and decide their destiny.

How do I reconcile my individualistic beliefs with this collectivist notion of “a people”? To be fair, at times, I don’t. But on a visceral level, I see no conflict. It is simply a matter of priorities.

This is very hard for someone whose ethnicity is secure to understand. Let alone people whose ethnicity has nothing to do with their nationality. The great Australian anthem, True Blue, asks:

True Blue, is it me and you?
Is it Mum and Dad, is it a cockatoo?
Is it standing by your mate
When he’s in a fight?
Or just Vegemite
True Blue, I’m asking you… *

This is a true and trying question to an Australian, whose ethnicity is mostly undefined. They are the descendants of British peoples, their language is a regional dialect of English (itself a mish-mash of French and Anglo-Saxon). I don’t think an Australian can ever grasp the notion of being part of a people, just part of a society, part of a shared history.

Eestlane olen ja eestlaseks jään
Sest mind eestlaseks loodi
Eestlane olla on uhke ja hää
Vabalt vaarisa moodi

This is one of the most remembered songs of the Singing Revolution. It translates roughly as:

I am Estonian and Estonian I will remain
For I was made an Estonian
To be Estonian is good and worthy of pride
Like my fathers before me

Change “Estonian” to “German”, and you’d get something Hitler would have approved of. But here’s the huge, gigantic difference between Estonian group-identity and the German thousand-year reich - chauvinism. Estonians don’t believe that being Estonian is objectively better than being German. Our history alone will attest to the fact that, materially, being German is significantly better. After all, they ruled over us as feudal lords for nigh a millennium. Germany today is richer and larger than Estonia.

This is why the term “nationalism” is so misleading. It fails to make the distinction between large, unendangered ethnic groups, and small peoples who have managed to retain their
identity despite the unending efforts of the aforementioned bigger groups to extuingish them. Taking pride in one’s Germanness, or Englishness on an ethnic level is grotesque. It stinks of racial purity. These large peoples have recourse in their history in the form of achievements.

Estonians didn’t have the opportunity to make their mark on the world until the early 20th century, and even then only briefly. Now that we have regained our freedom, we have, at breakneck speed, striven to be all we can be in the economically and culturally measurable. I don’t think we’re doing too bad at any of that.

But the crowning achievement of our people is the fact that we perservered and remained ourselves. Despite being trodden upon by the rest of the world for close to a thousand years, despite being ruled as chattel slaves by German, Swedish, Danish, and Russian “nobles”, we survived. We kept our language, we kept our superstitions, we kept our songs, we kept our disgusting food. We never produced the Magna Carta. We never discovered the Laws of Motion. We never built the Volkswagen or stepped foot on the Moon. But we did the greatest thing a tiny, oppressed and overrun nation could - we remained ourselves.

This is why we enact language laws in our tiny country, that seem draconian to some (almost always due to the help of a little Russian chauvinist exaggeration). Because this has always been our home, and despite its geopolitical importance, it is not a large swath of land we stake claim to. Because we believe that our ancestors souls live on in the language and culture of their descendants, and that no Estonian has reason to call himself that unless he fights for that language and that culture.

The entire state of Estonia should not exist unless for our endangered-people nationalism. And would the Russians, the Belorussians, the Azeris and Azerbaidjanis and Armenians and North Koreans here really prefer this country to be just another Russian oblast, with the accompanying piss-poor economy, lack of political freedom and anti-minority politics?

And by the blood of our men and the tears of our women, we won the right of self-determination, from 1918 to 1920. And thereby we won the responsibility to go it alone. Because there exists what seems to be a natural ally for us in the psyche of the Western world. Multi-culturalism is a virtue. Guilty left-wing WASPs bend over backwards to provide any spurious claim of aboriginalism a veritable feast of government cheese and inconsequential pseudo-autonomy. But any people that does more than whine is branded “nationalist”. The Inuit are a First Nation. The Basques are nationalists. The Australian aboriginese have been grievously wronged. Chechnya is Russia’s internal matter.

Note that I am not defending the violent tactics of the Basques or the Chechens, although this is all too common an Estonian failing, if myopic compassion towards other suffering and oppressed peoples can be called that. I think that perhaps the most defining achievement of Estonians is that we did not succumb to barbaric violence in fighting for our cause. Where is the Basque Chain? Where are the half a million Chechens singing in unison? In appropriating the tactics of the chauvinist peoples, these small nations have weakened their moral right to exist.

“If you don’t like it here, then go back to Russia” is a treasonous sentiment in the United States, because that country is built on individualism. And they have rightly won their position in the world because of this basis. But the same statement in tiny Estonia is completely sensible. Because this country, distinct from Russia, is distinct because of one thing, and one thing only - the Estonian people, outnumbered by Russians 150 to one. We welcome guests, we welcome other ethnicities, but only if they want to become part of Estonian society. If your Russian ethnicity is so important to you, then the largest country in the world is situated right on our eastern border, filled with Russians and opportunities to be a Russian.

But since Russians have never been in danger of ceasing to exist as an ethnic group, I can only think of ignoble reasons to pine for such an opportunity. Isn’t the material well-being and future of your children worth more to you than the defense of something that isn’t even under attack? If not, why? And I think pride in your ethnic background is a pretty weak endorsement of your ancestors if there are 150 million of you. How about doing what large nations do and make something of yourselves, and not at the expense of others this time.

(* an explanation of True Blue for people unfamiliar with Australians: True Blue, is it me and you? True Blue means “a true Australian”, and the song is asking what that is - is it all Australians? Is it Mum and Dad, is it a cockatoo? Is it our parents, is it our national symbol? Is it standing by your mate When he’s in a fight? Is it the perceived Australian trait of sticking together in a bind? Or just Vegemite? Or is it really meaningless, like the yeast extract sandwich spread Australian ex-pats crave for when abroad? True Blue, I’m asking you… True Australians, say what the answer is.)

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Not a socialist? Check.

Criticized by supporters of Chirac and Villepin? Check.

Called the French rioters “thugs”? Check.

But all is not well in Gay Paree:

He also advocated reducing the separation of church and state, including the government subsidy of mosques in order to encourage Islamic integration into French society. He flatly opposes financing of religious institutions with funds from outside France. There has also been controversy over his attitude to the Church of Scientology — which has itself been the subject of significant controversy in France — after meeting with Tom Cruise.

Now, the first part is kind of explainable. Perhaps it’s not the worst strategy, in theory, to close down extremist mosques with Saudi funding and replace them with government-selected imams in state-funded mosques. Too little, too late perhaps, and also ignorant of the self-selecting nature of whatever body okays the imams. Five years after the law is initially enforced, who do you think will care enough about imam-selection to get on the board that does the selecting? Secularly-minded Frenchmen or Algerians with an axe to grind?

But anyone who gives Scientology the time of day, is a flaming retard.

But Segolene Royal? Wow.

Royal promised a SMIC (minimum wage) of 1,500 euros per month and 90% of salary for year after losing job.

1,500 euros per month? Whiskey tango foxtrot? With their 35-hour work week, this comes to $14.5 US an hour, or a whopping $16 Canadian. That’s insane.

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