You keep denying what I tell you, so I imagine any personal account I give will receive a response like "the children you saw were just trying to trick tourists!" (I've been told that one before after beggars have asked me for money) or maybe "they are just drunks in the street!"
I could give you links to journalist accounts or films concerning homelessness in Kiev. I could give you academic research. Hell, you could find much of it with a quick search yourself.
But perhaps you'll say that they died from exposure or disease or crime. Sure, they were "hungry", and that might have made them desperate or weak, but that's not the same, is it?
How far will you go to justify the deaths in Kiev?
Hm, it sounds like a propaganda opportunity ripe for abuse.
"It may be shit for you, but you should just shut up and take it because it could be even worse!"
We want to get better - not compare ourselves with the worst.
FWIW, it was travel to third world countries which finally turned me from a spoilt rich kid who quite liked the West (even though I often questioned it, at least academically) into someone who despises it. The straw which broke the proverbial camel's back was a stay in Ph on business, living in the executive level of one of the nicest hotels in the area, enjoying a marble bathroom and raised swimming pool, a room at the front offering a rich buffet of infinite food while its back looked over a shanty town from which children would emerge to beg for money on the streets. Meanwhile my co-workers would bring prostitutes back to their rooms in the evenings, promising one that he would take her back with him.
I resigned from that job soon after returning home.
Anyone who says that rational self-interest lifts everyone up is a liar or an idiot.
my grandmother was pushed back in the queue for a new apartmen
That sounds unfortunate. Many people have to wait up to a decade for new social housing in the UK, especially since Thatcher sold much of it
In a capitalist country she could have bought herself a 1 bedroom in much less time than that just by working almost anywhere, and she wouldn't have to wait for 22 years, given the fact that in capitalist countries it was (still is) possible to get a loan, a mortgage.
Certainly not in the UK - mortgages are such that no single person on minimum wage would be able to save up for a ~10% deposit, let alone be offered a 90% mortgage.
1 was that they brought in some families from Cuba and placed them there, because of the 'Cuban brothers' who were also Communists of-course, their gov't needed to be shown how well people are treated in USSR.
Yeah, the BNP complain about immigrants taking social housing in the UK all the time too.
Another time was actually simpler than that, somebody with real connections to a local (regional) party leader wanted to have an apartment for their offspring. You think they had to wait for years for this?
Probably not. In my local town, planning corruption is awful - you can pretty much do what you want wrt/ buildings if you grease the right palms. Not sure about assignment of housing per se. Knowing an MP mysteriously seems to sort out most local hurdles in a few days, though. Feeling nostalgic yet?
7 of who got killed only on one side of the family because they had a farm... owned a shoe factory... in their possession part of a forest and a river and even a village...
I assume this was a Stalinist kulak purge. I am sorry. It would have been sufficient to nationalise these things and there was no need to harm the old owners.
As to Thatcher, she inherited a situation, which was so dire, here is what the former PM (before she came to power) said about it:
You mean that Labour's Callaghan inherited a situation made awful by Tory Heath. While Callaghan tried to reform policy (not in the cleverest manner!), Thatcher decided to destroy Britain out of irrational hatred for certain parts of society.
the government was able to set an artificial, official exchange rate, that had NOTHING to do with the value of Soviet rubbles
Q: How does the modern economist determine the value of something? A: When a buyer and seller agree on a price.
Did the Soviet Union force anyone to buy or sell roubles?
but there was nothing much to buy in the stores, nobody really produces anything
The fact that you're alive today confirms that people produced. You paint such an obviously false picture.
but everybody gets paid this nearly fixed amount of money, nobody wants to sell.
That's silly. Not every worker is incentivised by the (usually false) promise that they'll get paid more if they sell more.
In case of USSR people were stealing quite a lot from their places of work... you could physically remove, steal and sell on a black market
You should come to the West - everyone here has the opportunity to do that too, but the stealing occurs on a much grander scale than just nicking a stereo!
As to your message, are you saying that Russians are somehow inherently more corrupt, or is it merely that you particularly enjoyed the company of thieves?
Yanukovich is not the nicest man, but his power is not nearly as consolidated as Putin's. Your wild assertion that the Ukraine was treated like Russia under the USSR is simply nonsense - and you're certainly the first person with any Ukrainian association I've heard to claim it!
If you think that all people of the modern Ukraine are "a long way from starving", you must be visiting Kiev with your eyes closed. To put it in terms you may understand, you remind me of the Cuban fanboy who thinks that Castro's healthcare is accurately represented by the modern hospitals set up for foreigners.
Yes, because believing lies instead peddled by the left to justify their own botched policies is much easier isn't it.
Eh? Heath was captain of the ship until 1974 - he steered us with America and Europe and set the scene. The next few years were just the inevitable response from the unions ("you've fucked up and we're not taking it any more"). Thatcher's irrationally angry response seemed to be not to address policy but to destroy the unions at all costs, even if she had to ruin Britain in the process - which she succeeded in doing, though with a temporary lift caused by sell-offs and North Sea gas.
Oh dear, we're down to student debating society level already. What next , "patriarchal"
What problem do you have with the word "imperialism"? It merely describes subjugation of other nations to obtain cheap resources, labour or military advantage. Unless you think the Imperium Romanum comprised a bunch of undergrads, the word has sound basis.
Right, because 13 years of Labour mismanagement had nothing to do with that did it. You are REALLY in denial.
No, I quite agree - Labour's acceptance of banking deregulation and contracting out state services so that private corporations could perform unnecessary jobs at twice the cost had a lot to do with it.
Although, in the scheme of things, Britain's contribution to global economic depression was minor - it's just not that relevant any more.
I love Russian insults! You make me almost want to respond in Russian!
1970s wasn't the worst in USSR history,
Of course. Just as it took Victorian Britain, where children were killed for stealing bread, or pre-Civil War America, where half a population were treated as animals, to give us the UK and US of today. But Stalin was over within three decades and his industrialisation saved as many lives comes WW2 as he allowed to die in the decade before, while the dark ages of British and American capitalism lasted for over a century.
to have the same history repeat in USA, and so when 80 years from the start it also collapses
Will this be because there is a bigger superpower to poison the nation with its politics and then engage it in a wasteful military conflict?
when your relatives are wasted, murdered actually in an equivalent of USSR 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s,
My father was born in the middle of the Spanish Civil War during the siege of Madrid. Lots of my relatives were "wasted". If you want to go for the "my family had it worse than your family" bullshit, you have picked the wrong person, comrade.
when it was the iron curtain,
I cannot travel the world or go up into space because I do not have money. Either way, when I try to board the plane or the boat, I will be stopped by men with guns. Whether my pass says "dollar" or "visa" on it is irrelevant if I have neither. The majority of Americans have never left their country, let alone some bloc of nations.
the iron fist and for the people
And how sad it was that Stalin was so paranoid. But the advancement of the USSR was at a pace incomparable with the West, and there was no false hope as given to those today who have a voice but which is easily drowned out.
who later on had the terrible disadvantage to live in conditions that came out of the destruction of their former 'glory' of a country.
You are like the son who blames his father for being killed.
I can't believe that most people still believe this.
Imperialist interference in Middle East -- oil crisis -- inflation -- increase income to management but refuse to pay more to workers -- strikes -- hardship -- blame response to injustice rather than cause.
The '70s, dominated at the start and at the end by a Tory government, was the start of the tedious neocon war on labour which ended up with Britain becoming the laughable shell of a nation that it is today.
You're right about one thing, though: the complete failure of Tory policy was somewhat mitigated by the fortuitous appearance of Scottish gas. That and accounting for public asset sell-offs in order to appear as though the budget had been balanced. Thatcher was an interesting prime minister in only one sense: she had a peculiar ability to seduce pathetic, authoritarian, second-rate males into following her silly policies and turning Britain into a nation of corporate welfare queens.
Thank you. It is sometimes hard to explain that "abundance" does not mean "affordability" - indeed, one of the reasons a product may seem abundant is that it is still sitting on the shelves because there are not enough people who can actually pay for it! It is quite different from a rationing system where everyone receives a share of everything, even though it doesn't result in the queues so frequently mentioned by propagandists.
Marx was early to suggest that capitalism would degenerate into a system where there would be vast production of items that many could not afford. On this he was quite right. Maybe he missed the potential for extending absurd amounts of credit, but that's just given us an extra problem to prolong the pain.
So, for example, all pension rights and right to employment were preserved, with availability guaranteeing affordability?
If you say everyone is better off, your friends are evidently not representative. Of course, I would not expect visitors to Slashdot to represent the average in America, let alone the average in the former USSR. You can meet people in the South of England who can all honestly say that they were "better off under Thatcher" while many in the north honestly can say exactly the opposite. The key is that the majority are not in the South.
Can people really hear about what's going on in Russia without a "curtain of secrecy"? Is your opinion that Russian press is so free? You may say we have the Internet, but that is so much noise - and noise which Putin intends soon to filter in his favour. At least shortwave radio and samizdat was selective, and all you had to do was a bit of frequency hopping to escape the jamming. (Contrast the UK where shortwave broadcasts have been obliterated in cities with wideband interference from allowing the sale of knowingly non-conforming PLT.)
Books? Yes. While the West has always gone too far in protecting the freedom to of private publishers to own the presses even when they come out with any old shit, the USSR was always too paranoid. But having information per se is of no use if you are powerless to turn your knowledge into action.
Affordability of electronics appeared only from the '80s globally, and that was thanks to a combination of tech advances and cheap labour.
you are a pathetic individual, you shouldn't be called a human, you are slime.
Lol.
Life in the 1970s in USSR? For who exactly?
For the average man or woman, and the child with potential.
For the people in the concentration camps in the former USSR in 1970s?
How's America doing with its private prison population?
For the incarcerated in the mental institutions,
While the USSR was certainly ~15 years behind the West in mental healthcare, I strongly recommend a brief study of mental health up to the '60s in Britain or America. Especially for black people in the latter.
because they were not in lockstep with the party in USSR in 1970s?
Fair point. Better to drum up false rape accusations. Or just lock 'em up offshore - even further from justice, then!
For the young kids that were forced to march into Afghanistan in the late 1970s in the USSR?
I guess "Afghanistan" has more syllables than "Vietnam" so there is that difference. At least Russia has no conscripts today... oh wait.
For the people living on forver Soviet farms, resembling stone age villages in the 1970s (well, actually this part didn't change much since then).
You're almost right - those living on farms in the '70s are still living on the same farms in worse conditions today.
Maybe it was for all the people whose dreams of becoming something more than just a fucking cog in that meat grinder?
Meritocracy in the USSR was far stronger than in the West. A talented mathematician or engineer would be nurtured and rise to the top (compared with Soviet mathematics and science exams, America's and Britain's secondary education was and now is even more of a fucking joke). Even most party officials were ex-peasants or ex-workers rather than sons of former presidents.
I have no words to express my disgust with the slime like you.
It is typical for an irrational position to be defended with fear and anger.
Implying that the Ukraine was ruled like Russia under Soviet control.
Implying that the Ukraine is ruled like Russia now. (especially when you're talking about freedom to speak your mind!)
Implying that a "food and fuel queue" is better than there being food and fuel which many people cannot afford.
On a personal note - if, Violet, you and your partner are lesbians, I appreciate that things were much more difficult in the Ukraine in the '70s. But oppression on grounds of orientation wasn't unusual across the world until the last ~20 years.
A virus researcher is, of course, sufficiently wise to have local copies of all files because relying on a "cloud" provider is as sound as relying on that kid down the road who promises to keep all your personal documents safe in his dad's filing cabinet for a handful of sweets.
Since you are unaware that the Ukraine is not part of Russia, even though your wife "comes from" (does not live?) there, I am not sure how to approach your post.
If he weren't, he wouldn't have to spend all his time desperately trying to prove that he's such a badass.
Nonsense. The guy is powerful beyond anyone's wildest dreams and is doing stuff that a) he enjoys; b) appeals as propaganda to the macho sort still prevalent in Russian.
Russia has become precisely what the left expected Reagan+Thatcher wanted in toppling the USSR: a corrupt, undemocratic kleptocracy with few new freedoms but no social cohesion or state protections, where middlemen and government have their hands constantly down each other's pants, jacking each other off while they kick the common man. It is the neocon dream realised.
Anyone who thinks that life wasn't better in Russia in the 1970s either 1) was not living there; 2) is one of the very few beneficiaries of business. (Hint: if you're a geek programmer living in Moscow, you're in category #2.) But the Soviet Russia will forever be remembered as it was in the late 1980s, which would be like judging capitalism only from the Great Depression, late 2008, the imperialist drive for profit, the Southern State free market definition of "person", Halliburton, &c., instead of all the good things it has achieved.
There are introductory A-level statistics books in the UK which do a much better job than this - this is the kind of stuff a student would study at the age of 16 or 17 in the UK.
And I thought our education system was backward.
No, our education system is backward compared to much of Europe.
America, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please remove your idiots from both sides of the political spectrum and refill your education system with people who love nothing but to educate.
Slashdot Mirror
Then wilson and callagham came along, rolled over to the unions and pissed our industry up the wall.
How, over 5 years, do you think they "pissed our industry up the wall"?
Its when its aimed pejoratively and specifically at the west and britain in particular that I get pissed off.
Britain was an expert imperialist in C19. Recent UK and US behaviour in the Middle East has been imperialist. A spade is a spade.
If the USSRs subjugation of eastern europe wasn't imperialist I don't know what was.
It was.
You keep denying what I tell you, so I imagine any personal account I give will receive a response like "the children you saw were just trying to trick tourists!" (I've been told that one before after beggars have asked me for money) or maybe "they are just drunks in the street!"
I could give you links to journalist accounts or films concerning homelessness in Kiev. I could give you academic research. Hell, you could find much of it with a quick search yourself.
But perhaps you'll say that they died from exposure or disease or crime. Sure, they were "hungry", and that might have made them desperate or weak, but that's not the same, is it?
How far will you go to justify the deaths in Kiev?
Hm, it sounds like a propaganda opportunity ripe for abuse.
"It may be shit for you, but you should just shut up and take it because it could be even worse!"
We want to get better - not compare ourselves with the worst.
FWIW, it was travel to third world countries which finally turned me from a spoilt rich kid who quite liked the West (even though I often questioned it, at least academically) into someone who despises it. The straw which broke the proverbial camel's back was a stay in Ph on business, living in the executive level of one of the nicest hotels in the area, enjoying a marble bathroom and raised swimming pool, a room at the front offering a rich buffet of infinite food while its back looked over a shanty town from which children would emerge to beg for money on the streets. Meanwhile my co-workers would bring prostitutes back to their rooms in the evenings, promising one that he would take her back with him.
I resigned from that job soon after returning home.
Anyone who says that rational self-interest lifts everyone up is a liar or an idiot.
my grandmother was pushed back in the queue for a new apartmen
That sounds unfortunate. Many people have to wait up to a decade for new social housing in the UK, especially since Thatcher sold much of it
In a capitalist country she could have bought herself a 1 bedroom in much less time than that just by working almost anywhere, and she wouldn't have to wait for 22 years, given the fact that in capitalist countries it was (still is) possible to get a loan, a mortgage.
Certainly not in the UK - mortgages are such that no single person on minimum wage would be able to save up for a ~10% deposit, let alone be offered a 90% mortgage.
1 was that they brought in some families from Cuba and placed them there, because of the 'Cuban brothers' who were also Communists of-course, their gov't needed to be shown how well people are treated in USSR.
Yeah, the BNP complain about immigrants taking social housing in the UK all the time too.
Another time was actually simpler than that, somebody with real connections to a local (regional) party leader wanted to have an apartment for their offspring. You think they had to wait for years for this?
Probably not. In my local town, planning corruption is awful - you can pretty much do what you want wrt/ buildings if you grease the right palms. Not sure about assignment of housing per se. Knowing an MP mysteriously seems to sort out most local hurdles in a few days, though. Feeling nostalgic yet?
7 of who got killed only on one side of the family because they had a farm... owned a shoe factory... in their possession part of a forest and a river and even a village...
I assume this was a Stalinist kulak purge. I am sorry. It would have been sufficient to nationalise these things and there was no need to harm the old owners.
As to Thatcher, she inherited a situation, which was so dire, here is what the former PM (before she came to power) said about it:
You mean that Labour's Callaghan inherited a situation made awful by Tory Heath. While Callaghan tried to reform policy (not in the cleverest manner!), Thatcher decided to destroy Britain out of irrational hatred for certain parts of society.
the government was able to set an artificial, official exchange rate, that had NOTHING to do with the value of Soviet rubbles
Q: How does the modern economist determine the value of something?
A: When a buyer and seller agree on a price.
Did the Soviet Union force anyone to buy or sell roubles?
but there was nothing much to buy in the stores, nobody really produces anything
The fact that you're alive today confirms that people produced. You paint such an obviously false picture.
but everybody gets paid this nearly fixed amount of money, nobody wants to sell.
That's silly. Not every worker is incentivised by the (usually false) promise that they'll get paid more if they sell more.
In case of USSR people were stealing quite a lot from their places of work... you could physically remove, steal and sell on a black market
You should come to the West - everyone here has the opportunity to do that too, but the stealing occurs on a much grander scale than just nicking a stereo!
As to your message, are you saying that Russians are somehow inherently more corrupt, or is it merely that you particularly enjoyed the company of thieves?
Yanukovich is not the nicest man, but his power is not nearly as consolidated as Putin's. Your wild assertion that the Ukraine was treated like Russia under the USSR is simply nonsense - and you're certainly the first person with any Ukrainian association I've heard to claim it!
If you think that all people of the modern Ukraine are "a long way from starving", you must be visiting Kiev with your eyes closed. To put it in terms you may understand, you remind me of the Cuban fanboy who thinks that Castro's healthcare is accurately represented by the modern hospitals set up for foreigners.
Yes, because believing lies instead peddled by the left to justify their own botched policies is much easier isn't it.
Eh? Heath was captain of the ship until 1974 - he steered us with America and Europe and set the scene. The next few years were just the inevitable response from the unions ("you've fucked up and we're not taking it any more"). Thatcher's irrationally angry response seemed to be not to address policy but to destroy the unions at all costs, even if she had to ruin Britain in the process - which she succeeded in doing, though with a temporary lift caused by sell-offs and North Sea gas.
Oh dear, we're down to student debating society level already. What next , "patriarchal"
What problem do you have with the word "imperialism"? It merely describes subjugation of other nations to obtain cheap resources, labour or military advantage. Unless you think the Imperium Romanum comprised a bunch of undergrads, the word has sound basis.
Right, because 13 years of Labour mismanagement had nothing to do with that did it. You are REALLY in denial.
No, I quite agree - Labour's acceptance of banking deregulation and contracting out state services so that private corporations could perform unnecessary jobs at twice the cost had a lot to do with it.
Although, in the scheme of things, Britain's contribution to global economic depression was minor - it's just not that relevant any more.
Piece of slimy pig waste you are.
I love Russian insults! You make me almost want to respond in Russian!
1970s wasn't the worst in USSR history,
Of course. Just as it took Victorian Britain, where children were killed for stealing bread, or pre-Civil War America, where half a population were treated as animals, to give us the UK and US of today. But Stalin was over within three decades and his industrialisation saved as many lives comes WW2 as he allowed to die in the decade before, while the dark ages of British and American capitalism lasted for over a century.
to have the same history repeat in USA, and so when 80 years from the start it also collapses
Will this be because there is a bigger superpower to poison the nation with its politics and then engage it in a wasteful military conflict?
when your relatives are wasted, murdered actually in an equivalent of USSR 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s,
My father was born in the middle of the Spanish Civil War during the siege of Madrid. Lots of my relatives were "wasted". If you want to go for the "my family had it worse than your family" bullshit, you have picked the wrong person, comrade.
when it was the iron curtain,
I cannot travel the world or go up into space because I do not have money. Either way, when I try to board the plane or the boat, I will be stopped by men with guns. Whether my pass says "dollar" or "visa" on it is irrelevant if I have neither. The majority of Americans have never left their country, let alone some bloc of nations.
the iron fist and for the people
And how sad it was that Stalin was so paranoid. But the advancement of the USSR was at a pace incomparable with the West, and there was no false hope as given to those today who have a voice but which is easily drowned out.
who later on had the terrible disadvantage to live in conditions that came out of the destruction of their former 'glory' of a country.
You are like the son who blames his father for being killed.
I can't believe that most people still believe this.
Imperialist interference in Middle East -- oil crisis -- inflation -- increase income to management but refuse to pay more to workers -- strikes -- hardship -- blame response to injustice rather than cause.
The '70s, dominated at the start and at the end by a Tory government, was the start of the tedious neocon war on labour which ended up with Britain becoming the laughable shell of a nation that it is today.
You're right about one thing, though: the complete failure of Tory policy was somewhat mitigated by the fortuitous appearance of Scottish gas. That and accounting for public asset sell-offs in order to appear as though the budget had been balanced. Thatcher was an interesting prime minister in only one sense: she had a peculiar ability to seduce pathetic, authoritarian, second-rate males into following her silly policies and turning Britain into a nation of corporate welfare queens.
Thank you. It is sometimes hard to explain that "abundance" does not mean "affordability" - indeed, one of the reasons a product may seem abundant is that it is still sitting on the shelves because there are not enough people who can actually pay for it! It is quite different from a rationing system where everyone receives a share of everything, even though it doesn't result in the queues so frequently mentioned by propagandists.
Marx was early to suggest that capitalism would degenerate into a system where there would be vast production of items that many could not afford. On this he was quite right. Maybe he missed the potential for extending absurd amounts of credit, but that's just given us an extra problem to prolong the pain.
So, for example, all pension rights and right to employment were preserved, with availability guaranteeing affordability?
If you say everyone is better off, your friends are evidently not representative. Of course, I would not expect visitors to Slashdot to represent the average in America, let alone the average in the former USSR. You can meet people in the South of England who can all honestly say that they were "better off under Thatcher" while many in the north honestly can say exactly the opposite. The key is that the majority are not in the South.
Can people really hear about what's going on in Russia without a "curtain of secrecy"? Is your opinion that Russian press is so free? You may say we have the Internet, but that is so much noise - and noise which Putin intends soon to filter in his favour. At least shortwave radio and samizdat was selective, and all you had to do was a bit of frequency hopping to escape the jamming. (Contrast the UK where shortwave broadcasts have been obliterated in cities with wideband interference from allowing the sale of knowingly non-conforming PLT.)
Books? Yes. While the West has always gone too far in protecting the freedom to of private publishers to own the presses even when they come out with any old shit, the USSR was always too paranoid. But having information per se is of no use if you are powerless to turn your knowledge into action.
Affordability of electronics appeared only from the '80s globally, and that was thanks to a combination of tech advances and cheap labour.
you are a pathetic individual, you shouldn't be called a human, you are slime.
Lol.
Life in the 1970s in USSR? For who exactly?
For the average man or woman, and the child with potential.
For the people in the concentration camps in the former USSR in 1970s?
How's America doing with its private prison population?
For the incarcerated in the mental institutions,
While the USSR was certainly ~15 years behind the West in mental healthcare, I strongly recommend a brief study of mental health up to the '60s in Britain or America. Especially for black people in the latter.
because they were not in lockstep with the party in USSR in 1970s?
Fair point. Better to drum up false rape accusations. Or just lock 'em up offshore - even further from justice, then!
For the young kids that were forced to march into Afghanistan in the late 1970s in the USSR?
I guess "Afghanistan" has more syllables than "Vietnam" so there is that difference. At least Russia has no conscripts today... oh wait.
For the people living on forver Soviet farms, resembling stone age villages in the 1970s (well, actually this part didn't change much since then).
You're almost right - those living on farms in the '70s are still living on the same farms in worse conditions today.
Maybe it was for all the people whose dreams of becoming something more than just a fucking cog in that meat grinder?
Meritocracy in the USSR was far stronger than in the West. A talented mathematician or engineer would be nurtured and rise to the top (compared with Soviet mathematics and science exams, America's and Britain's secondary education was and now is even more of a fucking joke). Even most party officials were ex-peasants or ex-workers rather than sons of former presidents.
I have no words to express my disgust with the slime like you.
It is typical for an irrational position to be defended with fear and anger.
Implying that the Ukraine was ruled like Russia under Soviet control.
Implying that the Ukraine is ruled like Russia now. (especially when you're talking about freedom to speak your mind!)
Implying that a "food and fuel queue" is better than there being food and fuel which many people cannot afford.
On a personal note - if, Violet, you and your partner are lesbians, I appreciate that things were much more difficult in the Ukraine in the '70s. But oppression on grounds of orientation wasn't unusual across the world until the last ~20 years.
while being considerably cheaper than a true concierge service
A "true concierge" is an experienced individual who knows his clients and can perform all manner of complex tasks requiring intelligence.
Neither Siri nor choose-from-random-trollish-human-responses form a concierge service.
It's like pointing out that a vacuum cleaner and a washing machine are cheaper than a butler.
A virus researcher is, of course, sufficiently wise to have local copies of all files because relying on a "cloud" provider is as sound as relying on that kid down the road who promises to keep all your personal documents safe in his dad's filing cabinet for a handful of sweets.
Since you are unaware that the Ukraine is not part of Russia, even though your wife "comes from" (does not live?) there, I am not sure how to approach your post.
If he weren't, he wouldn't have to spend all his time desperately trying to prove that he's such a badass.
Nonsense. The guy is powerful beyond anyone's wildest dreams and is doing stuff that a) he enjoys; b) appeals as propaganda to the macho sort still prevalent in Russian.
Russia has become precisely what the left expected Reagan+Thatcher wanted in toppling the USSR: a corrupt, undemocratic kleptocracy with few new freedoms but no social cohesion or state protections, where middlemen and government have their hands constantly down each other's pants, jacking each other off while they kick the common man. It is the neocon dream realised.
Anyone who thinks that life wasn't better in Russia in the 1970s either 1) was not living there; 2) is one of the very few beneficiaries of business. (Hint: if you're a geek programmer living in Moscow, you're in category #2.) But the Soviet Russia will forever be remembered as it was in the late 1980s, which would be like judging capitalism only from the Great Depression, late 2008, the imperialist drive for profit, the Southern State free market definition of "person", Halliburton, &c., instead of all the good things it has achieved.
Wow, good stalker-memory - I don't think I've posted about that in ages.
I still stank by this opinion, of course.
Yes. Next question.
Black surgeon general's warning: This web site is designed to specifically rebut questions like yours and may dangerously affect your racism.
Have YOU done anything for humankind, white boy?
IIRC you worship at the altar of the free market.
I suggest everyone ask to be added to the list.
There are introductory A-level statistics books in the UK which do a much better job than this - this is the kind of stuff a student would study at the age of 16 or 17 in the UK.
And I thought our education system was backward.
No, our education system is backward compared to much of Europe.
America, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please remove your idiots from both sides of the political spectrum and refill your education system with people who love nothing but to educate.
First I get to take over your land because I don't think you deserve it.
Then you get to take over all the graveyards.
How can we find out whether the answers were genuine? A survey, perhaps?
I prefer a more nihilist, "Opinions are like assholes. Everyone's stinks, including yours and mine."