Tag Archives: en

The myth of a punctual German

I had to deal a lot with Germans the last three or four years. One thing I could not help noticing is that they are never on time. Well, no, that’s an exaggeration, of course, sometimes they are punctual but that “sometimes” is actually such a rare happenstance that it becomes exceptional on the common background of everyone being late nearly all the time.

Where did the myth of German punctuality come from? Were they actually punctual some time in the past? I do not know. What I know is that I came to expect a person from any other place on Earth to be more punctual than your average German.

People often say to me that “look, but their trains run perfectly on schedule, the buses are on time!” Well, those only run punctually because they have (technically) a lot of leeway. The buses and trains and whatever not runs on time (and sometimes ahead of time) simply because they have a large margin built into the schedule. They go, basically, half the speed most of the time, making the transport sluggish and inefficient. Compared to the Japanese transport system the German trains make one yawn.

And the trains are not people. People do not leave themselves leeway. They simply run late. All of them. All the time. Business partners, colleagues, doctors, teachers, police, homeowners and waiters. All of them make each other wait. Every day. All the time. The whole country.… -->

continue reading →

When Russians honestly lay down their arms, the rest raise and take aim

Columnist of “Komsomolskaya Pravda” Dmitry Olshansky muses the question: when all Russian forces tried to be friends with the West, what was prepared as response to them by the “civilized world”?

There is a popular rhetoric (both Moscow and Kiev, the U.S., then everywhere): “We are not against Russia. And we are not against the Russians. We are against Putin. We are against Asian, brutal dictatorship. Against the power of the FSB. Against imperial aggression . Besides that – we are the best friends of the Russian people. ”

Reply to this needs to be the following.

Dear friends!

In Russia, during whole fourteen years – from spring 1985, when Chernenko died, and until the spring of 1999, when you started the famous “humanitarian activities” in Yugoslavia – it was all the way you wanted. Two presidents – Gorbachev and Yeltsin – seriously listened to you, believed you, and did almost anything you wanted from them. The empire, continuously retreating, gave away things for free, withdrew troops, gave independence and nearly washed with soap the feet of all free people. TV was full of liberal ideas, and millions of copies of magazines and newspapers filled up with “crimes of Stalin.” The government consisted largely of the same.

Yes, there was the most important thing – the country itself was exactly the way as you all wanted it – all of you, the Moscow’s Tel Aviv patriot, Kolomoyskyi’s fans, and the American ambassador. The whole country wanted “to be friends with America” and “be part of the civilized world.” Euro-integrated, as they say now.

So there you had it all.

And what was the answer of the “civilized world” to this splendor?

And the answer was:

We will not give money.

No “Marshall Plan.”

No neutral countries – everywhere where Russia leaves, NATO comes.

No “rights of Russians” (especially clear in Baltic republics).

No Crimean autonomy (and there was not yet even a trace of the “hand of Moscow”, Crimeans fought all by themselves then).

Ukraine – a country of Ukrainians and Russians, Kiev – the capital of two cultures? Not at all. Ukrainization, People’s Movement of Ukraine and Ukrainian National Assembly.

Transnistria?… -->

continue reading →

Russian villains are back?

The Defense Committee of UK has published its report “Towards the Next Defence and Security Review” in the part that deals with preparedness of NATO today. The report argues that NATO is not well prepared for a war with Russia today.

Russian Federation actions in Ukraine have now raised the prospect, however unlikely, of a Russian attack on a NATO Member State. The risk of a conventional attack by the Russian Federation on a NATO state is low, but NATO needs to take much more action to deter that risk. The risk of an unconventional attack using the “ambiguous warfare” tactics deployed in Ukraine and elsewhere, whilst still small, is more substantial and would be even more difficult to counter.

It feels like if the clock is running backwards. I caught myself looking for the news of the restoration of the Berlin wall. Are we back to the times of “Cold War”? Should we now expect to get a rerun of all those “Red Menace” movies again?

At the same time, it is a little strange to see the admittance that Russia is prepared to operate using all those modern tactics that we are used to seeing from USA these days: cyberwar, infowar, “ambiguous warfare”, etc. We are used to hearing that Russia is laid back and outdated and, quite suddenly, it turns out that NATO has to play the catch-up game. This is … a tad unexpected, isn’t it?… -->

continue reading →

Robert Heinlein, “Citizen of the Galaxy”

Another great book by Robert Anson Heinlein, “Citizen of the Galaxy”, takes us on a miserable planet where slavery is the order of the day. The boy is sold at a local slave market to a beggar, marking a beginning of a truly exceptional relationship and a remarkable story of raising a free spirit in the world full of misery, slavery and deceit. Once the boy grows up and comes back to his home land, he meets the same deceit and slavery under different names there and cannot help but enter the fight again. A great story in memorial of the free spirit of men from a great author. Highly recommended.… -->

continue reading →

“Denial of Service” Attack

My site is under a Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDOS) since yesterday. What it means is that the server may be overloaded some or most of the time, server may crash under the load and you may be unable to reach the website.

I suppose this is one way of expressing disagreement with my views or saying that the information I publish is not welcome by someone. I am not pleased by this attack on my personal web site. On the other hand, I guess this means that I am doing something right.… -->

continue reading →

Fascism is there again

Chairman of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of Russia Sergey Naryshkin said that fascism is lifting its head again on the Russian borders. He said this on Sunday, June 22, at Brest during the meeting-requiem in Brest fortress on the occasion of the National Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Second World War, RIA Novosti reported.

“If schoolbooks are substituted with nationalist surrogate, fascism, unfortunately, once again will raise its head, and, unfortunately, this is what is happening very close to our borders in a brotherly country” – said Naryshkin. According to him, in the XXI century, as in 1941, people defending their homeland again die with the words “Fascism will not pass!”

“The word of “Motherland” is understood identically in Russia, Belarus and all other parts of the previously single country that saved the whole of Europe and the world from fascism,” – he added.

Russian politician stressed that the fortress of Brest holds a special place among the other heroic cities, as it was struck with the first blow of the Germans in 1941.

The event was attended by war veterans who came by the “Memory Train” from Moscow.

Speaker of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of Belarus Vladimir Andreychenko expressed regret that today we see attempts to downplay the contribution of the Soviet Union to the victory over Nazi Germany. “Parliamentarians of Belarus and Russia will exert their will and efforts to keep the post-Soviet space and the Eurasia the territory of peace, friendship and good neighbors,” – he said.

The exhibition “War Museum – the territory of Peace” has opened in Brest Fortress on Sunday.… -->

continue reading →

SS soldier for children in Riga

Riga, the capital of Latvia, has got a new piece of contemporary “art”. There is now a children’s slide in the form of a soldier of the Waffen-SS Grenadier Division in the heart of the Old Town.

The element of the playground near St. Peter’s Cathedral is made of wood and painted pink. Despite the fact that there is no distinctive sculpture the characteristic military shapes of the helmet and weapon identify the figure quite well as an SS soldier holding an assault rifle Stg.44 or MR-44.

During World War II, Latvia has formed two Grenadier Divisions of SS. One of them, 15 Waffen-division (1st Latvian), fought in 1943 in the northern sector of the Eastern Front and in the spring of 1945 receded in Germany. Another one, 19 Waffen-division (2nd Latvian), took part in the fighting in the Pskov region and existed from 1944 to 1945.… -->

continue reading →

The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom

I just watched the BBC Series The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom from 2007. The three one-hour series present a very interesting insight into one of the facets of our society. The basic idea of the movie is to describe the origins of two ideologies of freedom that dominate the world: the positive and negative freedom. The positive freedom is based on an ideology, on an all-encompassing idea that drives people forward, like in Soviet times, for example, while the negative freedom basically justifies “everyone for himself” attitude, promoted by the “free market” ideologists. The interesting part is that the authors conclude that both ideologies cause societies to end up in the same place eventually and then the positive freedom society at least has some ideology while in the negative freedom society people lose all purpose in life.

An absolutely hilarious piece of news from the movie:

… the game theory/free market model is now undergoing interrogation by economists who suspect a more irrational model of behaviour is appropriate and useful. In fact, in formal experiments the only people who behaved exactly according to the mathematical models created by game theory are economists themselves, and psychopaths.

And so it is a very interesting series. Highly recommended.… -->

continue reading →