Russia is building fortifications on the border with Ukraine to prevent the killers it sent there from coming back.
The war with Ukraine is being used in Russia to get rid of the most aggressive, impossible to socialize men who are a great burden on the country’s economy (don’t forget that this is a country where the enormous majority of families has a woman act as the sole breadwinner) and might pose a threat to the regime’s stability.
These surplus men are being spit out into Ukraine and left there to die or do what they will as long as they don’t come back. This population formatting is not Russia’s only reason for continuing the war with Ukraine but it’s one of reasons.
The women will not miss these men because great numbers of men from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have been imported to substitute them. The importees are a lot less likely to engage in social unrest because they are immigrants, they don’t understand the host culture very well, their own cultures are profoundly patriarchal, and they are terrified of deportation.
I fail to think of a group of people in the last 100 years who have been as consistently sacrificed and slaughtered in huge numbers for such a long time as Russian men. It’s a veritable genocide that’s been going on for 101 years and that nobody is even noticing.
Of course, it isn’t noticed because they are doing it to each other but still, what a waste of human potential!
Clarissa's Blog 
On Central Asian immigrants to Russia it is true that they have patriarchial cultures and are kept in line with threats of deportation. But, I disagree that they do not understand their host’s culture. Kyrgyzstan was dominated by Russians from 1863 until 1991. During much of the 20th century Kyrygyz were a minority in the Kyrgyz SSR and the largest non-Kyrgyz group were Russians. In 1959 Kyrgyz were 40.5% of the population and Russians 30.2%. In 1970 it was 43.8% and 29.2%. In 1979 it was 47.9% and 25.9%. About 10% of the population was Uzbek, but much of the remaining 20% were Russified Volga Tatars, Ukrainians, etc. So the Russian influence in Kyrgyzstan was and is still quite strong despite the fact that ethnic Russians are now only about 10% of the population down from 30%. During Soviet rule and after almost all Kyrgyz learned Russian as a second or sometimes first language and adopted a great deal of Russian byt.
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A whole generation grew up in the quarter century that passed since 1991. These countries were going into very different directions in this time. Be that as it may, though, a migrant will always be lost and confused compared to a local. Migrants find it extraordinarily hard to organize political action. The more people are on the move, the easier it is to control them.
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OK but, not all migrants are as lost as others. Former colonial subjects like the Jamaicans in the UK or Algerians in France tend to come with a greater familiarity of their host than others. This is especially true in the post-Soviet context. I lived and worked in Bishkek teaching university students for three years from 2007-2010 and have returned every summer since then. I fly out again next week. Russian influence is still quite strong in the cities of Kyrgyzstan, although less so in the rural areas. I have never had any trouble getting around only in Russian and knowing only a few basic words of Kyrgyz. A surprisingly large number of young Kyrgyz, born after 1991 in Bishkek preferred to speak Russian over Kyrgyz. Often because they spoke it better I suspect. Central Asians have been part of a larger Russian world since the US Civil War. It isn’t the same as Chinese going to Zambia or Vietnamese going to the US.
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” It isn’t the same as Chinese going to Zambia or Vietnamese going to the US.”
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“The more people are on the move, the easier it is to control them”
The reason for liquid modernity!
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“The reason for liquid modernity!”
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Because people who stay in one place have a better chance of learning how things work (and eventually becoming an alternate center of power).
People who change jobs every few years are of minimal value because they’re constantly learning the ropes and have no time to build support networks.
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Bizarre writing from Jim Kunstler:
“We’ve already got our knickers in a twist over Ukraine, a so-called nation whose highest and best purpose over the millennia has been as a sort of lethal doormat in front of Russia, leaving adventurers like Napoleon and Hitler bleeding in the snow as they crawled back to their nations of origin. In short, Ukraine has worked so well for Russia that we must be insane to imagine that it would give up that traditional relationship. Yet the US and NATO persist in their foolishness and attempt to back up their Kievan intrigues with financial “sanctions” against Russia.”
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/how-goes-the-war/
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What a crazy person! Where do these weirdos come from in such great numbers?
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Kunstler is terrible about just about everything. He wrote a fairly successful book about urban planning back in the early 90s and was popular as a campus speaker and with academic types at the time. I used to be a fan and was very excited when he started a blog. The quality of the blog went downhill VERY fast and it’s unreadable now. I still pop in every now and again to see if anything is changed, but it’s mostly rambling and very repetitive rants about his pet topics.
Basically, Kustler is convinced that modern/global/technological society is about to collapse due to a lack of natural resources and shaky financial systems and revert back to a state something like the early 19th century. The worst thing is not that he thinks this will happen, it’s pretty clear that he WANTS this to happen. He wants the world as we know it to fall apart and he wants to see all of the people who enjoy the benefits of modern society suffer. If you read his blog for a bit, it’s pretty clear that he would enjoy watching people starve, die for lack of medical care, and fight each other for food and resources. He is extremely dismissive of any issue or concern that doesn’t fit with his collapse narrative. He’s written all sorts of awful stuff about gay rights, women’s rights, immigration, etc. The fate of Ukraine is irrelevant to his impending collapse, so it’s obviously a waste of everyone’s time to worry about it – this is his basic stance on all sorts of stuff.
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I tuned in when he put together the “Eyesore of the Month” posts, then tuned out when he decided he’d try his hand at being a pundit for more than a bit past the expiry date.
I’m not sure if the “world made by hand” series of novels amounts to delayed gratification or wish fulfilment through prose fiction …
[oh yes, my precious, we shall have manual push lawn mowers and hand-operated butter churns and we’ll look forward to the annual gathering of the Chautauqua arriving after the Lutefisk Festival packs up, and Garrison Keillor will grace us with his tales of nailing ninety-five theses to the nail-battered door of some long forgotten church in the lands of ten thousand lakes, give or take a few dozen …] 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=068AFYvd58E
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The poor guy will die without ever having seen this long-awaited collapse. What a sad life!
This way of thinking is not a sign of a healthy psyche.
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@Jones – I also like the Eyesore of the Month. I would guess wish fulfillment on the novels, but you couldn’t pay me to read one of them.
@Clarissa – Yes it is sad. I also wonder what happened to him. He didn’t seem to be this way when I first encountered his work in the 90s. But he didn’t have a blog then, so it’s possible that an editor/editors filtered out a few good ideas from all of the nonsense he generates.
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