');
The Unz Review •ï¿½An Alternative Media Selection$
A Collection of Interesting, Important, and Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media
RSS
Show by ⇅�
Email This Page to Someone

�Remember My Information



=>
Topics Filter? ❌
Blogging China Climate Change Convergence Core Article Corruption Democracy Demography Economy Education Elections Energy Finance Forecasts Foreign Policy Futurism Geopolitics Georgia Germany History Human Rights Humor Imperialism International Comparisons International Relations Islam Islamophobia Liberal Opposition Medvedev Military Moscow NATO Obama Opinion Poll Politics Public Health Putin Putin Derangement Syndrome Russia Russophobes Society Soviet Union Translations UK Ukraine USA War Western Hypocrisy Western Media 2008-south-ossetia-war 2010 Census 2012 US Elections 9/11 Abortion Academia Admin Aesthetics Afghanistan Africa Aging Agriculture AGW Denial Ahmadinejad Airborne Laser Aircraft Carriers Al Gore Al Jazeera Al Qaeda Alcohol Alcoholism Alexander Hamilton Alexei Kudrin Alexei Navalny Anarchism Anatoly Karlin Andrei Korotayev Anthropology Anti-Semitism Apocalypse Arab Spring Arabs ARCS Of Progress Arctic Civilization Arctic Methane Release Arctic Resources Arctic Sea Ice Melting Argentina Armenia Art Arts/Letters Australia Austria authoritarianism Azerbaijan Bahrain Baltics Barbarians Beer Belarus Berezovsky Big History Bolivarian Revolution Brazil BRICs Britain California Canada Capitalism Cars Caucasus CCTV CEC Censorship Central Asia Chechnya Chinese Communist Party Chinese Economy Chinese History Chinese Language Christianity Christmas CIA Class Climate Cliodynamics CNN CO2 Emissions Coal Cold War Collapse Party Colmar Von Der Goltz Colombia Communism Consciousness Conservatism Constantinople Copenhagen Summit Corruption Perceptions Index Crime Crisis Cuba Culture Czech Republic David Frum David Moser Death Death Penalty Demographic Transition Demoscope Development Diabetes Digital Philosophy Dmitry Medvedev Domestication Dostoevsky Drought Drugs Dubai Earth Day Economic History Economist Democracy Index Egypt EMP Weapons Enemy Belligerent Act Of 2010 Environment EROEI Espionage Ester Boserup Estonia Eurasia Europe European History Evolution falsifiable-predictions Fantasy Fascism fat-diets FEL Weapons FEMEN fertility-rate Fertility Rates Financial Times Finland Flynn Effect Food Foreign Policy Fossil Fuels France Francis Fukuyama Free Trade Freedom Friedrich List Gail The Actuary Gaza Flotilla Raid Gender Relations Genetic Engineering Geography George Friedman George Kennan George Will Glenn Greenwald Global Warming Globalization GMD Goldman Sachs Graham Turner grains Great Depression Great Powers Greece Green Green Party USA Guantanamo Guardian Guardian Censorship Guest Hanzi Hashemi Rafsanjani Healthcare Hezbollah Hillary Clinton Himachal Pradesh Hindu Caste System Hist�kai Hitler HIV/AIDS homicides Hubbert's Peak Huey Long Human Biodiversity human-capital Ibn Khaldun ICBMs Ice Age Iceland Ideologies immigrants Immigration incarceration-rate India Indonesia industrialization Inequality Inequality Inflation Infrastructure inosmi Intellectual Property Internet interview Interviews IPCC IQ Iran Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program Iraq Ireland Islamism Israel Italy Ivan Bloch James Cameron James Kunstler James Lovelock Japan Jared Diamond Jews Jim O'neill Joe Biden Joe Lieberman John McCain John Michael Greer Jorge Luis Borges Joseph Tainter Journalism Kant Kenneth Pomeranz Khamenei khodorkovsky Kompromat Kremlin Clans kremlinology la-russophobe Laissez-faire Languages Latin America Law Law Learning Liberalism Liberia Libya Life life-expectancy Limits To Growth Linguistics Literacy Literature Living Standards LNG Lobbying london luke-harding Malnutrition Malthus Malthusian Loop Malthusianism Manufacturing maps Markets Marxism Massive Ordnance Penetrator Max Weber me Media Medicine Mercenaries Mexico Middle Ages Middle East Migration Milan Kundera Militarization Military History Military Technology Mitt Romney Moltke The Elder Monarchy Money Morocco Mortality Music Nationalism Natural Gas Nazism Near Abroad New York New York Times news-2008 Niall Ferguson Nick Bostrom Nick Eberstadt Nirvana Norman Finkelstein North Korea Nuclear Nuclear Energy Nuclear Power Nuclear Weapons Nutrition NYT Obesity Occupy Occupy Wall Street Oil oligarchs open-discussion Open Thread orientalism Orinoco Belt Orthodoxy Pakistan Palestine Pastoralism Pat Buchanan Patriot Missiles Paul Chefurka Pax Americana PDVSA Peak Oil People's Liberation Army Peter Turchin Philosophy Philosophy Pigs PIRLS PISA PLAN Poland Polar Regions Police Political Correctness Political Economy Population Growth Poverty Privacy protests Psychology Psychometrics Racism Ray Kurzweil R&D Real Estate Religion RFERL Richard Lynn rise-of-the-rest Robert Ayres Robert Kagan Roman Empire Romance Romanticism RTS Stock Market Russia-Germany Relations Cuisine Russian Demography Russian Far East Russian History Russian Media Russian Orthodox Church Sarah Palin Saudi Arabia Scandinavia Schlieffen Plan schools Schopenhauer Science Science Fiction Science Fiction & Fantasy Scotland Sergey Nefedov sergey-zhuravlev Sex Sex Ratio Shanghai Singapore Singularity Sisyphean Loop Slavoj Zizek SLBMs SM-3 sobornost Social Evolution Socialism Sociobiology Sociology Songun South Korea Debt Soviet History Space space-based-solar-power Spain stalin Statistics Stephen Wolfram Strait Of Hormuz String Of Pearls Suicide Surveillance Sweden Switzerland systems-modeling Taiwan Tamil Nadu Taxes Technology Terrorism THAAD The Bible The Economist The Lancet The Matrix The Oil Drum The Sublime Thermoeconomics Tibet Tim Ferriss TIMSS War Trade Transhumanism Translation Tsarist Russia Turkey Twitter UAE UAVs UC Berkeley Ugo Bardi UN Unemployment Urbanization US Navy US Politics Velayat-e Faqih Venezuela Video Viktor Yushchenko Vladimir Putin Wall Street Welfare Wikileaks Willem Buiter william-burns William Catton Winston Churchill World War I World War II WSJ yulia-latynina Zombies Zoology
Nothing found
� Earlier Items �
BlogAnatoly Karlin Archive
/
�BlogAnatoly Karlin Archive
/

◄►Bookmark◄❌►▲ ▼Toggle AllToC▲▼Add to LibraryRemove from Library •ï¿½B
Show CommentNext New CommentNext New ReplyRead More
ReplyAgree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
AgreeDisagreeThanksLOLTroll
These buttons register your public Agreement, Disagreement, Thanks, LOL, or Troll with the selected comment. They are ONLY available to recent, frequent commenters who have saved their Name+Email using the 'Remember My Information' checkbox, and may also ONLY be used three times during any eight hour period.
Ignore Commenter Follow Commenter
Of Rats and Men
•ï¿½April 25, 2013
•ï¿½1,300 Words •ï¿½5 Comments
This is a (very preliminary) prologue to a sci-fi novel I've been thinking of writing for some time. It's called 100 YEARS TO VICTORY, but obviously liable to change. My sole question is: Would you continue reading the rest of this book? It’s been nearly a decade since I built my first cage. It was... Read More
Review of "Black Sun Rising" by C.S. Friedman
•ï¿½April 15, 2013
•ï¿½1,500 Words •ï¿½1 Comment
Black Sun Rising (Book 1 of the Coldfire Trilogy) by C.S. Friedman, published in 1991. Rating: 3/5. The Coldfire Trilogy is sometimes described as a successful fusion of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. So what better work to start reviewing on this site? I will be forthright: By far the most wondrous and intriguing element of... Read More
Moscow Isn't Another Country
•ï¿½April 3, 2012
•ï¿½500 Words •ï¿½11 Comments
There is a certain Russian expression: "МоÑква — не РоÑÑиÑ" (i.e. Moscow, isn't Russia), to denote the idea that while the capital may be rich, at least by Russian standards, the rest of the country languishes in grinding poverty. This is a trope is frequently taken up by the Western media, which at times presents... Read More
Seven Myths About the Russian Elections
•ï¿½April 1, 2012
•ï¿½1,300 Words •ï¿½11 Comments
Apart from direct falsifications, which were extensively discussed here, the other really big criticism of the Russian elections process is that it isn't a level playing field. As said by an OSCE bureaucrat, "The point of elections is that the outcome should be uncertain. This was not the case in Russia." Well wait a second.... Read More
List of Estimates On Fraud In Russia’s 2012 Presidential Elections
•ï¿½March 21, 2012
•ï¿½900 Words •ï¿½1 Comment
This post is a follow-up to a similar one for the 2011 Duma elections. It contains an extensive list of blogger, pundit and “expert†opinions on the extent of fraud in the 2011 Duma elections. Interspersed among these opinions and analyses are results from federal opinion polls, election monitors, and other evidence. In general, it... Read More
Why Statistics Only Support 3%-6% Fraud
•ï¿½March 21, 2012
•ï¿½700 Words •ï¿½5 Comments
Remember Sergey Shpilkin? He is the mathematician, blogging as podmoskovnik, who estimated 16% fraud for the Duma elections (also the one whom the WSJ plagiarized off). He got this figure by assuming that in a fair election, the share of the vote for each candidate at each level of turnout had to be a constant... Read More
The World's Sleaziest Magazine On Putin's Election Victory
•ï¿½March 9, 2012
•ï¿½400 Words •ï¿½33 Comments
It's all so predictable. In its main piece on the elections, The Economist wrote: Note that the "at least" (my emphasis) part is supposed to give the impression that Putin's result may well have been less than the 50% needed to avoid a second round, thus making him illegitimate. They totally glide over the inconvenient... Read More
Quiz: Did This Happen In Russia or A Democratic Country?
•ï¿½March 9, 2012
•ï¿½1,200 Words •ï¿½1 Comment
Did you know that elections in Britain and the US are marred by mass fraud? At least that would be the inescapable conclusion if they were to be subjected to the most popular methods to "prove" that Russian elections are rigged in favor of Putin and United Russia. Below I have a translated a delightful... Read More
Prokhorov, President of Londongrad
•ï¿½March 7, 2012
•ï¿½1,400 Words •ï¿½19 Comments
Once again, a picture that's worth a thousand words, courtesy of Alex Kireev: A map of how Russians abroad voted in the 2012 elections (see below). Quantitatively, they split into three main groupings, each accounting for about a third of the votes from abroad: (1) Residents of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Pridnestrovie; (2) Other republics... Read More
Russia's Mortality from Vices On the Decline
•ï¿½March 7, 2012
•ï¿½200 Words •ï¿½6 Comments
Sometimes a single picture is worth a thousand words. This is one. Though Russia remains a highly dangerous country by developed country standards, it has improved immeasurably in the past decade. Fewer Russians today die from alcohol poisonings, homicides, suicides, and even - despite a near doubling of car ownership rates - transport accidents that... Read More
Why Golos' Own Figures Support Only 3%-6% Fraud
•ï¿½March 6, 2012
•ï¿½2,000 Words •ï¿½18 Comments
Since yesterday, the following image from an article by liberal journalist Evgenya Albats has been making the rounds on the Internet. It shows that whereas Putin's official tally was 65%, independent observers put it close to or below the 50% marker that would necessitate a second round, such as Golos' 51% and Citizen Observer's 45%.... Read More
The Provincialization of Russian Electoral Fraud
•ï¿½March 5, 2012
•ï¿½1,800 Words •ï¿½12 Comments
Analysis of the election data is now trickling in, so I feel I can now make some real preliminary estimates of the degree of fraud (eventually, I will compile a list of estimates as I did for the 2011 elections). My assessment is that in these elections it was on the order of 3%-4%, which... Read More
Winners of the Election Predictions Contest
•ï¿½March 5, 2012
•ï¿½500 Words •ï¿½10 Comments
Before the 2012 Russian Presidential elections, 23 particularly courageous (or foolhardy?) netizens and Russia watchers participated in a contest on this blog to predict its results for the chance of eternal glory and a free S/O T-Shirt. The winner is the person with the least aggregate error, i.e. the sum of the absolute discrepancies between... Read More
Preliminary Thoughts On the Election Results
•ï¿½March 4, 2012
•ï¿½1,000 Words •ï¿½19 Comments
Latest results are getting in that Putin got 63.8%. That a second round would be avoided was never really in serious doubt for the past month, nonetheless the election would still be important from several other perspectives, such as the level of falsifications (in particular, in comparison with 2011), and the relative performance of Zhirinovsky,... Read More
My (Second) Article On the Russian Elections At al Jazeera
•ï¿½March 4, 2012
•ï¿½4 Comments
Here it is: Reading the Russian election. Please comment at their site, rather than here, if possible.
Italy, A Showcase for Why Human Capital Matters
•ï¿½March 2, 2012
•ï¿½600 Words •ï¿½25 Comments
One of the key criticisms of my last post on the tight connections between (educational) human capital and economic performance is that correlation need not imply causation. An alternate (and PC-compliant) explanation is that "you get the education system you could afford, and the level of human capital in the kids is mostly determined by... Read More
Predict the Results of the 2012 Russian Presidential Election
•ï¿½March 2, 2012
•ï¿½400 Words •ï¿½52 Comments
Inspired by Kireev's similar posts in Russian, I'm asking S/O readers to predict (1) The official results of the elections, and (2) The actual, i.e. non-falsified, results. Please give them to one decimal point, and include all the five candidates as well as the share of invalid votes. They will be displayed in the table... Read More
Education as the Elixir of Growth III
•ï¿½February 25, 2012
•ï¿½2,800 Words •ï¿½20 Comments
Just in case you thought the correlation between human capital and economic development was an artifice of the post-socialist world, here is a similar graph (R2=0.4273) for all the world's countries that have participated in the Math and Science portions of the PISA or TIMMS (8th grade) international standardized student assessments. The methodology is the... Read More
The Profound Irrelevance of Corruption, Institutions, and Ease of Business to Economic Growth
•ï¿½February 23, 2012
•ï¿½1,500 Words •ï¿½64 Comments
That title sure caught you attention? Good. Now for the 1000-words-in-a-picture evidence. Human capital refers to educational attainment, as measured by the results of the PISA and TIMMS standardized tests*. As you can see, there is a very close correlation between human capital and GDP (PPP) per capita. The exceptions all confirm the rule. For... Read More
Translation: Sergey Zhuravlev - the Reversal of the "Russian Cross"
•ï¿½February 23, 2012
•ï¿½2,900 Words •ï¿½1 Comment
Sergey Zhuravlev is a Russian economist who runs a wonky but eminently readable and very useful, interesting blog and writes for Expert (author profile), which I may add is an excellent publication. You have met him previously on my blog as the inventor of a clever - if, in my opinion, flawed - argument that... Read More
Making Sense of Russia's Arms Binge
•ï¿½February 21, 2012
•ï¿½1,200 Words •ï¿½15 Comments
In the wake of Putin's article on national security for Rossiyskaya Gazeta, there has been renewed interest in Russia's ambitious military modernization plans for the next decade. I am not a specialist in this (unlike Dmitry Gorenberg and Mark Galeotti, whom I highly recommend), but I do think I can bring much-needed facts and good... Read More
Russia's Demographic Crisis Has Ended
•ï¿½February 21, 2012
•ï¿½600 Words •ï¿½7 Comments
I will have a much longer and detailed post on this in the future, with new projections, but this breaking news (at least as far as it comes with dry demographic statistics) so I can't refrain from writing a preliminary post on the matter. For all intents and purposes, Russia's demographic crisis - the infamous... Read More
And the Wheel Spins On
•ï¿½February 18, 2012
•ï¿½300 Words •ï¿½8 Comments
[youtube= "Despite it being a sad and fearful prospect, in my opinion a totalitarian reversion for a certain period of time is possible. But the danger lies not in the law enforcement agencies, the power organs, and not even the Army, but in our own mentalities - our people's, our population's, in ourselves. It all... Read More
Navalny's Petty Racism
•ï¿½February 18, 2012
•ï¿½200 Words •ï¿½36 Comments
A few weeks back Navalny brought my attention to this lovely song extolling Putin's achievements by Tolibjon Kurbankhanov, a Tajik singer from Dushanbe. [youtube= Navalny exhorts his minions to spread this clip far and wide. The writing between the lines is obvious. His reasons aren't nice and altruistic, but utterly insidious, playing on xenophobia towards... Read More
Whiskey Trickles Into Russia's Drinking Culture
•ï¿½February 6, 2012
•ï¿½900 Words •ï¿½49 Comments
Russia has a long and proud drinking culture; according to the chronicle of its founding, the main reason it chose Christianity over Islam was the latter’s prohibition of booze. Vodka has been distilled there since at least the 12th century. As of the time of writing, it is the world’s largest spirits market by volume... Read More
Far More People Protested for Putin Than Against, But You Wouldn't Know It from the Western Media
•ï¿½February 5, 2012
•ï¿½700 Words •ï¿½113 Comments
The above photo, part of a photo report by Ridus, shows the Anti-Orange protest at Poklonnaya Gora in Moscow on February 4th. Does that look like 35,000 people to you, let alone 20,000 or 15,000? Because those were the most commonly cited figures in the Western media, apart from those cases where they ignored them... Read More
Why China Is Far Superior to India
•ï¿½February 4, 2012
•ï¿½1,300 Words •ï¿½168 Comments
It is not a secret to longtime readers of this blog that I rate India's prospects far more pessimistically than I do China's. My main reason is I do not share the delusion that democracy is a panacea and that whatever advantage in this sphere India has is more than outweighed by China's lead in... Read More
Unofficial Early Voting for the Russian President
•ï¿½February 2, 2012
•ï¿½19 Comments
[AK: All old polls are gone - reason, but I recall Putin winning with a good 70% or so.]
Are Russians As Rich As Czechs?
•ï¿½January 31, 2012
•ï¿½300 Words •ï¿½20 Comments
In terms of new cars, they now are. According to 2011 statistics, Russians bought 17.6 new automobiles per 1000 people. This indicator is still quite a bit below most of Western Europe, such as Germany's 38.5, France's 33.4, Britain's 31.9, Italy's 30.1, and Spain's 20.0. However, it has already overtaken most of East-Central Europe, whose... Read More
Introducing the Journalism Security Index (JSI)
•ï¿½January 30, 2012
•ï¿½1,900 Words •ï¿½5 Comments
The Press Freedom Index issues by Reporters Without Borders is a good starting point for assessing journalistic freedoms in global comparative perspective. However, much like all attempts to measure democracy or Transparency International's assessment of corruption perception, their methodology relies on tallying a number of intangibles that cannot be objectively estimated: Censorship, self-censorship, legal framework,... Read More
Karlin Freedom Index 2012
•ï¿½January 24, 2012
•ï¿½1,000 Words •ï¿½26 Comments
This is the Karlin Freedom Index for 2012, a political classification system I formulated more than a year ago in response to systemic bias on the part of traditional "freedom indices" such as Freedom House and The Economist Democracy Index (hint: they give massive bonus points for neoliberalism and pro-Western foreign policy orientations). The explanation:... Read More
Is the US Still A Liberal Democracy?
•ï¿½January 23, 2012
•ï¿½800 Words •ï¿½23 Comments
In the years since 9/11, the US has built a mosaic of national security powers that undermine its claim to be the "land of the free." According to this useful summary by Jonathan Turley, these include: Assassination of its own citizens; warrantless searches; use of secret evidence and secret courts; the rise of an unaccountable... Read More
Translation: Sergey Lukyanenko - I Will Vote for Putin
•ï¿½January 23, 2012
•ï¿½1,800 Words •ï¿½30 Comments
Courtesy of Evgeny's comment at Mark Adomanis' blog, I found a very interesting piece by Sergey Lukyanenko - the bestselling Russian sci-fi writer best known for his Night Watch series, which was later converted into Russia's first blockbuster film in 2004 - on the recent turmoil in Russian politics. It is a bit dated, from... Read More
New Year Special: 2012 Predictions
•ï¿½January 3, 2012
•ï¿½4,000 Words •ï¿½215 Comments
It's been a great year! To recap, in rough chronological order, 2011 saw: The most popular post (with 562 comments and counting; granted, most of them consisting of Indians and Pakistanis flaming each other); Visualizing the Kremlin Clans (joint project with Kevin Rothrock of A Good Treaty); my National Comparisons between life in Russia, Britain,... Read More
The Argument for Compulsory Voting In Russia
•ï¿½December 30, 2011
•ï¿½1,000 Words •ï¿½27 Comments
One of the central (I would argue, the central) conundrum of all discussions about Russian elections fraud at the macro-scale is that the major pieces of evidence simply don't fit together. On the one hand, you have pre-elections polls that uniformly gave United Russia 50% or more of the vote; in fact, the last Levada... Read More
United Russia Steals Votes, and the WSJ Steals Others' Work
•ï¿½December 30, 2011
•ï¿½1,300 Words •ï¿½13 Comments
On December 28th, the WSJ published an article on "Russia's Dubious Election" by Gregory White and Rob Barry (it's behind a paywall, but you can read it here). In it they described the most famous argument for the 15% Club (i.e., the purported scale of fraud in the 2011 Duma elections) - namely, that of... Read More
List of Estimates On Fraud In Russia's 2011 Duma Elections
•ï¿½December 27, 2011
•ï¿½2,000 Words •ï¿½33 Comments
Despite Olga Kryshtanovskaya's disapproval, I thought it would be interesting and useful to compile a comprehensive list of blogger, pundit and "expert" opinions on the extent of fraud in the 2011 Duma elections. Interspersed among these opinions and analyses are results from federal opinion polls and other evidence. In general, it seems we can identify... Read More
Measuring Churov's Beard: the Mathematics of Russian Election Fraud
•ï¿½December 26, 2011
•ï¿½6,100 Words •ï¿½29 Comments
In the aftermath of the 2011 Duma elections, the Russian blogosphere was abuzz with allegations of electoral fraud. Many of these were anecdotal or purely rhetorical in nature; some were more concrete, but variegated or ambiguous. A prime example of these were opinion polls and exit polls, which variably supported and contradicted the Kremlin's claims... Read More
What They Say After: the Post-Elections Polls
•ï¿½December 22, 2011
•ï¿½1,400 Words •ï¿½49 Comments
Citing evidence revolving around pre-elections opinion polls and exit polls, in my Al Jazeera article on the Russian Duma elections I made the argument that "the aggregate level of falsifications is probably at around five per cent, and almost certainly less than ten per cent" (with the caveat that it was far worse in several... Read More
Al Jazeera On Elections and White Ribbons
•ï¿½December 15, 2011
•ï¿½100 Words •ï¿½15 Comments
Russia's winter of discontent? from Al Jazeera's Stream. Overall, fairly balanced. I appear at 8:50 to ask a question about the suspicious timing - two months before the actual elections - of the creation of the website promoting the White Ribbon as the symbol of the anti-Kremlin protests. Generally speaking, I'm skeptical about the more... Read More
Kremlin Oligarch Brutally Censors Long-Suffering Russian Media (From Printing Gratuitous Profanities)
•ï¿½December 15, 2011
•ï¿½1,200 Words •ï¿½35 Comments
Imagine a respected American financial newspaper such as the WSJ writes an article investigating elections fraud in favor of the Democrats. To illustrate the rightness of their point, they include a photo of a ballot for the Republicans that - they allege - wasn't tallied by the dodgy Solyndra machines rolled out for use in... Read More
My Article On the Russian Elections At al Jazeera
•ï¿½December 11, 2011
•ï¿½600 Words •ï¿½57 Comments
The long-promised post is out, but not here but at Al Jazeera: Truth and falsifications in Russia. It has also been translated into Russian at Inosmi.ru (Правда и фальÑификации в РоÑÑии). In the spirit of democracy, I am adopting Alexander Kireev's poll (kireev) to ask you guys what YOU think about how falsified these elections... Read More
All Opinion Polls Relevant to Russia's 2011 Duma Elections
•ï¿½December 8, 2011
•ï¿½100 Words •ï¿½83 Comments
For now I'm just making the data available without commentary. Make of it what you will. Levada (18-21 Nov), VCIOM (19-20 Nov), and ISI (4-10 Nov) predictions of election results based on polls. Election results as of Dec 9th 2011, 16:55 Moscow time, 99.99% counted. VCIOM (62 regions), FOM (80 regions), and ISI (24 regions)... Read More
A Quick Note On Russia's Duma Elections 2011
•ï¿½December 3, 2011
•ï¿½800 Words •ï¿½185 Comments
On reading Western commentary on the upcoming Russian Duma elections, I realized that they can't decide between two narratives: either the popularity of United Russia is sinking faster than Herman Cain's following his sex abuse scandals, thus meaning that it will manipulate the votes to get its desired majority; or Russian elections are complete shams... Read More
The Race to Collapse
•ï¿½November 25, 2011
•ï¿½1,900 Words •ï¿½79 Comments
As readers of this blog know, I have long regarded the return of economic crisis as an inevitability (because the core energy and no-growth predicament facing the Western world wasn't solved in 2008-9 but merely kicked further down the road by increasing debt and printing money). It looks like 2012 will be the crunch year,... Read More
Putin the Peaceful?
•ï¿½November 15, 2011
•ï¿½200 Words •ï¿½78 Comments
At least, surely more so than Obama, winner of 2009's Nobel Peace Prize. Let's do it by the numbers. Russia under Putin fought one war, in response to Georgian aggression against Ossetians with Russian citizenship and UN-mandated Russian peacekeepers. In contrast, Obama has participated in two wars of aggression: the Iraq War he inherited from... Read More
I Appear On RT to Discuss Occupy Wall Street
•ï¿½November 14, 2011
•ï¿½100 Words •ï¿½21 Comments
Here's the video. Big thanks to the guys at RT, the channel that has been at the forefront of covering OWS for providing me with this opportunity. I was contacted by RT after they noticed my post on why OWS isn't happening in China and Russia. As befits a program aimed at an American audience,... Read More
BRIC's of Stability: Why Occupy Wall Street Isn't Coming to Moscow or Beijing
•ï¿½November 7, 2011
•ï¿½1,000 Words •ï¿½83 Comments
As repeatedly noted by Mark Adomanis, the Russian liberals and the Western media have predicted about 10 of the last zero Russian revolutions. Likewise, the "Jasmine Revolution" in China that was the subject of so much talk about a year ago has fizzled out like a wet firework. Meanwhile, the Arab world remains in the... Read More
Russia Demographic Update VII
•ï¿½October 24, 2011
•ï¿½1,400 Words •ï¿½63 Comments
It is now increasingly evident that Russia's population has settled on a small but decidedly firm upwards growth trend. I have been vindicated. According to the latest data, in the first eight months of the year births fell by 1.4% (12.5/1000 to 12.3/1000) and deaths fell by 6.2% (from 14.6/1000 to 13.7/1000) relative to the... Read More
3000 AD: the Rise of Polar Civilizations
•ï¿½October 16, 2011
•ï¿½2,700 Words •ï¿½27 Comments
The river of time flows on, and empires crumble, leaving behind only legend that becomes myth, while new polities arise to take their place. This process of decay and creation is going to receive a boost from "peak energy" and, above all, climate change - which will redraw the maps of power to an extent... Read More
� Earlier Items �
Anatoly Karlin
About Anatoly Karlin

I am a blogger, thinker, and businessman in the SF Bay Area. I’m originally from Russia, spent many years in Britain, and studied at U.C. Berkeley.

One of my tenets is that ideologies tend to suck. As such, I hesitate about attaching labels to myself. That said, if it’s really necessary, I suppose “liberal-conservative neoreactionary†would be close enough.

Though I consider myself part of the Orthodox Church, my philosophy and spiritual views are more influenced by digital physics, Gnosticism, and Russian cosmism than anything specifically Judeo-Christian.