I assume this is is a diversion. But on the off chance it isn't, Russia will deserve not only to "lose" Belarus but to get NATO tank divisions next to Smolensk.
Two valid approaches. Non-interference (sanctity of intl law aka Soviet state borders). Or reunification into common national home, i.e. what I'd prefer as 🇷🇺 nationalist. But return to status quo would just mean kremlins see Luka as a fellow feudal potentate...
whose common caste interests trump both 🇧🇾 democratic & 🇷🇺🇧🇾 national aspirations. This would be cartoon level villainy, & a color revolution against *this* would become perfectly justified, even if it (understandably) carries a much heavier Russophobic tilt than the current one.
Happily, there's many signals suggesting Moscow doesn't intend to go down this patently ruinous path.
🇺🇸🇮🇱 I call Israel to join the US as the 51st state
(1) This would mostly solve Middle East geopolitics. The US extends its security umbrella to Israel (formalizing what we all know to be a de facto reality anyway) while constraining independent Israeli adventurism.
(2) Huge human capital boost to the US as 3M Ashkenazi Jews get full immediate access to its labor markets. American tech lead further augmented as Israel's R&D sector which punches well above its weight integrates into its technocapital machine.
(3) In particular, the Arsenal of Democracy is augmented disproportionately to just the GDP and human capital increase from adding Israel, in light of Israel's dense forest of military tech companies (esp. in drones and missile defense).
I'll be posting live coverage of interesting developments in the Russian elections here.
(Within a specific definition of "interesting", obviously said term doesn't apply to its outcome).
Result from exit poll at Russian Embassy in Prague (via Max Kats):
* Davankov - 66.5%
* Putin - 4.1%
* Spoiled ballot: 24.8%
Obviously, Prague is not representative of Russia; extremely so. And obviously you'd need to be "bold" to say you voted for Putin in a country where public support for Z is literally criminal. Still, safe to say pocket liberal candidate Davankov sweeps the board in most of the West.
This would be a change from previous elections, in which Putin/United Russia polled competitively against the "liberal" placeholder in 2012, 2016, 2018, etc, winning in most places outside the Anglosphere.
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Russian Embassies abroad tallied the vote fairly in past elections. I wonder whether this will still be true this time round in light of the stupendous tilt against Putin that has unsurprisingly developed after the war. The differentials - 10% (?) for Putin in Western Europe and the US, 80% in Russia - would come off as a bit weird.akarlin.com/prokhorov-pres… akarlin.com/russian-global…
Opinion Polls: A List
Compendium here:
VCIOM:
Putin consistently at 75%, Davankov up to 6%
State owned pollster
FOM:
Putin 80.8%, Kharitonov 5.7%, Slutsky 5.6%, Davankov 4.6% / turnout 69.8%
(This looks remarkably like kremlins' optimal result. Also unlike its standard polls has no demographic breakdowns).
State owned pollster
Levada: Curiously did not actually do a poll on Presidential elections - only on party popularity.
Private pollsters and "foreign agent"
Russian Field: Neither did they! Again, only question on parties.
Private pollster
(This is curious and notable because Levada & Russian Field are the two liberal-leaning opinion pollsters).
ExtremeScan:
New polling outfit, seems very oppositionist.
Putin 63% (down from 69% in Jan, with a notable 5% pt decline right after Navalny's death), Davonkov 4%
IRPZ
Obscure pollster cited by Boris Nadezhdin; of those decided:
Putin 73.1%, Davankov 11.9%, Kharitonov 6.8%, Slutsky 4.2%, spoiled 4.0% / 20% remain undecided
This is one of the best maps for groking why colonialism could work c.1900 and one of the reasons it became unsustainable later on, and why why Europe's prominence in particular declined relative to both the US & the Rest.
France/Britain & US have ~equal population to Latam and Africa, respectively.
Why Turks once viewed Greeks as a real threat, difference when ratio is 1:1.7 vs. 1:6. akarlin.com/turkey-populat…
Conversely, imagine populations of Europeans had they kept their "weight" constant relative to Third World, proxied by say India: 200-300M Germans, Italians, French, English each.
Germany + France > USA. About as many ethnic Russians as Americans. Ofc impact on influence.
(1) Almost certainly ordered or okayed by Putin. In retrospect, the theory that Navalny's disappearance in December was a trial balloon to gauge the public reaction - found to be encouragingly lackluster - to harsher measures has been vindicated.
(2) The usual amusing preoccupation with symbolic dates, exactly one month before the Presidential elections (to which Navalny represented ~zero threat).
(3) But more amusing still is that Putin did it while poor @TuckerCarlson is performing cartwheels trying to humanize Russia for the American rightoid audience.
Just a never-ending series of humiliations for him - but what's the actual point?!
But when tested as part of a list experiment, it plummets to 70%!
In list surveys there's a control and a treatment group which get a set of non-sensitive questions, but the control group also gets one "controversial" item. The respondents then say how many of the questions they agree with without actually ever answering the controversial one.
Some immediate observations in no particular order:
(1) Notable sharp fall in performance (esp. Math) relative to 2022 (average -2 IQ points in IQ equivalent across the OECD relative to PISA 2018), I assume this is mostly a COVID/lockdowns effect.
(2) Finland is no longer remarkable within Europe.
(3) Türkiye is now above Greece.
(4) Mongolia participated first time, is close to Kazakhstan (Kazakh figures these days would overwhelmingly reflect locals because % Europeans is small and in unremitting decline). Would be much bigger gap with East Asia than the 5 IQ point gap estimated by Lynn.
(5) As in previous surveys, Montenegrins do worse than Serbs. This correlates with personal observations there this year, they did appear to be "slower" than the other Balkan peoples and Turks to me. Side note but it is nice when personal observations coincide with data.
(6) Uzbekistan is very low and around Indonesia/Morocco/Jordan level, nothing surprising there. I was in Morocco this year and TBF while Arab IQ is usually nothing to write home about I was very impressed with their language skills, many of them were genuinely fluent in multiple European languages as well as Arab and Berber. Though I do realize that this is a common situation at crossroads type territories, and picking up some conversational Spanish/English/German to make tourism $$$ isn't super reflective of raw cognitive ability.
(7) Cambodia LOL.
(8) Ukraine performance as expected.
(9) Russian participation in PISA is yet another casualty of the Ukraine War.