The morning of the conference, the weather in Turku was perfect for a nice long walk around the city. It’s still winter, but the signs of spring are appearing, so in the morning it is cold, but too cold. I was waiting for the secret message telling me where the secret meeting would be held in the afternoon. I had decoded the message from the previous day, which gave me the location of the dead drop, so I had a few hours to kill. My first stop was the big old Lutheran church, that was a few blocks from where I staying.

Turku Cathedral was originally a catholic cathedral of Finland, but today it is the Mother Church of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland. It is the central church of the Lutheran Archdiocese of Turku. It was originally built out of wood in the late 13th century, but was expanded in the 14th and 15th centuries, using stone and brick as the construction material. In person, it is impressive mostly due to its age. It was not hard to imagine people walking to mass 500 years ago on the same spot I standing.

The cathedral is located next to the river that runs through the city. There is a little park there where you sit and watch joggers and bikers on the path along the river. In the early morning, it is very peaceful. As I walked along the path, I suddenly remembered how much I miss being on the water. It has been a few years since I’ve done any fishing, so I made to myself to pick up that hobby again. That is one of the great benefits of travel. It gives you time to think about what is important and remember to get back to doing that.

After a walk along the river, I took a hike up the big hill that overlooks the whole city, on top of which is an old anti-aircraft gun from the Second World War. There’s also a bunker that looks like it is functional. a short walk down the hill is the Luostarinmäki Handicrafts Museum. It appears to be a replica of what I think is a original village. During normal hours, they have actors playing the various roles of villagers from the period. It’s like an open air, interactive museum, along with a craft museum and the requisite gift shops.

From there I walked to the art museum, which was closed, but alongside of it was an open air food market. On the street leading up to the museum, which is on a hill, is a bust of Lenin. The Finnish Bolsheviks were a nasty lot, ready to see out their brothers to a foreign power, all in the name of a madhouse dogma. The Finns experience with the communists is a good reminder that there is no dealing with lunatics. There are simply some people who are born to be traitors to their own side…

Having retrieved the location for the secret meeting from the dead drop, I headed off from the hotel a little before the start, as it was a short walk from home base. Of course, I took a circuitous route, doubling back a few times to make sure I was not being followed. Upon reaching the location, I immediately saw someone I knew. We exchanged the appropriate greetings, which of course is the secret handshake. The cloak and dagger aspect these things is serious business, but there’s nothing that says you can’t have some fun with it.

All of these security protocols are due entirely to the fact that even in Finland, lunatics from Antifa are allowed to roam the streets causing mayhem. In fact, it is fair to say they are the unofficial secret police of the global managerial state. They are allowed to commit crimes, intimidate people and harass businesses. The government could shut them down tomorrow, but they don’t, which is an endorsement of Antifa by the state. That’s where things are in the West. We’re ruled by gangsters that employ thugs…

Inside the event, I was struck by the professionalism of the organizers. They really have their act together in Finland. The event kicked off with a recorded video from Jared Taylor, who was supposed to be at the event. He is usually quite sunny, but he was still a bit angry over what has happened to him. I really can’t blame him. When our enemies do these things, it is intended to be an insult, a humiliation. There’s nothing wrong with getting mad in response, even if it will change nothing. We are human.

Most of the attendees were young, 20’s and 30’s, with some graybeards sprinkled into the mix. There was a good number of people in their 40’s and 50’s too, so it made for a lively crowd, but not too lively. Most were people who worked in companies and were comfortable in a professional setting. The event had the feel of a corporate retreat. Once again, it was a reminder of why our rulers fear us so much. If not for the thugs, this event could fill a large venue with the sorts of people that keep society functioning.

Millennial Woes filled in for Taylor and gave a nice talk about the usual things. I think if I were to list one complaint about these events it’s that the speakers tend to spend too much time rattling off the list of crimes committed by out rulers. If you are at one of these events, you know why you’re at the event. Being the rude obnoxious American, I eventually spoke up during the question and answer period, making the point that these events need practical stuff about organizing, rather than the listing of complaints.

Olena Semenyaka, the international secretary for a Ukrainian group that calls itself the National Corps, gave a talk that lasted longer than it should. That and she sounded a lot like the IRA thirty years ago. Kevin McDonald was on hand and gave the sort of speech you would see at the Mencken Club, except for some commendatory on the Jews. He really hated the fact that I recalled the headline of John Derbyshire’s review of Culture of Critique. He’s still sore about that, I guess. I don’t think he likes me very much.

The best talk was given by Mark Collett. In all honestly, I liked his speech because he repeated many of the things I write here on a regular basis. I don’t know if he reads me or not, but he made a point I have been making for years. That is, no authentic alternative movement is going to succeeded by being negative. Positive identity has staying power and it naturally attracts people to it. A movement that is nothing but a laundry list of grievances only attracts misfits and trouble makers. That cannot be said enough…

I did have readers and listeners there at the event. Some of them recognized my voice and came over to say hello. It’s not false modesty. I just struggle with the fact that lots of people read these posts and now lots of people listen to me. It’s an odd thing to hear someone say they recognized my voice or tell me they are a fan. It’s even stranger when it happens seven time zones from home. That said, it’s always good reminder that there is serious stuff going on here and I always need to keep that in mind…

The event was over around seven, so we adjourned to a nearby pub to drink beer and socialize. The Finnish police were on high alert, as the local lunatics were threatening to cause mayhem. I’m not sure what happened, but we were told to leave one bar and then another. I noticed someone, who looked like Ted Kaczynski just after they pulled him the cabin, following us around, screaming like a lunatic. My guess is he was the one getting the bars to throw us out. We managed to have a good time nonetheless.

The lesson I’ve drawn from attending events in the US and Europe is that dissident politics is woefully short on organizers. We really need to get better at organizing locally, building real life communities and working out how to get together without alerting the crazies. That means were have to stop thinking of ourselves as concerned citizens. Like it or not, we live in a lawless age where the rulers will lie, cheat and steal to undermine dissent. That means we have to stop trying to play by the rules when organizing and conspiring.

Dissident politics will have to be radical politics. That’s the real awakening this week. We are the new Jacobins. If this thing is to succeed where prior movements have failed, it is going to have start with that understanding. That means operating like radicals, rather than the local rotary club. It means throwing sand in the gears, making sure that the wheels of society don’t turn smoothly. That’s going to be hard for many to accept and it will be harder to sell, butt hat is the only way forward, if white identity politics is going the thrive…

My train from Saint Petersburg to Helsinki was scheduled to leave at 6:40 AM, which meant a very early start. Given the insanity of Russian traffic, I assigned the same amount of time to get to the train station as it took to get from the train station. Figuring everything would be in Russian, I also had 30 minutes of getting lost time, so I was leaving the hotel at 5:15. That meant I’d get a chance to see the city at the most quiet hours. It’s another good way to get a sense of a place you’re visiting for the first time.

Stepping out of the hotel, I saw the streets were totally empty, so I was thinking maybe I had overestimated the problems of Russian driving. The hotel called a cab and it was there in few minutes. The cabbie was right out of central casting. Skinny, twitchy, leather jacket that was popular in the 70’s. Of course, he was smoking. Russians don’t smoke as much as the Chinese, but it is close.  It’s not just the older people. Young Russians seem to love smoking. I guess vaping has not caught on with them yet.

Anyway, we head off and a few blocks into what I think will be a quick trip, we almost hit another taxi. Both slam on the brakes. My cabbie mutters something that I just assumed was an epithet appropriate to the moment. Then he leaps from the taxi and starts screaming at the other cabbie, who had leaped from his taxi. I was suddenly feeling like I was in one of those YouTube videos of Russian drivers. I thought they were going to go at it in the empty street, the way the two of them were screaming and pointing.

In a few minutes, one made the universal hand gesture signifying he was done with the other guy. That got the universal gesture for “you mad?” from the other cabbie. My taxi driver got back in and said something I just guessed meant “That guy is a fucking asshole” so I nodded and he seemed satisfied with the response. He then took off like the cops were coming and we had something close to a carnival ride to the station. He made two Russian U-turns, which they love, but got me to the station on time…

The Russian train station was another fine example of Hollywood tropes about the Soviet Union proving to be hilariously true. For starters, it is a dump. Second, the guards are old and fat and about as energetic as basset hounds. You have to go through security, which meant putting my bags on a conveyor belt about three feet long. It looked like a small x-ray machine you see at the airport, but the person manning it was asleep, so who knows if it even works. Then I walked through a metal detector, which did not work.

I know it did not work as I had a pocket full of Russian coins, some Euros, my phone, wallet and passport. The fat lazy Russian guard stopped me and pointed at what looked like the little basket you would normally put all your metal stuff before walking through the metal detector. I put my phone in it. I then picked it up and he waved me over to a waiting area. There were no lights on the metal detector and I did not hear it beep a single time in the 30 minutes waiting in the station. Old weird Russia is real…

Perhaps it is the residue of the Cold War and half a life of propaganda about Russians, but I had a strange sense of relief leaving Russia. Once the final customs check was done around Vyborg, I realized I had been pretty tense all morning. Part of it was the lack of sleep, for sure, but the strangeness of Russia had something to do with it too. There’s an unpredictable inefficiency to Russia that keeps you on edge. Throw in the fact that they use a different alphabet and it is like being on another planet at times.

It’s probably the closest any of us can come to understanding how it is like for Somalis in the West. In Russia, I did not understand anything. I can noodle my way through writing in Latin and Germanic rooted languages. It’s not precise, but close enough to feel some comfort and familiarity. Cyrillic is hopeless, so being in Russia is like being an illiterate, who does speak the local tongue. That’s not a bad description of life for most migrants, but especially the East Africans our rulers enjoy dumping into your neighborhood…

Back in Helsinki, my choice was to grab a train to the airport or take a taxi. My next leg was to rent a car and drive to the city of Turku. Since I had no idea where the car rental area was, I grabbed a taxi and sure enough, the driver was Somali. He was a younger guy, probably in his mid-20’s. His English was not great, but it was good enough. As with the Nigerian taxi driver the other day, I quickly found myself slamming in the reality of an 80-something IQ. He was struggling with the basics of his duties.

On the trip to the airport, he kept asking me questions about America. Some of his “cousins” live in Minnesota. He was hoping to immigrate to America, but his cousins tell him Minnesota is colder than Finland, so he was thinking Miami. He wanted to know what type of free housing they have in Miami. His free apartment in Espoo is too small. I’m guessing he was in some sort of public housing that was not exactly free, but then again, I would not be surprised if the Finns provide free housing to their conquerors.

As I was listening to him, the thought of maybe grabbing the wheel and smashing the both of us into oncoming traffic came to mind. I would be making a sacrifice for the good of my people, but that would mean my life was only worth one Somali. Perhaps if we were in a bus full of his cousins, it would make sense. Instead, I told him that Miami was very expensive and the Cubans were extremely racist. The racism stuff seemed to alarm him, suggesting they learn that stuff as soon as they set foot in the West.

That is something we Americans don’t fully appreciate. The rest of the world studies us, as America is the empire. Those of us in the dissident right understand that we are no more important to the imperial ruling class than a Somali herdsman, but those Somalis don’t understand this. To them, we really do look alike. As far as he was concerned, I was an ambassador from the Imperial Capital. My bet is my taxi driver asked every American he met about the places he sees on snap chat.

That is the other thing I learned from him. They love snap chat. All Somalis use snap chat to stay in touch with each other all over the world. This is something Steve Sailer observed back during the Merkel’s Millions crisis. The internet and social media apps that allow morons to get on-line has brought the fringe closer to the core, in terms of them knowing about us. These people see what we have and they want it, so they do what they must to get here. Social media is turning out to be a doomsday machine…

I picked up a nice Volvo at the airport and headed out to Turku. Once you get outside of Helsinki, you’re suddenly in what looks like New Hampshire or Vermont. The E18 is like an American state highway or the rural part of an interstate. The countryside is very nice, if you are the sort that likes driving the countryside. I was reminded of my many trips through New England in winter. I miss those drives as I love winter and I love the New England countryside in late winter. It’s peaceful, beautiful and clean….

My very first impression of Torku is it looked like Chapel Hill North Carolina, a quaint college town. After a few blocks, that gave way to thoughts of Newark New Jersey, as it got dirty and grimy, with lots of people standing around for no reason. There were more blacks than I saw anywhere in Finland, plus some North Africans. My hotel turned out to be a lot like where I stayed in Newark last year. Torku is not Newark and it is no overrun with Africans or even close to it. It’s still white, just downscale from Helsinki.

After checking in, I was in need of sleep, but I did a walk around anyway, figuring that would put in me in the right frame of mind for a long nap. If I had to guess, it is smaller cities like Torku where resistance to multiculturalism is growing. Not only are there more strangers here, they are more obvious. In big Cloud People cities like Helsinki, they use the cost of living as a barrier between themselves and multiculturalism. That does not work as well in small towns and rural areas. The natives see the truth every day.

After my nap, having a beer at a pub I found, I fell into conversation with a couple of Finns who were late-30’s, maybe early-40’s. They were nice and apparently educated. They knew the dissident terrain surprising well, as they became somewhat enthusiastic about the topic of immigration. Of course, alcohol loosens the tongue by removing inhibition, which is dangerous with the Finns. They drink like Japanese businessmen. That made for an interesting few hours of talk from people holding a lot in every day.

There is an awakening here, like everywhere in the West. That’s the term you hear in Europe among dissidents and nationalist. In America, we use red-pill to describe the feeling when your eyes open to this reality. For Europeans, it is more like they are waking up from a long dream, between when the lights went out in Europe a century ago and the Million Muslim invasion welcomed by Angela Merkel. For a tiny country like Finland to take in over 100,000 violent morons from over the horizon was a giant clanging alarm.

Standing on the platform at the Helsinki train station, a fellow walked up to me and asked in Finnish, “Tämä on junan Pieksämäelle?” I replied in English, “No, this is the train to Saint Petersburg.” He sat on the bench next to me, placing his newspaper between us. In a few minutes, he got up and left his newspaper behind. When my train arrived, I picked up the paper and boarded the train. Thus began my journey to the land of my ancestors, with the remaining instructions for my short stay in Saint Petersburg…

Being an American, I am unfamiliar with riding the rails. The closest we come to that, outside of train enthusiasts, is taking the subway in the local city. Not all American cities have subways, so many Americans never experience train travel at all. I’ve been in a lot of cities with subways, so I’m a bit of an outlier, but this sort of train travel is still foreign to me. The train station in Helsinki is like everything else in the city. It is clean, simple and extremely efficient. I was able to find my train by myself like a big boy.

I booked a first class car from Helsinki to Saint Petersburg, mostly because of the WiFi, but also because I don’t care for the riffraff. Now that I am an international man of travel, I now take pride in looking down on the little people. OK. I really just wanted the WiFi. I read somewhere that if you wanted to make sure you had good service the whole way, spend the extra euros on the better ticket. That and you get food services and a charging outlet, which is essential these days. For 65 extra Euros, it is a bargain for a three hour trip.

The first class car has a double row of seats on one side of the car and a single row on the other side. The seats face one another over a table. I selected one of the single seats facing to the back of the train. A middle aged gentlemen, slim, European cut suit, but of the quality one would see from an upper level civil servant, maybe a staffer for a political appointee, got on the car and sat right across from me. The car was empty at the time and only a handful of riders boarded, so his choice was unusual.

The result was I was going to spend three plus hours facing off with a fellow, who looked like Chris Cooper from the Bourne Identity. The possibility that I was either having a flash back to another part of my life or perhaps going to have to kill this man in a life and death struggle on a high speed train occurred to me. I was good either way, but then I remembered I had dosed off while watching that movie last night. He did look remarkably like the guy from the movie, but I’m not a sleeper agent in a CIA program…

A little over a century ago, April of 1917 to be exact, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin got off the train in Petrograd from Finland to change the world. Today I got off at the same station under less auspicious conditions.  Of course, Lenin’s trip was more dramatic, as he left Switzerland for the Baltics, then crossed over into Sweden. From Sweden, he and his traveling party, all revolutionaries, traveled by sleigh to Finland. The party broke up into groups of two and three, so they could make it across in the dark and avoid detection…

The Finnish countryside this time of year is all pine trees and snow. In breaks of pines there are stands of white birch. The uniformity of the trees and the various paths and roads cut into them suggests this area is carefully forested. We passed many small farms on the way. Some had the idyllic look one wants to believe is rural live, while others were abandoned shacks. Watching the scene roll by, I could not help but wonder what the Russians were thinking when they decided to invade Finland in the dead of winter…

To expedite travel between Helsinki and Saint Petersburg, customs is handled on the train as you make the trip. Unlike the airport, you just get on the train and the process of inspecting your documents is done by custom agents as you travel. Once you get to the border, Russian border agents repeat the process. They are just like the version you see in movies. It was two women, not bad looking, with scanners for reading your visa and looking up your ticket information, to make sure you are you.

They were quick with the Finns, but they took a strong interest in me. They looked carefully at each page of my passport, then both of them checked to make sure I was the guy in the passport photo. I suppose not many Americans turn up on the train to Saint Petersburg. Talking to my new traveling companion, I learned the train is mostly used by Finnish businessmen. They use Russia for cheap labor, especially high tech labor, in the same way American firms use India or China…

If you are old enough to remember the Cold War, the train station and surrounding area looks like a scene from an old spy movie. It’s actually quite remarkable, for reasons that are hard to explain. It looks like a movie scene, but it is a working, functioning city with people going about their daily lives. I guess I did not know what to expect from the city, but it was quite astonishing to me. It reminded me of my first trip to Boston as a kid. It looked like the pictures, but was also a real place, not just a movie set.

At the front of the train station, I got a cab. The weirdest thing of the trip was the cabbie looked just like my grandfather looked when I was boy. My grandfather has been dead for a long time, but this guy was his doppelganger from decades ago. He was a man in his 60’s and he had the same face and build. He also had the same crystal blue eyes, which was his most striking feature. There was a ton of traffic and plenty of crazy Russian drivers, so I had time to think about the odds of what I was seeing.

This is good time to mention that all of those YouTube videos of crazy Russian drivers are all true and plus some. Anyone who has been to what we used to call the third world knows that insane driving is a feature of these places. Russian is obviously not third world and Saint Petersburg is a mostly modern city. Russians are just crazy drivers. On the trip to the hotel, we saw three wrecks and too many outlandish acts to count. The really crazy thing is they have an otherworldly respect for pedestrians.

After checking in, I did not waste time getting to see the city. I was at the Renaissance, which is just west of Nevsky Prospect. It’s a great hotel and a great place to see all of the normal tourist stuff. I walked the Neva River west toward the docks. It was a beautiful day, so the locals were out in big numbers, walking along both sides of the river. There were also tons of Chinese tourists, so it felt like a weekend afternoon. The sheer beauty of the buildings you pass by is quite remarkable. It’s like being in a postcard.

I’m not the most sentimental guy, but as I was walking along the river, I was feeling a bit emotional. I suppose being reminded of my grandfather must have brought to mind memories I’d long forgotten. Family lore is always a bit dodgy, but I know that side came from Saint Petersburg. I kept thinking what it must have been like for then, all those years in America, remembering what they left behind. They were poor, so it was not like they left the good life, but they did cut themselves off from who they were as people…

Since it has come up in prior posts, Russian women can be quite beautiful, but they can also be ridiculously trampy, at both ends of the scale. On the high end are the glamour whores, who always dress to the nines and love wearing garish sunglasses. They have a look on their face like they are bored and disappointed. On the other end are the type who look like they would be at home in a West Virginia trailer park. They dress like strippers and probably smell like bar soap. They have that bored look on their face too.

There is another type that was the majority, from what I could tell. They are plain and pleasant, thin in their youth. They sort of remind me of country girls. I started talking with a women in her early 30’s, I’m guessing. She had good English, so we could chat without using hand signals. She was visiting her mother, as she lived in England. Her mother looked like she pushed school children into her cottage oven. That’s the thing about Russian women. Father time is never very kind to them…

I walked down to the Dom Knigi, which is a tourist area for having lunch and buying cheap souvenirs. Everywhere you look, there are sellers hawking Russian dolls and lacquer boxes. I guess people like that stuff, but I can think of a dozen better things to sell to tourists looking for a memento. There is one good thing there and it is the Savior on Spilled Blood church. It’s not big, but it is an impressive church both inside and outside. If you are into old churches, it’s worth the walk and the 350 rubles for the tour.

From there I visited the the State Hermitage Museum, which is a collection of buildings that includes the museum founded by Catherine the Great and the Winter Palace of Peter the Great. It is simply impossible to accurately describe how I felt walking across the massive plaza toward it. Maybe is the vastness of the plaza or just the sheer enormity of the building itself, but I felt like an ant walking toward it. It’s one of those things that you just cannot appreciate until you walk up to it in real life.

Like every other tourist, I took a million pics of the place as I walked up to it. I even took some shots of the silly Cinderella carriages they use for giving tourists rides around the city. Unlike the ones you see in American cities, these are modeled after the Grand Coronation Carriage. When you walk into the complex, the enormity of it gives way, as you are suddenly in a relatively small courtyard. It really does give the full effect of what it must have been like for the royals. This was their shelter from their people….

Maybe it was a carryover from the unfortunate bout of sentimentality I experienced earlier in the day, but walking back I suddenly understood why the people revolted against the Tsar. Nicholas II, like all of the aristocratic families of Europe, was no longer the leader of a people. He was just a guy in charge of an empire. Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, King George V of England and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, the three principle monarchs at the start of the Great War, we all cousins. The Tsar’s mother was Danish.

If you were living in Saint Petersburg at the dawn of the 20th century, the royal family and the system that supported them was as foreign to you as space aliens. Instead of the trappings and symbols being a tangible representation of the people’s shared reality, they were symbols of a system that allowed strangers to rule over people they did not know and would never know. The massive walls of the palace and the guards who protected those walls, were a daily reminder that you were ruled by strangers.

That’s how it is with revolutions. The people in charge, at some point, take a turn where they no longer see themselves as an extension of the people over whom they rule. They begin to see themselves as different and separate. They start to turn the rituals and ceremonies of the people’s shared reality into a psychological barrier, reminding the people on the other side that they are not inside. That’s when they start building walls and exclusive retreats. The Hermitage was a tangible representation of this reality.

It’s why the revolutionary can have no empathy for the people on the other side of those walls. The rebel may have some sympathy for the people he must dispatch and some sympathy for the people who must do it. There can be no empathy, though, as when the revolution comes, the people on either side of those walls no longer know one another as people. You cannot have empathy for strangers who hold you in contempt. Those on the other side are defined by your hatred for them.

Walking back from the Hermitage, not only did I understand that the Tsar got what he deserved, I understood why the Bolsheviks were so quick to do it. A revolution that seeks to preserve the past is not a revolution. It is a restoration. It’s like trying to fix up an old house. A proper revolution must always end with the utter destruction of the old order, the symbols of that order and the people who control it. Revolutions are a sacrament in blood, bring forth something new and washing away that the old order.

Something I noticed in Denmark last year is that things in this part of the world seem to start later than in the US. I walked around Copenhagen in the early morning and did not see many people. It was a work day, so I should have seen commuters and people headed to trains and buses. Here in Finland, the taxi ride to the ferry was remarkable for the lack of traffic. I think I saw one car and a truck. In America, at least on the East Coast, traffic jams start at 6:30 AM. Most people are in the office by 8:30 AM.

I wonder if it is not the warping effect of New York. Whenever I have spent time on the West Coast of America, I’ve noticed that the day starts earlier and ends earlier. It’s like they are still on NY time. I have business associates in Los Angeles and I get e-mail from them at 9:00 AM my time, which means 6:00 AM their time. The secret handshake society I will be attending, at an undisclosed location, will start after lunch. The one in Denmark last year started at 2:00 PM and ran until 7:00 PM…

The ferry over to Estonia is a pretty cool thing, but another great example of things you can have or you can have diversity. The cars getting onto the ferry line up and go through an orderly process of driving onto the ferry. In America, the vibrant would be smashing into one another and getting into fights while going through the check-in, so that would mean an army of storm troopers to police the process. That would require commuters to line up hours in advance, which would mean a many hours long boarding process.

In Finland, the drivers get to the terminal an hour in advance and drive right through a quick check-in process. They drive onto the ferry and then head to the decks. The rest of us walked over a gangway to what is very much like a cruise ship. I was booked into the business section, which had a nice breakfast buffet, drinks, excellent WiFi and a staff to police the tables. I got a little work done, answered e-mails and spent the last hour reading a book while enjoying my second cup of coffee. The coffee was excellent…

My first impression of Tallinn, as I disembarked, was that it was dirty. Maybe it was the aftermath of winter, but the streets were caked with what looked like cinders. Where you get off the ferry is probably the least welcoming place, as it looks like a freight terminal that is under construction. In fact, most of Tallinn is under construction. Every other building is wrapped in plastic and the streets are torn up everywhere. This is not the best time for tourism, so maybe that’s why it seemed so grimy, but that was my first impression.

My second impression was that it stinks, stinks of diesel exhaust. It seems they have found a way to power everything with diesel, including bicycles and pets. When I walked out of the tunnel from the ferry to land, I was engulfed in a cloud of diesel exhaust from a passing truck. I’m surprised the EU permits it, but maybe they look the other way for the former communist countries. Maybe the Estonians just cheat. Either way, it reminded me of what it was like in America in the 80’s when city buses were like crop dusters…

Rather than follow the crowd to Old Town, I went the other direction and walked a dozen blocks to the east, then another dozen blocks or so south. If you look at a map, the tourist area is to the west, so I figured the real Tallinn was to the east. Given the history and layout of the city, my guess is the east is mostly built in the 20th century, but a lot of it dates to previous centuries. Estonia was a battle ground fought over by Danes, Russians, Germans, Swedes and Poles for most of its history, so it is tough to know.

For example, I walked past an apartment building, probably built in the middle of the last century. It was the drab concrete style popular with communists. Next to it was a cool looking old wood structure that would look at home on Cape Cod. Upon closer inspection, I saw it had undergone a recent renovation, so maybe it was old, but maybe it was just made to look like it dates to the 19th century. You can’t trust anything now. Even in a place like Estonia, everything is becoming a reproduction of a long gone culture of a foreign people.

If you want to get a sense of what life was like under the Soviets, walking around this part of Tallinn is a good way to do it. You see the old buildings and dilapidated old houses. It’s not a slum, but it has that aesthetic the Soviets were so famous for back during the Cold War. Lots of concrete and gray paint. The materialism of the Bolsheviks was really just the total lack of spiritual beauty. They were ugly people and that ugliness was made manifest their building and city planning. They were vulgar and depraved.

The other thing I noticed, or at least I think I noticed, is that Estonia is a country without an identity, other than a long list of historical grievances. The building and repairing is a rush to join the global economy, but it is not being done by the locals. They are just bystanders, as global interests invest in Tallinn. The Estonians working in the city could be Poles or Germans or space aliens, as far as the investors are concerned. Estonia is rushing to become a part of the consumer race…

Old Town Tallinn is a nice tourist trap. It is one of the best preserved medieval cities in Europe, so if you are a history buff, I highly recommend seeing it. You get a real sense of what urban life was like in the Middle Ages. One warning. You will walk a lot and do a lot of walking up hill on cobblestone streets and uneven walks. There’s also the fact it is laid out like a medieval city, which means the streets make no sense. I needed three tries to find the Nevsky Cathedral. I was pretty tired after a day of walking the city….

What do you do when you have no cell service, the fraud alert has shut down your credit cards, you have no cash and you’re in a strange foreign city? Well, let me explain. The people at my cell carrier said I would have no problem using my GSM phone in these counties. I would have to pay a fee to their partner here in Europe. This actually worked in Ireland, but it did not work in Denmark. I tried everything and finally got a burner in case I needed to make a call. I did not need it, but it was insurance.

In Finland, I was getting texts and e-mail over the cellular network, so I figured I was OK, as I never make calls anymore, just text and e-mail. In Estonia, I realized I had no cell service at all. I was not worried until I tried to buy something and all three credit cards were declined. To make matters worse, I had no cash of any type with me, as I planned to just charge everything. That meant I had no money and no way to call the credit card company to get the issue resolved. I was suddenly thinking about life in Estonia.

I found the tourist center, which will always have good free WiFi these days. I then downloaded Skype and setup a new account. I then called American Express using their toll free number, so I did not need credit on Skype. They turned my card back on and I used it to charge up the Skype account. Since Estonia has decent public WiFi, I figured that would get me through any more problems until I returned to a land in which the banks have greater trust. My next stop is Mother Russia, so…

As far as Tallinn, my guess is it serves Sweden and Finland as something like what Tijuana used to serve adventurous Americans. It’s a place to go to get crazy drunk and do things you don’t talk about upon your return. That’s just a hunch, but the way it is setup strikes me as that sort of thing. There’s a big open court in the middle of Old Town surrounded by cafes and bars. During the day, people shop and eat. In the evening, the crowd changes over and it becomes giant party with midgets and donkeys…

European butter and cheese is the greatest thing ever to an American. That’s because we have weird laws about dairy products to prevent small companies from competing with giant food corporations. Our dairy is not terrible, but it relatively flavorless compared to the European options. I have no opinion about which way is better, but I know I really love the taste of European dairy. I have probably consumed a pound of butter so far. Finnish egg butter is a nutty idea, but it is great spread over a freshly baked roll…

I visited the Nevsky Cathedral, which appears to be a working facility. They have signs up asking for donations. I walked in and the smell of incense brought back some memories, but the babushkas praying into front to the icons really brought back memories of the old women I remember as a boy. A church full of old women, though, is not a church. It is a museum. Does the shared culture collapse and then the churches follow, or is it that the churches fail and then the shared reality of the people follows? It’s a good question…

Men in Europe really like tight clothes. They really like suit jackets that are what Americas would see as a size too small. Even the portly guys have tight jackets and pants. The difference between Americans and Europeans is that the worst sin for a Euro is to be seen as boring, while the worst sin for an American is to be a phony. This shows up in men’s styles. European men look like they spent hours getting ready to go out, while American men want to look like they live in a house with no mirrors or hot water…

I saw three blacks in Tallinn. They were standing in front a restaurant called “Tabula Rasa.” On the street was a sign for the Final Four, the college men’s basketball tournament in America. I was overwhelmed by the urge to take a picture, but years of living in Lagos has trained me to avoid doing stuff like that. Still, after seeing the glory of Nevsky Cathedral, the whiff of incense still in my nostrils, I could not help but wonder if the man upstairs was gently reminding me that he is keeping an eye on me…

On my trips to this part of the world, I’ve noticed that women here are what we in America would call high maintenance. The men seem to put a lot of effort into doting on their women, while the women act like they deserve it plus more. In Copenhagen, I saw men pushing a cart in which their date would ride. Contrary to the Viking image, men in this part of the world seem almost henpecked. Given what we see with their politics, it’s clear that the culture veered into matriarchy at some point and politics followed.

Even if this is just a superficial affectation, it is interesting because of what we think caused the variety of eye colors, hair textures and hair colors in Northern European people. The most common explanation is that there was an imbalance between the sexes, as the males needed to engage in high risk activity like hunting large animals and fishing cold waters. The result was more girls than boys, which gave an edge to women with unusual eye and hair color, as far as the sexual marketplace.

A trait that offers an edge in terms of attracting a mate, especially for women in a world short of eligible men, is going to spread quickly. It would follow that women would be the pursuers, while the men could be indifferent. If things are the reverse today, then it suggests something important changed over the last many generations. Perhaps enough cads were killed off in wars to turn the tables, giving the doting males an edge. That would have changed the dynamic among women, making them high maintenance…

I am planning to take the train from Helsinki to St. Petersburg, so it meant taking the ferry back over the Gulf of Finland. I went to the taxi stand and to my surprise there was a black taxi driver. It turns out that there are at least two Nigerians in Helsinki, the cabbie and his mother. He took a call and I noted that he had a Muslim name. His Finnish was awful and his English something close to nonsense, so I would assume he grew up speaking his people’s native tongue. I had to program my destination into his GPS.

Of course, the reason for all of this is he was probably sporting an 80-IQ. I had practiced a handful of Finnish phrases, in case I needed to tell a Finnish speaker what I wanted. He did not understand what I said. He just pointed at his tablet and made the writing sign with his hand, so I got the idea. I entered the address and we were off, but he got lost in the port area somehow, so I had to help him get on the road. The GPS allows him to drive a taxi, which is a great example of how we make it easy for the stupid to survive.

When we finally got to my hotel, he became confused about how to enter or even how to get to the front gate. Finally, I yelled stop enough ways for him to get the idea. He was trying really hard to to do his job and for that I could not help but respect him, but he clearly lacked the intelligence to do it. He handed me the credit card machine, assuming I could work it, which led me to assume he could not, so I charged my taxi fare and walked the last block to the hotel. I had been driven by an unfrozen caveman.

I actually felt bad for him. Unlike our rulers, I get why second and third generation migrants become extremely hostile to the native populations. The first generation have enough on the ball to leave their native lands looking for a better life. It’s not enough to compete at a middling level in the West, but enough to compete at the bottom, which is a several steps up from what they can do back home. Being on welfare in the West is better than the good life in Nigeria, so migrating makes perfect sense to the first generation.

One way to think of the great replacement is to think of it as an effort to bring the bottom up, by importing a slightly better underclass. The little brown guys running leaf blowers in America and the migrants driving cabs in Europe are an upgrade to the native working classes, who the rulers see as too demanding and too lazy. The trouble is, the layer between the rulers and the lower classes is the middle class and they are the people paying the price for the ruler’s great demographic experiment.

What this is revealing is something that has been true for a long time, but the middle-class has been blind to it. That is, the ruling elites of the West are post-national and largely define themselves in opposition to the great middle-classes of the West. The more the middle balks at immigration, the more excited the managerial class gets for multiculturalism and mass migration. That’s because the louder the native complain, the more intense the managerial class sense of identity. They truly hate us…

Helsinki is roughly the size of Baltimore, in terms of population and it is also a major seaport, but it may as well be another planet. I arrived from London in the afternoon and breezed through passport control. The young woman who checked my passport asked me the normal questions then asked me where I was staying. I could not remember the name of the place, so I said it was the former prison. She laughed and said, “That’s Katajanokka!” I was sent on through and headed down to baggage claim.

The Finns must have the best run airport on earth. I’ve been in a lot of airports and the wait for luggage is a minimum of thirty minutes in most of them. By the time I got to the carousel, my bag was there waiting for me. I collected it and went outside to see a taxi stand right by the door. The trip from the plane to the taxi was maybe ten minutes. Of course, the taxi was a Mercedes Benz, which always makes me laugh. In America, the Mercedes is the symbol of suburban affluence. In Europe, it is the most common taxi.

Of course, you soon understand why Helsinki is a clean, efficient city, as the taxi driver is a white guy, who speaks good English in addition to Finnish. Most everywhere now, the taxi business is run by Muslims from the Middle East or North Africa. In Finland, you just don’t see many non-Finns, other than some Chinese tourists and white Europeans here on business. I asked my taxi driver where I could find a ghetto to visit. He laughed and said there are no ghettos in Helsinki. Everywhere was safe.

After I told him where I was from, he then understood my question better. He had been to the Imperial Capital in the 1980’s and still remembered the squalor. He asked how it was now and I gave him the truth about our multicultural experience. He figured out my politics, because he then told me how important it was for Finns to keep the Muslims and blacks out of the country. He also said their rulers were trying to change Finland by importing diversity, but he was confident the Finns would not lose their country…

The sun was close to setting, so after I checked into the hotel I took a quick stroll around the area where I was staying. Katajanokka prison, which is now a hotel, is actually on an island named Katajanokka. It’s just over a short footbridge from the mainland, but it is still technically an island. There’s a utilitarian vibe here. The Finns must think form follows function, as the building style is not intended to impress anyone. There’s a humbleness about it that can be mistaken for plain, but it quite beautiful.

Katajanokka is a very nice neighborhood, where local big shots live, so its lack of gaudiness is not due to a lack of wealth. It’s just that Finns are never garish. There is a park named after Tove Jansson, the famous creator of the Moomin books. These are a collection of somewhat disturbing children’s books, popular in Finland since the middle of the last century. There is the Uspenski Cathedral, which is an old largest Orthodox cathedral. The waterfront is full of shops, food stands and tourist stuff…

The next day, after my early morning walk, I found a nice little place, in the side of an old building, selling coffee and baked goods. The proprietor was Italian, an older man, who somehow ended up in Finland. In his youth he had a spirit for adventure and enjoyed drug taking, so one thing led to another and he wound up in Finland. He now has a pleasant life playing music, when not selling coffee and biscuits to people in his shop. I get the sense that many of the foreigners living here have a similar story. They just ended up here…

I sought out where the Finnish rulers hold court and asked for an audience with their ruler, but I was told that it was not possible. I presented a letter of introduction, passed on to me by John Derbyshire, from the honorable Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, exulted leader of Turkmenistan. Unknown to me, Sauli Niinistö, the ruler of Finland, is in a quarrel with Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow. After some very tense moments, in which flogging was discussed as an option, I was released and told to report back before my departure…

The women of Finland come in two main types. There are the somewhat cherubic type, with a hint of north Asia to them. They do not have an eye fold, but they have the facial structure of Asians. These are robust women, who get more robust as they hit their middle years. It’s not hard to imagine them hauling firewood or a reindeer carcass into the cabin during the dead of winter. All of the old women in my family have this build. Facially, they really do all look the same, which suggests a narrowness to their family tree.

The other type is at the other end of the morphological scale for females. Unlike the more robust variety, these women usually have blonde hair and they are athletic. Their faces are round, but lack the cherubic quality of the former type. As they age, they maintain the athletic build, but their faces show wrinkles along the jaw line, which is actually quite attractive. It make them look wizened, at least to me. Finnish women of all types seem to view men with good humor, as if we are clowns sent here for their amusement…

You know you are in a different land the first time you use the toilet. I realized this for the first time while in Mexico. The public toilet was a hole in the floor and it was very public, in that there was now stall. In nicer facilities, a man would be in the toilet handing out squares of paper and offering to wash your hands. In a rich country like America, solving the bathroom problem is not something we have faced for a very long time, so we take this stuff for granted. We don’t think about toilets and showers very much. At least I don’t.

Something I’ve noticed in Europe is the lack of water pressure in the shower. I’m in a nice place in Helsinki and the water pressure is not much above a trickle, relative to what I’m used to in America. My shower at home can remove paint if you get aggressive with the settings. I’ve never experienced anything like that in Europe. It’s always the opposite, which is probably due to a need to conserve. America has plenty of water and it is cheap, relative to most things, so we use as much as we like. That’s not true in Europe.

That’s something we Americans don’t appreciate. In North America, we have plenty of every natural resource. We could be energy independent if we simply stopped selling oil and gas to foreigners. We have plenty of water, plenty of places to throw away trash and so on. Buy gas for the car in Europe and you quickly appreciate why we love our trucks and SUV’s. Gasoline here is a little under $6 per gallon. The rental car I will be driving to Turku this week is the size of one of the tires on my truck….

Waste and water are two things that have popped into my head several times during my short time in Helsinki. Everywhere here offers water, even the coffee shop. I bought a couple of beers at the front desk and they offered me a glass of water. On the other hand, the Finns seem obsessed with wasting anything, especially water. In a few places, I’ve seen signs that describe how much was wasted the previous day. I’m a thrifty guy, so this appeals to me for obvious reasons, but it is a strange thing nonetheless…

The Finns also obsess about energy usage. In the hotel, you have to insert your key card into a slot near the door to turn on the electric. Even the sockets power off when you remove the card. The point is to prevent guests from leaving the lights on when they leave. A local told me the Finns are very energy conscious. As someone who hates it when people leave lights on in an empty room, I’m thinking this will be a good policy to institute at my office. Maybe I’ll install thermal sensors in every room…

Helsinki is one of the least diverse places you can visit, so those who enjoy vibrancy, as much as I do, will be disappointed to find zero vibrancy here. I mean zero. I walked about for most of the day and saw zero familiar faces. The closest thing to vibrant, other than the Chinese tourists, were some Indonesian businessmen. That said, you do manage to get used to the sameness. I know, it seems impossible, as diversity is our strength, but being in a place where everyone looks sort of like you is relaxing after a while…

There is a Chabad outpost in Helsinki. I wandered past it on my walk. For those unfamiliar, Chabad is a Jewish cult that started in Russia, moved to Poland and then moved to America before the war. They have “centers” in every country. President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is in the cult. One thing they believe is that this is a messianic era and that Jews must prepare for the end times. That means their movement must bring Jews back into the faith, similar to some Evangelical Christian movements.

One big difference is they think Jews should revolt against secular governments. They are a little vague about this, but the main point is that Jews should have no loyalty to any secular government. Funny how no one thinks this is a problem. If some white guys get together to talk about white identity politics, the full force of the custodial state swings into action. A worldwide cult preaching the end times, with recruiting centers in every capital of the West, including a man inside the White House, is no big deal…

Finland is a country of roughly five million people. According the most recent crime reports I can find on-line, they had 63 homicides in 2017. Half of those involved men of marginalized groups where heavy drinking was involved. That’s a nice way of saying losers who got drunk and took their disagreement to the next level. Baltimore, a city with ten percent of the population of Finland, had 342 murders in 2017. Roughly 95% of those murders were committed by marginalized men, by which we mean blacks…

Before going to bed, I turned on the television. I speak no Finnish, so the local shows are a mystery of white people speaking what sounds like Klingon. The local shows have zero non-whites on them. Even in Copenhagen, I saw they decorated their shows with some diversity. The Finns have not done this, as far as I can tell. I watched something that looked like a game show. The only thing diverse about it is one guy had neck tattoos and ear gauges. Otherwise, Finnish TV is what our ruling classes hate the most.

The exceptions are the American and British channels. The BBC is a carnival of cloud people diversity. Imagine CNN with British accents and British condescension. That’s the Beeb. The American station is a Fox affiliate, playing the Simpsons and Family Guy. They also have National Geographic for some reason. The commercials on these channels are full of vibrancy and diversity. I saw an ad for razors featuring a black guy. There was an ad for something featuring race mixers. We are ruled by monsters…

The first leg of my journey was a stop in London. When booking the trip, the cheapest flight took me through Heathrow, with a half day layover. I hate having to run to make connections, as that often ends in me missing my connection, so I don’t mind a few hour gap between flights. Having almost a full day between flights was not ideal, but it beat the alternatives when I was booking the flight. My plan was to leave the airport and do a quick tour of London, but that plan got scuttled by British security.

When leaving the airport’s secure area, I was pulled aside for the rubber glove treatment by whatever they call their security forces. I was taken to a room and asked the usual questions. Then they asked to examine my phone, which got them upset, as there is nothing on it other than some classical music I loaded for the trip. I keep nothing on my phone as a rule. This one is brand new, so the browser does not even have some history on it. That lack of a information seemed to upset them.

That led them to ask to look at my laptop. I use a travel laptop, so if something happens, I’m not missing important parts of my life. This one I just setup with Linux and a new solid state drive. This only increased their anxiety, so we spent an hour or so playing Petrovich and Raskolnikov. My Russian visa did not help matters. I’ve gone through this a couple of times in American airports, but this seemed different. Maybe I’m imagining things, but I got the strong sense of being on a list. Maybe it was just the culture gap.

You see, that’s the other thing. The British Starsky and Hutch were Apu and Mustafa, two brown guys from over the rainbow. Their English was fine, but it had the hint of the exotic, suggesting they grew up speaking something other than English at home. They also had the narrowness that is typical of the South Asian. There’s always a barrier that exists between the Occidental and the Oriental, despite the degree of shared experience. There is an inscrutableness there that always leaves a degree of uncertainty between us…

After getting sprung from gaol, I was free to explore the giant shopping mall that is the Heathrow airport. The best I could tell, all of the employees were either brown people from over the horizon or Eastern Europeans. I got something to eat and all of the wait staff was not British. Given the international flavor of the passengers, you would be hard pressed to know you were in the heart of Britain. They don’t even have televisions playing the BBC or local sporting events. Heathrow is a foreign country disguised as an airport…

I’ve been in a great many airports in my life and I have a weird fascination for them. Most airports serving big cities are really just complex systems that have evolved over many years to solve evolving problems of air travel. An airport is a solution for a problem of modern life. As a result, you can learn a lot about the evolution of human organization by observing what happens at the big airports. Their design is similar everywhere, but everywhere is not the same, so the airport says something about the local culture.

If you are going to make a list of the worst airports on earth, it’s hard to imagine how Heathrow would not make the cut. It is a big hub for international travel, so it is a lot like the bar in Star Wars. They have turned the thing into a giant shopping with an airport attached to it. To do that, it meant connections require train rides and shuttle buses to get to your connection. There’s no way to make a connection there without allowing a few hours in between. Otherwise, you watch your flight take off from the shuttle bus…

On the fight from Lagos to London, a couple of Africans were across the aisle, one row up, from where I was sitting. Both were dressed up in what Hollywood tells us is traditional African dress for African royalty. Their accents suggested Ghana to me. At some point, the male got very agitated at the person in front of him, who had reclined her chair. He started violently shaking her chair-back and hollering something. Two stewards came over and gave him a lecture about his behavior and airplane etiquette.

Watching the two of them struggle to understand how to be passengers on an airplane, I realized what it would be like to bring Stone Age people into this age. The two of them were just too dumb to navigate plane transport. They were frustrated by the food service process. They struggled to understand simple directions. When the plane landed, they got up and started walking down the aisle, while the plane was still taxiing to the gate. They are primitives incapable of existing in a modern society, without constant supervision…

Walking around Heathrow, it is easy to see why our rulers love multiculturalism. They look at the diversity you see at a big intentional airport and they think of it as the Casablanca of this age. It makes them feel worldly and sophisticated. That brown guy in their department with the perfect continental English is not just a colleague. He is a symbol of what makes them special. They are not provincials. They are worldly cosmopolitans. They never see the other side of it. They just see the good part of the transaction.

Frankly, I don’t blame them. I could not help but be a bit impressed with myself, as I mingled with my fellow globetrotters. If I spent my days looking out at a polyglot, multiracial sea of people getting on well with one another, I might start thinking we have transcended something more than the Malthusian limit. Mankind is about to cross over into being a single race, a global race. It’s an illusion, but one that is reinforced every day, so for them it is reality. The trouble is, their reality is not our reality or even reality…