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Jukka_Rohila

Listed below are comments made by Jukka_Rohila between Friday, 20th November 2009 and Sunday, 22nd November 2009.

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Blair camp not hopeful 9:23pm on 22 Nov 2009 To WebAliceinwonderland (140):

Ah...

Then it is an institution of secondary education. In Finland we have two type of schools like these: High School for general education, and Vocational schools for professional training like plumber, metal worker or furniture restaurateur.

Vocational school in Finnish is "ammattikoulu", however the English name can be something like Turku Vocational Institution. Usually Finnish Vocational schools like to use the word Institute to differentiate from just being a school.

Now if the school you have isn't just a vocational school, but for example has different lines, like more closer to high school, then I would just recommend naming it as an school of secondary education and then explaining on what different subjects they teach there and what in practice it does give to people.

You could also look for this page for a diagram on what the Finnish education system is like...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Finland
Blair camp not hopeful 8:34pm on 22 Nov 2009 To WebAliceinwonderland (135):

What is your real question? Is it, "I'm applying for a job as an marketing/account manager in a western company, how should I state my education?". To which I can only answer, it depends...

In the US, and the rest of the world following their example, divides the education in two:

1) Graduate education, as in any Bachelors degree or comparable to it. If you have a some old Soviet era degree, that is comparable with it, I would classify it as graduate level.
2) Postgraduate education, as in Masters degree or an PhD. Your MBA goes here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postgraduate_education

Of course then there is the vocational education, which is part of the secondary education, and involves obtaining a professional training.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocational_education
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_education

After secondary education, you have the tertiary or the higher education.

Now if you are trying to explain these things to a know-it all young hotshot like me, then I would suggest using Europass CV generator, as nothing tells more strongly that you are a practical, no fuss, team player with no "not invented here" syndrome that can be trusted is to use standard template for your CV.

http://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/europass/home/vernav/Europass+Documents/Europass+CV.csp

Now did this at all help you in your quest?
Blair camp not hopeful 8:11pm on 22 Nov 2009 To cool_brush_work (133):

You are deviating away from the real argument and that is the increasing strength of the Euro and diminishing strength and influence of the US dollar. Allocations of reserve currencies are an clear indicator of this, anything else is more or less irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that Euro has strengthened its position as reserve currency, even with the US invasion to Iraq and followed banishing of usage of Euro in oil trade and the continued threatening of Iran on not going along the same route. That is the main story. Now the US dollar has almost collapsed already, what do you think will happen when oil producing nations will start to trade oil in Euros. The answer is collapse of the US dollar, collapse of the US economy and collapse of the US military might. Now US isn't going to become a third world country, but it won't be the behemoth that it currently is.

Now what goes to markets, the economy Eurozone is already almost as big as the economy of US. It is ridiculous to think that its centers of finance and banking wouldn't take leading positions in the world. The Eurozone is only 10 years old, and we are just going with the first phases of integration of the underlying infrastructure from things like EMA to more technical renewals such as TARGET2 and the upcoming 2011 transfer to SEPA. What ever the situation is now, after completing of the integration work, things will change.

...

Jumping to Stockmann.

The work is still underway and the extension to the department store should be completed in 2010. With the extension they will get 10 000 square meters more space, thus having total 50 000 square meters of shopping space. They are also doing other renovations and expanding the underground parking garage from 200 cars to 600.

The city is also soon completing its own work in central street and making the section besides Stockmann the newest walkable street in the city.
Blair camp not hopeful 5:52pm on 22 Nov 2009 To cool_brush_work (129):

You might want to update your reserve currency position statuses.

In Q2/2009, from allocated reserves, 62.8% were in USd, and in 27.5% in Euro which continues the previous trend of decrease of USd reserves and increase in Euro reserves. However, that isn't all to the situation, 37% of all reserves and unallocated, their holders not wanting to reveal mixture of their holdings. It is very probable that in these holdings there are many more Euros than there are US dollars as developing economies like China have tried to shift away from dollar holdings without collapsing the market in one night.

http://www.imf.org/external/np/sta/cofer/eng/

Now what goes to global financial centers, London currently is one of them, but don't be fooled by the indexes and ranking tables out there, as for example GFCI was done by London City operated think thank, the same goes to many other publications that glorified London. Believing them would be the same as believing GDP stats compiled by the Soviet Communist party claiming the USSR having greatest GDP per capita in the world, or Nazis making index of most cheerful Jewish centers in the world and making Auschwitz number one in their list.

Now in regards the profits made by the UK financial industry, let me just remind you on how much money the UK government has pumped to keep up the financial industry going. The profits of the UK financial industry are as real and as earned as those of the Goldman Sachs.

Lastly, if we go back to the topic of Iraq war, let me just say one word: Yellow cake. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries
Blair camp not hopeful 2:47pm on 22 Nov 2009 To maria-ashot and WebAliceinwonderland:

Preserving history is good, and St. Petersburg is full of Russian and European culture history, however preserving everything makes a city just an outdoor museum, and museum tend to be quite dead places.

For example, take the new coming Stockmann department store in Nevsky Prospect. They are demolishing the old building from the place and constructing a new building in its place that will retain the exterior outlook of the old building.

http://www.stockmann.ru/portal/1731/

Do you accept this or not?

In my mind, somewhere along you have to make compromises and some sacrifices to keep the city being alive.

Also I object to idea that the history of St. Petersburg is already written. The history is open and the city a possibility to become again a booming hub of the Northern Russia and Europe, a city that is growing and renewing itself.

In my opinion, having Gazprom building a skyscraper is not necessarily bad thing, as long they make more far reaching plans to build a new central business district which in time will be full of skyscrapers and towering building. Many other old European metropolises have skyscrapers and they suite them, for example Paris as La Defense district which is a wonderful place and suites Paris very well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Defense

Another thing to remember is that a living city with prosperous firms and businesses is a key for preserving, renewal and creation of culture itself. I would hate to see the Russian Empire being the last great phase of the history of the city as the future holds much if there is a taker.
Blair camp not hopeful 2:35pm on 22 Nov 2009 To cool_brush_work (122):

The CIA, NSA and their UK counter parts knew exactly that there were no WMDs and so did the elected leaders who got their intelligence reports. The thing was that they were ordered to lie in order to get war started, simple as that. The public was bought with lies, more lies and lies on top of that: Al-Qaeda and Saddam, a fantasy story, nothing more.

Now let me ask you a question...
Do you object to the theory that Saddam's decision to use Euro to trade oil was the reason for the Iraq war...
A) because having chaps die for the US dollar is a repulsive idea, or
B) because Euro being so powerful that it threatens the position of the USd, tells that the Federal project is firmly in tracks and has frighteningly much economic power mounted to the EU?

Are you afraid of this graph?
http://fx.sauder.ubc.ca/cgi/fxplot?b=EUR&c=USD&rd=*&fd=1&fm=1&fy=1999&ld=31&lm=12&ly=2009&y=daily&q=volume&f=png&a=lin&m=0&x=

Or these figures of reserve currency holdings?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_currency

What the US leaders in 2002 - 2003 were afraid is happening right now. The world is changing from USd based global economy to a era of competing reserve currencies where the Euro might very well have a leading position. With the change of reserve currency positions, the US can't anymore print money and finance its global military presence and keep it consuming up, the Europe on the other hand can print more and more money to finance its consumption and military endeavors. What we have going on right now is the creation of new global order where superpowers such as the EU, USA and China negotiate and conduct global order.

The US leaders were afraid to have this to happen. You are afraid of this too as it shatters the world view that you have as if the world has three centers of power and London isn't one of them, what possible reason there is anymore to be eurosceptic, as the game has already been lost.
Blair camp not hopeful 10:03am on 22 Nov 2009 To maria-ashot (107):

Having economists in the leading positions doesn't necessarily mean that they produce better results, however because of their education and experience, they are more able to understand the economic side of the argument, and use economics and economy as their tools to solve what ever comes ahead of them. In the EU, this is vital to get the job done.

To illustrate this more, lets ask what the EU can do...

A1) Can it conduct intelligence operations in foreign countries?
A2) Can it assassinate unfriendly actors in foreign countries?
A3) Can it organize coups in foreign countries?

No, no and no, because the EU doesn't have its own intelligent organization. Actually no European country has anything that resembles even close the strength and abilities that the NSA and CIA have.

B1) Can it threaten and punish foreign countries with usage of military action?
B2) Can it make a military strike at any corner of the world at any time?
B3) Can it invade and occupy unfriendly countries and set up puppet regimes?

No, no and no, because the EU doesn't have its own army. In a matter of fact no European country alone or even together conduct same kind and same sized military operations as the US is capable. We don't have a carrier fleet, we don't have transports to carry troops all over the globe

The only power that the European Union currently has is its economy, the world largest with a soon to become leading reserve currency. That is it. When the EU conducts its relations to foreign entities, the union to achieve its aims has to use a careful mix of economic operations to drive up the end game that suites its goals.

For example, lets take the EU Belarus relationship. The best option would be to sent Lukashenko and all his followers from time to eternity via organizing a coup'd etat, keeping Russia from intervening by threatening with a nuclear annihilation, and then sending EU advisers and trucks loads money to initialize preparations for joining it to the union in a decade. Now this isn't an option, yet. So the EU just has to deal with Belarus by offering carrots in trade negotiations to advantage human rights situation and to pull the country closer to west. Indirectly the EU can punish Belarus by offering better trade terms and financial assistance to Ukraine, because they both conduct most of their trade to EU and they export same kind of products to EU.

Then there is of course the view that all conflicts are inherently economic conflicts. For example USA didn't invade Iraq because of WMDs, but because Saddam started to trade oil with Euro thus threatening the dominance of the US dollar, thus threatening the US economy, thus threatening the US hegemonic position in the world. Another example could be the Israel Palestinian conflict which is just about land and more importantly about water. Actually one could argue that the reason for existence of Al-Qaeda is economic conflict between Saudis and US, in essence US buys precious finite commodity, as in oil, with US dollars that are more or less worthless in long term.

In my opinion, it is vital for the EU to have economists on board, as both the problems and the tools to resolve those problems are economic. When the EU comes in a point where we can just send cruise missiles or conduct black operations, then probably it is best to have lawyers as leaders to make sure we conduct our operations under guidelines of the international law or make a case for both the domestic and foreign audiences on why war for global justice, peace and freedom we have to invade foreign countries and take over their resources.
EU back to the future? 2:02pm on 21 Nov 2009 There is no Presidential Palace for the coming EU Council President.

Residence Palace is a complex of buildings in Brussels. It was originally designated as an apartment block for wealthy people. After the WW2, the Belgian government used one of its blocks as administrative offices and one block as international press office. In 2004, the Belgian government suggested that the EU Council and Council of Europe would take it, the administrative side, as their place of office.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residence_Palace

Since the EU took the offer, they made plan for renovation and for extension of the building. Into the extension, besides the offices of the said entities comes the office of the EU Council President. Again, I underline the usage of word, office.

Here is a link to the winning plan for the extension of the building:
http://www.uia-architectes.org/texte/england/Residence/2-results.html

So no. The EU President won't have a palace, he will have an office in an office building that looks like an regular office building, there won't be no luxury or extravagance, just plain office work.
Blair camp not hopeful 10:26pm on 20 Nov 2009 To maria-ashot (101):

What did an Engineering major say to an English major...

I will have a Big Mac, extra large French fries and a extra large coke.

...

What did a Business major say to an English major...

I will need you to work this weekend.

...

What did an Economics major say to an English major...

Get off from my lawn you damn hippies!!!
EU back to the future? 8:59pm on 20 Nov 2009 To MaxSceptic (61):

Eh... I think you are missing the point...

If you had a real respectable world currency and not something approaching grading of an toilet paper the quoted sum would be smaller.

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