Franco-German power
Next week the European Union is likely to know who will sit on the next Commission. These posts never gain much attention in the popular press, but for the aficionados these are the top jobs in Euroland. A commissioner is hugely influential and controls the agenda in whatever field they are responsible for.
There are always suspicions of deals, of carve-ups, of the bigger states getting their way. Yesterday the President of the Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, vowed to resist the pressure from the member states. To a degree, I suspect.
This time round there is increased fretting over the emergence of a Franco-German axis. France and Germany, it is said, want the all-important economic portfolios in order to control the EU's economic agenda.
Many in Britain fear that the French want their man, Michel Barnier, as the commissioner in charge of the internal market. They see in this a long-held French desire to regulate the City of London with its hedge funds and private equity funds.
Just in case no one was listening President Sarkozy said: "France will have a European commissioner with important responsibilities". His remark did not contain much doubt.
The most important part of the EU is the single market and power lies in regulating that. France and Germany, like other countries, know that the key to influence lies with just a few posts. Many suspect that Germany is also eyeing the presidency of the European Central Bank.
The Paris - Berlin axis, in its current form, is a recent embrace. Initially President Sarkozy, in a burst of energy, was preoccupied with his own projects and establishing himself as Europe's most visible leader. Then he began pursuing Chancellor Angela Merkel. He knows he is stronger inside a Franco-German alliance.
So how does this axis reveal itself?
- The choice of Herman Van Rompuy to be President of the European Council was interpreted in France and the UK as a victory for Merkel-Sarkozy. They had said beforehand they would reach an agreement together and not oppose each other. In Paris the rejection of Tony Blair was seen as a victory for Franco-German unity.
- Angela Merkel went to Paris for France's Armistice Day. She was the first German leader to take part. President Sarkozy enthused that the Franco-German friendship was a "treasure".
- The last time the two leaders met, President Sarkozy is said to have given Angela Merkel a copy of the notes General De Gaulle had taken at his first meeting with Chancellor Adenauer in 1958. Surely a sign that he wants the Sarkozy-Merkel relationship to follow that of Francois Mitterrand with Helmut Kohl and De Gaulle with Adenauer.
- France's loose-lipped Europe Minister Pierre Lellouche wrote in Le Monde that "more than ever the relationship between France and Germany will form the heart of what I would call the third phase of post-war European history". There is much talk of a "new Franco-German agenda for Europe".
In Paris and Berlin it is not difficult to hear this argument: that as the EU has expanded to 27 countries it has become harder to tackle issues decisively. That is what the Lisbon Treaty was supposed to address. But there are plenty of voices in and around government who believe that the 27 is too unwieldy and that only the two big powers have the will to take on the big projects and chart the future course of the union.
So when big decisions are taken, like with the Commission next week, they will be examined to see the hand of France and Germany.
I'm 
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~52~RS~)
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This is a really strange article. It uses completely alien terminology to the usual discussion of political appointments within an institution.
Consider, there is not one single mention of a political party by name. Reading this article, you could be forgiven thinking that political parties were absent from the discussions, and that the will of political parties executive leadership was unrelated to the selection of commissioners.
As I said, that is alien to the usual discussion of political appointments. Can you imagine, even for a moment, a discussion about a life peer in the house of lords WITHOUT any mention of which party appointed that peer?
Can you imagine, even for a moment, a discussion regarding an appointed high court judge without any mention of which party appointed that judge?
It is absurd, on the face of it. A discussion of political appointments without a discussion of which party appointed them is .... well it is completely devoid of any meaningful context. How can you know, or have any way of guessing, what the appointee believes? How can you possibly know what their agenda might be?
Notice how Hewitt describes the appointments. They are all made by NATIONS. Yes. This is Anthropomorphism gone heads-in-the-fridge crazy. The appointments are not the business of political parties. They are the decisions of whole nations!
We're all in this TOGETHER!! You and me. We're all part of it, you see. These people are not being selected and appointed by political parties who take sponsorship from specific segments of society and who represent specific interests. No way! What are you, crazy? Paranoid?
That is not how the world works at all! You see, when a party calls itself "Labour", this party does not mean to imply that is represents labourers, government unions and those others who sponsor the "labour party". No! Not at all. What that party really means is that it represents everyone. Everyone all at once. That is how democracy works, you see. You vote for a party because, well heck, they're all basically for everyone equally, and then at the end of the election you end up with one big happy family. In fact, it is always just the NATION making the decision, so why bother having elections at all? What is there to choose from?
So it doesn't matter if you are not a member of a government worker union (the only kind that still exist). it doesn't matter if you do not own shares in large corporations or banks. Even those these two special interest groups sponsor the two dominant parties across europe, SO WHAT?
There is absolutely no chance that these two special interest groups are dividing the power of government between themselves, as the executives of the parties see fit. That isn't happening at all. After all, it is NATIONS who are appointing these people to make your law. YOU and ME. Us. In this together. All happy smiling europeans, right?
Right. All in this together. All taking part in the happy family outing. Just like the glorious soviet union.
But don't dwell on stupid comparisons like that. After all, we have an independent and free media. Right?
The media is 100% independent of large corporations and government worker unions. right? Of course. The idea that the media is totally controlled by the same folks who sponsor the two major political parties all across europe, well that just sounds crazy.
Enough sarcasm. I have been saying this for quiet some time, and I will say it once more for the newbies:
The EU is a power sharing deal between the two dominant political parties in europe. What the EU does is guarantee that parties who have a majority in their member state end up with absolute power under the EU structure.
The EU structure concentrates power into the hands of the political party executive. It removes the member state governments from both competition for power, and also from audit by local member state media and minority parties. And from independents, of course.
The way it works is this: The people who created the EU (verify for yourselves, it was the two dominant parties in europe, the social democrats and the catholic democrats) knew in advance that they would either be in power or the major party in opposition. Both parties knew that in order to gather funding and sponsorship from the unions or the corporate elite, they needed to be able to promise their sponsors a set amount of taxpayer funding in contracts. Now having those contracts under scrutiny is very bad business, because we are supposed to live in a free market economy, and government is not supposed to hand out money for votes and sponsorship. Government is not supposed to be "for sale" to the highest bidders, or the common folks get annoyed and vote in honest government.
So what the two largest parties in Europe worked out is that they would be either 1. In power, or 2. the dominant party in opposition. Either way, they would have the numbers in their member state parliaments to demand PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION. Which means that if a special council was selected to represent the NATION (hey, there's that word!), then their party would certainly.... certainly, not probably, ... be able to APPOINT someone to sit on that special council Someone whose family might own a newspaper, but who might not be electable. Someone who is a life peer for all sorts of hidden reasons, but who is not electable. That sort of thing.
And guess what? The EU is run by exactly these "special councils". The EU commission is a fascinating example of power sharing.
Google the EU commission, and navigate your way to the list of past presidents. Notice how the president of the EU council has been social democrat, then catholic democrat. Then social democrat. Then catholic democrat. Then social democrat. Then catholic democrat. Then...., you should get the picture.
Now all this might be a happy accident, except for one tiny thing. And that is that it was exactly these parties who designed and built, and who now staff, the EU. The EU was not made by the general public and all of sudden the dominant political parties just happened to fit the bill better than anyone else. The EU was designed and purpose built by the same people who now appoint the people who make the law in Europe.
In other words, the EU is specifically designed to undermine democracy, and to establish the rule of the party, and government by appointment. That is the purpose. That is not a side effect, that is the entire point.
If you work for a government in a union (Hi Gavin!) then presumably you think this is ever so clever, because it means that all you have to do is pay you union dues and your job is safe. And if you own shares in a large corporation, such as a bank, then you can also rest easy, because you know that your man is going to be in charge of the tax money required to get you out of any hole you might get stuck in. And all you good folks who matter in the new system can rest easy knowing that the judiciary are also going to be appointed by the same party which collects your contributions.
But if you do not work in a government job, and you do not own shares in large corporation, or have a job working for one, then i guess you don't even matter any more. You just dropped right off the social contract. You no longer have any stake in "your" europe.
If you own your own business, or you are a sole trader, or you are unemployed, or you work for a small private firm with less than 50 employees.... well i guess you just don't matter.
And if you do belong to a union, or work for a large corporation as one of their drones in sector 7B, then i guess you better pay a lot of attention to what your boss says to you. Because it doesn't matter what you think, or how hard you work. The only thing that matters, if you want to keep your job, is what the union man says.
Welcome to the EUSSR, folks.
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The BBC, and others, often refer to France and Germany as the two strongest countries in 'Europe', implying the UK is (at best) the 3rd most influential European country. I think this is incorrect, and the BBC should instead describe France and Germany as the two most influential countries 'within the EU institutions'. My reasons for saying this are as follows:
In game-theory, it is known that three-player games are unstable because an alliance of two-weaker players will always overcome the strongest individual player. It is unlikely you will see the two strongest players uniting against the weakest.
Furthermore, the EU is not the whole picture but only part of it. In the global Great Game, France and Germany actually do not exert much influence on world-affairs, as the events of 2003 illustrate. Washington is the main player in the bigger game, and what distinguishes the EU from all other major international organisations is that it excludes the USA. The agenda of international organisations typically comes over time to be set by their largest member-state(s), which is why the EU not only has a different agenda from that of the other international organisations, but actually becomes the preferred policy-formation arena not just of France and Germany, for also for all those 'bent-twig' nationalists in Europe who perceive that the USA as the source of their ills against which they must lash back.
France and Germany feel they cannot exert any influence in the world except through the EU, and are also keen to ensure that they jointly remain its two key agenda-setters. That is why there is an EU, why there is a Franco-German alliance, why the EU voting rules were changed under Lisbon (though they do not come in until 2014) to make it easier for France and Germany together to block what they do not like (something which was becoming harder for them in an expanded EU under the Nice treaty). Any why these two cuntries oppose populous countries like Turkey joining the EU. European federalists from other countries that support the EU project are the equivalent of Lenin's 'useful idiots' in supporting this Franco-German game of power (unless they happen to be 'bent-twigs' seeking to get others to lash back at the US on their behalf).
The consideration for the UK (alone) is rather different. We are not only are an important European power in our own right (we will be the most populous European country by 2050, and the largest European economy well before that), but we have a solid and trusted relationship with the USA that allows us an avenue for exerting an influence on world affairs which neither France nor Germany can aspire to.
In short, the Franco-German alliance reflects their weakness and not their strength. And all major trends in the world - demographic, economic and technological - indicate that these countries with their stagnant economic 'models' and declining populations will get relatively weaker as the 21st century progresses.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7938173.stm
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Great photo attached to your post, gavin. From the look on their faces I'm guessing a waitress spilled the drinks tray.
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Mr Gavin: It is very likely that France and Germany will look for maximum influence in the new commission. It is my understanding that the British PM at the recent summit looked for maximum influence for GB, and maintained Tony Blair’s candidacy in order to put a gun on the table. I am glad that the other participants left their weapons at home.
Apart from the national aspect that you are very occupied with, we have parties and coalition governments (outside UK, of course), regions, female politicians that demand appointments of women. Then we have the European parliament that is supposed to approve the commission. A complicated play about power, influence and competence, and I am glad you are not making it more complicated than necessary in your article by going into a complicated analysis of all this interests.
As a citizen in the union, who occasionally wonder how we can develop the cooperation and diminish nationalism, I welcome the role of the parliament. I believe it is the institution that is best suited for that purpose.
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At 2:11pm on 25 Nov 2009, democracythreat wrote:
'In other words, the EU is specifically designed to undermine democracy, and to establish the rule of the party, and government by appointment. That is the purpose. That is not a side effect, that is the entire point.'
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Bravo! The whole post is missing only a mention of the 'Jewish World Domination’ to become perfect.
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Financial Times Deutschland is reporting Franco-German agreement for a German (possibly Uwe Corsepius) as Secretary General of the Council of Ministers and another (likely Axel Weber) as president of the European Central Bank. This report seems to correspond with Angela Merkel's earlier decision to 'get rid' of a difficult ally, Gunther Oettinger, by sending him to the EU Commission where presumably he will now become (to use Mark Mardell's phrase) 'Commissioner for paper clips'.
There is no mention in the FTD of the quid pro quo, but many reports indicate France wanting the EU Commissioner for the internal market, including responsibility for financial regulation over the City of London (and Frankfurt).
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First of all, let me say I'm not Brittish, but from what you call continental EU member state, Slovenia. I completely disagree with the first comment, while the second comment makes more sense in certain aspects. It also includes some fairytale visions about the UK becoming the largest economy in EU (even before 2050) at the end, that one really made me laugh. My point of view about the EU isn't at all this pesimistic. I never saw EU as a center of power over the member states nor a meaning of Germany and France to execute power on the world stage. In my opinion, this is a very wrong perception of the Union, which really is trying to achive its initial goals (a lasting peace in Europe, cooperation in as many fields as possible, improving the lives of all European citizens, promoting human rights and democracy etc.). Of course, nobody is perfect and also the EU has its problems. I also understand that bigger and more important countries have a more powerful voice, this is completely natural as we, the small nations, can't have more say than huge economies with 50+ million people. However, I never saw German, French or Brittish opinions and plans offensive or in any way harmful to us. On the contrary, we all have much more influence than we deserve (objectively speaking) or could get without this marvelous organisation. You should also not deceive yourselves by thining that you are something special to the USA or that you can influence world politics through good relations with them. That's also a joke of the century. You need to understand asap that the USA don't care about Europe at all including Britain (did you read the reports of the UK military supreme commanders about being humiliated and completely ignored by the US military in Iraq?), but we do care about you. Britain and its citizens are highly respected in the EU member states for their centuries long democratic tradition and their enormous contribution to the development of the human society that we as Europe stand for today. That society is light ages away from the society the USA represents and spreads all over the world. I read a while ago in an article on this web page that the EU would be glad to get rid of you. That is, of course, very untrue. It is just that we simply don't understand your position as such strong oposers to the European project. Since the Brittish way of life is one of the founding pillars of European culture, enjoying high respect and admiration, we do not understand where this oposition is coming from. So, I suggest a more sincere communication between the institutions and the citizens, because lack of understanding each other is in my opinion the biggest obstacle in these relations. The UK could have a word just as strong as France and Germany if it only wanted to. Instead of that, efforts are being constanty made to tear apart the EU integrity and unity. I simply don't understand why. A dictate from Brussels doesn't exist, because the EU isn't run by Russians of Chinese, but it is run by the member states themselves. So, if you oppose certain legislation, say so in the Coucil and Parliament, and it won't be approved. Instead, it's more convenient to make excuses for failed domestic policies by saying it was demanded by the EU. This happens in all member states and all governments make excuses by blaming the EU, but the citizens don't understand that those same governments are the EU that approved that same legislation. Then we have anti-EU oriented public opinions all over the EU although the accusations are completely false.
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If you suggest that party members in the soviet union conspired to concentrate governmental power away from the populace and towards a system of appointments within the party, then you are a simply performing institutional analyses.
If you suggest that party members in the EU conspired to concentrate governmental power away from the populace and towards a system of appointments within the party, then you are a crank, and not worth taking seriously.
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I have to add that, in my opinion, Baroness Ashton will be a superb foreign affairs supremo and that she really is the best for the job, as she said herself.
And please, try your best to realize that your best friends are in Europe, not across the Atlantic.
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Isenhorn doesn't believe in such a thing as a political economy of a man made system of spending money.
Presumably he believes the angels come down from the clouds and wave their magic wands, and then the chosen people who are blessed with a hotline to god just "understand" exactly how to do what is perfect and wholesome for everybody.
This discussion of states behaving like sentient entities is infantile and embarrassing.
Does anyone on this blog have any interest in the money? qui bono, folks. It is the investigators first question, and it has been for more than two thousand years.
Europeans love to point at American's and laugh at their ignorance of the outside world, but at least they are not willfully stupid about human nature and political power. this blog is a disgrace, in terms of the intellectual standard.
"Mr UK thinks Mr France is a nice fellow, by Mrs Germany has some concerns about the way Mr Spain speaks to Miss Latvia. So Mr UK will sit down with Mrs Germany and Mr Spain, and together they will sort out a nice way of explaining to Miss Latvia that Mr Commission is a jolly nice fellow who should be given the tax revenue of the working people. Then Mr France will bring out the cake and the soda pop, and everyone will sing a happy song about the people of Europe. Isn't it nice?"
Pathetic.
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Anyone still have any illusions that the EU is a democracy? How can single individuals have any voice in the decisions that will govern their lives when entire nations don't?
How fitting that the entire nation of Britain has become a slave to a foreign power axis. What an ironic turn of history. The counteless ghosts of the victims of the cruel empire on which the sun never set are smiling.
Britain, you will do as you are told as stipulated in the contract your Prime Minister signed on your behalf. The Prime Minister of the UK may be a poodle but it isn't the President of the United States who holds the leash, it is the real powers behind the EU, the French and German governments.
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There is no reason why we could not be there also, however getting Gordon to go and make friends is not an easy task. With his shyness and all that, and as if that is not bad enough it looks as if next year we'll be stuck with another lots of "shy" politicians that are afraid to go and make friends with Nick & Angie. So good for them I say for talking to each other. Our politicians can just sit over here and "whinge" as they normaly do, instead of talking and making decision. As per "Freeborn-John" theory of school ground dynamics, only makes sense if you are dealing with schools children not grown ups.
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'6. At 3:32pm on 25 Nov 2009, Freeborn-John wrote:
Financial Times Deutschland is reporting Franco-German agreement for a German (possibly Uwe Corsepius) as Secretary General of the Council of Ministers '
Funny. I thought that Pierre de Boissieu was appointed to that position last week.
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#10
Of cause it is all about money DT (and women according to the "no woman, no crime" song)! So, no earth shattering news here. As to who talks to whom, who cares. Unfortunatelly we can't all talk or even if we talk we can't be heard.
So we need to vote for those that talk best for us :))
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Mavrelius if you are so "democratic" what is that strange democracy, why it tells you to destroy others? You've fed up a dragon by Russia's side, 400 bln of investments in - lately only.
Perfectly well knowing they are 10/1 in quantity to Russians (the countable ones), live in enormous density and in a country lacking every thing, and that (well this I don't expect exactly you in particilar to know :o)))) and that Russians live in 3 zones: 27 per km2 btw Europe and theUrals; 3 people per km2 in Siberia and 1 (one) per km2 in the Pacific coast and the whole Russian Far East.
What a monster you have fed up for us on the side and what will we do I wonder. Your best intentions toward Russia entirely post USSR only by other means. And stop diverting attention away by "muslim threat" three ha ha compared to the Chinese one.
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I wonder how this will play out next time considering the EP groupings plan on running with their own candidates for President.
Also, with reference to mention of parties in the Commission piece at the top, I also see no mention of parties when the Government of the UK creates the Cabinet. It's redundant, the centre-right won this time. A mostly EPP aligned Commission will be drawn up and eventually approved by the European Parliament.
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#2 Freeborn-John wrote:
"In short, the Franco-German alliance reflects their weakness and not their strength. And all major trends in the world - demographic, economic and technological - indicate that these countries with their stagnant economic 'models' and declining populations will get relatively weaker as the 21st century progresses."
France and Germany are just as strong as us, militarily France is rocking Carriers and Nukes like us, and the German Economy stronger than ours at the moment, are these the same failing economic models that came out of recession before us and weathered the storm better?
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Well, Mr Mardell: I'll be holding my breath and reading the bios.
democracythreat, No. 8: There was no "party conspiracy" in the Soviet Union: it was a totalitarian Partocracy from Day One. Lenin was a dictator. No one ever pretended there was power held by the people of any kind: "the dictatorship of the proletariat" was just words that meant nothing, and everyone knew this.
Remember, they were initially (and for quite a long time) after a worldwide revolution in which "workers would rise up and seize control" -- not for themselves, for the International: a committee of privileged leaders, and also "their sisters and their cousins, whom [they] reckon by the dozens, and their aunts."
There is really only a very general comparison to be made between Soviet, America, Chinese and European bureaucracies, their elections or decision-making, the degree of accountability before populations.
In the sense that there are always committees deciding how to administer anything -- even in large privately-held corporations that are actually family businesses, such as our own -- the essential structure cannot really be all that different from any other: military, schoolyard, kitchen staff, private club, diocese.
I can make a good cake with good ingredients or a bad one with indifferent ones. They may even look similar and be called the same thing (let us consider Chocolate Decadence cake, for example). The result will be known in the eating, and in the health that results.
Europeans have such excellent chefs. They have the best, strictest laws about the quality of food products and the ingredients used to provide health to the consumer, from start to finish. (Of course, I am referring to the key nations Rummy so unjustly disparaged as "old Europe.")
I trust this Eternal Europe. I am willing to wait and see.
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#16
According to Freeborn-John been less well off is good for us, been in a recession longer is good for us, seen any savings we had reduce in value by 20% - 30% is good for us. The EURO zone is so much more worse off than us because they have a strong EURO because they can't export as much, but hey opps hold on a second, EURO zone recorded another trade surplus for the 3rd quarter ohh we recorded another deficit, but at least we have a weaker currence that's supposed to be good.
Yes we have them cornered now with our sneaky plan to stay out of the EURO. Freeborn-John sounds like the MoodyPython character, with no legs and arms wanting to fight! Give me a break please!!!
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@ 2 FBJ
Anglo-Saxon supremacism here we come...
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Maria - ashot. "Europe has best ingredients".
(a husband to his wife)
-mm, tasty. did you make the cake yourself?
- no, bought in the supermarket.
-ah, well. I hope you'll cook me one such again yourself, I quite like it.
- are you nuts? where will I take E212, E455, E658 :o))))))))))))))
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History begins to repeat itself in Europe, perhaps not in the violent way of the thirties, but it may very well in time lead to the same end result.A growing power block in the centre and a lot of aggrieved people around it feeling they have no voice and lesser rights. This is the situation that has always produced revolution whether violent or not in the past and will no doubt do so again. When the common people feel disenfranchised, anything is possible.
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Iantownhill (13): The decision to extend Pierre de Boissieu for another 18 months is only a holding measure i believe. There is also no vacancy at the European Central Bank for Axel Weber to step into either until 2011. However the Franco-German agreement on these future job changes sets the scene for the more immediate allocation of jobs within the EU Commission.
Benfactor (16) and StandEU (7): The trends i am talking about are longer than 1 year's growth in GDP. The UK has significantly outgrown France and Germany over the last 20 years and has outperformed the Eurozone in each year of its existence other than this one. The UK already has a higher GDP/person that either France or Germany, and that gap should continue to widen in the long-term. The UK has a faster rising population than France, and Germany's population is falling. With both faster rising population and a faster rising GDP/person, the UK can expect to be the most populous European country by 2050 and the largest European economy sometime in the 2030s.
The USA's population is forecast to rise even faster than the UK's; up from 300 million in 2000 to 400 million in 2050 and 500 million by 2100, so all talk of its decline is wishful thinking on the part of some. India is also developing rapidly, all be it from a low starting point. There is no reason why the UK cannot develop good bilateral relations with China either, with Hong Kong being a ready-made gateway between our two cultures. Technological changes, particularly in communications technology, all facilitate improved ties with the geographically-disparate but linguistically-united English-speaking countries and relatively mitigate against the Tower of Babble in Brussels.
These are the large-scale trends that will play out in the world in our lifetimes that effect calculations of power. No ingenious re-arranging of the institutional furniture in Brussels will substantially alter them. These economic, demographic and technological trends do not balance one another out, but all re-enforce each other. They all point toward the UK interest being best served by prioritising the cultivation of links with rising powers in the globalising world outside Europe, while of course trying to preserve as good relations as is possible (short of political union) with near neighbours in decline.
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I am far more cynical about this than others. Yes, I can see the old Paris-Berlin Axis shifting up a gear but are we right to see this a reborn fraternal partnership? Sarkozy is, for my money, far to busy courting popularity to be reliable. And well he might. His poll ratings are still not good. Merkel, on the other hand, has never been in a stronger position - increased majority, full term ahead of her and an adjusted economy moving back into growth. My view is that Berlin is very much prima inter pares in this relationship and Frau M. is milking it for all it's worth. She is so reasonable. Well behaved, not given to ostentation, the consummate democrat and I would not trust her as far as I could throw her. Having France on board suits her just fine at the moment but the moment will pass. If I was in Brown's shoes, I would be happy to let them play in the sandpit for a while while I conducted a full frontal charm offensive in Madrid and Rome.
He has two things going for him. If the smaller newer members think the power game is getting too cosy, they will find common cause. And with the possibility of far more EUsceptic administartion in London next year, there may be a growing awareness in the EU that putting the UK's nose severely out of joint at this juncture but be storing up a lot of grief for the future.
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maria-ashot wrote:
"democracythreat, No. 8: There was no "party conspiracy" in the Soviet Union: it was a totalitarian Partocracy from Day One. "
Hi maria, I think Alice would be the one to judge this point, but my understanding is that the soviet union was constantly having elections and telling its people that they lived in a glorious workers democracy. At least that is what my mattress relations tell me. They lived in the former soviet union.
And after all, what was the name of eastern germany? The "Totalitarian Workers Collective"? No, it was the Democratic Republic of Germany. Just as North Korea is a fine democracy, if you listen those who run the system.
So my guess is that you are dead wrong on this point. I would submit that is absolutely untrue that the soviet union was not a representative democracy, run in accordance with its own constitutional law.
Now I am not saying that the soviet union was a meaningful democracy, or that it was not a crooked and false democracy. Sure, i can see the flaws. I can see the absurdity. My brother in law tells me of the time his military unit were driven forty miles in an army truck, to vote for a candidate in a "crucial" party election. And there was only one candidate!!! But the party folks were so caught up in their ow propaganda, they couldn't see anything wrong with that!
so don;t read me wrong, I can see the absurdity of calling the soviet system real democracy in action.
But then again, we both know that Obama won his first election in Michigan in a one horse race, too. He had every other candidate struck of the ballot on technicalities, and his party lawyers helped him do that.
So it happens in the glorious west, too.
And there are those who would go so far as to suggest that it is impossible to tell the difference bwteen the centre left and the centre right these days, because all their policies are just about identical. there are a great many people who feel that no matter who they vote for, the same vested interests behind the scenes are going to end up being the winners.
After all, you know yourself that major corporations generally sponsor both major parties equally, sure as to be sure of a favorable hearing no matter who wins the so called "election".
So my feeling is that people in glass houses ought not throw stones. Representation is representation, and should not be confused with real democracy. Either you have representatives who make your law for you, or your vote on the issues yourself.
I tend to think power systems evolve over time, like any system, and further that power concentrates itself.
My view is that the western system has always had much better propaganda than the soviet system and a much easier job to do. the western system criminalizes the lower classes, doesn't expect them to vote, and for many decades of the last century black folks were not even permitted to register to vote. The civil rights movement didn't come until LBJ, after all.
the soviets, by stark contrast, were pushing the very difficult line that class war was a good thing for the economy and that uneducated drunks were fit to judge capital crimes.
So I have some sympathy for the architects of the soviet system. Selling their system of representation as democracy must have been much harder than selling the westminster or the US systems.
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ohh god Freeborn-John is having a dream again! If he'd overcome his fear of people that speak languages other than English he'd live a much happier life:)
Wake up and smell the coffee, the game for us ir right next door with our neighbours that are NOT in decline and with the club we are members off. Not with some "linguistically-united English-speaking countries" that club does not exist (other than in your dreams). Our politicians need to catch a Eurostar ride and two hours they are in Brussels were they can talk to other politicians with similar values to ours and business rules similar to our i.e. no slave labour!!! And agree rules with them that benefit us. We have a "foreign affairs high rep" lets pick another good post, talk to some people and make some deals.
The trends you are talking about are just that. They are not facts, you don't base your decisions on trends you base it on facts and the facts such as they are today do not support any of the statements you make. Future visions based on assumtions are not worth the paper they are written on.
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There are rumours floating around that Sarkozy used his veto against Juncker, perceived as Merkel's favourite for the President job. Do you know if these rumours are true mr.Hewitt?
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yes, dt and maria -ashot, that "all focused after ww revolution", the "International" business - was correct, in early Lenin beginnings.
By Stalin time the whole "Internatsional" institution faded away, together with int'l dreams. We have had "the first Internatsional", "the 2nd Internatsional" - those were foreign international foreigners, how to say, who came to Russia to lead and assist our ww revolutionary intentions.
A powerful formal institution, in editions 1-2-3 and then it expired. Stalin cleaned them out all :o))) and thus to the end came the dreams of the "ww communism revolution".
The inter-communist party documents published now show the stages of the internal party fights, there were very many streams, directions, currents and under-currents. The "foreign" branch was very active all along it existed. Made of of Germans and British and French and who only not - Spaniards - the whole EU! :o))))
There is one doc where they complain that (1936 approx.) "where the world is going to, all the recent Ve-Tche-Ka appointments are beyond Internatsional members - local Rusians have been elected into the holy of the holiest organisation!" - you can't beleive the cheek.
We were practically ruled by "Internatsional" and for quite along while.
Until Stalin decided he doesn't need any assistants, and what's that foreign kindergaten doing here :o))))
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Many "Internatsional" people are buried in the Kremlin wall, in the status of the glorious first ww revolutionaries something.
Lenin isn't lonely in the Red Square, the whole wall behind him has urns and plaques with revolutionaries' names.
Every year there is a worldwide get-together of the Internatsional children, in an orphanage in the suburbs of Moscow. Huge gatherings and events, from all over the world come children and grandchildren of those kids or the very fragile walking kids themselves.
The thing is their parents who flocked to the world revolutionary centre in 1917, brought with families, but normally both parents would be flaming revolutionaries with no time for home affairs, so the foreign kids were dumped into that very orphanage. Which was nothing like an ordinary orphanage but a very rich private school, rather, full pansion, with piano lessons and languages lessons and swim-pools and gymnastics and what not. Quiet an elite institution to revolutionary kids which many remember fondly and come for alumni gatherings.
And then of course Stalin began to put away foreign revolutionaries, which again produced total orphans, for real, so they again joined the club. That's how the place was busy, for decades.
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I'm getting really tired of this Calimero act of the UK journalists and UK governments.
Wake up and smell the coffee. GE and FR are just 29.4% of the EU.
Brittain is 12.4%, Italy is 12.0%, Spain is 9.0%, and Poland is 7.4%. So team up with Spain, Italy, and/or Poland and you can have a larger block. Realy this post is meaningless. Boohoo, we are the third biggest nation and the two biggest are ganging up on us. All I can remember seeing on the television is prime-ministers/ presidents of the smaller nations begging the UK for some leadership, while all they do is complain. And put on this Calimero act and than again this we are too good for you continentals act. No we dont want this Euro with you patetic small nations we laugh at you, haha. Oh no, the Germans actually share the DM with you. Lets hope it all blows up in your face so we can ridicule you, you patetic little nations. You pesky small nations, haha, look at our musles here in the UK we have a military and will invade Iraq. Oh no, our economy is hot air. The currency ship is sinking. Well ha, we laugh at you you pesky little nations. You are burdend with your expensive valuable currency. look at us we are cheap. We outsmarted you all, you patetic little nations, with our worhtless currency. Really, do you really think this makes you friends who will vote with you on issues of your concern? Come-on show some constructive contributions here (in Europe). we are so small we are only the third biggest, boohoo. They (GE and FR) control us, boohoo. We are too good for you pesky little nations, haha. Really, don't you see how silly/weird this is.
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under the old voting rules, germany and france together had 17% of the votes in the european council, while a winning majority (where qmv applied, i.e. no vetos) required 74% of the vote.
under lisbon, germany and france together now have 29% of the vote (based on population weightings), while a winning majority under qmv requires only 65% of the vote. moreover the number of policy areas in which qmv (and not unanimity/the veto) applies has been greatly expanded.
so based on the dry figures, the franco-german axis certainly has a lot more punch under the new rules, assuming they do work in tandem. however 29% of the vote is still a long long way short of a winning majority. france and germany would have to convince countries representing at least 51% of the remaining population of the eu in order to win a vote. that would mean getting support from a minimum of four other countries (including the uk, or five others excluding the uk).
my conclusion: if france and germany really do work together, they are in a strong position to drive the agenda - i.e. to propose policy that only needs to appeal to a simple majority (by population) of the other eu members. however, that is still a long way from being able to dictate what happens.
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#29, Johan_Heuvel
You are pointing at something quite obvious.
Opt-outs and taking power back to the national state is not a very attractive programme for many members of the union, and it is not the programme of the central member states of the union.
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Democracy huh?
The question is: can we kick them out if we don't like what they do?
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@ #22 Freeborn
Come on... theres more to prosperity than population, unless your at the top and need more bodies for the grinder. Oh hai China!
Those population forecasts are heavily biased through immigration, considering all the major parties are starting to take a tougher stance on immigration and the general populace won't really swallow much more do you really think those predictions will hold for 40 years?
Regarding our faster economic growth in the past, with the benefit of hindsight it does seem to have been built on rather unstable foundations doesn't it.
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#32. Deadlylampshade wrote:
"Democracy huh?
The question is: can we kick them out if we don't like what they do?"
Yes, you'll have to wait for an EP election mind.
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#30. benagyerek
"my conclusion: if france and germany really do work together, they are in a strong position to drive the agenda - i.e. to propose policy that only needs to appeal to a simple majority (by population) of the other eu members. however, that is still a long way from being able to dictate what happens."
NO! LIES! Its a conspiray by zombie Napolean and zombie Hitlar!!!1
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Deadlylampshade wrote:
"Democracy huh?
The question is: can we kick them out if we don't like what they do?"
That isn't how it works. They way it works is that when you are upset, Mr UK will go to Mrs Germany and tell her that Mr France is jolly well no good at all when it comes to being kind to the other children at the kindygarten. THen Mrs Germany will say to Mr France "Mr France, you have been jolly naughty!", and if Mr France argues with her then Mr UK and MRs Germany will turn their backs on Mr France until Mr France realises that he can't talk to his friends like that and still expect to be invited out for tea and scones. And then when Mr france has had a good cry and apologized, Miss Latvia and Mr Poland Jnr will be invited to sing along with this weeks Happy Song : "We all love the happy happy ECJ!"
You see, elections are for people who think politics is about having an opinion and voting for parties which articulate not only their policies but the core economic and social philosophies behind those policies. In Europe, we don't like those sort of naughty birds! Those sorts of nasty types just make all the children sad, and make it hard for teacher to keep Mr UK and Mr France happy and jolly.
So the important thing is to remember that Mrs Germany loves you very much, and that if Mr France says a bad word then this is because his parents were on welfare when he was just a cute little baby, and now he can't adjust to the proper social environment for a child his age.
But nevermind, Miss Latvia and Mr Poland Jnr will cheers us up so we don't have to think about poor Mr France and his trailer trash parents on welfare. Miss Latvia and Mr Poland Jnr know a very happy song, and they will lead us all in a fantastically delicious sing along!
Here we go, sing with Miss Latvia and Mr Poland Jnr....
"Our bank is your bank is our bank is your friend!
We all love the banker our love to him send,
And send him the money, the law and the press,
If you want more money just lift up your dress and say ......
EU HAPPY SONG! EU HAPPY SONG! EU EU HAPPY HAPPY SONG!!!
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Very good posts, Chris Arta and Johan Heuvel
Actually, reading FBJ is becoming a learning curve for me. No honestly... it is not about "I have a dream"…
I have always been perplexed about why Freeborn John and his alter ego (in figurative terms, of course) John Cameron Redwood Hague want to stay in the EU. They hate it, don't they? Sorry...no comprendo. And now, reading FBJ's Anglo-Saxon supremacist eulogy suddenly it all becomes clear:
Uncle Sam, i.e. their boss across the pond would get very, very cross with them if they left the EU. They would throw them away like a broken toy. For that reason they get all stroppy and throw a tantrum, kick the toys out of the pram but reluctantly stay in the EU ...yes, you know...the EU that only exists in history books when there were twenty something different currencies, everyone had its own proud picket fences to keep undesirable foreigners out and any Chinese or Indian business visitor had to apply for twenty odd different visas if they wanted to explore that new thing called Europe's single market.
So under Uncle Sam's orders they remain in the EU. But of course no Mickey Mouse currency, we already have our own sinking pound, thank you very much, yes the one that is going to take us out of recession earlier than anybody else while the Eurozone collapses before Xmas 08 (or was it Xmas 2000, 2001, 2002...fill in every Xmas since the Euro was a sparkle in the milkman eye). I mean, even some in their own side are starting to wonder whether this is all codswallop ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeremy-warner/6563688/Currency-devaluation-is-no-magic-bullet.html ... Well done Jeremy Warner, the closest you can get to speak favourably of the Euro in the Torygraph...) . And of course, don't even mention that we, proud Britannia, should get rid of our picket fences to keep out the hordes that would otherwise invade us. We are in the single market but that doesn't mean that we have to comply with its rules:
"The internal market shall comprise an area *without internal frontiers* in which the free movement of goods, *persons*, services and capital is ensured " (From the Single European Act)
In yer dreams... We are British don't you know? Only in the EU under Uncle Sam's orders. But don't you push your luck.
You live and learn indeed.
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ARE there people here who actually do read newspapers?
They are fun to read and have diversions if bored..
Uncle Sam (in the current times of Obama and..I, myself, like him) view of Europe is... "is their heart beating?" yes, ok, good.
Most people here in the US are Parochial and are planning their lives AND if looking at the world as in the USA map on TV with weather predictions...
Truly. No offense to any.:)
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I don't know I find FBJ's two and one model viable, and threnodio's "frontal charm attack" :o) quite a good move.
People are so practical here :o) performance indicators, things.
_
dt, right, I felt no deficit of "democracy" in the USSR, possibly because luckily when you don't know of a thing, you don't want it :o)))
Still, the feeling was all goes normal, in terms of people participation and involvement, heaps of voting available any time of the year on all subjects. Right, it ended up anyway Communist party way, but in terms of being asked felt no deficit. 2 branches of power, Comm. party (for political-moral issues) and Councils ("civil" branch, for housekeeping, how to say, concerns. if a pipe got broken, or to build a factory - that was non-party business, party's concern was to keep us all politically-morally LOL guided). Stil, either you elect someone in the party levels (by the way funny all elected, being non-party members at all), or elect some municipal powers - no lack of running back and forward with various ballots.
So on the surface of it the appearances were kept, and one wouldn't wish for any more "elections", were kept busy enough :o))))
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In WWI it was Germany plus Austria versus the Allies. It didn't go too well.
The hand of the clock ticked on a country.
In WWII it was Germany plus Italy versus the Allies. It didn't go too well.
The hand of the clock ticks on again.
It looks like in WWIII it is going to be Germany plus France versus the Allies. It isn't going to go too well.
I'm getting worried about WW4.
Which country comes next after France? My brain hurts. I am standing to take the pressure off it but it still hurts.
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Thank you for the answers to my rhetorical question. I feel so much better now.
I still have my freedom. The freedom of the powerless.
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#39
SB2 a more practical advise to you is instead of standing up, take your pills and lie down. It may help better your poor confused brain :)
What WWI, WWII, WWIII, WWIV rubish are you dishing out? And what has this got anything to do with the situation on the ground today?
- End of WWII
* China in Civil war, today becoming a superpower
* India didn't exist (was part of us), today would like to buy us
* Brazil who ever heard of them, today about to over take in terms on economy and in terms of importance, already overtook us
* Half of Africa was ours
* Australia we would say jump they would ask how high, today with most its population been from non English background, they'd tell us to go and jump
*Cananda ditto
WWII & Empire where all then and now it is now!! Times move on and so should we, we are in the EU amongst other things to have economies so interdependent that we don't have wars and I don't want a war if that's what makes your brain sore. The only way to move ahead is for Gordon to go across the pond and talk and not to wait for some disaster to happen so he can call world meetings and get the camers to shine on him.
No honestly, just lie down and relax.
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Mr Hewitt, you ask, "..how does the 'axis' reveal itself?"
I cannot agree that "..in its current form, is a recent embrace..".
La Monde is wholly wrong to write of the "..new Franco-German agenda for Europe..": Quite simply and often openly over the last 3 decades since Maastricht, the leaders in Paris-Berlin have colluded to the detriment of Europe, the UK and to European relations with North America via NATO etc.
Paris-Berlin aided and abetted by the venal, corrupt, undemocratic Brussels have pressed forward the Federal EU project despite no indication of public support for the policies: Nice, Schengen, Lisbon have no Electoral approval from the European Citizens - - in fact, all Ballots (1st time around!) reveal utter distrust of the axis' programme of further integration and eastward expansion.
One only has to look at the joint-exercise in forming a European Defence Force (when NATO already does the job) whilst categorically refusing to back the senior NATO ally's military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq to realise the axis 'agenda' has been underway for several years in overseas' foreign policy.
There are no doubts or assumptions: Your, "...always suspicions of deals, carve-ups, the bigger States getting their way.." and, "..only the 2 big powers have the will to take on the big projects..," is exactly how it is in political reality within the EU.
Paris-Berlin do not allow any other Nation (especially in its fear of the UK) to take the lead in any initiative.
When did the 6, the 12, 15, 27 ever decide anything? Is there anyone who could possibly be so profoundly naive as to suggest the content of documents from Maastricht to Lisbon have a sentence France-Germany did not approve?
There are quite a few paragraphs in these Treaties that obviously do not suit every other Nation, hence several Nations have opt-outs/derogations from them - - it is not that 27 Nations is just "unwieldy", it is that Paris-Berlin insist only their version of what is good for Europe will go on the Brussels' Statute book - - it is taking time, but the awareness is growing across European Citizenry of the 'Democratic defecit' within the EU.
In their rush to be free of the communist yoke the East Europeans voted in lemming proportions for unity with the EU: By all recent desparately low EU Election participation it would seem many of those East Europeans as they went over the cliff to another supra-national oblivion realised their mistake and clung to the democratic chalk-face hoping it is not too late. They certainly did not oust Moscow in order for Paris-Berlin to take over the levers of power.
'Franco-German power'?: Its manifestation and intent can be summed up in this short apposite phrase, the 'axis of ill-intent'.
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Im not suprised british people are sceptical about the eu, as they have not joined the 2 most practical parts of the EU.
Schengen and the Euro, they might sound demonic to EU-sceptics, but for the average citzien this is where life becomes much easier within the EU.
Im sure Britain could pull much more weight within the EU if they would play ball a bit more and not opt out of everything...
At the heart of it the EU is a good thing, alone the fact of 60+ Years of peace among member nations speaks volumes!
Everyone who is bickering about it, without trying to improve the situation, should just shut up.
Like people that dont vote and then complain about the elected government.
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Contrary to the British role back plans and without any fear of Franco-German powers a vast majority in the Danish parliament only yesterday once again repeated its wish to remove a couple of the Danish EU opt-outs.
I wonder if the British society is very much out of touch with the EU positions in the rest of the union.
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#29 - Johan_Heuvel
I entirely agree that some of the smaller nations and especially the former Warsaw Pact members had very high hopes of Britain. They thought they shared the same Atlantacist values and they believed that Britain, having championed their admission, would also lead the way in opening up the EU rather than locking it down. All this language - which is complete nonsense by the way about an 'EUSSR' nevertheless has a sinister ring about it. The Brits, doubtless fearing for their own electoral fortunes, turned out to be weak-willed and limp-wristed. They have let go a huge opportunity. All the talk about being in 'the mainstream, not the slipstream' was just talk.
At 30, benagyerek is right about the balance of power in terms of the hard figures but the fact remains that even with Benelux in tow the Franco-German team cannot drive the agenda. To be sure, they need the Baltics, the Visegrad Group, the Scandanavians or one of the other big players - Italy, Spain or Poland. If the Brits are suddenly nervous about Franco-German plans, a bit of 'divide and conquer' might not go amiss rather than whinging from the touchline.
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#45
Who would take us seriously anymore? If both CON/LAB we not afraid to tell out loud (what they believe in secret) that the EU is good for Britan and we are in it. People may took us seriously, now with the CONs afraid to spell it out in case some of their votes run away from them, we are stuck.
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A message form The Commission of The European Union to The People of the United Kingdom;
"We are the Strasbourg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is Futile."
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Alice (No. 20): Well, not in my kitchen!
I still make kulich the old way. Meat-free beet-soup with all organically-farmed produce, the best bottled water, organic sour cream and pomegranate. Not to mention wild mushrooms. Can't be beat!
My mother would curdle her own milk for the Easter piece de resistance. In the US, milk won't curdle: it merely rots. Disgusting. Why is that?
Throughout the EU, including in the UK, the milk curdles properly.
Even though they are importing a lot of European foodstuffs into the more expensive Russian supermarkets, you really have not eaten until you have bought from a proper open-air market in the UK, France, Italy, Germany... And the food in Belgium! My word... Can't decide yet which is better: Belgian, French or Italian food. Not to be described (those of you who have never eaten elsewhere have no idea how lucky you really are).
We buy a lot of food from Spain and Greece as well. Greeks still have farming right. They have honey from bees descended from the bees that buzzed in the days of Homer... And wine, too boot. Greek wine from Mt. Athos is, in fact, blessed. And available even as far away as California.
I was extremely pleased to see some superb quality Russian food products coming out of some of our revived "traditional-style" / forward-thinking sustainable-farming enterprises. Really a wonderful development. And if one goes to the right rynok... well... Plus the French are helping bring back proper viticulture in Russia. Another blessed event.
You can tell a great deal about a culture, a society and its people from their food, its quality & its processes: how much importance is attached to what is placed on a table and received into the body.
In that regard, many Europeans are already light years ahead of everyone else, and some Russians rapidly catching on and catching up!
As my father used to toast, on the very rare occasions when he would raise a glass of French wine or (rarer) a proper frosty shot-glass of the good stuff: to the health of our captive brothers, and to all of us who fight on!
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Actually, democracythreat (No. 24), I am a better judge than Alice in the matter you mention, because I have actually lived in America and so have a frame of reference from which to judge.
I have also had access to more documents than Alice on the subject.
And my parents, who actually lived through the events in question, and witnessed the thrilling blow-by-blow, did not have to spend their lives cowering in fear of being overheard speaking about what they had witnessed, or being denounced and interrogated for something they had written.
Furthermore, I have had the privilege of reading the primary sources in five languages. Not to mention making a lifelong study of the 1917 events, what came before, what followed.
Sometimes the people who study a system, rather than merely inhabiting it, actually do know more.
Years ago, I was hired by the Hoover Institute to delve into the life of Lenin, very thoroughly. I got to read the Collected Works of the great deceiver, all upmteen tomes, in three editions no less (for comparison purposes): the First, the Fourth, the Fifth.
All most illuminating, I assure you.
For a much briefer distillation, every bit as effective, in support of what I said earlier, I refer you to Heller & Nekrich, the still unsurpassed English-language history of the USSR called Utopia in Power. The first 100 pages will do; they will cook your goose (or perhaps roast your turkey if you are in the States, today).
You can still find it, even on amazon.
Seriously, check it out before you have the temerity to cast aspersions.
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#47
Wrong that's the American way, here in Europe our message is United in diversity.
Go back to hypothesing and also read some American history instead of making it up as you go along to suit your purposes:)
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ChrisArta, I think a better European motto would be:
"United in Adversity." Because that is where all of us are today, collectively, even if not individually.
Diversity is always a given. Even in a family of just three -- Newlyweds + Baby -- there is a lot of diversity, ineluctably so.
Having said that, I reiterate my conviction that a Contract for Immigrants is a very good way to go.
In exhausting, excruciating detail, binding, with penalties & accountability.
Bring It On!
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Comment #7 by StandEU is the best I've read in a while.
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Threnodio (23): Your proposal for a regional UK alliance with Spain, Italy etc. to counter the Franco-German axis has been tried and failed. It assumes there to be cross-party consensus in those countries that would consistently support the UK against France and Germany. In practice, there may be some periods (e.g. when there are 'right-wing' governments in both Rome and Madrid) when these countries might find common cause with a British government on ad-hoc issues, but that is very far from being the basis of a stable relationship. Such an alliance existed for a brief period, nick-named "BAB" or "Blair-Aznar-Berlusconi" alliance. However the election of Zapatero as Spanish PM, and his early description of Blair as "un gilipollas integral" brought the thing to a quick end.
The only stable international alliances are ones that persist independent of which party is in power, and this requires an enduring alignment of national interests. The only such stable relationships of significance are the US-UK alliance and the Franco-German alliance, with the latter being perhaps best viewed as a reaction to the former. Chirac and Scroeder did once briefly try to lure the UK with an offer to Blair to extend the Franco-German partnership into what Chirac called an 'isosceles triangle' relationship (with the UK at the far-end), but with no enduring mutual interests to underpin it, it barely lasted beyond a press conference or two, even with left-wing governments in London and Berlin.
We are stuck with the Franco-German alliance for the foreseeable (but not indefinite) future, but the UK is already part of a winning team at global-level, where the Franco-German alliance can never really be much more than 'a stick in the bicycle wheel' when it comes to influencing world-events and one whose ability to do even that will decline as the 21st century progresses.
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To understand properly, respectfully & with a degree of detachment the complexities of the EU-UK tango -- which is what it is -- one has to full absorb the intricacies of some 2500 years of Western European + British history.
Really dig into that stuff, all the way into the history of the Roman Empire and the educated pre-Roman Greeks who shaped its worldview.
Once you understand that in the British Isles, more than perhaps anywhere else on earth, History is still studied in great depth, argued over, worried about, and -- crucially, and in a most salutory way -- used to help plan for (or against) the Future, it becomes as plain (and as delicious) as custard why Sovereignty matters to the English more than probably anyone else on earth.
And a good thing, that is. Mightily inspiring and instructive.
JS Mill gave the world the ultimate word on this in his essay On Liberty. Please study it, especially if you are from east of Western Europe, where it really needs to be committed to heart.
Make user you have an excellent translation, if the English is difficult. Work through each paragraph carefully. This work is the cornerstone of balancing individual rights against the rights of Everyone Else, in a way that both can be secured intelligently.
The leading Western Europeans all know this, and of course so do the English within the context of the UK. Some Brits of non-English antecedents perhaps do not correctly gauge how much this History, and Mill, and all of it, are of central significance to the debate.
It is a beautiful tango, for all that, and will end beautifully, with a nice flourish.
(For those not up on it: what sets the tango apart from other dance forms is the considerable degree of improvisation expected to complicate the already complex -- breathtaking! -- choreography.)
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#51
I think a good contract would benefit everyone :) you exactly where you stand and it doesn't suit you, then sorry but please shop from someone else that has a better contract for you :)
I would also prefered "Adversity" but I'm happy enough with "Diversity" as long as it is not complete uniformity I'll buy it.
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#53
so that we are all aware of the influence we had in world events recently can you please mention a few? Or even one!
For all the "non fact" stuff that Marvelous-AureliusII write, some of it by default has to be right because America does have influence. But us in the UK talking about influencing world events, where on earth are the evidence for that?
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FBJ @53, "two is company three is nil" :o)
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And, "let's be friends. - OK; against who shall we be friends?" :o)
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#53. FreebornJohn wrote:
"We are stuck with the Franco-German alliance for the foreseeable (but not indefinite) future, but the UK is already part of a winning team at global-level,"
I don't think the waterboy is officially part of the team. You do know a lot continental countries think they have a special relationship with the USA as well.
"where the Franco-German alliance can never really be much more than 'a stick in the bicycle wheel' when it comes to influencing world-events and one whose ability to do even that will decline as the 21st century progresses."
An alliance of a nuclear weapon and carrier wielding nation with UN veto and until very recently the biggest exporter on the planet and the largest economy in Europe have little to no influence in Global affairs? Then please tell me what you hope Britain can accomplish alone...
Then put it in the context of what we could achieve with them...
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Artiste;
"Wrong that's the American way, here in Europe our message is United in diversity."
Over a thousand years of wars in Europe among Europeans proves that ;-(
The whole idea behind the EU, Schengen, the Euro, is to eliminate divesity creating one single European culture where one former country will become just as bleak and gray as another. There will be as many former Poles living in former Italy as former Italians living in former Poland. Britain will be populated by former Bulgarians, Czechs, Spaniards, Hungarians as much as former Brits. Homogenization is the key to the centrally controlled ant hill the EUSSR will be. Dissent is already not permitted. Holland, France, and Ireland are proof. If future European history texts mention those votes at all, it will just be a footnote saying the populations had made a mistake and that each one had been corrected by its all knowing all wise government.
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WA #57;
A single rock in an empty oil drum rolling down the side of a hill can make one hell of a useless racket all by itself.
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The Brittish government should focus more on the other nations in the EU (instead of feeling threatened by the co-operation between Germany and France) to find partners for the UK it's own agenda. In some respect, like the worry about a too powerfull role for Germany and France, Poland is a more natural partner for the UK. And in other areas like the banking sector, the role of Londen, the Netherlands, Austria and Luxembourg are a more natural partner. Since they have a huge banking sector as well. The Brittish attitude to the EU is really one dimensional in this respect. There are a lot of upportunuties out there to find support for issues that are important to the UK. There also are a great many countries who feel more checks to the EU institutions and more direct involvement of the elctorate is a good thing. This is the main area in which leadership of the UK has been long, long, been expected, but never materialised. For most outside the UK the bahaviour of various UK government appears reactionary, unpredictable, and lacking any long term strategic strategy. This has laid to politicians saying on television: "Don't listen to what the Brittish say. If it works they will join". Which implies that the UK government is actually, from a practical point of view, outside the constructive loop.
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#60
wrong again the purpose of the EU is to harmonise trade rules and internal markets and the rights of the EU citizens.
It doesn't care less if we here in the UK prefer currie and the Italians prefer pasta or the Germans want Schwine-haxel with beer and the Swedes are proud of their meatballs while the Greeks go for Souvlaki. get it diversity not homogenisation :)
You must confuse the EU with US where the biggest diversity is between coffee at macdonnalds or starbucks :)
In summary:
homogenisation = US
deversity = EU
simple to follow realy :)
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#53 - Freeborn-John
Yes, I agree with your general thrust and Zapatero is certainly not as 'user-friendly' as his predecessors but I have the distinct feeling that there may be sufficient dissonant voices in the EU to cause significant discomfort if the Franco-German alliance looked as though it was moving towards an unacceptable degree of dominance.
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#64 & #63
Only recently Zapatero spoke to governments about plans for the Spanish EU presendency that is coming up in Jan. His target is illigal migration and improve FRONTEX, that is something the UK should take part in, and if he hasn't spoken to Gordon yet, then Gordon should pick up the phone and say "hey mate, I'm interested in that one, keep me in the loop". Has he done it are we in the loop or are we out of it again and in six months time the BBC will report the "Spanish-Italian-French axis drives EU policy"
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maria-ashot wrote:
"Actually, democracythreat (No. 24), I am a better judge than Alice in the matter you mention, because I have actually lived in America and so have a frame of reference from which to judge."
The matter I mentioned was whether the soviet union declared itself to be a system of democratic representation, and conducted elections. You had claimed that it had always set itself out as a totalitarian dictatorship.
The reason I mentioned Alice was because I feel uncomfortable talking about the soviet union in the presence of someone who lived there, when I did not. I don't have your blind faith in what I read. And I have the basic good manners to defer to eye witnesses when their testimony contradicts my own hearsay.
maria-ashot wrote:
"I have also had access to more documents than Alice on the subject."
That seems an incredibly arrogant thing to claim. I mean, you could be right. Nevertheless, you can't possibly know, and so it just seems a brutally arrogant comment. You have a very, very high opinion of yourself, and you don't mind setting it forth. Charming.
maria-ashot wrote:
"And my parents, who actually lived through the events in question, and witnessed the thrilling blow-by-blow, did not have to spend their lives cowering in fear of being overheard speaking about what they had witnessed, or being denounced and interrogated for something they had written."
So they were not communists in America then?
maria-ashot wrote:
"Seriously, check it out before you have the temerity to cast aspersions."
I didn't cast aspersions, you poisonous pedant. I simply questioned your suggestion that the soviet union did not portray itself as a system of representative democracy. In return, I receive a high and mighty lecture regarding the brilliance of your CV.
However, I am now in a very good position to cast aspersions. Your breathtaking arrogance, combined with your preference for flashing your credentials rather than engaging the argument at hand, leads me to suspect that you are an intellectual bully and a second rate thinker.
And yes, I have the "temerity" to make these comments because you are just another faceless voice on the internet. And so am I. You can't be the smartest person in this room, because the room has no walls.
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oj oj oj
Now maria-ashot will tell democracythreat what she thinks of his lawyer's opinion of women's lucky lot as mum of three, and democracythreat will tell her what he thinks about the combination of all things divine and democracy.
Whereas the real competition here is about who can write longer kinder human posts! (imo)
Can I bring any peace into the discussion? - No :o))))
Anyway, if this is a consolation for any body, USSR party rule was totalitarian and, simultaneously, we were consulted and asked opinion of, or, as min, there was all in place to feel this.
I side with dt that no amount of studying Lenin equals being on the spot, after all "on-site trainings" :o))) were not invented for nothing; neither doctors' practice for years on graduation. Before they actually get with knives and tablets onto live own patients tete-a-tet :o))))
Yeah, from outside often things seem clearer but I won't sell my experience of living in the country so cheap :o))) it's an asset - try to repeat the trick, simply :o))) The left-over survivors of the 20th century will grade their acquired skills :o))) and deep skin-felt understanding dear.
That's of course a heroic deed , maria-ashot :o))) reading whole Lenin, but honestly a big deal :o))) - who didn't here? and many not only for a "tick" in the course of university study whatever (a compulsory "tick"/"pass", mark awarded, exams tests etc. - because them all 2 beards and one bold chap were learned as a science :o))) - but many also read with heartfelt interest, trying to decipher -"oh what went wrong? why it does not agree with reality? where is the bug now let me read that page again :o))))
Then - this time to dt -, I approve of maria-ashot "all-knowing" airs :o))) because that's an exusable minor defect imo :o))), given the current lay-out - namely any one who has a heart to actually try to do anything about Russia - ought to have blind faith by definition (of the enormity of the task undertaken), and no level of self-assuredness will, how to say, be extra :o))))
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#65 - ChrisArta
If van Rompuy take office in December, how can there be a Spanish presidency in December? Am I missing something here?
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So much narrow-minded nonsense here! Why don't some of you get out a bit more?
eg the coulisses de bruxelles blog has a full list of expected appointments. As a regular reader of his, I suggest he gets some excellent insider leaks. Sorry folks - it's in French, though.
However, thought you might like to know, the view on that blog is that Barnier (the French Commissioner nominee) will not get oversight of finance. And the word is, your mr Brown won over Mr Barrosso; By his Scottish charm, perhaps?
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Maria_ashott
I suppose as a Brit, I should be happy for the ringing endorsement of our approach to democracy and sovereignty but your parallel with the tango intrigues me. Short of actually being arrested for an act of gross indecency, the tango must be as close as it gets to public seduction. I would have thought that was something at we Brits have been conspicuously bad in this century.
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Maria-Ashot,
I would please like to hear more of your experiences of adversity, as a woman, and in Russia. (not all in Russia...but everywhere.
You are a good ..better than good (I mean in the world) writer ...like DT, Marcus, Web Alice, Threnodio and all the other ones here that are good -- better than good :)
Women in Europe is a good subject...for this blog and post per German-French power :)
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#64
I don't think you are missing anything, he just organises meetings the presidency still changes every 6 months :) at least that's how I see it.
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@ 53 FBJ
"In practice, there may be some periods (e.g. when there are 'right-wing' governments in both Rome and Madrid) when these countries might find common cause with a British government on ad-hoc issues, but that is very far from being the basis of a stable relationship. Such an alliance existed for a brief period, nick-named "BAB" or "Blair-Aznar-Berlusconi" alliance. However the election of Zapatero as Spanish PM, and his early description of Blair as "un gilipollas integral" brought the thing to a quick end."
So what part of that description is inaccurate could you please tell me...
As for the BAB alliance, as you correctly point out it was a one issue alliance: The Irak invasion.
Othewise, it is nigh on impossible to find much common cause between the UK and other EU countries when the British government/s is/are the only ones in the EU to refuse both the Euro and Schengen. Not a single government or opposition party in the EU rejects either of these pillars (someone please correcty if I am wrong), not even the most ultra-catholic/ultra-nationalist members of the Aznar party or the ultra-catholic/ultra-nationalist Polish parties with which your party, the Tories has signed an alliance in the Euro parliament. In the case of the only EU countries that are outside the euro or not committed to join it, Sweden and Denmark, both their governments and all their mainstream parties supported euro membership but were defeated by referenda, in the same way that, had there been a UK referendum on decimalisation in the early seventies, we would still be struggling with halfpennies, shillings and crowns. After all, it is nigh on impossible to explain to a whole populace the benefits of a single currency in a single market of 27 states. The average man/woman in the street would just think: "I can't be bothered with the hassle" and stick to what they know. Let alone in a country were people are terrified of change. Those are decisions that are best left to political consensus across major parties, and consensus there is across all major European parties (UK excepted of course).
But I digress. As I say, it is quite difficult to find common cause with the UK other than, as you say, ad-hoc issues like breaking international law to invade a sovereign country, when the UK is in a minority of one in disagreeing with basic tenets of the EU.
Other ad hoc issues where the UK found agreement was on the Charter of Rights, where it found agreement with the party of the Polish twins, a key member of their new grouping in the European parliament in opposing it:
- The Polish twins opposed it because they are ultra-Catholics and they think it gives too many rights to homosexuals.
- Havel, the famous Czech president, in turn, joined in at the eleventh hour in opposing it because he thought that Germans expelled from the Sudetes might be entitled to claim property rights.
- The UK government opposed it because the unelected tabloid bureaucrats that HMG need to keep sweet (Murdoch et al) told him that the Charter of Rights was a 'Crooks Charter'.
The essence of the matter is that what you and your Tory colleagues want in reality is not a close alliance with Europe but a close alliance with the US but they, Uncle Sam, your masters across the pond don't really care much about a close alliance with their former colonial masters, now a middle ranking and declining nation, but demand that YOU should stay in the EU (even if it is in one particular EU that only exists in history books) and influence the agenda there. No wonder that De Gaulle (was it him?) opposed UK membership of the then EEC on the basis that he saw that membership as an US Trojan horse, i.e. exactly the same reason why your masters across the Atlantic won't let you and your Tory colleagues leave the EU.
So in order for the US to let you be their waterboy, as correctly pointed out by Benefactor at 59, you need to stay in the EU. What a dilemma uhh?
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Mavrelius, when you'are finished with the turkey bones, post a recepie (in the decent am hours). we have your birds in the shops, but their meat looks so hard.
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A question to all those of you oppposing British EU membership: Are you aware of the fact, that the - despised - Lisbon treaty finally includes a proceudre for leaving the EU? Just elect a government which actually holds a referendum on Britain's EU membership and leave for good.
NB: Personally I am convinced that 80-90% of all continental European citizens would NOT mind Britain leaving the EU and might actually encourage you to do so...
I will not comment on all the discussion about the "German-French" axis which simply exists and will continue to exist, not least because of the shared border and some similar problems...
Some of the other commentators already outlined, that Britain is missing out on two of Europe's greatest achievements, namely Shengen and the Euro, which naturally influences the British perception of Europe.
I can understand some emotional objections towards the Euro (had there been a referendum e.g. in France or Germany before the currency union, the Euro wouldn't exist today), but I simply do not understand why Westminster didn't participate in the Shengen area. Just imagine, getting rid of all the home office queues at British and European airports, ferry ports etc... Are you aware of the fact, that flights e.g. from London Shengen cities like Madrid, Frankfurt or even Zurich are arriving at the "overseas gate" with border controls before departure and after arrival? All intra-Shengen flights arrive at different terminals (e.g. in Madrid or Zurich) where no border controls exist, whereas all passengers arriving from London need to pass through border control...
If anyone has a convincing answer towards these question - I am looking forward to reading it.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
2. At 2:11pm on 25 Nov 2009, Freeborn-John wrote:
"The consideration for the UK (alone) is rather different. We are not only are an important European power in our own right (we will be the most populous European country by 2050, and the largest European economy well before that), but we have a solid and trusted relationship with the USA that allows us an avenue for exerting an influence on world affairs which neither France nor Germany can aspire to."
Interesting.
You must have very solid data sources (is it a crystal ball or a cards that you're reading from?).
Can you give me a single example where the UK has influenced any of the US decisions in the last 65 years (basically since the UK has become a de facto vassal state the USA)?
As for the real world, it does look like Britain has a booming population, but its economy is falling down the ladder quite quickly and its not clear whether the boom in people will be enough to compensate.
I remember you predicting (crystal balls?) last year on this forum how the Eurozone was doomed and the UK would swiftly recover from the financial turmoil.
While your arguments are endearing, you systematically fail to note in your "analysis" that while Germany (and to some extent France and other EU countries like Holland, Italy and Spain to name a few) have a solidly diversified economy, Britain suffers from the Dutch syndrome whereby its once excellent industry has been completely dismantled, its agriculture is virtually non-existent (you hear about it only when the UK moans about the CPA) and it still relies on the discredited "financial sector". If the current trends continue, the UK will soon be the 4th, not the 3rd, economy in the EU behind Italy, which makes its relative population boom a liability rather than an asset.
Between a crystal ball and a wishful thinking session, I suggest you have a look at real world data as well: http://tinyurl.com/yk2cjsa and http://tinyurl.com/ydzj48t
Enjoy.
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#74
why bother fighting with a tough bird, you have so many other tasty foods to eat. What's wrong with garlick, herring, black bread and vodka? or the thing with sour cream and the meatballs wrapped in noddles type thing? :)
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(I'm ...subtlely changing the conversation because I, myself, love Britain and all that.. it.. signifies...in order not to say what I really think...subtlely, subtlely (spelling it wrong as a diversion lol) ..cain't u tell)
Also, your jokes, Web Alice, and your stories are so nice and ...wonderful :)
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I had only recited a Neil Young poem..
is that why the moderators have taken it?
But, that is why an earlier post looks ..um..like a diversion.
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WA;
So you want a recipe for turkey. Well here are two. First of all, turkeys are usually bought at a supermarket "fresh" or frozen. Fresh birds are not frozen and can be cooked right away. Frozen birds must be thawed out. The recommended method is to let them thaw in the refrigerator for three days. I'll often just leave mine out on a counter overnight. Frozen turkeys can be thawed in a microwave oven in an emergency but is not the best method. They should be thoroughly washed. Some people like to make a gravy using the giblets (heart, liver, neck etc but not me. I give that to the dogs.)
The best way by far to cook a turkey IMO is to deep fry it in peanut oil at 375 degrees F (191 degrees C.) Special fryers for this purpose are sold all over American and are usually made in China. They consist of a propane burner with a regulator, control valve, hose, a stand, a vessel for holding the oil, a holder which goes through the bird with three tines that turn back on themselves to hold the bird from underneath at one end and an eye at the other. This is made of heavy duty stainless steel. A grabbing device that looks like a wire coat hanger but also heavy gage stainless steel (the open end goes through the eye and the rest is for lowering and lifting the bird. A cover and a thermometer to measure the temperature of the oil inside. An additional basket to hold chicken parts and other things you want to deep fry also comes with it. The usual price is $60 but I bought one in the supermarket for $30. Once the oil is preheated (it is very important to use the correct amount of oil, too much and it will spill over the side when you put the bird in it, catch fire and the whole thing will go up like a torch, too little and the top of the bird won't cook as uniformly as the rest of it. ) It takes about 1 hour to cook a 13 pound bird (about 6kg.) It is extremely dangerous. Animal rights groups show videos on TV every year at this time and there probably isn't a fire department in America that doesn't have at least one horror story about one. The risk is that if the oil catches fire, it can burn down your house, badly burn you, even kill you. The turkeys themselves are cheap, it's the peanut oil that's expensive. It is very dangerous to do unless you know exactly how and are alert with no distractions at all times. The result is superb with skin as crisp and tasty as crispy bacon and meat as moist, tender, and tasty as it can get. I've done it exactly twice.
Roast turkey is much easier. Everyone has their own recipe but here is mine. Coat the turkey thoroughly with olive oil, sprinkle liberally with garlic powder, add a little paprika if you like but not too much. Put in a pre-heated oven at 350 degrees F, 20 minutes per pound. I put mine on a roasting rack in a roasting pan and contrary to normal instructions, I place the breast side down. This causes the internal juices to flow towards the white (breast) meat and keeps it moist and tasty. Usually the white meat can become dry and tasteless as cardboard if the breast side is up. For the last half hour, I'll turn it over. Then, at the end, to brown the skin, I turn on the broiler and rotate the bird until the skin is brown and crispy on all sides being careful not to burn it.
Here's a link for professional advice but you can get millions of recipes on the internet from the Food Channel for example.
http://www.butterball.com/
Turkey costs anywhere from 88 cents a pound (BJ's Warehouse) to $2 a pound (Shoprite.) Typical weight is from about 12 to 18 pounds but there are certainly larger. This is not a hard thing to cook well.
BTW, stuffing is best made outside of the bird, not stuffed inside it. This is because it is important that the stuffing get hot enough if it comes in contact with the bird. Not hot enough and it could be contaminated with salmonella bacteria that can make you very sick. Estreme caution and cleanliness when handling raw fowl must be used. A roasting pan or on a stove top in a frying pan is good for cooking stuffing. I like mine made with veal, chestnuts, and raisins as well as bread, herbs, and other assorted ingredients such as a little celery. Other traditional dishes to go with turkey are cranberry sauce (easy to make fresh and much better than canned) yams (I like mine candied with honey, sugar, and cinnamon) corn on the cob, and baked or mashed potatoes. You can drink almost anything with it but I prefer wine, usually a chilled Chardonnay (California, Oregon, or Australia) or Sauvignon blanc (New Zealand.) Champagne is excellent too and there are some good values from California. Hard cider may be more traditional, even beer. I do not like the traditional pumpkin pie for desert. Anything but that. Hot Dutch apple pie expecially with a crumb crust and Vanilla ice cream with butterscotch sauce and whipped cream are good. Coffee and some brandy or liqueur too. After that, one is ready for a nap :-) BTW, my favorite part of a turkey is the drumstick which I eat Henry VIII style.
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22. At 7:19pm on 25 Nov 2009, Freeborn-John wrote:
"The UK has significantly outgrown France and Germany over the last 20 years and has outperformed the Eurozone in each year of its existence other than this one."
You're a pathological case John! Don't you understand yet what Tony Blair knew all the way? Britain's economic growth in the nulabour decade or so (quite far from 20 years, mind you, remember 1992-95... the British economy was not precisely booming then) was based on fake money injection, via home-purchase loans and credit. This is the economic equivalent of hot air. It's all gone now, flushed down the pipes of economic history. Despite attempts by the City fat cats to recover some lost ground it doesn't look that the party is going to start soon enough. The UK taxpayer is now also stuck with a 20K debt per head on average. To understand this figure: 20K x 60M = 1.2 Trillion GBP of personal debt!!!
(More precise, and worse, figures for you to enjoy on http://www.creditaction.org.uk/debt-statistics.html)
Now you should subtract that from the growth in the last 20 years, and you'll realise the shabby state in which nulab's policies (building on the thatcherite ones) has gotten you into.
If British voters decide to leave the EU, as you seem to be wishing, the EU member states will be all too happy for this good riddance. The problem is that the EU cannot kick the UK out of the union. And most likely the UK government, with its staggering debt and inefficient economy, will stay stuck onto the Franco-German backbone for some time against the wishes of its electorate (not a first for a country known for disregarding the will of its people, e.g. Iraq war).
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ChrisArta, well. if that bird is there it means something? what is it doing on the counters so useless :o) waiting for a passer-by American and Thanksgiving? :o)
"meetballs in noodles" must be Siberian "pelmeni", stress in the middle. That look like small white ears :o))), depending, how one rolls them up little kind of pies.
you roll out on a wooden board flour and water, to make the cover eh, something to roll meat balls into, a packaging for meatballs. Then you get an empty vodka glass and press it down, onto that coating rolled around (by an empty vodka bottle :o)))) naturally, as well :o)))) - whats a better eh? roller? So, with the empty glass turned upside down you carve little round circles in your ? that flour coating, and thus obtain round pieces of it. Into which into each round you drop in a meatball and roll the sides up like "ears". :o)))
Thus you obtain meatballs coated in that? what's the English word. Anyway, into that from which all breads are baked.
These little white balls you produce when you have time. (men are good at it). And lump into your fridge into the freezer compartment, until better times when you have no time.
Then, when you are hungry and want something substantial and hot immediately! immediately! you only need to put on a kettle (1 min.), pour the contents of that kettle into a pan, add salt, and somersault into the boiling water a couple of handful-s of your stocks frozen to death from the fridge. First they drown. When they are ready they surface up like a submarine. Good with sour cream but normal butter is just as good. Typical bachelor's food some survive on it for years.:o))) Siberian because they never needed a freezer LOL, but must be put them around the house :o)))) here and there or I don't know where :o)))) and then simply collected them from snow behind the door to cook when hungry.
What goes an accompaniment to the "pelmeni" you must have figured out yourself :o)) from the technicalities of the process :o))))
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Mathiasen
Re #4
Semi-Quote, "..how we can develop the cooperation and diminish nationalism.. I welcome role of EU Parliament.. it is the institution best suited for that purpose."
That would be the European Parliament with 700+ MEPs returned by less than 50% of EU Citizens at the last 4 European Elections?
That would be the European Parliament that in 2009 managed to gain 44% EU Citizen Voter participation?
Which part of the European Parliament has no Mandate at all from the Citizens of Europe for the last 15+ years is it you are finding difficulty grasping?
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The process is called "to sculpture the pelmeni". Men folk insist they need a kind of an inspiration for the process :o))) an awful creative work o))))
Sadly, our men are Asians exactly 9th century BC 100% in terms of the difficulty to force them into the kitchen. We are impatiently waiting for the ideas of the Western civilisation and all things democratic to settle over and posess the masses of menfolk. European ideas of home work 50/50, how to say, are not exactly ingrained in Russian men masses. All is below men's esteem, whatever you propose, apart from taking out the garbage bin and pelmeni-sculpturing, one can't count on much.
As the saying goes "will die by the fridge of hunger", un-able even to open the door.
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Artiste;
Either the turkeys grown in your part of the world are not bred for being tender or you overcook them to death which is why they are hard and dry. While there are few things more foul than undercooked fowl, when properly cooked turkey is tasty and moist. That is why Americans like them. Unfortunately most Americans only cook turkey on special occasions and go into a panic when they do because of inexperience and the necessity to please guests by doing something well they are not familiar with. I generally cook at least one turkey a month. It is so easy. I recommend investing in a meat thermometer. When inserted into the thickest part of the thigh, it will tell you when the bird is done.
BTW WA, the lowest price was at Wallmart, not BJ (right across the street from BJ an no it was not raised in China but right here.) Butterball was $1.08 last time I was there. Sometimes we'll keep several of them in the freezer but usually just buy them as we need them. Once you get the hang of roasting one, it's no big deal. It is surprisingly forgiving of being cooked a little to long, too short, too high a temperature, too low.
I can buy a thirteen pound turkey for less than a pound of imported French or other European cheese. Three pounds of Angus Porterhouse steak, four pounds of non Angus porterhouse steak, five pounds or more of chuck roast. We don't buy much imported cheese anymore, domestic cheddar is just fine. And we don't make any French Onion soup either. Not when Gruyere cheese is $18 a pound.
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yes "pelmeni" thank you, that's the one. Well I like them :)) with some vodka or baltios bear, mmmm tasty!
Now on that tasty thought I better go to sleep, CU all.
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Mathiasen
Re #44
.. Danish Parliament only yesterday... remove a couple of the Danish EU opt-outs.." and, "..wonder if British society... out of touch with the EU positions in the rest of Europe?"
Going to put those wishes to the Danish Citizen Electorate in a Referendum?
Going to risk asking the Danish Citizens for their point of view?
From reading the coverage in the press (albeit translated for me from Danish by a 'pro-EU' Danish speaking Swede!): It seems that the Danish Political Parties are about to do a 'Lisbon-rat' (as it is now called by Citizens denied a right to a voice in their future), and the Danish Government will not be consulting via the Ballot box on these issues!
Well, there's an EU surprise! An entire nation not allowed to express its opinion in the traditional 'democratic' manner - - my 'gast' has never been so 'flabbered'! Not!
Exactly how in touch is the Danish Parliament with its Citizens?
Look, of course they may agree to abandon the opt-outs, but, Mathiasen where is the 'democratic' expression if such matters as Public accountability are just brushed aside?
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#86
Marvelous-AureliusII I can only wish you success with the bird, but it is not for me :) nothing to do with "too American" or anything like that but in general I don't like fowl, or that stuff the French eat duck liver!:)
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StandEU
Re #7
A lot of your contribution was very interesting and gave another perspective which is certainly grounds for thought by the 'anti-EU' such as myself from the UK/England.
However, right in the middle of it you wrote some stuff about "..British forces humiliated.. by USA..".
Apparently you have read such reports: Could you specify them, because the 3 US Commanders of Ground Forces in Iraq from 2003 to 2008 certaily did not record anything but admiration for the professionalism, commitment and effectiveness of UK Armed Forces personnel in Iraq. The US Congress received Pentagon reports in 2004, 2006 and 2008 commending the British Armed Forces support of the 'allied' campaign in Iraq.
So, I'm just wondering: Did you read some newspapers about particular incidents of disaffection between the US - UK forces, or are you referring to actual 'official' reports by either the US or UK Military Commanders?
I'm intrigued as nothing of the sort has ever been put before the UK Public except in the context of the usual agony and disbelief when casualties occur due to 'friendly-fire' and the inevitable 'fog of war' cock-ups that only people who have seen active service will ever truly understand.
Sometimes, when I watch a television drama (usually American or British) and they have the 'bad guy shooting' it always makes me laugh to see the 'good guy look to where the shot/s came from'! In reality you are either dead, wounded, or utterly bewildered and diving for cover totally unaware of anything except getting out of the way.
So StandEU, are you shooting a line or are your 'reports' for real?
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Mavrelius if that's a recepie how to make that overgrown "induk" (turkey) eatable - I leave it on your conciousness.
Why "turkey" BTW? Here it's "induk" (male) or "indeyka", "indushka" (female). Indian, aboriginal, in your quarters.
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WA;
Enjoy your Siberian meetballs with sour cream. Maybe you'll enjoy the General Tsao's Chicken when the Chinese invade Saint Pete's Russia. I'll bet you could get it in Saint Pete's Florida for a very long time now.
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delondres
Re #75
".. are you aware..?"
Oh no! Really?
Until you wrote about it all us 'anti-EU' were completely unaware!
In fact if you read the 'pro-EU' none of us 'anti' have ever read a line of Lisbon, we have no understanding (that's putting their description of us politely) of 'competencies'/'directives' etc., and, when it comes to the European Parliament MEPs we are so lacking the word 'Democracy' is not in our vocabulary!
"..elect a Government that..": Gee, thanks for the advice - - how do we dumb smucks put socks on in the morning!?
"...80-80% of all continental European Citizens would NOT mind Britain leaving the EU..": Really? And you base that astonishing statistic on your recent survey of 26 National populations, or, is it something a bit more personal, like your own opinion?
"..Europe's greatest achievements.. Schengen and EUro..": That would be the 'open borders' policy which according to the latest EU statistics had some 12,000,000 people 'trafficked' into the European Union - - of which the majority were vulnerable women and children - - there are 200+ International Airports within the EU, so, if you could explain how the EU is strengthening its 'external borders' as Schengen claimed when that many somehow slipped through your "overseas gate", we'd be pleased to know - - oh, that's some success, alright!
Then the EUro - - there is nothing wrong with the currency at all - - it is a stand-up, decent currency - - but, can you explain why the UK should use it to replace the Pound - - you know some Economic-Financial statistics that do not involve your hunches about what may or may not suit the British Isles!?
I'm rather pleased you had so little to say on the 'French-German' axis: "It exists"!
No! Until I read that I assumed Mr Hewitt was writing an article for the fun of it: You did us all a favour.
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Marcua Aurelius
Re 381
For your ultra polite, helpful and thoroughly good Thanksgiving 'turkey' cook you deserve a break from the usual.
So, thank you very much for a thoroughly entertaining and evocative piece of writing that I am sure many on here will really have appreciated.
May yours and 'family' Thanksgiving Day (plus Turkey) be a good one.
Cheers.
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WA;
I am surprised to hear that Russian men won't cook. It is part of an American male's masculinity, his machismo to prove his skills at grilling food which we mistakenly call BBQing. The man works the grill. If it is a charcoal grill, he builds the fire. He cooks the food. He is in charge. At sporting events, a relatively recent phenomenon is the "tail gate party." A tail gate is a fold down door or panel on the back of a vehicle. Men (and women) arrive at sports arenas several hours before a sporting event and set up their portable BBQ grills. They will grill anything and everything from hamburgers and hot dogs to steaks and chicken. Usually there's lots of other food dragged with them including beer, cole slaw, potato salad, beans, and all the other things you need for a picnic. Picnic grounds in parks are sometimes set up for people to grill there also. It is always the man's function to carve the turkey at the dinner table. There is a special skill to this. Also carving roasts is the man's responsibility. Learning to cook is not hard. Food is cheap and variety is bewildering. Utensils and appliances for cooking are endless. And we are bombarded day and night with cooking shows and advertising for the latest cooking gadgets. So you think Americans can cook? Well...I think a lot of them can't. Take out food is just too easy. And if even that is too hard...well there are frozen TV dinners. Somewhere I read years ago that the average supermarket has over 20,000 different items in it. So how come the eternal question is....what shall I eat for dinner?
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delondres
Many of continental Europeans actually do have such negative attitude towards the UK because they don't want to enter Shengen and Eurozone atm. Bu in my opinion, that kind of attitude is completely wrong and destructive. They have the right to do so as the EU is an organisation of cooperation not dictatorship. If they feel that it won't benefit them, we must respect that position, not blame them or even want them to leave the EU. That would be a great loss for both sides. Instead, communication is needed in both direction. The UK should be more clear with explaining to us their concerns, concerns of the citizens and the rest should be more supportive and put more efforts to explain the consequences, benefits and experience from other countries. Only that way we will be able to understand each other and continue to work together.
cool_brush_work
I didn't read the actual reports as it is confidential i believe. However, there has been news about this on our national television (not some tabloid) so I think there si some truth behind it. You state that US military complimented UK support. But of course they did, they wouldn't put themselves in the bad light as the problems are with them not with the Brittish. In short what the article stated:
This was suppose to be parts of the confident report parts of which went public. Colonel J.K.Tanner stated that now he understands he is European. They had better relations with all European soldiers in Iraq (which chat and talk to each other) and even with the arabic coleagues than with the US soldiers, for which he says are like a group of Martians unfamiliar with a thing called dialogue. He also believed in the so called special relationship between US and UK, but he found out that it actually doesn't exist as the Americans were dictating their way through arrogancy and bureacracy. The supreme UK commander, general A.Stewart wrote that he was completely ignored by the US generals in command, that the US doesn't allow their positions being questioned, and that he often evaded contacts with the US command and even had to refuse the execution of some orders from American command. For that, the British ambassador to the USA was called in and issued a diplomatic warning, which is usually given by the USA to countries like Zimbabwe. This news was taken from the Telegraph, says on the web site of Slovenian national television.
So, of course I can't be sure that this is true, however the news from our national television usually are credible and I guess also from the Telegraph.
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Mavrelius, it's nice to see how good you are in the kitchen. Can just imagine you in the apron with meat thermometre in hands. Very handsome.
In the mis-hap of the Chinese crossing Russia's border - no doubt you and your meat thermometre will be of great help.
If you like scaring people for the night, skip Russians, tell a story to the Kazakh. I looked up a Kazakhstan blog now, on the latest China news :o))) Have it open now, in fact, running parallel to this one.
China switches them off water, already blocked nearly all rivers coming in the Kazakh direction. The one that still bubbles - bubbles with pesticides, Kazakhs are in horror. Things are real poisoned in China.
a quote from that blog "a good article. their expansion is creepy, there won't be a war, they will simply one day run a referendum in Kazakhstan and announce joining up China as a majority on the ground. As they say "allure enemy to the roof and take the stairs away." I like better what Russians say: "An optimist learns English, a pessimist learns Chinese, and a realist learns Kalashnikov machine-gun".
So, we are again popular in Kazakhstan, only they worry about themselves, and we worry about the Russian Far East.
____________________
Anyway, the post gets too gloomy.
:o)
There are Americans and Americans. Stellarbeloved, you seem to have mentioned you like Russian jokes :o)
- How is life? How is crisis?
- Continues. Ends.
:o))))
Own life - each one should live through so! - so that, as an example for the grandchildren - it would be no good at all!
:o)))
Grandad, how old are you?
- 62.
the boy, with a look of doubt "And, did you start to count - from 1?
:o)))
Save money on the tickets to "2012"! Just wait a couple of years - and you will see it in reality. :o))))
In the old times, to fight draught or to prevent flooding, they gathered on a meadow and performed ritual dances. Now they gather in Copenhagen and start a conference.
:o))))
According to the last survey, 86% of Russians believe that Americans don't stock up for winter salt, flour and spaghetti because they are silly.
:o)))))
Relationship of population and state remind me of the relationship of whale and plankton, where plankton is made to be proud of the arrangement of the whale's digestive system.
:o)))
Take my advice, don't fool around with her. She's got, for the world's most ancient art - a degree of black belt. With pink garters.
:o))))
Russian football team lost to Slovenia 0:1. (and does not go to the world championship)
State Duma sat down to review the law on death penalty.
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lolololol:) WA
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Mavrelius, I don't know why ours won't cook. BTW BBQ-s they would, but that's clearly your latest influence. Combined with on-going pressure from Caucasus, where men make "shashlyk" - same barbeque, basically, for centuries. Grilled meat. If not for the Georgians and Armenians, and recent TV American movies, ours wouldn't touch a barbeque either.
The excuse they must have fo themselves in this case, can be "it's not kitchen, it's outdoor." :o))))
May be, because kitchen is "female tsardom" - but as it depends on me - Jesus Christ! I am not posessive and proprietory. :o))) I shall myself "die by the fridge door" :o)))) Emancipe, you know :o)))
That's how we die out as a nation, must be! come to think about it. flop dead as flies, by the fridge doors :o)))))
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My half-brother, though, cooks. I even gave him a frying pan, as a birthday present :o)))) the other year. I don't know, if a thought stirred up in him, that it's not very, how to say :o))) classic. If it did - he didn't show it :o)))).
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MarcusAureliusII wrote:
"So you want a recipe for turkey. Well here are two. First of all, turkeys are usually bought at a supermarket "fresh" or frozen. Fresh birds are not frozen and can be cooked right away. Frozen birds must be thawed out. "
You lost me at this point.
Frozen birds must thawed out.
Marcus, I have forgiven much in the past, especially of you. I think we can both agree that in future you will grace the both of us, and this forum, if you lift your game considerably.
Speaking of lifting the game, this blog entry by Hewitt was a refreshing change. If the man wrote more than ten words a day, I might even change my opinion of his value to the community.
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WAlice,
Look at the Economist webwsite if you want to read many many Chinese comments....they are very polite people there, its just that they are very confident now, and
I do not insult them (by commenting on their governments scary flaws), because
even though every (human) person is different, there are SO many Chinese people who are similar (in their differences) and if these similarly antagonized Chinese people feel angry, well...again, read the Economist website.
But, I trust Obama,
because when he was "stepping over Japan"--many Japanese noticed he was only a day there--"to get to China," he DID bow to the Japanese Emperor
which was classy, so poised and appropriate. (as the Japanese revere their Emperor)
And no offence to WW2 veterans or Chinese peoples:)
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54. At 2:02pm on 26 Nov 2009, maria-ashot wrote:
"To understand properly, respectfully & with a degree of detachment the complexities of the EU-UK tango -- which is what it is -- one has to full absorb the intricacies of some 2500 years of Western European + British history. ..."
SB2: No! You just have to see continental policemen in operation to know that the UK does not belong in the "EU".
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I have just been to a non-"EU" country. I had to wait about ten minutes to get through the passport check thingy. If that is what Schengen would save me then I can do without it.
As for Euros. I think the Euro is great. It simplifies my life greatly when I am on the continent. It suits me that they have it. We don't need it.
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To cool_brush_work :
You are doing a great job! I salute you!
No need to return the compliment. I don't do it as well as you and I know it.
Anyway, thanks for what you are doing.
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#88. cool_brush_work
Each and every opt-out will be subject to a referendum in Denmark, but that does not prove Denmark as a democracy in itself. It is also a democracy without referenda.
The LT treaty has placed the Danish opt-outs in an area, which the Danish parliament wants to leave as quickly as possible. It is therefore only a matter of time before the Danes abolish their opt-outs.
In this case the opposition suggested the 23 March 2010 for a referendum. The coalition government agrees on the purpose but not on the date. It is a matter of political strategy in relation to political conditions in Denmark, when the referendum will take place.
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Yes, I'm still awake here in the US (its midnite here-not 6am) and reading this blog, even though, I had planned to watch "Cloverfield" for the Nth time, but,
Someone, earlier, was saying that the UK could/should find friends in the EU like Poland, or other nations (in the EU) that have the same ideas and reservations about the EU,
and work with those nations about what could/should be done in the EU (work within the system).
And my thought is, that the UK should join Scandinavia eventually *in a trade group* (with or without the EU's agreement) as Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark are much like the UK in their aspirations.
They seem to all admire the UK and vice-versa. I truly admire Scandinavia for its humanistic agendas, policies and processes (who am I?...but..)
My point is these nations seem compatible with the United Kingdom and its peoples. And these nations could choose neutrality or "whatever" in future conflicts ...in the world OR in the EU. :)
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#107. stellarBeloved
Before anything else Denmark and Sweden are compatible with Germany. Our languages are very close, much closer than you would imagine, but above all the political and social structure in Scandinavia is based on the German model; take a look at the trade unions and the Social Democratic parties.
What seems to be difficult to understand in the UK is the following: The membership of the EU is a strategic decision, which has USA and China as its counterparts. They know that in Berlin. I think they know in London, but they do not like it, and BBC will get nowhere with its nationalistic agenda.
Have a nice weekend.
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#105
But we do need it. I wish we had it and I didn't have to guess every day if the money I have in the bank is worth less today again. But in his wisdom Gordon and his famous 5 tests deny it to us. For that alone he should not be re-elected.
#93
CBW
Yes as 60% of our trade is done with the rest of our EU partners it would save us 60% of exchange fees and remove exchange rate ups and downs, for those two reason is a good thing for the British isles. Also the EURO is more stable than the pound so having a stable curency is good thing for the British isles. Having a few less bankers in the city making money from buying a selling pounds (i.e. producing nothing) and having them work on a real job, that would be good thing for the British isles. You see all those benefits are concrete and obvious not hunches and for sure not soft emotions.
About Schengen, I haven't seen the 12,000,000 number that you claim (I have seen 4M - 8M) but is that 12,000,000 in the rest of the EU excluding the millions that we have here? A benefit would be that we have access to the common database the other countries use to check for criminals. Also what is it with 200+ international Airports? I believe you are well travelled, so you would have noticed that at Schengen member countries people arriving from "non Schengen" airports go one way, people arriving from "Schengen" airports just walk to the exit.
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StandEU
Re #96
Whoops!
It appears some Slovenian newspapes and television is a tad worse than the infamous UK s'T'un tabloid in the area of actual fact!
It is worth noting the UK Daily Telegraph on which your Slovenian media are basing their reports is very short on specifics, but very long on gossip.
As a point of record PM Brown's Government cannot comment in detail on any of the recent media stories as the Chilcot Iraq Public Enquiry has begun and the Government must avoid being seen as interfering in its investigations. Be prepared for countless UK media stories over the next 12 months such as the stuff already coming out - - until the Enquiry is completed and the report made in detail - - it is all just so much verbiage, i.e. this or that person's opinion/experience/2nd and 3rd hand knowledge/supicions blah, blah, blah..
No UK Government has ever had its Washington Ambassador called in for what you call a 'diplomatic warning' since the 1956 Suez crisis.
UK Armed Forces General Stewart and Colonel Turner are supposedly referring to the relations between US-UK Forces in Iraq post-invasion during 2003 - 04: Within the context of the 180,000 US and 11,000 UK personnel over such a frenetic period in the Iraq campaign the comments seem very tame and nothing like as dramatic as the Conservative supporting Daily Telegraph would try to have people believe.
E.g. in 1944-45 Generals Eisenhower (Supreme Allied Commander Europe, USA) and General Montgomery (Officer Commanding UK Forces Europe, UK) had many a spat over tactics, targets etc. and the most important being whether to go direct for Berlin or roll the German forces up on a broad front leaving Berlin to the Red Army - - Eisenhower as CinC made the final strategy decision - - it is the role of the top dog.
So it was/is in Iraq, Afghanistan etc. in fact fairly much as the Telegraph report states, "..USA being the no.1 superpower... does what it wants..". Hardly a surprise and whilst the American Commanders could perhaps have been more diplomatic I suspect the UK Officers felt side-lined partly because 180,000 and 11,000 makes 'consultation of dubious relevance when in the 'operational/active service field'.
There is nothing in these reports that would lead me to conclude alliance with the USA and NATO is not the very best course of foreign and military policy for the UK as compared to the timidity and shallowness exhibited by most of our supposed EUropean NATO Allies in the last decade.
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ChrisArta
Re #109
Pound or Euro? Why change when it is only the exchange rate? You wrote it yourself - - 60% of UK Trade is with Europe - - sorry, but if its doing that well why would anyone consider changing? 'Stable' Euro? Well okay, that is a benefit if that is guaranteed, but it is only 4 to 5 years ago the EUro was bouncing just like the Pound now - - no need to change currency-horse on the basis of very limited Financial history - - if the EU is a success it may be worth considering as I have suggested before, 'both' currencies become acceptable tender in the UK (as indeed happens in some retail outlets already - - it is perfectly feasible - - my brother's UK-based aero-engine supply business deals in 'dollars' for all transactions and all such admin costs etc. are inc. in prices from the start).
Yes, I consider myself 'well-travelled': The 12 million inc. those 'immigrants/foreign workers' illegally in the UK and non-EU nations also tied into Schengen - - your figures were for the EU Schengen area - - it is astonishing how blase the EU is about the 'open borders' policy that virtually all Police-Customs-Security Services of Nations have directly mentioned as the major 'new' contributory factor to the explosion in 'trafficked' (that is forced movement) people!
The International Airports are 'inside' the EU - - unsure how you differentiate because your 'open borders' are therefore 'inside' the EU - - passengers do indeed go through various customs-security checks and that is working so well that even by your lowest estimate there are 4,000,000 who should not be 'inside'! The 4 to 12 million 'trafficked' have arrived somehow by plane-train-lorry-car-ship through those supposedly strengthened 'external borders': An ever increasing tragedy the EU is keen to brush under the 'unity' carpet - - criminals, sex workers, enslaved/indentured servants, vulnerable children... plus the unrecorded smuggled drugs, weapons, products, counterfeit goods...
The EU continues to grow in prosperity whilst an underclass of unprotected, unregulated, unknown serfs also grows in numbers. What a triumph of unification!?
Yes, all these things have always been present in every form of society: The issue is how much worse has it become because of the EU policies within UK-Europe?
I submit it is intolerable of the EU to perpetuate an 'open borders' policy in the knowledge that it is expedentially increasing criminal activities and exploiting social suffering, just so Europeans do not have to show a Passport at a border.
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Mthiasen
Re #106
That is good news: The 'democratic' process is at least encouraged by the Danes holding referenda on such matters.
I wonder though: If by improbable chance the vote goes against removing the 'opt-outs' will the result stand the inevitable Brussels inspired backlash?
And then, as I have pointed out and you have airily dismissed - - there is the ECJ - - hmm, now that would interesting to see: What would happen if the ECJ I have warned about was asked to look into the decision to retain the Danish 'opt-out'?
No, of course it wont happen - - the Danes will vote 'yes' and even if they don't, the ECJ has no authority... or, does it since Lisbon?
No harm meant: Just a little tease!
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SuffolkBoy2
It takes all sorts and all sorts of ways: Isn't that yours and my main point of difference with the wretched EU?
Their one-size-fits-all, pan-European, unification would have us all singing from exactly the same hymn sheet with the music, lyrics and conducting choices made by those who know so much more than we do.
Keep going, mate - - they are in the wrong - - at the moment choices are still open to us and we choose Free-will.
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#111
I said it would be good for the British isles both for the exchange rate and exchange fees :) I must be the most "Free-will" person in the UK as I it is my interest to have the EURO as currency. I don't have any emotional attachements what so ever to the pound (neither do I have any emotional attachment to the EURO btw) so if I didn't have to pay a fee every time I want to perform a transaction with someone in Germany or France it would suit me fine and yes for the sake saving some pounds a year in fees I would be very happy to see the end of the pound.
But been outside the Schengen does not stop illegal immigrants coming to the UK, the only thing it achieves is us not having access to the data the rest of the Schengen area member states have. How does that help? The way I see it we have the worse of everyting. No access to data, the illegal immigrants still come and we have to queue at points of entry to the Schengen area. So what do we achieve by been outside of it? Other than say "at least we don't have it!" and yes that also bugs me and I would love to see the back of that op-out policy also :)
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ChrisArta
Re #114
It is not emotional attachment to the Pound or antipathy to the EUro that motivates my opposiition to a change of currency.
However, you hit the Pound sign on the Frankfurt head with your reference to deals with France and Germany: It seems to me that you equate the Euro with the same benign influence as those 2 nations dominance of the EU, whereas I see any UK transition to the EUro as yet another loss of National sovereignty to a Paris-Berlin-Brussels (Mr Hewitt's 'Franco-German Power').
Quite apart from which your 'commission fees' for foreign currency transactions to my mind more or less goes along with the 'inconvenience' of a queue at Passport controls - - an extremely small price to pay for a 'Free-will' UK/Europe in which those who prefer may certainly use a EUro or Yen, Yuan, Dollar, Rouble etc. - - just where is the terrible effect on the Economies of the World that a 'Euro' isn't common currency!?
I never said and never would claim being outside Schengen protects the UK's borders: I just cannot see how being inside it offers anything of significant advantage and to my mind, were it to sign-up, the UK would indeed become party to a policy that is detrimental to millions.
Why abolish slavery if by a different 'carpetbagging' EU-policy (so much like the 'northern' gentleman exploiting the southern States in post Civil War reconstruction) the destitute, the homeless, those in fear of authority or criminal power are made 3rd class in the civilised UK-European region!?
"..way I see it we have the worst of everything..": Way I see it the UK has always tried to stand up for the principle that it is how we treat the weakest among us is how our society is judged.
If Continental Europe chooses to grow richer conveniently overlooking those weaklings in its society is no reason at all for us to join in on the shameful excuse and claim we have 'worst' of it all!
I would like to see UK/England opt-out of the idea that some overmighty European Union with a blanket policy from Stockholm to Valletta and all points in between means it must be the right course of action never mind ehtical and moral justification.
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oj Mavrelius, I was very ungrateful, you did place a recepie. I just missed it. Sorry sorry sorry.
_________________________
cool-brush-work you've also missed a thing :o) In the military discussions with StandEu. At that very @96 in the beginning he wrote
"they (the UK) HAVE RIGHT TO DO SO (not to want to be deeply involved in the EU) as the EU is organisation OF COOPERATION NOT DICTATORSHIP"
Now, I understand that in the great scheme of events this doesn't change much :o))) - but notice the first ever difference in attitude, at least I haven't seen anything of the sort here in the EU-nonEU discussions.
Finally, words of a man, not of a boy!
:o))))
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It is always funny to read British blogs, the few comments I have read here from British commentators (democracythreat, Freeborn-John, etc) were completely delusional, ludicrously irrelevant or expressing the POV of someone living in a fairy tale. Funny indeed.
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Freeborn-John "but the UK is already part of a winning team at global-level, where the Franco-German alliance can never really be much more than 'a stick in the bicycle wheel' when it comes to influencing world-events"
What on earth are you mumbling about ?!!! Do, you actually believe that you exert any influence what so ever on the US ?!! Are you that arrogant and blind? If Iraq only proved one thing, it is the utter absence of influence of the UK on the US, and therefor on the world, much to the chagrin of it's european allies, the UK choose it's usual place, pretty much the one of a flee on a bear's tale! Sad but true.
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#117
Please don't generalise concerning all British blogs. British Europhobes/ Eurosceptics are a special breed. I tend to imagine them holed up in a concrete bunker somewhere in deepest Suffolk, armed only with basic foodstuffs, internet access and a copy of the Daily Telegraph, refusing to come out until the great European 'dictatorship' has gone away.
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#115
It is not a small price that we pay for "Free-will" it is a BIG price that we pay:) and no those that prefer can not use any other currency, we can only use the pound. So please be exact, don't make fluffy statement, in the UK today I can only use the pound, if I travel to France I have to change that pound into EURO and it costs me money, it doesn't come for free.
I point out to you obvious benefits to using the EURO here in the UK for you and me and then you reply to me with statements like "just where is the terrible effect on the Economies of the World that a 'Euro' isn't common currency!?" come on be serious.
Any no I don't see it as loosing National sovereignty to a Paris-Berlin-Brussels, as you may have guessed I'm not a strong nationalist at all, I don't have the need to follow a "group" or belong to a "group" I'm "Free-will" and look after my own interest and all indicators point to the fact that my own interested are better server within the EU and having a single currency and having the freedom to move within it. I can not a sinlge reason why the pound serves my interests better than the EURO, if I could see any point for it I would say keep the pound.
About us and Schengen, I still can't see how us been in it would exploit people any more?
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Chris Arta
Re #120
Just a moment!
"..fluffy statement.."? That would be where I point out it is not you or I who are paying the BIG price, but the 'trafficked', the destitute.. however, apparently they do not register in your me-me-me EU!
"...Euro isn't common currency... Come on be serious.": I could not be more serious and I put the question back to you again, how is it the EUro is such a better prospect than a Dollar, Yen, Yuan, Rouble or even the Pound? Many Economies worldwide do not function exclusively using the EUro, so what makes it so special for the UK to adopt it? Answer, it's a little easier for you and saves you 3 cents on every Pound!
You be serious: The UK is still an independent Nation - - just - - and submission/succombing to the EUro currency will be 1 of the vital factors that destroys the individualism-entrepreneuriaism-outside the box-freemarket venturism that the European Union's straitjacket Economic and Financial policies would crush in very short order.
Your not having any strong 'national' attachment is no reason for the UK/England to bind itself into the Federal EU: It seems everything has to be decided on what is suitable to the smooth running of ChrisArta lifestyle. Sorry, I do not concur - - there are issues more important than the dictates of your preferences - - and this lax approach to giving up centuries of British Isles historical-cultural evolution for the sake of some mythic Continental European integration ideal is precisely the political-social-military danger UK/England must counter.
In another comment on another article on here you argue Sharia Law isn't suitable: Well, neither is EU Law when it is entirely based on the one-size-fits-all dogma of Brussels.
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Sensi
Re #117
"..completely delusional.. ludicrously irrelevant.."
Now let me guess: Whereas of course anything and everything you write is substantive, verified, accurate to a slide-rule degree, and we should all be humbled before your masterful knowledge of the world at large!?
In fact, Mr Hewitt close the Blog down, 'Sensi' knows it all, so, no one else need bother!
Hmm, "..POV of someone living in a fairy tale..," well, you got that bit right.
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#121
back later, now I'm off to spend some pounds to support our economy :))
I can cope better with EU law than Sharia law :)
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that's what I meant; 117-118-119. I am sorry but for an outsider it looks exactly this;
one side says - YOU MUST!
the other: - I WON'T I WON'T I WON'T!
one side: You behave like a baby! throwing ? tantrums! Live in the fairy-tale world - open your eyes - look at statistics :o)))))) - how unmature!
the other side: And you behave like a policeman! Assuming the "grown-up", all-knowing role! How dare you?
All those scares, "you'll regret; you'll come ask for a piece of bread, glass of water - but will be too late! You've lost 0.5 % :o)))) on the tempo on getting out of crisis, as compared to the clever others. AND - your masters in the USA have left you ho ho ho :o)))))) You DON't have and "special relationship" he-he-he - but only us - as your friends - to rely upon!"
LOL!
What do you expect after that, from the contra-EU campus? That they say "yes please give us 3 crusts of bread :o))) we are very sorry, silly us clever you
I mean
No, I understand of course, that one can't move one's case forward without bringing in arguments, but the attitude of the "press" is very bizarre - and hopes to convince in that manner are also bizarre.
A press can only press in sailors. I thought.
Sorry, none of my business, but you can't not to interfere, seeing how it goes on.
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WebAlice
Re #124
Yes, it is exactly like that - - in this case the laws of EU/UK physic(al) union mean 'opposites' do not 'attract' - - and to be precise it is more often than not that we 'anti-EU' are called names as the superior intellect of the 'pro-EU' contributor gets frustrated: All their logic, reason, understanding, depth of Lisbon reading (heee-heee-ho-ho-ho-ho-hahaha!) finds itself stymied by the commonsense approach of Citizens who will not agree to throw away 1,000+ years of evolution for a few legal documents that they have seldom if ever had a Ballot box voice in deciding.
Excellent the way you picked up the LOL refrences to being the puny 51st state, as if the only alternative is the 27th regional branch, when all the time the World is out there and nothing to say it will be 3 or 4 Global entities or a whole hotch-potch as in the past. Amazing how they accuse us 'anti' of missing 'empire' and it is they who seek to construct such an undemocratic web!
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MA, what is "Henry YIII style"? the rest I think I understood, thank you. I only vaguely think it's about the last button on the vest. Provided it was No 8 and not somebody else. Did he also invent a particular style of eating turkeys?
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and as you are an engineer mind it - I'm honest - there is a bug in mathematics, hidden some place btw F350 and C 169. 176? Theoretically, one equals the other. Practically - it does not. I swear. Not only a turkey - a lemon pudding will stay raw if you put it on C 169/176 whatever. Everything that is supposed to cook up at F350 - stayes raw at its equivalent in Celcius. Tried enormous amounts of times. Gave up.
Roughly, F350 equals C250 - remember, in case it's a bridge or something else technical you are doing. Someone had under-thought something in this C - F relations, and the swirl of the continuum or whatever it is - lies exactly at F350.
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Uhm cool_brush_work have you been smoking a little something something in Amsterdam maybe before posting this comment?
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115. At 1:06pm on 27 Nov 2009, cool_brush_work wrote:
ChrisArta
Re #114
It is not emotional attachment to the Pound or antipathy to the EUro that motivates my opposiition to a change of currency.
However, you hit the Pound sign on the Frankfurt head with your reference to deals with France and Germany: It seems to me that you equate the Euro with the same benign influence as those 2 nations dominance of the EU, whereas I see any UK transition to the EUro as yet another loss of National sovereignty to a Paris-Berlin-Brussels (Mr Hewitt's 'Franco-German Power').
Quite apart from which your 'commission fees' for foreign currency transactions to my mind more or less goes along with the 'inconvenience' of a queue at Passport controls - - an extremely small price to pay for a 'Free-will' UK/Europe in which those who prefer may certainly use a EUro or Yen, Yuan, Dollar, Rouble etc. - - just where is the terrible effect on the Economies of the World that a 'Euro' isn't common currency!?
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What is your point exactly? Lots of text no cohesion?
The Euro is there since the single market is an optimum currency zone. According to you logic every village and town in the UK should have its own currency. But you probably see the benefit of having a "common" pound in the UK. Don't forget that in the middle ages indeed every village had its own currency. We did not move away from that for nothing.
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I never said and never would claim being outside Schengen protects the UK's borders: I just cannot see how being inside it offers anything of significant advantage and to my mind, were it to sign-up, the UK would indeed become party to a policy that is detrimental to millions.
Why abolish slavery if by a different 'carpetbagging' EU-policy (so much like the 'northern' gentleman exploiting the southern States in post Civil War reconstruction) the destitute, the homeless, those in fear of authority or criminal power are made 3rd class in the civilised UK-European region!?
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What the hell? Okay you lost me here. what does FREE travel across the continent have to do with slavery in the USA? And you are aware that our (the Dutch) welfare system is among the best in the world? And build according to, now hold your breath, the Rhineland model (Oh yes those evil Germans concocted a system in which we help the poor, the slave drivers they are indeed).
You must enjoy being able to drive across the UK. I live near the Belgium and German border and I must say it is liberating to just drive across them without being hasseled by the police. Or, are you advocating border controls between Wales, England, and Scotland, because it brings more freedom?
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"..way I see it we have the worst of everything..": Way I see it the UK has always tried to stand up for the principle that it is how we treat the weakest among us is how our society is judged.
If Continental Europe chooses to grow richer conveniently overlooking those weaklings in its society is no reason at all for us to join in on the shameful excuse and claim we have 'worst' of it all!
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What are you babbling about? Overlooking the weaklings? Welfare systems in for example Sweden, Finland, Belgium, Germany, the Netherland, Denmark, France are vastly superior to the UK one. We even have a functioning NHS system here in the Netherlands. It is named after the freaking Rhineland. You know, the Rhineland model. God, what have you been smoking. Ar e you sure you have not been looking up USA stats instead? 20% not enough money to eat and 40% grosly overweight?
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I would like to see UK/England opt-out of the idea that some overmighty European Union with a blanket policy from Stockholm to Valletta and all points in between means it must be the right course of action never mind ehtical and moral justification.
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The UK already has opt-outs on nearly everything and that is fine by me and all other 450 million EU citizens outside the UK. The blanket policy might be there because for example the Belgium fir department uses other types of hoses as the Dutch. so in case of a fire at the border they cannot assist one another. Which results in fire department over capacity at every border. And that is just the fire department. Good god, do you want every town and village in the UK to have its own system or what? that would be chaos right? Now enter the EU contintent. We have this mess and we want to sort it out. Now if you want to opt out fine. But don't pretend like the devil is uppon us because we want fire departments to use similar equipment. Good god. It is not my fault nor the Germans, nor the French that you politicians are incompetent and corrupt. All they do is destract you from the real problem (themselves) by pointing at someone else, me (the EU continental). This discussion is really draining you know. You really get under my skin with posts like this.
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WA, 176 is correct. Must have pushed the wrong buttons on my calculator late last night (after a few drinks too.)
I highly recommend you see the movie starring Charles Laughton. He was the quintessential Henry VIII. A large hunk of meat in one hand, a big stein of ale in the other. But I don't have the hat or the robes, nor am I 350 pounds. Nevertheless.....a king is a king is a king is a king. As good as turkey can be, there are better things. Spare ribs for instance.
dt, the process of how to properly thaw out a frozen turkey seems to be important but I have no idea why. Anyway, my comments compared the recommended method and my method. The results from doing it my way tastes fine to me.
John Hovel;
I read the red line opt outs that were actually made available on the web. Forty odd pages of legal mumbo jumbo which had to be carefully parsed to figure out what they really meant. They didn't seem like opt outs at all. What they were amounted to a five year deferral after which the UK was required to comply with all of the provisions of the Constitution or face penalties without limit imposed by an EU tribunal on which it would not be a member. The term "opt-outs" was just one more ruse to make submission to a foreign dictatorship more palatable to the UK's population. The UK will get quite a lesson as a result I think. Selection of those foreigners who will decide its fate is just the beginning.
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@ ChrisArta, 114
The way I see it we have the worse of everyting. No access to data, the illegal immigrants still come and we have to queue at points of entry to the Schengen area."
It is obvious that CBW and other Europhobes, Anglo-Saxon supremacists et al do not comprehend the huge implications of Britain being outside Schengen while 25 European countries *already are* in Schengen. Nor they understand the huge implications of Britain being the only EU or EEA country that is outside both the two key pillars of the single market, the Euro and Schengen.
For them, the only implication of being outside Schengen is half an hour queue at border controls. That is all. Nothing else.
This really reminds me of a great description made in a letter by an academic sent to a newspaper, yes the only one where the Schengen issue is ever debated
"The cabbage-patch culture of parochial navel-gazing at Westminster is a serious, albeit irrational, obstacle to our joining the euro. British MPs should reflect on whether their current priority of preserving the trappings of the pre-1914 past when sterling reigned supreme on the global financial markets, is still appropriate."
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5de35b38-35bc-11dd-998d-0000779fd2ac.html
To say that the consequence of not joining Schengen is *only* a half hour queue at British border controls (when coming back from another EU country) is pure parochial navel-gazing at its best and I am sure that the enlightened lot at Westminster think in the same way. The same parochial navel-gazing applies to the Euro, where the only consequence seen by the same enlightened lot is the racket that has to be paid to the banks in the form of exchange fees and commissions. And in that particular case, I am sure that many of them (the political elite) see that as a positive a) because they would hate upsetting the banks, as they are the most powerful of the powerful lobbies in British politics, b) many of them have inside connections to the banks themselves.
This writer of this letter also says:
"We currently expend enormous amounts of precious time and energy standing patiently in queues throughout Europe."
Exactly the same that ChrisArta says.
On this one ChrisArta I beg to disagree, but in a friendly way!
I have flown into other EU countries from the UK, e.g. Spain, France, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal on quite a number of occasions and I cannot remember a single one occasion when there was a significant queue or long wait when arriving in those countries. No, the problem is on the *return* to the UK. For example, I recently came back to the UK and arrived at a third rate airport in the Midlands, so no Heathrow or Gatwick, and I had almost an hour queue close to midnight. This is obviously not the first time that this happened but what I notice is that it is getting worse and worse.
Digressing a bit I think there are two reasons for these long queues at UK border controls:
1. The UK border jobsworths scan every single passport or ID at the border control and they store the info in their 'travel database' where they record all our travel movements. I can attest that when I arrive in my home country (from a non-Schengen country, i.e. the UK) my passport is *not* scanned, just inspected. It might be scanned (I assume) if I came into the country with a visa, but not if I am an EU country national.
2. While I may get in trouble with the censorship by saying this, it is my considered opinion that HMG is using border controls as a huge PR exercise to (unsuccessfully) try to convince swing voters and labour voters deserting to the BNP that the borders of this country are not open and that there are *tough* (NuLabs favourite word) border controls. Unfortunately it is the rest of us, innocent bystanders who are caught in this crossfire, i.e. a) the powerful anti-immigration lobby saying that this country has open borders and b) HMG trying to convince them of the opposite
Coming back to the key issue of the consequences of being out of Schengen, other than the thirty minute to an hour queue at midnight at British airports, a couple of examples:
1. Huge disincentive for foreign investment into the UK
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a395ccd4-9fb1-11dc-8031-0000779fd2ac.html
2. Tourists or business visitors from places like China, India, Russia or Brazil need one single visa if they want to visit the 25 countries in the Schengen area but a second one if they want to include the UK in their tour
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c627278a-f6da-11dd-8a1f-0000779fd2ac.html
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@ 75 delondres
"I simply do not understand why Westminster didn't participate in the Shengen area … If anyone has a convincing answer towards these question - I am looking forward to reading it."
Very simple. The UK is well known to have the largest number of CCTV cameras per head of population in the world. It has also been categorised by an organisation called Privacy International as an 'endemic surveillance society'.
http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd[347]=x-347-545269&als[theme]=Privacy%20and%20Human%20Rights
And then it is the only country in the whole of the EU that has a problem with Schengen.
Where's the surprise? ... just add two and two together.
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JorgeG1
Re #130
Oh no!
Not the "..Europhobes" again! the "..Anglo-supremacists.." again! Woe, woe, thrice woe it's the "..third rate Midlands airport.." again! And lets not forget the old favourite, "..*return* to UK.. queue.." again!
How about a bit of realism as opposed to your usual anti-British diatribe:
"Airports": Which Spanish Airport do you recommend - - La Palma or Gran Canaria - - my recollection is a bit hazy, but the words overcrowded and sweatboxes come to mind!?
Discouraged "Foreign Tourists": 15.2 million (including 9.6million Europeans) visited London in 2007-08 which was down by 1.7% from 06-07 (evidently that weakling Pound compared to that gutsy 'Euro' had foreigners delighted by UK prices); Midland's hub Birmingham received 671,000 Foreign tourists in 07-08, Manchester 585,000.. and so on. Clearly the "..half hour" Passport checks didn't have too much effect on a lot of discerning foreigners!
Then there's "Schengen": Spain is a signatory of Schengen - - Spain decided to legalise overnight 4.6 million of 5.5 million illegal 'foreigners' in Spain in 2005 - - now that is what I call protecting the internal borders by strengthening the external borders!
Huge disincentive to "foreign investment": If the UK is such a turn-off how come in June '09 the China Construction Bank, 2nd largest in the World by Capitalisation, set-up its European HQ in London? With the UK struggling as you claim why did 1,744 new Foreign Investment Projects set-up in the UK during 2008-09 (that's approx 5 per day)? In all that doom and gloom how is it 53 Nations invested in the UK's business-finance ventures during '08-09 (with India 44% up, Gulf States 25% up and lets not forget our EU pals, e.g. France increased its investments in the UK by 15%, Italy 45%!) and the USA remained the number 1 investor in the UK and invested more than in any other EU Nation?
Lst Financial year the City of London Financial Services sector made 43 Billion Pound Profit despite the massive downturn (please don't make the Jukka-R mistake of writing about Loans/Buy-outs by the Government, that is an entirely different sector!).
The above are all official, audited figures published by the Department of Trade and Investment for 2008-09.
Another interesting figure from the DTI: The UNCTAD Stock Report confirmed the UK with 1,348 Billion US Dollars worth of Stock continued to have the highest Foreign Direct Investment of all European Nations (that's the Value of the Share Capital and Reserves in all enterprises - - to put it another way, the UK got/holds more money from overseas in its businesses than the rest of the EU).
Now, I know it is not all rosey in the UK/England Economic garden and with 3.6 million unemployed clearly there's a lot of issues: All the same I do wonder JorgeG1 would you be another of the 4,200,000 unemployed Spanish were it not for a job in that weary, dreary, rundown UK you so enjoy denigrating? Would you perhaps be among the 1 in 3 Spanish under-25 currently out of work (compared to 1 in 6 in the UK)?
The Financial Times is an important newspaper for Economic news, but, just like any newspaper you cannot believe everything you read in it as being the only version or guage of a Nation's strengths and weaknesses.
Don't worry, I'm sure Spain will come out of recession sometime in the next 2 to 3 quarters, and almost certainly it will be with the help of millions of UK tourists and their UK Pounds exchanged for EUros at all sorts of Airports up and down the Peninsula and the Islands!
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Frankly speaking, visas are a problem for Russians, though it does not matter - a visa into Schengen or a visa into Britain. All the same trouble.
I don't know how it is now, since got a dog to walk - silly yes - but don't go anywhere. Before a UK visa was even easier obtainable than a Schengen visa - because we apply not for abstract "Schengen" - but to a particular country's embassy anyway, "the country of first entry point into the Schengen area". Where your airplane lands first. Confusingly, it also has to be "the country of the maximum days of stay" of all the Schengen zone countries, that a Russian plans to visit along the, say, 2-3 countries trip. This makes maddening travel planning, because, for example, there may be cheap airfare rates to the country No 3 of your 1-2-3 visit, but still you have to enter first "country No 1", along the route.
Anyway for me all irrelevant now, no money, dog, this and that.
But it is hard in the "easy Schengen" enough.
Also, one's chances of Schengen visa, or, rather, the difficulties to go through to obtain it - hugely depend on the embassy to which you apply.
Same Schengen, one would think :o)
Different requirements for paperwork - from every single "embassy" of the Schengen zone.
Here they accept a fax copy, and there only the original of the invite, and there some of your own documents are accepted in the original, and there they have to be translated by a certified agency and verified by a stamp - here they want your bank statement - there a paper from your work as proof you have salary, photo this size, that size, in white blouse in any blouse - oh go it all to hell. Unless you awfully badly want to travel - you wouldn't go through this for no money.
What is unconvenient indeed is, for example, when I was in Britain and wanted to go to friends' place in Luxembourg - in their car, from Britain, for a couple of days - I couldn't. I first need to return to Moscow, apply there for a visa to Luxembourg, get it, LOL, fly back to London, and then go with English friends to their "Luxembourg dacha".
So once a Russian is in Britain he/she is stuck :o)))
Remember it CBW :o))), may be if BeNeLux embassies in London were allowed somehow? by someone? why won't they! by the way! why doesn't any embassy! to issue visas to Russians in London - those Russians (and other unfortunate folk) - would have migrated out of Britain elsewhere! :o)))
I went to the Lux embassy in London, and asked and pleaded, by the way, but they said sorry can't help, you have to apply to the Lux embassy in Moscow.
So Britain is a kind of a trap :o))) once you get there. Except it's not Britain's fault, it's all Schengen and the EU embassies - a Russian can address them for a visa only standing on the Russian soil.
I don't know why.
Have anyone tried, of Western countries, to get a visa at an embassy not being at home at the moment of applying, but on anyone's else ground?
To sum, I studied in Paris and studied in Britain. I applied to the French embassy in Moscow for a visa, and to the British embassy in Moscow for a visa. Both times LOL ended in the same manner - I was beginning my classes later than the rest of the group/cohort, because both embassies were late in making up their minds, to let me in or not.
Not even thinking, rather, way too many applications, and when your turn to be looked at comes - studies have long begun.
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The third time I had a fancy to learn something in Paris - I applied for a visa, waited 2 weeks LOL, and on the 3rd week went there and said give my papers back I changed my mind. They were very offended, "we are about to start looking into them" :o)))) but luckily I had brains and advice rom acquaintance to insist on the special stamp in my passport - type, "changed her mind does not wants to go." Because they could have esily stamped "denied a visa" - and that is the end of the world for a Russian eager to travel - once you get such a stamp in the passport - like hell any other Schengen country embassy will issue you a visa. You'll be proving for ages that it's you who dididn't want to go, not that France found you persona non grata afater much thinking it over. Nobody tells this to anybody, but I can just imagine trying to obtain dates and paperwork exchange copies back from a French embassy in Russia - to prove to another embassy later on what it was.
In such a case no doubt an application or a study visa will take not
"standard 2 months" - but "standard 2 years"!
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Web Alice, you just made it---you are smart. (about travel)
Also, this great debate must be clozing out, as the Lisbon Treaty is a done deal.
Poor democracy...lucky Europeans...
I wish the UK had listened to Europe not the USA, huhhhhh?
Watch -- from now on -- whom your friends and allies are...OMGGG,
Poor UK, now the USA IS GOING TO HAVE TELL THE EUROPEAN UNION (TELL?) TO LET THE UK IN...oh blushhhhhhh,
Oh, well, life goes on.
But, poor Britain, I do feel for her (hims and hers):) poor judgement can be so embarrassing NO OFFENSE to the UK I Love you, UK,
David
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To be fair will add that Russia, in her turn, makes a visa-obtaining procedure for the Schengen countries and for Britain - also as hard as possible :o)))) Paying in the same coin.
In the beg. I think the Westerners, applying for a visa to Russia, were dealt with simply as potential spies and coup-organisers. That was Cold war times and back then it was easier to get a visa into the USSR.
Now, when we became real friends :o)))) LOL! the procedures were intensified on both sides, and brought to perfection.
I don't think any Russian chap escaping from USSR to "freedom" was asked LOL for the translated copies of his property documents in Russia :o))), last half a year salary summary stamped by the company stamp on company letterhead paper, with the signatures of both the GM and financial director, originals of two-way air tickets bought in advance, and other tiny details like a 44-question questionnaire - which I can compare only to the typical KGB questionnaire, which I once filled in taking a job in a vicious suspected by all means foreign company in the USSR transition time. :o)))) When Baryshnikov jumped over the fence, or that Eastern German soldier over the wall - oh did they have all the necessary proofs and documents? :o)))) How about their bank statements?
But those were bad Cold War times granted, when Russians asked in the West for polytical asylum, because what would the Kirov theatre do next to poor Baryshnikov, or that German soldier bosses to him - scary to imagine. If they didn't jump, but stayed. (I personally think that Baryshnikov would have been threatened with another leading dancer part in the next ballet. Sure death.)
Anyway since we got out of mirky cold war business, visa obtaining became far more hard for both sides - fact.
Any one who cherishes illusions about true nature of Russia-West relations post USSR times - should simply apply for a visa, on either side. Clears up brains condition and vision immediately.
I've got an English friend who wanted to visit me. This is bad, individual travel, not within a tourist group which both sides tolerate better. She began and was quite cheerful in the beg :o))), but at one point said to me, type, "Alice! I'm damned if I go through all this in order to see this xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx of a hole. Your country thinks too much about itself. I am sorry, and like, I'd love to see this and that, but I'll be damned ! xxx ! xxx" (approx.)
I pointed out in consolation that should she be a Russian pensioner instead - like hell even her application be accepted. For pensioners have no "salary statement from the company, LOL, signed by :o))) and stamped." And that Russian embassy requires a 1/10 of what the British does of me.
But she was not consoled. :o))))
Another British friend though made it. :o))) She began with the papers , let me think, last February ... :o))) - and by August - hop! was already in St.Petersburg. Just 200 pounds for a visa for 2-days stay :o))) and half a year of preparatory work - and that was it. Piece of cake. :o))))
(Reminds me still need to send back photos of her and the sights.)
We are dear darling friends to each other with the West, no doubt.
Great trust, mutual understanding, and all.
1/2 of Russian disappointment with "democracy" I think lies in that great lie, that we used to hear from distant radio voices :o))) though well hushed of course :o)))) - that the USSR is trap, they hold us in prizon, and when the Communist Party rule is over - WELL then Russians become like the rest of the world - they'll be able to travel. The whole world will be open to you!
Why nobody mentioned that it is not enough that USSR lets you out? that it's also a pre-requisite that others let you in?
Silly Russian head, listened to the crap putting ears wide aside, like an elephant.
I am sorry, but looking at a good amount of recent arrivals in Europe, just any look in the subway or in the bus - I can't imagine most of that folk ever going through the paperwork Russians do to be able to go "to the West". Rather, my idea is half of them would not even understand what I am talking about. What "proof of the salary and property ownership", with the Afghan taxi drivers, for example?
Can't imagine.
Only Germany did an exception to the rule post-USSR. Opened doors to all Russian Jewish - anyone willing. But then you have to be Jewish, being Russian is a no-go. I've got my whole telephone book of friends who were Jewish now to call not St. Petersburg but dial "44".
Roughly, I think it didn't end badly for Germany, or exceptionally badly. Of my 4 acquantance in Germany 3 work and work very well. One though is on German state expense. But the overall statistics must be worse.
But then, again, one has to be Jewish, for Russians - no allowances.
I think it is better to be Timbuktu in this Western-Russian case than a Russian. We, for our part, seem also to prefer Timbuktu :o))))
Those Europeans who complain here about immigrants' invasion should simply ask own respective governments to install for distant countries "same rules as for Russians." Satisfaction guaranteed. In the next half a year your horizons will clear up immensely :o))), and you'll have as many new arrivals, as, say, we have British in St. Petersburg. Namely, you would know "all your foreigners" by first name.
:o))))))
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49 it is, 44 - Britain.
And Russia, FYI - OO7, of course!
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oh, yeah,
USA is going to have to advise Europe to let the UK into the EURO and the Schengen area.
oh well, new blog post
sorry UK, so sorry:)
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democracythreat: On posts 10 and 35, regarding the states-as-sentient-entities idea, its presence isn’t really surprising — after all, one often reads/hears (at least in English-language media) about “the international community” being concerned about a particular topic, e.g. Iranian uranium enrichment. (What is that Mr. Iran getting up to in his shed? wondered Mr. USA, keeping the shed under constant binocular surveillance through his bedroom window…)
maria-ashot: In post 17, rather than “partocracy” I’d suggest “commacracy” instead (from Greek κόμμα + κράτος [party + rule]).
For post 48, have you tried adding something acidic (e.g. lemon juice, or whatever would be appropriate for the particular recipe) to the milk to help it curdle? If you have a farmers’ market nearby, look for high-protein milk, from breeds such as Shorthorn or Jersey.
MarcusAureliusII: On post 81, the liver shouldn’t be used to make gravy unless one likes liver-flavoured gravy. (My dog and I would, but the rest of the house wouldn’t; thus, the liver gets pan-fried separately, to be shared by all interested mammals.) I haven’t tried deep-fried turkey, but rely upon an overnight brine (240 ml [1 US cup/8.33 UK fl oz] of salt in 7.5 l [2 US gal/1.67 UK gal] of water) for a moist roasted turkey (and when possible, a day of air-drying in the refrigerator after brining for crisper skin). For a 6 kg (13 lb 4 oz) turkey, buttered top and bottom, I use a 225°C (405°F) oven; 45 minutes breast down, followed by one hour breast up, then 30 minutes’ rest out of the oven before carving. I prefer stuffing inside the bird because of the resultant intermingling of flavours; to avoid salmonella problems, the stuffing is preheated before going into the turkey.
WebAliceinwonderland: For post 91, the reason behind the name turkey requires a bit of history. The African bird known as meleagris to the Greeks and Romans had acquired two names in English by the 16th century: Guinea-fowl and Turkey-fowl. The first name was due to Portuguese traders who had brought the birds from Guinea, and the second name was due to Venetian traders who had brought the birds from Turkey. When the Spanish introduced to Europe the birds that they had gotten from the Aztecs, it was thought that they were a different subspecies of the African bird, so the North American bird was called by the same names as the African bird. By the 18th century, it was determined that the African bird and the North American bird were of different genuses; but for whatever reason, the North American bird received the Turkish name exclusively, and the African bird retained only the Guinean name. Unfortunately, Linnaeus himself assigned the Meleagris genus name to the turkey, which severed the historical Greco-Roman link to the guineafowl.
In many languages the turkey is known as a bird “from India”. Given the accuracy of the Russian name, I wonder when it was introduced there?
In post 97, shall we conclude that you are an optimist? Or a realist? ;*)
stellarBeloved: For post 102, bowing would be the polite thing to do, under the circumstances — or not, depending upon the depth of the bow.
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OK, Marcus. I am going to try your turkey method.
The deliberate clarity of your way of the the turkey has been with me, stuck in the back of my mind, for many days now, and so when I saw a large bird on discount at the supermarket this morning, I knew it was destiny.
I don't have a deep frier. Curiously enough, a friend/client of mine does have one, but he is in new york visiting his russian girlfriend this week. True story.
So anyway, I am going to have to roast the sucker. The gobbler. Whatever.
Alice, I will be sure to let you know how it goes. The way marcus tells the story, it is convincing. It oozes confidence, like an Abraham tank.
But that doesn't mean it i true and virtuous. Americans lie, and Marcus might never have cooked a turkey in his life. For all we know, Marcus is a one legged black woman in mexico who has fantasies of being an American, like we do.
I figure this turkey recipe is the test. I am going to follow the instructions to the letter, and report back.
If the theory holds, then I have no problem issuing respect where respect is due. But if it fails..... I am going to curse America and declare Marcus a fraud.
We'll see.
Jan_Keesop, you are correct, in my view, that the tendency to discuss European politics in terms of nations states being the entities making conscious decisions is hardly surprising.
But it is ironic, is it not?
After all, what was the express purpose of the EU? Was it not to defeat the obscure and irrational problems associated with nationalism? Wasn't the whole point of the EU to bring people closer together by dismantling the barriers of nation states?
Hence I find it ironic in the extreme that the European people are now confronted with an opaque wall of nationalistic terminology when they try to understand their political world. Although the political parties have broken down national barriers and can do their business (the allocation and spending of tax revenue) without interference from nationalistic concepts, the common people have lost any chance of understanding what is happening to their money.
Of course, I recognize that this journalist Hewitt does not speak for all the media, and that his lamentable tendency to ignore the reality in favour of the fluff does not mean a person is unable to know what goes on.
But even so, I think this is the way we are headed, in Europe. The parties can now hide behind idiotic and meaningless terms, and the business they conduct behind closed doors is removed from all public scrutiny.
The European parliament is going to add another layer of opacity to the study of European politics. The EP doesn't matter, and doesn't influence the law making or the spending of taxes. But no doubt it will become extensively referenced in discussions regarding "the way of Europe".
A person may as well discuss the best way to cook a turkey, as discuss what happens to their taxes and their law in the EU.
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democracythreat! careful! it's true Mavrelius can write slogans for Russian TV in their best time - the clarity, turkey message sent to masses :o)))) and all
comes to mind? 1962 - the first humanity's (Russian :o) message sent to the outerspace, to those? yet unknown civilisations out there:
Mir - Lenin - USSR
("peace/world" - one word here - "Lenin" - "USSR")
We are still waiting for the answer :o))))
But do remember Mavrelius's recepie has also got 2 main messages as I understood it. You cook it option 1 - and it's a house fire. You cook it option to - and that's salmonellas crawl out of the plate and bite you at your ankles.
I see you set your mind on the blow up, as a good revolutionary.
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Having said that, this is all funny, but I haven't slept yet. You might have heard, a bomb was blown up under the first car of the train Moscow-St. Petersburg yesterday at ab 22:35. First cars of the train flew over the hole, but the last 3 cars flew off the rails. Awful crash, the speed was 200 km, and the train is not normal sleeping cars, but a sitting train, a speedy one, people packed like in an airplane, rows after rows of seats. Awful consequances, 25 dead at once, 18 "missing" (under the cars, "misssing", about a hundred in nearby hospitals, which is not nearby but either Moscow or St. Petersburg. As the crash was exactly mid-way in between. Now, who? what? Chechnya again? one would think that not. Dagestan? some other - stan? Ingush? no idea.
That it's a bomb we knew last night, as a huge hole under the rails, this night they say they found the bomb pieces.
Saw TV all night people waiting in the St. Petersburg railway station, the one to which trains from Moscow arrive, as they said a train was sent from St. Petersburg to the mid-way (road is blocked, 50 trains waiting on both sides), to take out people the live ones to St. Petersburg, basically it was "the live ones will arrive at 4 am". Imagine the relatives of the passengers waiting who will exit of the train to the platform.
RW was quick though, published on-line the names of all the passengers of that train, already yest night, as rw tickets in Russia are bought with showing passport same as airplane tickets (policing culture) so
you always know who is on board.
One thing you do not know is who put the bomb.
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How did monsters even manage to plant the bomb, it's a so busy route, trains go one after another, nearly like in subway. 26 thousand St. Petersburgers go daily to Moscow and 26 thousand muscovites do daily the same.
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2nd bomb! today at 14:00, diagonal to the train crash place, on the rails going in parallel, the return direction - there blew up the second bomb!
They planted 2, on both ways.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
WA, you don't have to bomb the cars, bombing the tracks is sufficient. Timing is critical. That's how the bad guys did it in the old Western movies. They'd bomb the tracks and then in the havoc after the entire train went off the rails, they'd fleece the poor passengers who were dead, injured, or just in shock. Usually the bad guys (gang of outlaws) knew there would be a large shipment of gold or money on the train. That was their real target.
I always liked the movie "How The West Was Won" even if it was fanciful and corny. It is best seen on a very large screen; Cinematography was excellent.
http://members.cox.net/ralphhanson/HTWWW/frames.htm
in this movie, the train was split in two by the bandits.
http://members.cox.net/ralphhanson/HTWWW/pics/outlaws/OU4.htm
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Jan_Keeskop (No. 139) thank you for the suggestion about how to make the milk curdle. While my late mother was alive, in the US, we resigned ourselves to just buying a particular variety of fine farmer's cheese. She would do interesting things to it prior to running it through a ricers to get the right consistency, and then of course strain it via cheesecloth to let all those lovely juices run out.
(Being committed to reduce waste, I save the liquid and use it to make other puddings).
My own experience has been that European dairy products -- and, indeed Russian ones (creams to die for!) -- are superb and save many steps. Fantastic results. For the sake of experimentation I have taken to making roughly half the batch with mascarpone cheese now, and it is really wonderful stuff... plus I can be assured that the farming practices have been rigorous.
In our household, it matters literally who gets supported for every bite. Makes shopping so much more fun, so much more interesting -- and the results, curiously enough, also yield more flavour. Today it may be Alpine honey, tomorrow it may be Greek honey, next week Urals honey... Terroir matters in so much more than wine. And, yes, waters, too (Voss, when I can get it).
Well, dear Alice, I shall look past the fact that you are obviously designating Murkus "MA," even though we agree you wouldn't. You suggested I would be "M-A" although I would much prefer an algebra where I am "M+A". Having said that, for the record, don't think I don't actually worry about all of this enormously.
What I see, that probably Mr Aurelius and some of my colleagues here might agree or disagree with, is that there has been an escalation of violence related to the offensive against Talibs for quite a few months now.
And I believe the bomb on that track between Russian's 2nd and 3rd capital cities is not unrelated to that broader escalation. Some here in the West would like to say "You see, the Chechens [meaning the armed bands] are not finished yet!" But I see it in the context of the highly provocative execution of a young Orthodox priest just a week ago -- and in the context of the rapprochement definitely on between EU & RF, and not at all likely to weaken... Quite the opposite.
I did, in fact, agree with PM B. Netanyahu's assessment. Liked his speech at the GA of the UN very much.
There is a great deal of stress over oil out there, climate, economics... Governments may finally have to form actually functional alliances that actually collectively address pressing problems... That shall undoubtedly put the squeeze on interests that have learned to live off the margins of peripheral shadowy transactions which -- like it or not, believe it or not -- are going to have to be run out of town, possibly even off the planet.
There are angry men out there (I can say that: pretty sure they're men, virtually without exception) who imagine some dramatic event -- one gunman at Ft. Hood, a couple of bombs -- will somehow ignite monumental upheavals.
It won't happen. Innocent people die, tragically. Many are maimed or traumatised for life.
But all it demonstrates is precisely why in the battle between Barbarians and Civilisation our side really has no choice except to win. Definitively & conclusively.
Without question, 85% of persons in positions of authority in Russia have to do their jobs better than they currently do them. In some other countries, I would say that percentage is smaller -- in some places as low as perhaps 40%.
In the US, as the events in Ft. Hood demonstrated, Virginia Tech, Columbine -- even the gate-crashers at the White House -- the percentage of people not working adequately is also embarrassingly high.
It is sad that it takes tragedies to get people to notice they pay a price for being indifferent, or nonchalant about their duties.
We have had some serious derailments in California recently, Alice. Not a bomb (thank God): a machinist smoking cannabis or texting on the phone (or both).
People who find it worthwhile (or entertaining?) to place a bomb on a route where masses of people travel to go about their daily business deserve capital punishment, democracythreat.
So do the people who came up with 9/11 and carried it out.
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OK, here it is, the train robbery sequence from "How the West Was Won."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfAk8ljuEcQ
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MA, thank you for the Westerns, but it is here Wild West currently again enough.
M+A :o) - mind it I never mixed you up :o))) would be difficult :o)))), and, didn't I write every time Maria - Ashot. Hopefully not Antoinette
:o))))
I don't know why bombs again; indeed, there was quite a long interval. Well, in terms of that particulat train - not long at all! Last time they tried to blow it up in summer 2007, not sure this very one or the other speedy one. But in 2007 the train hopped over the hole - the whole of it - literally flew over, as it was going down onto the bridge and the rails were blown up at some extremely lucky moment when the train gained top speed and took off the rails honestly and flew over the 3 metre torn away rails. And only collapsed on the other side of the river, but very elegantly collapsed, kind of slowly and beautifully, with absolutely all safe, just some scratches and bruises. Those were Chechens. May be they felt the business about speed trains is un-finished. But more likely someone new this time. Simply noted, on the prev. example, how easy it is - long road, forest on both sides, no dwellings, come anybody do whatever.
St. Petersburg of course suffered more than Moscow - because who is on the train returning from Moscow on Friday night to St. Petersburg? Our folk.
Sad that all those speed trains were only to work less than 2 weeks more - on 18 Dec there is to start a new train, Siemens-made for us, called "Sapsan" - some kind of steppe quick bird - and the old ones were travelling their last days.
Now, the new train was taken out in emergency at night, before its time, and sent to the crash place to pick up the survivors. Its first journey, so much awaited for - alas no ribbons and flowers.
The resque HQ though worked well, the organisers, mind it headed by the ex-kolkhoz (collective peasants' farm) director, who lifted that dying poor kolkhoz in his time out of mud into prosperity (in the Leningrad region, and they still all pray on him :o), a practical chap, quite able. Funny that when cornered Kremlin extraxcts him to fix something, not relying, LOL, on more eh, modern "managerial managers" :o))))
So what could be done was done, but of the director of Russian railways I have, softly to say, a different opinion.
Such an important route; already after the first attempt at the train; outrageously overpriced tickets - all the money he had to install some surveillance along the route or to hire simple walkers along the route, to check how things are going along the rails. Nothing of the kind was done in 2 years after the first "attempt on the train", and he holds extraordinary bossy with not a glimpse of a look of repentance, how to say! Asked "what about compensations" to the families of the dead said "well, it's all the culture of our people, who do not buy private insurance, while anyone can - why didn't they? It's their fault. Now they will all get the obligatory insurance sold to them included into the ticket price - 15,000 roubles."
Insurance! First show us a first insurance company who would work longer than 10 years in the market and not run away together with the money!
"People's fault." Aha.
And safety of the road - whose fault?
Read on BBC it was "aimed at ruling elite" - no. Ordinary train, all take it.
Anyway.
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though, honestly, I first thought it's not a bomb, but simply they ran the speedy trains daily, for profit, on the rails un-built for the speedy trains, but for ordinary overnight ones. In my time I travelled a lot btw St. Pete and Moscow and became friends with lots of servicing teams on those trains. Back then (on the same road) the speedy train was run once a week. I asked the rw employees why - they said - "Why!? Because after every time it passes it shuttles out the rails so that a special fixing brigade goes on the rails after the train and looks if there is anything to fix!"
I kept to the overnight trains, and recommended only the slow trundle-trundle ones, 8 hrs - not 4 - to everybody.
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To WebAliceinwonderland:
Firstly, condolences for the victims of the terrorism strike.
Secondly, this strike didn't come as a surprise, freedom fighters turn into terrorists when there is no other alternative way to organize resistance. From what I have read from the newspapers, young people in Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia have better hopes on living on running away to the mountains and joining the guerrillas than to stay put to wait for the government men to take them for interrogation.
While the victims of this terrorist incident should and will be mourned, this incident shouldn't be used as an context for more oppression in the Caucasus region, but for reflection to ask are the current policies adopted really the right ones.
To MarcusAureliusII (146):
You don't need careful timing with an anti-tank mine. Just place it carefully under the track with minimum pressure applied, hide it and leave the place. In Russia I would think that it would be likely for one to be able to buy an anti-tank mine with a bottle of vodka or with two bottles.
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Alice, my dear, ordinary people is what power always rests on.
That is why those who want above all to destroy any social order naturally target "ordinary people." It is ordinary people who must be brought into a state of panic before society can be forced to collapse into anarchy: as happened in 1917.
Some people are still trying, imagining it is possible to have a "controlled repeat" of 1917 and that all that is necessary is to get the people "to rise up against Putin": that is the exact formulation that I read quite often in US media such as The Wall Street Journal... Why would they wish such horrors upon anyone? Because the wealth of Russia is at stake. They think the people -- the ordinary people, people like you and me and my kids -- all count for nothing; we are the refuse of history: we can simply be swept aside and those precious assets pocketed and made to serve.
We have watched this happen before: a long time ago, and not so long ago.
And we who are of that place know: no one can simply take over Russia. Certainly not after 1917: those lessons have been very well learned.
Yes, we have had plutocrats; we have seen enormous damage done in recent years by all kinds of unsavory sorts. And I completely agree with you about Vl. Ya. and the mismanagement (theft) of precious treasury funds allocated for the specific purpose of upgrading security. It's the 21st century: there are ways of dealing with security even on long stretches of railroad in forested, underpopulated areas. For heaven's sakes: they laid that track down long ago; they maintain it. No one can claim, "The track is inaccessible to security operations -- it is only accessible to terrorists."
I certainly hope and fully expect that the only real leadership that matters will remove the man currently in charge of the railway system, hold him personally accountable for any misuse of funds, and appoint someone competent.
I have really been looking forward to the Siemens train for some time. But I have taken the Beautiful Arrow (no, I refuse to call it by any other epithet) and enjoyed it, especially on some unforgettable, indescribably luminous white nights, when the entire countryside seems to be infused with the melodies of ancient, heavenly harmony...
So of course any serious prosecution must begin with the bureaucrats who steal and don't do their jobs.
It is too much to say that is a cause worth dying for, but, unfortunately, it seems anyone only actually pays attention (in any country) when something spectacular, violent and utterly preventable happens.
No one gave a second thought to the decline of the social & educational environment in American schools until two seriously disturbed boys in an affluent suburb marched in with guns and killed a bunch of classmates. Even Jimmy Carter's famous, historically significant report "Literacy in America" did not directly blame the situation with indifference to learning in America on the truly egregious mismanagement of the public schools by the people who had been put in charge of leading them.
Indifference kills.
Even these terrorists who have been able to prove that the vigilance of Russian security forces and the performance of duties for ensuring efficient, reliable & safe connections between vital points -- for which significant money had been provided -- are simply tiny cogs -- vintiki -- in a larger, menacing machinery of evil intent, that will not be finished seeking to destroy us until we ourselves destroy it.
I mean all of us: the Civilised people. The people who believe the future (if there is one) depends on intelligent collaboration & positive forces, not on conquest & force & seething hatreds.
Russia is steadily moving forward. It is not an easy task (Suvorov & the Alps) and there are many chilling sights all around, and many things that are obviously wrong, that people have every right to point out and complain about.
The surgery is more than halfway done; the cancerous cells are being removed; the sight of the organ damage is quite alarming. It is important to make sure no cancerous cells remain to grow back & metastasize... it is important that the tissues receive the necessary nutrients and care, in a properly safe & clean environment, with the right amount of oxygen and toxin-free water... But the patient has a very good chance, and I would say has already surprised everyone with a remarkable, resilient constitution, and a powerful will to live.
Life is not so sweet that we do not all sometimes say, at a funeral of a loved friend: "Well, at least now he or she is free." But of course that is not consolation for the families and especially the children, the parents left behind.
Of course the whole insurance situation is disgraceful! Insurance! How easily they throw around these phrases: "In our culture!" As if they know anything of "our culture"! As if "insurance" is any kind of an answer!
I am relying on the words of President Medvedev that proper compensation will be paid to all victims, including to those who survived but obviously experienced a terrible shock. You also tell me what you hear from the city itself...
By the way, a propos of earlier comments about certain descendants: On 2 Nov 2009, a certain pleasant young man who claims to be the (very much diluted) descendant of Alex2 via the second marriage gave a speech at a "property development" conference in StP in which he had this "advice" for President Medvedev & PM Putin: "cut the defence budget by 90% and spend 500% more on health & education."
Now do you understand more about why I detest all these aferisty -- these invented personalities who have the besstydstvo (shamelessness) to walk around using titles they no longer have any right to (if they ever did) to make statements at carefully orchestrated events that are then followed by some important reporters, creating an illusion intended to trick ordinary people about "someone still out there who is smarter, nobler, better and more divinely approved" than whoever is trying to manage Russia today?
Just last night, on vesti, here is that insincere looking man who made a film about Ivan the Fierce -- a film that cannot be made honestly, and so should honestly not have been attempted -- and the heading is "we need a kind tsar..."
Exactly. And the gentleman speaking will surely point us in the right direction. Towards someone who is going to advocate that the defence budget be wiped out (and how will the military families live then?), or better yet some 24 year old (another diluted version) who is, believe it or not: in Moscow, learning how to speak Russian, as I was cheerfully informed by some of his family connections last night in London...
There is not going to be any deus ex machina for Russia. There is not going to be any puppet controlled from anywhere but inside the heart of Russia, of her Past, Present & Future. There is not going to be any pretty but expensive symbol spouting empty phrases while others steal & rob & break down borders and destroy the very memory of Decency & Common Sense.
In fact, one reason Russians today have so much to complain about, and do it so effectively, is that they have not yet lost all their Reason, sense of Rightness, sense of Decency, sense of Shame. Those are healthy manifestations: the immune response, so to speak, of the political body, of the organizm, the "ordinary people" (who are rarely as "ordinary" as the elites imagine).
The only people who can help Russia today are the ones already helping her now: all of us.
And quite obviously, Alice, that is also you, and your dedication to the truth, to making things get better.
With regard to previous visa discussions, which I read: visas are always a tricky business. US applications are notorious for the kind of details they demand: this is nothing but data overkill; it is not so much for the process of the decision, as to simply gather information that eventually may be of use to someone somewhere (probably useless). Sometimes, with visas, you have to really be persistent. Sometimes you have to have someone helping at the other end (your destination). Praying does help (I know this for a fact).
At the same time, as much as we all look forward to having a world in which visas would not be needed, at least between some countries, there are very serious threats, and so we are all stuck. As this latest heinous attack reminds us, we simply cannot trust everyone who wants to "see the sights." It would have been better if the terrorists had been simply detained as soon as they arrived in the local town. That used to be done, in the USSR, for example. If it were done today, people would only complain about "Putin's police state."
And so we are constantly looking for the right balance. In the UK, they have cameras everywhere. I think that is the right approach. But Russia has a lot more land to cover with cameras... So we are, again, stuck in reality, doing as much as humanly possible. Let us soldier on and see how it unfolds.
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Jukka, "it is better for Chechen, Dagestan, Ingush youths to be up in the mountains with guerilla than being forced around and pressed/persecuted? by corrupted state structures on the ground."
(approx.)
Jukka I think there is funny fascination by the Finnish youths and must be Swedish youths with "heroic guerila fighters" "there up in the mountains". Some Scandinavian fashion. I mention Sweden, because Sweden did take in a lot of Chechen terrorists - namely who Russia thinks are terrorists but Sweden thinks vary btw "freedom fighters" and "simply Chechens suffered from Kremlin policies."
I think there are 2 reasons for this fascination
- A./ in your peaceful times Scandinavian men simply have nowhere to fight, while men do have that natural inclination for getting, how to say, LOL, too sporty somewhere. Energy pent-up and naturally you envy the nearby neighbours who can do some hearty fighting. :o))))
- B./ those lucky ones who you envy not only run around with Kalashnikov's guns and bombs but also do it "against Kremlin". Such a war stirrs compassion in Scandinavian hearts. :o))))
Really. That's all there is to it.
I think if Russia could export some Swedish men or Finnish men onto those land-mountain fighting arena, and made you an offer "chose your side" - in a short while you will find yourself exactly "on the ground, together with the corrupted Kremlin forces." Not because they are nice, but because of 2 evils one seems to be better.
For example, whole Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia know that Bek Yevkurov is an honest decent man. Devoted to his nation and country (in the local sense). And still he is being assasinated, blown up, and what not on a daily basis like there is no tomorrow. If you think there is no "corruption" in the guerilla forces three ha ha.
Awful, corrupted police there, but still police. It gets out of hand when Kremlin brings to those regions army. Army is un-accountable to locals. They come and go and are protected by own clan army network and are largely beyond public scrutiny because whatever you approach with investigation is "secret". Local (corrupted) police is , to the contrary, tied to the ground. They are there, they have homes, families, office to come to, names and positions, and a career to make, they write kilos of paper reports, can be called upon "what did you do on that day at...hrs." - they are manageable. When there is a wil - like Yevkurov has, for example - you can call police to answer. They are not ghosts or fleeting shadows like the army. You can corner any policeman in Russia in 5 minutes - when there is will.
And I understand you find corrupted police no police, overall I agree but in practical terms I don't. Believe it or not, one can still address police in Russia for help. They have kept in the bottom of their understandings "what I am in the job for" at least a pattern "to help females and children." With men - yes, they seem to have special personal counts :o))) - there is a war going on :o))) - Russian men unanimously hating police and police unanimously finding any Russian man as min "suspicious".
When I was couple of yrs ago in the dacha and onto the second floor climbed over some narcomans or I don't know who at night - and I was alone in the house I phoned police and said this and that - someone shambles-rambles on the 2nd floor. In 10 min the car was there, and they drove like mad half way from Finland, LOL, because the nearest police station to the dacha is ab 20 km away. And the next nights, not every night, there was a police car standing over across and lighting my garden with lights, simply, glancing in, if all alright.
Were these corrupted in the 70% of whatr they are busy with at day time :o)) I dare say yes, covering up as a "roof" various small businesses in the area. Still, who do you call if something? Them, and their basic work - nothing fancy - they do well.
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My unscientific observation is there is difference btw Russian police day-time and "after dark". After dark some ancient police instincts :o))) wake up in them, and once can count on them.
When I approached police day time myself, type "bag stolen, passport in it - do something" I got a yawn and a response type "sure you wish to bother us with it? where will we get the pickpocketer - think reasonably about it. you'll only cause us troubles to write a kilo of extra papers -with no result, mind it. Are you sure you have no merci on your police folk :o))) to make us type all those silly papers? Listen, may be you like, think better about it - I've got three reports to write more, I've got a dead body still lying at the corner of xxx and xxx streets (!) and you come here with your silly bag."
A similar appeal, though, in the same very St. Petersburg at 11pm though miraculously resulted in heaps of running around the square activity - one patrol phoning another patrol, more people coming to the internet cafe where it took place, why, in ab 15 min LOL the whole building and area around :o))) was full of various busy-body looking patrols with very focused looks calling each other and checking video camera records on the building. A special police operation, LOL, Alice's bag stolen again. :o)))) I was even scared and wanted to go home myself, like, the hell with the bag, but "no no no, you shouldn't be lazy, you've got your citizen's duty! :o)) You will go with us to the police station and fill in heaps of papers. I was saying I am hungry, and subway will close, let me go! I deeply apologise. I don't want no nothing bag anymore I want to go home!"
Was lectured like "you don't do you duty - we let the thief escape without your detailed description of the chap - next time he robs someone tomorrow - what will your consciousness tell you?! No, let's go we have a picture file, you'll simply glance through it, (for about 2 hrs" !!! :o))) and then you can go home.
Honestly. Disaster. :o)))
Day and night difference.
Must be at day time they are indeed busy with paperwork, and various meetings and bosses, and receiving visitors with bribes :o))))
while - come the night - no bosses, no meetings, no bribes to be taken - and then their normal police instincts wake up (especially - it's daaark. criminals sneeeak around....) and they are like, "So! Let's catch someone! Where are them those criminals? Give us one, someone, immediately!"
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Jukks, in fact I have news for you; it's 2 days already since anyone LOL wishing to fight Russian police has the top level sanction for it.
A statement on TV, made by the Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliev.
Much discussed.
He was visiting a police academy where were invited some small local kids aspiring to become policemen. And Rashid Nurgaliev was answering kiddie questions, in direct broadcast. Now, LOL :o)))) ! some overeducated boy of about 10 yrs old asked the Interiror Affairs Minister:
If a man is attacked by a policeman in the street - what is a man to do?
Nurgaliev said, "What, you mean, you simply walk the street on your own business, and then all of a sudden a policeman starts to grab you or beat you?"
- "Yes."
- Well, in that case, - nobody cancelled a citizen's right to self-defence. When you did nothing wrong, and a policeman jumps at you - you have your right to protect yourself. Surely you fight him back."
Bang!
Now all Russian lawyers sped up to various media sources saying "Citizens! Don't hurry up to introduce the direction of the top country's policeman into practice! resistense to the "representative of power" is one of the worst criminal offences in the country - up to 20 yrs in prizon, mind it, for attacking a policeman. You will never prove that you simply "realised your right for self-defence", the policeman will be always right. Please don't hurry up to beat the police back - we, lawyers, will have real difficulties to fish you out, in such a case."
Still, Nurgaliev didn't show up on TV again with any "clarifications" or "corrections", in spite of the big bang his statement caused.
And we read it like "I can't manage my police forces who got wild. Citizens, protect yourselves, as you can."
A creative approach to the police-citizens' relations. But Nurgaliev said the truth.
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WA;
Now you know how the Israelis feel when their people are killed by car bombs, suicide bombers in shopping malls, restaurants, buses, or by snipers. Only it happens in Russia once in a while, in Israel it was happening every day for decades. Each step the Israelis would take to stop it was countered by steps the Palestinian terrorists would take to overcome them. The wall, the quarrantine were not the first steps to thwart terrorism but among the last. They have had effect but the rocket attacks haven't stopped.
I've heard more than one Russian on TV refer to the Palestinian terrorists as freedom fighters. That is why I have no sympathy for Russia. Senseless attacks that accomplish nothing except to create personal tragedies for large numbers of people and families over time. Some of those who rationalized 9-11 celebrating the attack on America are now on the receiving end themselves. I have no sympathy for them either.
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Marcus, next time you hear a Russian on any official broadcast refer to a Palestinian terrorist as a "freedom-fighter" please do call it to my attention. I have not heard anything remotely like that in the past 15 years, certainly.
Of course, let us also clarify what you mean by "Russian." I mean ethnic Russian. As the Swiss incident recently exposed, all kinds of people come armed with all kinds of passports these days. Russia has substantial numbers of Muslim citizens and most of them inevitably sympathise with the Palestinian side. However, as the Israeli government and foreign ministry would themselves confirm, there are no disagreements at the present time between the Russian government, official policy, broadcast content, the Israeli government.
Furthermore, most Russians today (of the people who live in Russia and are not Muslim) have a profound affection for Jerusalem and do not wish to see anything but peace & prosperity in the Holy Land. (I am not suggesting there are not Muslims who have their own range of feelings about Jerusalem; I am simply referring to the majority.)
Everyone should have sympathy for Russia: that is the truth. It is also true that few Europeans or Americans actually do. The reason you should have sympathy for Russia, is that Russians did not hesitate to do their duty, at a very heavy price to themselves personally -- family by family -- and to the entire nation and land as a whole -- when Nazism threatened not only Europe but specifically the survival of Jewish people.
As has been repeatedly acknowledged by many leaders of Israel, Israel today exists because men like my father sacrificed blood, health, limbs, futures, and even their own and their loved ones' lives.
Six million Jews were brutally exterminated by an evil ideology and its acolytes, but some did survive and were freed because men like my father were able to reach Auschwitz. And he never forgot the sight of what he beheld that day, nor to teach us about it.
Of those Russians who survived and returned from the front, as members of the Soviet Armed Forces, or escaped to the West, as my father did in Dec. 1946, when he was demobilised from the Vienna HQ (out of a well-founded fear of losing his life for his virulently anti-Communist and anti-Stalinist beliefs), none received the kinds of benefits, pensions, acclaim, thanks, assistance with their futures or even basic health services that were customary for members of the European armed forces, American veterans, victims of Nazi atrocities and even surviving members of the defeated armies of Hitler.
Yes, Marcus: You should have sympathy for Russians. You are here because of us. You have this technology available to you, because of the peace and prosperity that our blood -- in greater quantity than anyone else's -- bought.
Learn to be grateful. Learn to care.
Not a single Russian "celebrated" in any shape or form the horrors of 9/11. Vladimir Putin was the first to call the White House with condolences and offers of help. The staff of the US Embassy in Moscow and the CG in St. Petersburg will attest to the constant stream of expressions of the most heartfelt sympathies imaginable.
Your slurs against Russians are really outrageous. Since you believe, evidently, that "what goes around comes around" perhaps you should ask yourself what kind of karma you are banking, on your own behalf.
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maria ashot;
Who do you think you're kidding. Your father and Russians didn't fight to save Jews, they fought to save their own countries. Before WWII when Nazis were persecuting Jews they did nothing. NOTHING! Your pack of lies is hardly worth rebutting. That some Jews were saved as a consequence is besides the point. I owe you nothing.
"Your slurs against Russians are really outrageous."
I know what I heard with my own ears and saw with my own eyes. It is you who is outrageous. Europe's bloodbath was of its own making. It got what it created for itself. It has only its own folly to blame for it. Not one drop of sympathy from me whatsoever. And for 50 years of Russian dominated Soviet threats to enslave the world with only the threat of annihilation of the entire human species by thermonuclear war standing in its way, they get nothing but my contempt. There is not a single human life on this planet that was not adversely affected by them.
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It is easy to forget because the Soviets wound up on the same side as the allies in WWII that at the start, the secret treaty between Nazi Germany and the USSR resulted in the two of them invading Poland and carving it up between them. And it was the Soviets, not the Germans who murdered the Polish government and the top generals in cold blood in the forest. Had the Malinkov-Von Ribbentrop pact not been secret, would the UK have been forced to declare war against the USSR too? Why didn't it. Why should it have come to Poland's aid on account of the Nazi attack but not on account of the Soviet attack? It wasn't until Operation Barbarosa where the Nazis attacked the USSR that the Soviets suddenly found themselves on the receiving end of the German military stick instead of the delivering end. Their later explanation that they were "buying time" is so transparently false it is hard not to laugh at it. And then Stalin was furious when the US and UK didn't come forth with vast quantities of immediate aid in the form of arms. That there weren't any to send didn't appease Stalin's anger at all. Stalin ignored the warnings of his top generals and was completely unprepared for the invasion putting the lie to the later claim of buying time. Perhaps he wasn't wary of the Nazis because nobody had ever told him the old truth that there is no honor among thieves. A lot of Soviet lives were lost because of his mistake. As for the bravery of the Soviet troops, that's a joke that was fully exposed in the Gulag Archipellago. Soviet front line soldiers had a choice, march forward on orders and get shot in the front by the Nazis or don't follow orders and get shot in the back by the KGB standing right behind them. And if they were unlucky enough to be captured alive by the Nazis, when they were freed the Soviets sent them to the Gulag for having committed the crime of having seen the outside world. Evidently even life in a German POW camp was preferable to life in the USSR.
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Mugliest,
"the Jewish were saved by Russians as a side effect; before the 2ndWW when nazis were persecuting Jews they did NOTHING. NOTHING."
1. the USA is a side effect. by words of your own commander "America was one step away from signing shameful peace with Hitler, if not for the unexpected resilience of the USSR".
2. the Jewish lives saved are a side effect. Only, unlike the USA, Israel gives credit where it's due. For the "side effect."
3. pre-war NOTHING. Only took in half-Poland and three future Baltic states, where Jewish population was saved - by Russians. By the vicious Red Army - the Jewish wetre saved there. From locals full of their best intentions. This is, indeed - "a side effect" - but it is fact.
Where do you think all Jewish ended up, by 1930-s? Migrated to Russia's Western borders. Belorussia is one local Israel, and the Baltic states were, and Eastern Poland was.
4. What did the USA do, pre-war, for the Jewish in Europe. Did you do as "little" as Russians? You financed Hitler for a decade pre-war.
And - held talks with him.
For that matter - when Germany was a "Weimar republic" - who, who of European countries, or USA even talked to it? They wanted to be friendly, raised lots of initiatives, tried to establish ties with countries - and got a total thumbs down every time. Persona non grata, not a state in Europe.
The moment Hitler came to power - ambassadors streamed with embraces. Hitler was received, and talked to, by all - USA, Britain, France, Poland - who only not hurried to shake hands with him. That's the kind of monster you like as a state, to deal with.
When Russia proposed anti-Hitler coalition to France and Britain - the talks were going, and going, and not a single step towards us was made. Confused by Stalin's politics Britain could not decide neither for nor against. In the spring of 1939 the British-Russian talks came to a total stand-stil, while Stalin demanded an answer. In July 1939 the British talking rep cancelled the airplane method he used to fly to Moscow for the talks, and took a train instead! Lingering and lingering and waiting, all - but not to say a definite yes or no.
I got distracted. Russia will always win, while there is one Russian left. Because we don't surrender - and you'll do all, for comfort and convenience. And you are ungrateful indeed, as rightly says Maria-Ashot.
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"the bravery of the Soviet troops, that's a joke, fully exposed by Gulag Archipelago."
The author of "Gulag Archipelago", Mavrelius, would have you eaten these words. He wrote nothing of the kind.
dear little silly head MA. If all America was as simple as you are.
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Which bothers you most WA, Russia's shameful past, its grim present, or its dim prospects for the future?
"Russia will always win, while there is one Russian left."
Like it won in Afghanistan? Like it won the cold war? Like it won in Chechnya? As it is winning against the terrorists?
What can Russia do?
It still has enough nuclear weapons to blow up the world.
It can freeze Europe out and shut it down by turning off oil and gas.
It can incite a nuclear war in the middle east by providing Iran with the capability to build nuclear weapons and air to air defense missiles to protect them.
It can anger the US by selling weapons to Venezuela which will wind up in the hands of communist rebels in Columbia who want to overthrow the government and establish a narco-communist terror state.
It can sell tickets to visit the international space station.
It can sell old decommissioned disarmed Migs and flights in still operational Migs.
What else can it do? It can ignore the HIV crisis building in its country. It can ignore the declining birth rate and increasing death rate from alcoholism. It can continue to threaten Eastern European nations like Ukraine until they beg to join NATO. It can still probably poison a lot of people. I'll bet besides ricin and radioactive polonium, Russia's KGB has invented poisons the outside world has never seen before. Perhaps Yassir Arafat was killed with just such a poison. The French never did say they figured out what killed him. But then we don't know if they were just lying or never discovered the truth. I guess Russians were able to steal plans and build their own version of the F-22. But what enemy could they possibly use it against where it would be of value? A hijacked train traveling across Siberia?
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BTW WA, I highly recommend you read the Gulag Archipellago. It will teach you much about the history of your country during the 20th century you don't know...and proabaly much that you don't want to hear. I'd ignore the official version of your history if I were you. It is without doubt a pack of gross distortions and lies told by people with a vested interest in hiding the ugly truth.
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Mavrelius, how badly you stand competition.
Russian historians, unlike yours - paid for the books and lectures - have no "vested interest". We've never been once rich in capitalism LOL, here, so that historians are able to make a rouble on their summaries. May be in 1903-1917 a bit. Between 3 revolutions :o))))
Our historians, made of the real material, were, at all tsar regimes, how to say, more inclined "to write into the desk drawyer". From where, with about 30 yr delay, we have a habit to extract writings - and enjoy.
At intervals of low pressure, type - in between those 3 revolutions, type Khruschev's thaw, type Yeltsin time - true books are even available to contemporaries at once.
At intervals of high pressure - we are happy with good old samizdat.
As things turned upside down in Russia quite often - with every next ruler saying "the prev. one did all wrong" - one, in fact, had lots of access to interesting read.
You seem to me to live far more, how to say, streamlined to the "average pattern". With a focused effort to keep your brains in shape :o)))
Here we are, how to say, traditionally unexpectedly changeable - LOL!
Far more flexible folk, by nature - and with wider horizons, more liberal in our view of the world.
There aren't any dogma-s in Russia. Nothing is taken for granted. I can sponge info - and you LOL, definitely, :o)))) can't :o))))
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I'll gladly talk about Russia for hrs but sorry now you can go eat smth, I need to walk the dog.
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WA;
There's a name for your kind of historians. They are called "revisionists." So much so that in fact during the war between Russia and China back in the 1960s, the Chinese changed the name of the street the Soviet Embassy was located on to "Revisionist Street." That will keep historians constantly busy in a totalitarian society whether the tyrants are called Tsars or Commissars (Commie-Tsars :-). Winston Smith the anti-hero in Orwell's book 1984 about the anti-Utopia worked for the Ministry of Truth which constantly had to revise history to fit the current explanation of events. There were only three countries in the world, Eastasia, Eurasia, and Oceania. The story takes place in London at some unspecified time in the future, 1984 just being a metaphor for that time and chosen because the book was written in 1948. At any time two of the superpowers was at war with the third and the alliances could change at any time. When they did, the history had to be rewritten to conform to the current situation proving the fearless leader "Big Brother" patterned directly after Uncle Joe was right. The old history was sent down a memory hole which was of course a chute to the incinerator to destroy all evidence of past mistakes. The concept of the anti-Utopian totalitarian superstate was patterned after Nazi Germany and the USSR. I'll bet they didn't assign you to read that one in school either when you were growing up and receiving your miseducation. I'm putting it on your assigned list now along with the Gulag Archipellago. You can read The First Circle in your spare time as recreational reading if you care to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_First_Circle
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WA;
More glorious Russian history for you. A long history. One written by another of your countrymen. Perhaps you've read it in Russian but here it is in English;
http://remember.org/witness/babiyar.html
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Magnoramus, I'm back. Sorry will have to intercept this with a lecture LOL I need to write for tomorrow. As that is going to be boring you are a great relief (as usual). I'm going to earn another 300 dollars LOL and the School of Bsnss Director wishes to speak to me to find out if I have a clue LOL of what I'm going to talk about, because may be they'll change their mind. So I need a brush up on latest tendencies to snoop around here and there a bit.
And there is you ! with all your combined, how you put it, "miseducation" o))))
What's that with Afghanistan? Russia certainly did NOT win, but I don't have a feeling we lost either. As min on our departure the morals and general attitude was much higher, don't remember a single boy in my class who didn't want to go there and fight, and they were only afraid "oh the war will be over before we finish school".
Which is in stark contrast to your polimorsos - politically-moral condition, as is the abbreviation in the Rus. Navy. You already only think how to get out, while you are still there!
Yes it was an un-pleasant surprise that you go to fight "Afghanistan" but find LOL Britain and the USA financing and arming the opposition. We, how to say, counted on fighting one country, didn't count on all of you backing them up. There seemed to be no end, you destroy arms - they get it. Quite right we got out. But the soldiers on the ground - mind it - were in the mood to continue, and were angry that commandment took army out, saw this as treason of their effort and lives put.
Not quite your modern state of morals.
You seem unable to win, having no third parties arming and financing Afghanistan, it's only you and them. Russia doesn't sponsor mojaheeds to make your life there difficult, right?
You seem unable to win, having far more advanced army equipment than USSR brought to Afghanistan 30 yrs ago. Simply look at any photo of our time soldiers - cloth uniform - that's the whole "protection" - and then look at one of the NATO soldiers now. 25 kg of equipment hanging on each. To say nothing of drones and electronics and hell knows what.
While your opponents, I dare say, stayed pretty much in the same condition they were in 30 yrs ago. Same primitive warfare.
Then, how many are there in NATO, countries fighting to help you, along your side? One would think they send their best soldiers as well, not Turkmen draftees that we had as a mighty "back up", "to convince" their muslim brothers. And each country brings to Aghanistan their best equipment as well. How come whole 20 countries can't win even the same amount of provinces that the USSR held 30 yrs ago?
You are clearly not in the position to raise up the very "Afghanistan" subject to Russians - judging by any of the reasons above.
As the icing to the cake can add that the word "shuravi" (Russian) in Afghanistan does not raise any degree of hatred as comparable with "NATO". They've killed 15,000 of our soldiers to their heart's content and as many Afghani-s I've met ater - strangely held zero bad feelings about our invaders. Rather, feel we are even. They say that "your soldiers fought honestly, face to face, we respect a strong fighter" - while your strategies and tactics, I'm sorry, involving thousands of deaths of locals - won't leave such an impression.
We are not enemies with Afghani - fact - even after our invasion. Can you say the same about yourself?
On the "Cold War lost by Russia" - I wish all wars are lost to this end.
I am not sure the USA are able to lose a thing, without harming all around.
The world definitely breathed in relief, with our stand-over - over.
We have harmed ourselves more than we should have, but that is the Russian nature, no half-measures :o))) Threw out the baby, together with the washing soap water, so to say. Destroyed all at home we could in one go, once we settled into the mood :o))) Political system, economy, industries, suppliers, sales market, money, social system, infrustructure, geography - there wasn't a stone left un-turned after Perestroyka a-la-Rus.
Still, apart from the left side of the Dnieper river, Crimea and Northern Kazakhstan - we don't miss a thing, geography-wise. Kind of expensive, it worked out for us, to get rid of the Communist Party, one would think we could have rid of it at a cheaper price. Damn expensive party, not many exist that cost so much in land, to get rid of it.
That's what we lost in the Cold War - and you don't even know such places; only heard of Crimea.
What we have gained is another question, but in terms of unquestionable loss - see above.
What to do, one such a very expensive Party it was.
What else you say we have "lost". What was No 3? Ah, Chechnya.
Well, can't say we won forever, but temporarily we have certainly won.
May be for a shorter time period than normal fruits of "victory" exist in the history, what's a decent time? to win over someone for 50 years? 10? 100? for a while, say, we have won.
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But then of course MA, if you were always after Northern Kazakhstan, Crimea, and the left bank of the Dnieper river - then we have lost the Cold War to the United States.
Personally, I suspect you don't even know where the left bank starts where it ends. You may wish to ask your historians LOL! :o))) search high and low - in your free world of un-biased, un-revisionist :o)))) information field. You've got :o))) full sources opened to you - try to figure out LOL! why, where and how is it - what you have "won".
Not that we can see you there physically present either..., for a sec.
So it will be a hard time to you, to prove to Russians that you have "won" the Cold War. Heartily sympathise with your thinking effort.
Unless Russians lose land which we consider ours - we don't lose.
BTW don't exactly remember an Armaggedon either, of any kind. Did the USA and Russia happen to clash their forces in the battle field? What's the date how come our depressed-suppressed historians missed it in the annals? How many of our banners have you got? A (1/2 or one :o)))) US soldier not to be mentioned for the night, on the Russian land?
Then what exactly and when did you win, enlighten me.
Ah, the Northern Kazakhstan. How awful sad! :o))))))))))))))))
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WA;
You think the USSR won in Afghanistan? You believe that? Is that what they told you? The Mujahadeen kicked your butts from pillar to post. Your soldiers fled back to Russia with their tails between their legs. Your soldiers used the same poison yellow gas killing Afghans that Saddam Hussein used on the Kurds. It came from the same factory in Russia. By the time the Afghans got through with you, your soldiers could hardly wait to leave. The Soviet government did all it could to avoid photos of the body bags coming home. BTW, your Mujahadeen was the Viet Cong. Afghanistan was your Vietnam, a kind of symetry, a mirror image Alice in LaLaLand. It was part of the undoing of the USSR. Once the Afghans had stinger missiles, they took your helicoptors down like shooting fish in a barrel. Great field testing for those weapons.
What will happen now in Afghanistan is not clear at all. The outcome is far from decided. Our NATO "allies" have been of limited help. Even the British who fought in numbers were badly underequipped just as they were in Iraq. Major Taleban strongholds like Kanduhar and Helmand Provence have not been taken out of Taleban control. the issue is not the Taleban itself but al Qaeda which is believed to have fled to Pakistan. The fear is that if we leave and the Taleban take over again, it will become a haven for al Qaeda again. But there are other havens...like Somalia. Will we have to fight all of them alone? Whom do you think was behind blowing up the train yesterday?
So far I think the US has lost about 800 dead in Afghanistan in 8 years. The problem is segregating the bad guys we want to kill from the civilians we don't want to kill. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. Sometimes the difference is only a matter of what hour of the day it is. If we didn't care who we killed, we'd be out of there in a matter of a few weeks after almost everyone was dead. It could have been the same in Vietnam if we'd wanted to win that way. Did Vietnam win? Yes and no. The US left without a military victory and the Vietnamese government fell to the communists. But Vietnam became a basket case, one of the poorest countries in the world. It is still a dictatorship but it isn't a communist country anymore. Communism failed and they gave it up. Too bad they weren't smarter sooner, had it adopted the policies it has today back in the 1960s, there would have been no war at all there. Today it is a capitalist country begging for foreign investment. But unlike Russia, it will probably get some. Your worst enemy is Vlad Putin. Were it up to him Russia would become the USSR again, a menace to itself and the entire world. The good news is that it can't happen.
The Soviet dissident Andrei Amalrik wrote a book which asked "Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984?" to which I reply "Will Russia survive until 2084?" As of now, it doesn't look so good.
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WA;
"How many of our banners have you got?"
14 former SSRs and the entire Warsaw pact minus Russia.
Conquering Russia would be a big mistake for America. We'd have to feed you.
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WA;
http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=95194981
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_in_Afghanistan
"The total irrecoverable personnel losses of the Soviet Armed Forces, frontier, and internal security troops came to 14,453. Soviet Army formations, units, and HQ elements lost 13,833, KGB sub-units lost 572, MVD formations lost 28, and other ministries and departments lost 20 men. During this period 417 servicemen were missing in action or taken prisoner; 119 of these were later freed, of whom 97 returned to the USSR and 22 went to other countries.
There were 469,685 sick and wounded, of whom 53,753 or 11.44 percent, were wounded, injured, or sustained concussion and 415,932 (88.56 percent) fell sick. A high proportion of casualties were those who fell ill. This was because of local climatic and sanitary conditions, which were such that acute infections spread rapidly among the troops. There were 115,308 cases of infectious hepatitis, 31,080 of typhoid fever, and 140,665 of other diseases. Of the 11,654 who were discharged from the army after being wounded, maimed, or contracting serious diseases, 92 percent, or 10,751 men, were left disabled.[71]
After the war ended, the Soviet Union published figures of dead Soviet soldiers: the total was 13,836 men, an average of 1,512 men a year. According to updated figures, the Soviet army lost 14,427, the KGB lost 576, with 28 people dead and missing"
"Over 1 million Afghans were killed.[73] 5 million Afghans fled to Pakistan and Iran, 1/3 of the prewar population of the country. Another 2 million Afghans were displaced within the country. In the 1980s, one out of two refugees in the world was an Afghan.[74]
Along with fatalities were 1.2 million Afghans disabled (mujahideen, government soldiers and noncombatants) and 3 million maimed or wounded (primarily noncombatants)."
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Well, this thread is a ringing endorsement of vicarious joy through the power of empire.
Anyone would think, listening to the patriotic tales on offer here, that being accidentally born in one geographic location rather than another must reflect upon the consequent value of the human being.
On one side we have Alice Nevsky declaring that "Our wars are more authentic than yours"
On the other we have Captain America declaring that "Our wars are cleaner."
Pretty soon threnodio will turn up and say a few words for the dear old English empire, and the virtue of the most profitable wars.
I feel all let out and low grade, on account of not having an empire I can identify with.
And yet I can't help thinking that none of you would enjoy the glory of Empire and war if you were forced to endure it, for real.
Anyway, I leave you all to the debate. One thing take away from the debate, for certain, is the powerful attraction to the illusion of power and force in the world. These fictions, these totally fabricated superstitions called "nations", entirely captivate even the most intelligent of folks.
I wonder, without good reason, why that is so. Perhaps it is because the contemplation of a world that turns coldly onwards despite our mortal concerns is so terrifying. Perhaps we make ourselves warmer by clothing ourselves in the blankets of glorious fiction. When we belong to something vast, powerful, and most of all enduring (I note marcus's comment about Russia not existing by 2084: oh grave insult!), perhaps we fool ourselves that we are not shuffling along the mortal coil for only a few moments, before dropping off into the forgotten details of humanity.
I suppose that if this force, this attraction of the fiction of the greater state, is really so powerful, then that would explain why so many otherwise intelligent people support the EU. It is a club, a tribe. It is large. It will endure.
Whereas democratic rights, these are a process. They are mundane and time consuming, and a responsibility.
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Men die and empires fall but so long as there is plunder to be hidden, taxes to be evaded, ill gotten gains to be laundered, Switzerland will prosper. It doesn't matter who is fighting, who wins, or who loses because if you are Switzerland, there's profit in it every time.
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Mavrelius, out of interest; why did you bother to write No 172?
I said "15,000".
Well, if you ask very nicely and well, I'll refer you to the name list, and then you'll have more pleasure copying line after line over here.
You haven't noticed I never mentioned US particular achievements, during the year we speak?
I am not interested in your losses and failures.
But if you think that basking in every single thing you can pull up about Russia (be it Baby Yar Ukrainians collaborating with Germans' achievement) helps you sort out your problems - I am all for, LOL, that you'll fix at least a milli-milli-mini anything.
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democracythreat you know we differ on the attitude to the "nation state". You think it outdated, together with nationality and all that jazz, and I still find it handy.
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Humans are social animals, not Maugli, and even he found himself a group of wolves for company. It is natural for humans to flock into mobs, flocks and company of fish.
Immune system gets under stress when you are among un-known - read - danger - un-readable individuals. Bad for health, to be constantly under stress. Easier among "own folk", whoever they are. That's why people group up.
When it becomes safe to be among strangers, how come that format gets into shape - I don't know. I think not before one can "read" all around.
Why necessarily "an empire" :o))) Simply - a large walking space, where, whenever you go - you meet only "readable folk" :o)))) The further away the un-readables are - the more space you have for strolling around.
Russian concept :o)))
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WA;
So you think the Gulag ended when Stalin died? Wrong. It only became more sophisticated;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_psychiatry_in_the_Soviet_Union
What does the Russian word "Psikhushka" mean?
Too bad I can't find a link to the extensive New York Times Magazine article. It described in considerable detail how thorazine was used by Soviet psychiatrists to torture political dissidents. These were the modern equivalents of the torturers of the Inquisition back in the dark ages. It wasn't called the evil empire for nothing.
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We know why Russia wants an empire. It was invaded countless times for a thousand years. Russia within an internal empire within the Soviet empire within the Warsaw pact empire. All gone except for Russia's internal empire which is breaking up too now. During the cold war it was said Russia was the only nation on earth surrounded by hostile communist countries.
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Mavrelius, that's all money that have mis-placed your world perception.
You've lived so long embracing money that by now have a kind of an atavistic instinct - to destroy the competition even in peaceful times. Because there are no peaceful times for the USA - you always compete.
I've just now had some refreshments on int'l marketing :o), read one of your profs. dear me. A neutral, one would think, text on marketing. Oh what examples of "wrong", "wrong" "wrong" business practices about Iraq and Iran and China. On the EU have now appeared LOL, as well, marked with interest. About Russia - and Japan - have always been there. :o))))
Well, I might quote these as a joke, to Russian students.
An instinct, you are born with it, what to do.
It is useless to expect of you a neutral stand of the world, all in relation to US interests. At that, your interests, LOL, seem to be very all-embracing. Anything that can pass as food.
How did you put it? "vested interest".
Overall I don't object, all get mad in their own way, as one pleases.
In particuar, though, I object - because the USA and Britain have been long calling shots in the Western hemisphere - and all along bombasted their preferred view of the world onto others.
And your black-mouthing is focused at who currently the USA see as competition. Care to add a bottom note to all your remarks about Russia "keeping in mind we saw USSR as top enemy during 70 yrs".
Even if the other party doesn't even think of competing with you - the USA find that for a quarrel it's enough to have 1 side.
Unique attitude, in a way.
You are a bully, and as you are calling shots in the information field -you mis-place brains of others.
Up-date me, who in the world is currently "nice", in the US view. Where is it that you do not keep an eye on potential grass grazing. Is there one such a lucky place?
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WA;
"Up-date me, who in the world is currently "nice", in the US view. Where is it that you do not keep an eye on potential grass grazing. Is there one such a lucky place?"
I'd say at the moment, Washington DC is probably not too terribly concerned about Fort Wayne Indiana. I'll bet they're not quite so sure about Chicago though. President Obama knows a lot of people in Chicago. Not all of them like him either. Perhaps someone in the community felt they were left out, not organized. Of course that doesn't mean the Federal Government will ignore Fort Wayne forever.
Nations don't have friends, they have interests. And they have to be wary of threats to all of them all of the time. It's the ones you don't worry about that usually cause trouble...seemingly from out of nowhere.
The good news is that between spy satellites and drone planes, we can watch a lot of things all the time. And when someone in that air conditioned room in Florida sees something he doesn't like in the camera of one of those drone planes, he pushes a button and whooooooosh, a harm missle does it extreme harm. I hope it's not over my house when he sees it. I don't live in Fort Wayne.
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The USSR sent tanks into Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan, poisoned an ex-KGB agent in London leaving a trail of radioactive polonium so wide leading back through Germany right to Russia a blind man couldn't miss it in the dark, sends guns to Venezuela to help rebels overthrow the government in Columbia, sends equipment to help Iran build an atom bomb to destroy Israel and attack America, sent armaments to North Korea and North Vietnam, flew pilots in North Korean and Syrian Migs against Israelis and the US, and YOU call ME a bully? Why, because America sent relief to Georgia after Russia attacked it? And no America did not tell Georgia to attack South Ossetia, it told them not to but they did it anyway. They didn't understand that it wasn't in their interest. BTW, aren't you worried the KGB might be reading your postings here? Do they know you are collaborating with capitalists on marketing projects? Have they given the green light to your speech on you don't know what yet :-) ? Perhaps they could offer some suggestions. Now that they are no longer in the business of taking over the world, I'm sure they've been spying on Madison Avenue to learn their secrets.
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Captain America writes:
"Nations don't have friends, they have interests. And they have to be wary of threats to all of them all of the time."
No Marcus, nations do not have interests. They cannot, for an interest requires a sentience. One must think, and therefore be, before one can be interested in something.
People have interests, and the interests of some people are served by maintaining the fiction of the nation state. The interests of others are not.
People have both commercial material interests and they have entertaining emotional interests. Your beloved nation state and the violence done it its name serves the former of the few and the latter of the many.
No matter how hard you enjoy your emotional interest in the fiction of the nation state of the USA, you cannot change the basic and fundamental fact that the fiction is not sustained for that purpose.
Essentially, your enjoyment of and pride in the fiction of the USA is an intended side effect. It is the grease upon the gears of conceptual political control. The USA was never constructed in order to give you the vicarious satisfaction of belonging to a large and powerful tribe. There was never any collective scheme to pool resources and create the huge emotional rewards you claim as your own.
Whether you ever face the fact or not, your glorious and thrilling nation state was created specifically in order to generate material benefits for a very, very small number of families, and at the expense of vast numbers of people, both domestic and foreign.
The nation state exists to serve materials interests of people who do not believe in it, and who would never allow their children to be foolish enough to become thrilled with it. They bank in Switzerland, if you will.
You can ignore that underlying reality if you want, but don't expect others to share in your willful delusion. While you wrap yourself in the flag and stand tall in front of the mirror, the people who designed the flag and sold it to you are rolling in the aisles with laughter, the tears of mirth streaming down their cheeks.
Nothing is as humorous to the farmer as the donkey who thinks himself a lion.
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Mavrelius.
When Russian writes an e-mail these days he feels faaar less in need to, how to say, not to say something wrong - than you do, and many of our European counterparts. Though I suppose we are monitored.
Freedom of speech, you know. Come over, learn from "Vlad Putin". We'll arrange you classes.
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And yes, Russia, sadly, sent tanks to Czechoslovakia and Hungary.
Did you notice, BTW, you wrote "sent"? Why "sent"? By your mythology we WERE there, Red Army, occupying "colonies", for 40 years, keeping them "under the boot".
And still, that pink tank in Prague, that the Czech have fun to oil-paint in various colours :o))), the very symbol of Soviet occupation, has indeed travelled there, to choke the uprising, for about 2,000 km.
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dt;
"Whether you ever face the fact or not, your glorious and thrilling nation state was created specifically in order to generate material benefits for a very, very small number of families, and at the expense of vast numbers of people, both domestic and foreign."
Seems my family did just fine and likely far better in the way of material benefits in the non nation state of the United States of America than they would have done in the non nation states of Europe taht they left. I can understand Swiss cynicism. After all, what are borders and governments when criminals in every one of them is a potential depositor. Whether it's the booty stolen by a dictator of one non nation state or the profits on illegal narcotics that flows freely across supposed but imaginary national boundries, there is money to be made in every one of them. Surely nobody would expect the Swiss to survive on selling Swiss cheese, antiquated mechanical wristwatches, pen knives, chocolate, and cuckoo clocks. No the real money comes from exploitation of the illusion of nation states. After all, the only real allegience intelligent people have is to their own money no matter how they got it. Isn't that how the Swiss see life? Why else would they remain in a frosty mountain fortress when there are warm tropical beaches all over the world to bask in? Only a Russian would choose to stay in an ice box simply because it is an ice box.
WA;
How ironic that Russians looked up to a Georgian as their god just as the Germans looked to an Austrian. There must be some special charisma that a foreign born mass murderer has that a domestic one can't match. Lenin, Khrushchev, and Breshnev were no Stalin.
When I was referring to the KGB watching you, it wasn't with an eye towards your political views which seem entirely consistent with theirs by the way, it was with their likely frustration that you are wasting your time here instead of spending it on your marketing presentation and that they could probably give you a few pointers having learned how to refresh their brand by changing their name and their logo. I'm sure our local boy scout who is never without his trusty combination corkscrew-screwdriver-ice pick-tweezer-toothpick-nail file-bottle opener-scissors-semiautomatic machine gun-and oh yes pen knife that he carries around in his pocket all the time would advise you to ditch that old clunky soviet army watch for a nice shiny gold clunky Rolex. If you haven't got $3000 to $25,000 for the real thing, get an immitation one made in China. To the untrained eye who doesn't look for the sweep second hand, it isn't easy to tell the difference...until the thin gold plating wears away. But as the "me-generation" of the 80s in America who used to be the flower power hippies of the 60s and are now the has been baby boomers used to say..."if you've got it, flaunt it."
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I'm back, :o). Mandragorsky.
Overall not a bad night behind, thank you for the entertainment. LOL.
?
- "Sophistication; Europeans demand considerably more sophistication than Americans who may react more favourably to emotional appeals - example - an ad showing a mentally retarded young man succeeding in a job at McDonald's was very favourably received in the US but was booed at the Cannes film festival in France."
- Mavrelius. "someone in air conditione room in Florida pushes the button and whoooosh :o)))) harm missile does extreme harm"
- "Information content versus fluff. American ads contain a great deal of "puffery", which was found very ineffective in Eastern European countries because it resembled communist propaganda too much."
- Mavrelius. whining something about thorazine.
:o)))))) And so on and so forth.
BTW, on "punitive psychiatry". It's not "punitive psychiatry"; Russians call the whole medical service "punitive", it simply goes "our punitive medical system" :o))))
On thorazine in particular - well I have a friend who was subjected to it. He thought it's a cute idea to escape military draft to pretend he is mad. The whole Soviet psychiatric hospital tried to prove to him the opposite but he resisted. Kind of the Cockoo's nest story. I visited him there.
Given that I also borrowed from him 5 thousand roubles a month ago, LOL, and he exported from dacha me in the condition of hair standing up, cat with infarction, dog who simply vomited all the way and minor things like whole dacha contents :))) this and that electric radiators, curtains, pans, clothes, boots, umbrellas, .. he was especially impressed by the big plastic pan with a good whole piece of the garden, you know, soil, with grass on - for the cat to not to miss dacha so much at once, and be able to graze on "ecologically clean grass" - well can only say that on departure he also added me 5,000 roubles "for the first days in the city expenses", refused to have coffee, and said "Alice, until the next time. I hope you phone. Not very often :o))))
On total, one would think he survived Soviet psychiatric hospital (very much minded against him) - quite well.
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And, yes, he won against the system; they tortured him as much as they pleased, finally stamped what he wanted - "insane" and let go. If one wants to be crazy, after all, what's the problem? The problem was only one isn't allowed to turn crazy sharp at 18 the army drafting age :o)))
The only unexpected problem that no one kind of thought in advance about was he couldn't get any job he wanted any where after. For example he went to work for a theatre, those ? scenery pieces getting in and out on stage, the theatre mechanics, dressing up the stage for a play - and the safety requirements he couldn't pass, as "no work at the height". Big theatres have quite high halls and balancing there on top in the darkness and what not is required. So someone else was technically employed in his place, whose papers fit the safety rules, while in reality he worked himself, but on papers it was a different fellow from the same theatre.
It took him ab 10 years to take the diagnosis off away.
On the other hand, the other friend, from the same very youth gang of acquaintance :o) that I kept company with, well the other one simply 10 people would have to hold him tight :o)) so much he wanted to go the army and fight somewhere anywhere.
People differ, even within the same small circle. Well, that's what friends are for, to back up each other whimsy :o)) and occasional madness :o)))
Now, plunged into distant memoirs I even remembered the song that the gang :o) put together, in the honour of their missing component (in the crazy house/yellow house, in Russian. because our first ever in the country was painted in yellow oil.)
I still have somewhere a whole tape recorder cassete, full of amateur recording songs composed to commemorate different happenings and occasions. :o)
"A mark's been done on the glass :o)))
And a cosy corner has been found :o)))))))
And there dries out, broken into three parts,
In the pocket a piece of melted cheese
- O where are you, friend?!!! :o))))
Our third darling friend ! :o)))))
It dries up in the pocket the melted cheese.
tra la?
..Or, it may be, by this life exhausted,
You've got into the world, slightly different to this one:
In a yellow house - small green devils :o)))
You're catching by their white hospital sheet O where are you, friend!
Our darling third friend!
It dries out, in vain, in the pocket the broken into three part cheese.
:o)))) Awful touching :o)) and sentimental. I think was even performed once to a guitar, under his hosptal's barred windows :o)))
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Mavrelius, you've disappeared? Today's "joke of the day" seems to sum up our discussion perfectly.
"If we want to collapse one any country-state, we should start being friends with them.
The armament race with us they have held through somehow, but friendship with us - no one will survive."
:o))))
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Hooray more propaganda, long live journalism serving their readers what they want to read instead of drawing unbiased pictures :-)
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"A mark's been done on the glass :o)))
And a cosy corner has been found :o)))))))
And there dries out, broken into three parts,
In the pocket a piece of melted cheese
- O where are you, friend?!!! :o))))
Our third darling friend ! :o)))))
It dries up in the pocket the melted cheese.
tra la?"
"he was especially impressed by the big plastic pan with a good whole piece of the garden, you know, soil, with grass on - for the cat to not to miss dacha so much at once, and be able to graze on "ecologically clean grass""
WA, you were right;
"an ad showing a mentally retarded young man succeeding in a job at McDonald's was very favourably received in the US"
It's enough to make me cry. Publish your e-mail address and I will send you a gift certificate for a free Big Value MacMeal. And one for your cat too.
"finally stamped what he wanted - "insane" and let go."
Russia must be a very strange place. In every other place I've ever heard of, the insane ones are the ones they don't let go.
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:o)))))))))
In fact, MA, :o))))))) I haven't even :o))0 thought of it. I thought it's Ok .:o)00 ..
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may be, they thought, forgot when laughed so muchj>:o{'' "now - norm - can be let out into the bulk of the population :o))0
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Well,collecing myself together, Mafricanty - can offer you the standard offer we offer in consolation to foreigners. You know, the cast in stone :o))) verse, type that? Magnum carta? Rosette stone? :o)))
"By brains one can't figure out Russia,
By common inch you won't it measure
She has a pose :o) of her own
So, give up until it's too late :o))) (sorry. un-classic. the last line is:
In Russia it's possible only to believe.
(or not :o)
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it's because, in order to survive, and sort out simple things that come to you for granted, one has to kick out constantly here so ingenious tricks, dear me. not "by the book". in the result of the natural selection :o))) world hasn't seen so creative a population.
this is also because most of the time we have nil and feel you want it all. I don't know who cared to inform Russians that "it is no-go" and instilled such high demands to the environment, because many, in similar shoes, simply sit relaxed and don't feel decreased in their rights, how to say. but take it easy. while we are constantly un-happy and try to work out ways to work around ways as they are on the ground.
Most of the time here I feel like? Like your Challenger :o))) - the one LOL that can never properly take off :o)))) one is constantly challenged here with troubles, round o'clock. and things "by the book" simply do not work! you have to invent something crazy to stay "normal"!
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democracythreat: Regarding post 140, yes, there certainly is a sense of irony about it, but one can hope that as Lisbon “settles in”, that more and more EU citizens will be interested in poking a few holes into that wall of opacity.
Your posts 173 and 183 are spot on. At least your tax francs aren’t supporting an empire with which you can’t identify — that’s more than I can say about my tax dollars.
WebAliceinwonderland: In post 141, the concern for salmonella is not centered on the turkey, but on the stuffing, which typically has egg for a binder. An unstuffed turkey that is rinsed well and cooked properly will have no problems there.
My sympathies go out to the victims of the Nevsky Express bombing. I was surprised to read that there weren’t any first-aid kits on the train, but relieved that casualties weren’t as numerous as they might have been.
maria-ashot: On post 147, seeing that you’re someone for whom terroir matters, be careful about being identified as a supporter of terroirisme — no telling what a typo might lead to… ;*)
Really, it sounds like you’re blessed with having many culinary choices; I don’t think that I’ve ever seen such a variety of honeys. [Hmmm, there’s a “straight line” for someone to use…]
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WA;
"can offer you the standard offer we offer in consolation to foreigners."
The ultimate consolation for foreigners is what I kept reminding myself during those last days in France when I was counting the hours and knew that I would forget how I felt because it is human nature to remember only the happy times and that is....I'm the one with the airplane ticket out of here. I've got a place to go and will never have to come back here if I don't want to. And I didn't. I never thought I'd do it but when I got of the plane at Kennedy Airport for the last time....I kissed the ground. Having seen some of the world I've concluded Dorothy was right, for me at least there's no place like home.
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Jan_Keeskop, I thought the fact that there were no first aid-kits on the train (there were. 2-3 per wagon/car :o))) might have something to do with the rumour that circulated in St. Petersburg for a while. Namely, that the owner of the 3-street 3 facades' palace by the Hermitage side, that we've discussed with maria-ashot and cool_brush_work and Jukka a while ago - is the son of the Russian Railways Director.
Now we don't know, because the happy owner's name of the new 5 star hotel is "commercial secret".
But the overall schemes looks reasonable - first-aid kits are (by the "book", mind it, exactly as there have to be - 2-3) are kept to a minimum, while palaces are bought on the side at a maximum.
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Alice, you are so kind to try to reason with Aurelius, but it is quite pointless.
"Russia" did not send tanks to Hungary or Czechoslovakia. The Secretariat of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union made its decisions: a council of a bunch of old men.
At the times in question, Russia did not exist, unless you consider the RSFSR (Federated Soviet Socialist Republic) to actually = "Russia": a pretty indefensible proposition. There was no "Government of Russia." There was no "Army of Russia." The territory marked "RSFSR" on Soviet-era maps and defined by CPSU-invented borders did not have any sovereignty whatsoever: the fact that its young men were also drafted into the Soviet armed forces, or that its language remained the lingua franca for the USSR did not in fact confer any kind of autonomy to ethnic Russians or even members of other ethnicities who happened to reside in what were known as regions of the RSFSR. They had no say in anything and were captives of a police state in which the only ones with any kind of political power were the members and descendants of the original Bolshevik clans who took over in 1917.
Even while actual Hungarian or Czech or Slovak patriots were fighting and dying for the possibility of some kind of liberation, many ethnic Russians and Soviet citizens from other ethnic groups were perishing in exactly the same way, for exactly the same reason.
The west, Alice, knows next to nothing about the many internal uprisings brutally crushed in the USSR since its creation until its dissolution -- just as they know nothing of Chechens who remain loyal, for very good reasons, to the existing Russian Federation; just as they know next to nothing about the Caucasus (as the events of August 2008 demonstrated).
And yes, as you correctly point out, there is monitoring everywhere. There are even books about it now, that make no bones of what is no longer any kind of secret (I refer to "Body of Secrets" by James Bamford, not to mention recent UK blockbusters). In fact, if one calmly embraces the concept of total surveillance, it is much easier to get things done.
At least the debate is out in the open, and so, may the best arguments win.
As wicked as people can be (another story today in the UK of a 17 y.o. boy who killed his coeval girlfriend by dousing her with petrol and lighting her on fire), there is also a desire in every human society to achieve greater efficiency and thereby better outcomes. So arguments can still be effective as an instrument for persuasion. The drop wears down the stone.
At various moments in history, the whirlwind of events mangles lives. If you believe in Something Higher, then you imagine there may be some greater logic underlying the particulars of your own situation. Wherever you are, however you are, you "take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them."
If don't believe in any kind of overriding programme, then all the evil in the world is random, and one is left to ponder "whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune": in other words, accept all that is wrong with the way things are, and simply do nothing. "Suffer" -- not in the sense of "feel the pain of" but rather "to put up with."
Life in America has taught me that there are a great many Americans who deserve and desire a better way of being, in their own country.
Life in Europe has taught me that there are still people in Europe who remember all kinds of essential things, but they must overcome the timidity that two dreadful, monumental wars inevitably inculcated, as the legacy of the "anything-but-war" lessons broadly internalised.
Life in Russia has taught me that anything is possible, miracles do happen and -- rather crucially -- that there is Hope for Humankind. Even the worst of calamities can be overcome. And the eternal values are not the material ones.
(And yes, it bothers me no end when the editors do those ridiculous 'transcriptions' of Latinised names that were originally Russian back into a fractured mess of Cyrillic. It is, indeed, an insult -- to all kinds of people, myself included, whose original, difficult-for-English-speakers names were nonetheless a vital expression of personal identity that Russians "over there" out to respect, and not kick down the street by adopting some perverse method of re-transcription. Changing countries is hard. Yet it happens, all the time, and not just to the descendants of subjects of the Russian Empire. When European families moved to Russia, they had to spell their names using Russian letters; then, when their descendants wound up outside Russia again, there was never any difficulty about resuming the original spelling in the original language. Only our modern Russian ignoramuses persist in thus butchering one or two of my family names each time they are given the chance. It truly is revolting, and ought to stop.)
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Alice, about the palaces and so forth (No. 198): thank you very much for some priceless details.
And of course we entirely agree... Is it too late? I wonder, I really wonder... Only God knows. It is, undeniably, disgusting.
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maria-ashot, I took in note about arguments. I often skip them all together mea culpa because I think "it's common knowledge that" but surprisingly not so much may be it is a fact.
like Stellarbeloved or ChrisArta say "Alice thank you for the story" :o)))) - which means LOL 1./ looks improbable :o)))
2./ still interesting because a new look
So it means what I think is "all know" - not all at all.
Mavrelius, for example, clearly doesn't know! or else, why try to even bring forward Baby Yar against Russians.
Mavrelius - take note as well - maria-ashot is right - Russia within USSR had the least rights of all 15 republics. Because it had none of its own, and even its territory was defined as "what's left over of 14". Honestly.
All had flags, hymns, own official language for documents, and it was sponsored by state to be "you" while Russians constantly had to yield in to others.
Even the minimum survival LOL requirement - an own Communist Party of the republic - Russia DID NOT HAVE. Forget about "hymn".
When Kirov (Leningrad city mayor) - Communist Party member, and his communist subordinates - his office - began putting forward way too many sensible suggestions to Kremlin - bombarding it with silly letters type "every republic should have its core speciality. stop spreading butter evenly across with bits and pieces of the machine spread out at thousands of miles. this "even" distribution of production facility only eat at that facility profits, because of hilarious transportation costs. all feel equal but stupid. instead - 2-3 industries must be chosen for every USSR republic and nourished as their competency and driving force." (not bad for 1930-s, eh?
Well a dozen of such blaspenous ideas - and "The Leningrad Communist party branch was all in Gulag in minutes - the ones who were not shot in Lybianka, that is.
The verdict was: "For the plot to create a separate Communist Party of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic (!!!) and thus collapse the wholeness of the USSR".
Read into these wording, everybody. The last Tajik could have sovereignity, small, but own things, from Kremlin. Ukraine had. (had all - large chunks of "left-over" Russian Socialist Republic - were steadily passed over to it by all Ukrainian rulers - Khruschev, Brezhnev).
Only Russians were devoid of own identity in the USSR.
And then, Mavrelius, you tell me about "banners"?
That I am supposed to be depressed LOL, that the USA got from Russia in cold war a list of "banners" - Georgia, Eastern Europe, whatever you mentioned?
How to continue the thought o:)))) without offending much those banner places :o)))))))
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WA, you were the one who brought up the banners. You were the one who asked which banners America won in the cold war. I merely pointed out that the answer was all of them. As for offending them who cares. Who can deny that each of them is just one more meaningless jerkwater berg. Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Romania, so what? If Russia can't afford to hold on to its toys, that's Russia's problem. Frankly I know the problem. But when I run out of pet food, I just go to the supermarket and get some more usually with my cedit card. Looks like Russia just ran out of scratch and left the door unlocked so the poodles left home looking for scraps elsewhere. How lucky for them the EU had piles of them and some shiny new leashes once they were lured in. Who could be scared of 20 toy poodles on leashes yipping as they scamper down the street? Most people just watch them and laugh.
Face reality. Russia is a failed state. The sign that guy held up which said 72 years of going nowhere is out of date. Now it's 92 years.
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