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PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   1619 thread views

Transnational Thursday for March 20, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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new Russian territory is not recognized by the "international community"

Israel's settlements aren't recognized by the international community, yet they persist and expand. This war is about facts on the ground, not words on a page. Sanctions are a perfect example: Russian oil just goes via India off to Europe. The demand for luxury European cars has risen enormously in Azerbaijan...

Besides Ukraine, Europe is also a clear loser, even if they're brave enough to seize Russian assets. Apparently the war already cost Europe some 700 billion Euros by mid-2023:

if you include the support that the European governments have had to pay in order to help their families and firms to face the high prices of electricity, of food, the subsidies to our people in order to face the consequences of the war is €700 billion – ten times more than the support for Ukraine.

https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/singapore-speech-hrvp-borrell-shangri-la-dialogue_en

Israel's settlements aren't recognized by the international community, yet they persist and expand.

Because Israel has the demographics to get make settler colonialism work. Russia uh… doesn’t.

Seriously when your core demographic has a tfr of like 5(and zionists/likud supporters have a higher fertility rate than already high Israeli general fertility) you can do things to conquered territory that would make no sense if your core demographic(and ethnic Russians have a lower fertility than Russia in general) has an Eastern European fertility rate and your population density is already one of the lowest in the world.

Israel’s fertility is terrible with the exception of the Haredim, who refuse to hold productive jobs or serve in the military.

That is not true. Secular Israeli Jews have a fertility rate of 2, and that’s the lowest Israeli Jewish fertility gets.

And if their adversary and neighbor was North Korea that would be pretty good. But they have the misfortune of being in conflict with one of the few remaining fertile groups on the planet.

This isn’t 2005. Islamic fertility isn’t sub-Saharan Africa level. Israel’s TFR is generally higher than it’s neighbors.

Israel’s TFR is generally higher than it’s neighbors.

It is not, thoughbeit. The fertility rate of the Palestinian territories is 3.44. Gaza is 3.88. While that’s down from a whopping 7 in 1990 that’s still almost double of Israel’s. Egypt is 2.88. Syria, despite being in the middle of a horrific civil war, is 2.70. Iraq is 3.88. The only country Israel is keeping up with is Lebanon. Unfortunately it seems western culture has a more deleterious effect on fertility rates than several million smart bombs do.

A quick google says Israel's overall TFR is 2.89 and the Israeli overall Jewish TFR is 3.03. Both of those are higher than any neighbors except Palestine and Iraq(which is stretching the definition of 'neighbor').

Most of the people in Donbass, Crimea and so on are Russian. They speak Russian, many of them are fighting for Russia.

Russians seizing a part of the world with cities founded by Catherine the Great, literally named Novorossiya, isn't settler colonialism.

Is Israel (ie the Jewish seizure of Judea) settler colonialism? I would argue it is (And That’s A Good Thing), you seem to be suggesting otherwise.

I have nothing against settler colonialism in general and it wasn't even part of my main point, nearly everyone has done it at some time or another.

To a certain extent Russia is gaining Russians by invading Ukraine, Israel isn't gaining Jews by annexing various parts of Palestine, they're just securing land. That's relevant to hydro's point.

eh, they're still better off than Europe. Ethnic German tfr isn't any higher than ethnic Russian. The Europeans have inflated their numbers by importing foreigners, but this is actually a long term detriment. Currently in modern countries you need around a 70iq to at least function, but with ai and multi function robots around the corner this is increasing. Wouldn't be surprising if around 85 is needed to function by 2040-50. Assuming we aren't all obsoleted by some kinda singularity level event.

Majority of immigrant populations are maybe 85 iq. So about half of them will be societal deadweight, at the same time the productive population is declining. It's worse in some places, somalis are maybe 70 IQ, and they have a TFR of 5 or so in Sweden.

Really only east asia is looking good these days. US might just avoid Europe's fate if populism can kick out the globalists. Oceania despite their best efforts might be saved by geography. It's east asia's century though.

Russia has the second largest illegal immigration problem in the world, behind only the USA, and its youth population is increasingly Muslim steppe peasants with IQ’s suppressed by generations of cousin marriage. The idea that it’s ‘resisting demographic change’ in a way Germany isn’t is risible.

No doubt Russia in 2100 will speak Russian and have ethnic Russians occupying top spots. But that’s because it’s an empire. How many Puerto Ricans are there in the senate? Descendants of illegals?

with IQ’s suppressed by generations of cousin marriage.

wouldn't that mean that IQ gets leap back in just 1 generation after?

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