EU plans to rein in banks
Why doesn't the European Union have a single regulator to oversee banks? After all, there are 40 big banks which operate in several different EU countries.
The Irish commissioner Charlie McCreevy would clearly love to go down this road, but says it is "devilish difficult" to get the agreement of individual countries to back such a plan. 
What he has come up with is the idea of "a college of supervisors". It means if a bank in one country wants to do business in another the respective regulators will get together to share information.
Mr McCreevy said that finance ministers had only given a "light benediction" to this plan. As for getting them to agree to pan-European regulation, he felt the current crisis should have galvanised ministers, but it has not. "It is a desperately difficult political debate. It is not going forward, because there would not be political support for it at all."
He's also announced some other measures to make the system more stable. Banks will be stopped from lending more than a quarter of their money to one individual or business. They will also have to share more of the risk of certain financial products with their customers.
Trade commissioner Peter Mandelson told me: "We have recognised for some time there is a need for change, a need for tightening, a need for greater prudence frankly, because what we've seen operating is not simply an American export, we've seen how these elements have developed across the world: an excess of risk-taking, frankly some would say greed, but also some poor policy and decision-making. The point about markets is that they function fine as long as there is somebody there second-guessing when risk or policy is getting a little bit out of control."
I put it to him that some would say "here we go again: more red tape, more regulations from the EU".
"Well, what is the alternative?" he replied. "We don't want deterioration in our financial system, we don't want to be any more exposed than we need to be to the contagion spread from the United States. A lot of the financial system in Europe operates across borders, so we need an overall European role to supervise it. Not to replace national regulators, but to support them, enable them to collaborate and co-operate."
Quick note to Tomireland, who is disturbed by my "non-reporting" of the European arrest warrant. It was introduced in May 2005, a few months before I got this job so it is a bit old hat as a news story. Do you mean this? I agree worth keeping an eye on.
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I would go further and say we need a world regulator.
All the Markets are linked now and the all effect each other. The world needs one set of rules which is enforced on everyone, otherwise this situation could easily happen again.
As for
"EU trial in absence plan defended" i believe this was discussed by bloggers in the 'how to spot the English' blog
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Seems to me like the EU is thinking about closing the barn door now that the horses have escaped and are by now about five counties away. It sounds like a case of too little too late. Besides how are you going to convince member governments to end the cozy relationships their largest banks have with their most powerful and wealthiest citizens. Who for example will protect the Mafia's money from public scrutiny? Do you think they want to have to go to Switzerland every time they need cash for some "special project?"
Even if such a plan could be enacted, the next high rolling fast money making scheme to come out of the US in say five years or so would see money fly across the Atlantic faster than an SST if Europeans couldn't copy America again. Does anyone think the current credit crisis in the US was the first or will be the last time something like this happens?
WhiteEnglishProud, any effort to impose international regulations on American banks would meet with war. America would sooner nuke Europe to cinders than allow its banks to come under the rule of outsiders.
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As to the main topic:
For the most part Eurozone banks will cooperate with with the ECB - they may even cooperate with some EU Quango that is equivalent of the UK's FSA - IF the Heads of Government agree to that (and I would not hold my breath for that to happen!) - but the chances of UK-based banks being regulated by the Bank of England, the FSA and some EU Quango or even the ECB - forget it. No UK Goverment is going to even consider it as something to even think about.
If this EU Banking Regulator Quango were to come about - expect another UK opt-out.
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Mark,
Firstly, the European arrest warrant is more dangerous to the freedom and welfare of Britons than the current economic crisis.
Secondly, The move by the Irish to guarantee deposits in Irish banks causes some serious headaches for the EU:
They cannot accept such a 'protectionist' move as this provides Irish banks with an unfair commercial advantage - especially in euros - contrary to the single market competition rules. If, however, they come down hard on Ireland, then there is little chance that the Irish government will agree to a second poll on the Lisbon (Constitutional) Treaty - and the Irish people will be even more angry at EU intervention in Irish affairs.
All very satisfying.
MarcusAureliusII: An understandable sentiment. Fortunately this is unlikely to come to pass as even the EU Commission is not that stupid. (On the other hand.... Any chance of the US developing a neutron bomb that affects only EUrocrats?)
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any effort to impose international regulations on American banks would meet with war.
They could not be imposed your government is aready talking about new regulation for banks it would be something that was international discussed and agreed.
I see your back into crazy nationalist mode.
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Re: arrest warrant
I agree with Menedemus (no. 1) that the law against Holocaust denial is (to quote a German commentator whose name eldues me) a "silly law for silly people". However, surely the point here is that this man alledgedly denied the Holocaust in Germany and thereby committed an offence. Likewise, obviously the police in the UK would laugh if the Singaporean courts wanted them to arrest and extradite all UK gum chewers unless the gum chewers were alledged to have chewed gum during a visit to Singapore. Well okay they might still laugh in practice, but is this a valid distinction?
I'm curious as to why Menedemus' comment has been taken off? Didn't seem offensive at all.
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WhiteEnglishProud
Sovereignty may not mean much to Europeans who not only gave theirs up but forgot what it is but rest assured that it is still very much alive and kicking in the US.
I think if Obama becomes President, many especially in Europe who wanted to see him elected will be surprised at just how protectionist he will be.
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I cannot believe my comment at #1 has been removed?
Off-topic? I can hardly think so given that Mark included the topic in this item.
Racist? I can hardly believe so as I twice iterated my own distaste for Holocaust Deniers.
Perhaps I have been wonked simply because someone doesn't agree with my concerns over the threat to freedom of speech that my comment at #1 was trying to highlight.
I feel like my freedom of speech has been somewhat curtailed by this wonk!
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i agree with wep that finance is a global industry and needs to be regulated globally. however the eu should have a very important role in this, particularly in moderating the populist tendencies of the us congress (though hopefully this will moderate once the us elections are out of the way).
if we are moving towards a financial model that relies on even bigger banks, it is important to create real competition amongst european banks. otherwise the likes of hbos-lloyds will become way too dominant.
btw this crisis is going to get a lot lot bigger..
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Mark - Please ask your moderators why they removed Menedemus's comment @1.
What 'house rule' was broken?
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jon_toronto @ #7
My point was not to belittle the offence committed in Germany (perhaps that is what someone thinks I was trying to do?)but try to emphasise that International Extradition Agreements have always required that the offence for which extradition is sought must be a reciprocal offence in the detaining country.
In the UK there is no offence of Holocaust Denial although such people are often belittled and despised.
Thus, the new EU Arrest Warrant is being used to detain someone in the UK for an offence that does not exist in the UK and highlights the inequity of the article to which Mark himself relates above in his final paragraph (and if my post has been removed for being off-topic then I am truly amazed!) with the link Mark provides.
Arguably, this event highlights the fact that anyone, anywhere in the EU could be arrested and handed over to another EU country without any arguments for any offence that the extraditing country might like to dream up!
Holocaust Denial is an offence in about 10 EU countries but it is not an offence for which you would normally be arrested in the UK where freedom of speech is considered sacrosanct unless you post on a BBC Blog!
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MarcusAureliusII
I have no problem with the U.S wanting to keep its Sovereignty and even being protectionist. I see this as good sense.
just as internationally agreed regulation for banks would be good.
The two concepts are not mutually exclusive.
This is not a Soveregnty issue as such but it is about protecting national institutions from abuse and corruption.
An internationally agreed set of rules for all banks world wide would help protect from this problem reacuring.
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WhiteEnglishProud @ #13
There is one problem with international watchdogs operating under international rules and IAEA is a prime example of how it can all go boss-eyed and become a problem rather than a solution.
The IAEA has 35 members. Some or all of the posts are up for election by the International Community.
Both Iran and Syria were competing with one another for one of the seats. Iran has stood down and you can expect Syria to get a seat on the IAEA - the very organisation that is investigating both Syria and Iran for irregularities when it comes to nuclear proliferation and clandestine attempts to create nuclear weapons.
One can well imagine the IEAA eventually back-tracking on investigating Syrian nuclear research and soft-peddling on Iran despite US protestations.
Fast forward to some future global Bank Regulatory Body - you could have Lichenstein, Monaco, Venuezela, Iran, Bolivia, Cuba and Switzerland overseeing Wall Street and the London City banks and I can imagine Marcus going for his guns and bombs now!
Dogs being in charge of the Kennels is a phrase that springs to mind.
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I did not see Menedemus's comment at #1 but I would be very surprised if it were either offensive or irrelevant. If people are going to register complaints when they don't agree with someone, we may as well all stop blogging.
With regard to internationalising the regulation of banks, I fail to see how this could be realistic - even within the EU - if different countries are singing from different hymn sheets. If it is possible to construct a rule book on which all can agree, maybe in the mid term some agreement could be forthcoming but I have my doubts. We can already see the problems within the euro zone when member countries are at different phases of the economic cycle and low interest rates which suit some situations do not help in others. Add to that the complexities of working in a number of different currencies and the problem is confounded. We have already been through periods when the pound has fluctuated quite dramatically against the euro. When and if the UK decides to commit to the euro, that may be different but, at present, I do not believe it is workable.
Regarding trial in absentia, prima facie evidence is sufficient to secure extradition and there is absolutely no good reason for not using these provisions to bring an alleged offender before the courts of the country where the offense is alleged to have been committed. It is therefore a red herring and yet another attempt to short circuit the judicial process and mitigate against the rights of ordinary people.
On the subject of holocaust denial, I can say only that the howls of derision that generally greet futile attempts to rewrite history ought to be enough deterrence for anyone with a grain of common sense. In Britain, prison has generally been used to protect people from people who do dangerous things but not - so far - people who have dangerous ideas. I despise denilaists but certainly do not want to see them in prison cells which ought to be occupied by thugs and muggers.
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EU's proposal is not a new idea but a testament to Japan's banking experience since the property bubble crash of the early 90s.
What the Japanese realised is that their banks are actually privileged franchisees of the money creation process. If MacDonalds, Seven-Eleven etc always insist that their franchisees adhere to the company's performance standards.
Why not a Central Bank in its supervision of the commercial banks and other quasi financial institutions?
The Banks' capability and culpability in circumventing any banking regulations should never be underestimated. A simple concept like value at risk that demands some integrity not legalese is made a mockery by them. They insured their default risk via CDS and in its place they take on the risk of the underwriter which was reckoned to be of lesser magnitude and weight. All done in a scenario of imperfect information. Guess what's next? A major underwriter, AIG went bust. But they were undisturbed as AIG is rescued by the US Govt.
I just wonder how good the banking regulations and supervision can be?
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"The era of American global leadership, reaching back to the Second World War, is over... The American free-market creed has self-destructed while countries that retained overall control of markets have been vindicated."
"In a change as far-reaching in its implications as the fall of the Soviet Union, an entire model of government and the economy has collapsed.
"How symbolic that Chinese astronauts take a spacewalk while the US Treasury Secretary is on his knees."
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Some posts get banned automatically. In my case for inputing a web link.
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#17 - WhiteEnglishProud
The quote looks familiar - The Observer quoted by Justin Webb?
It would be a serious mistake to write off the United States as a spent force. It would be downright madness to wish it away. For all it's faults - and they are many and manifest - the USA remains a great country and a powerful force for good in the world. A great deal of the anger that is currently being directed against the States is sheer sour grapes.
I will rail against the iniquities of the Bush administration, cry foul over Iraq and condemn Guantanamo. I will tell them the death penalty is barbaric and that a society that does not provide universal health care is a basket case. I will doubtless be extremely unpopular. But I will not turn against them. The bottom line is that there are roughly 300 million people who may not agree on much but are damned sure that freedom, democracy and tolerance are the only true values worth standing up for. These are values we share here in Europe and we should be supportive of them wherever we find them.
(Don't worry Marcus, I'll get over it!)
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Rob_Hob @ #18
Not as far as I could tell - the post appeared and I double-checked the link which worked fine . . . it was to a BBC webpage so it is not an illegal link?
I expect someone has complained but, whatever, the post is in the hands of the moderators and that seems to take ages to resolve.
It just seems daft to me and it unfortunately kills the flow of discussion as responses get left in isolation as readers cannot see the start of the discussion!
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#19
I think there is a lot in what you say.
I would not wish to write off the US with a stroke of a pen, or deny that there is much that is valuable (and much that is not) in the US.
However I do think that the current economic turmoil is not so much "the problem" as "a symptom of the problem".
That "problem" in my view is the gradual shift of economic power away from the US and Western Europe and towards the Middle East and Far East.
I would liken that gradual shift of economic power to the gradual shift in the tectonic plates in the earth's crust - which sometimes results in a sudden and unexpected earthquake.
I think we are now seeing one of those financial earthquakes - as it happens this one is particularly severe because the banks have been hard hit.
When a bank sneezes the businesses that borrow from it can get a nasty dose of influenza!
Even assuming the $700 bn bailout goes ahead, and governments around the world do everything they can, I think we shall see a lot of 'Main Street' businesses with influenza soon.
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... if the automatic link ban is done by some kind of automatic bot, who knows how it was set up. I put in a link to Nature webpage... yes the prestigious science journal LOL . It banned the post. Eventually my message reappeared, WITH the link.
However, I agree that in a fast moving discussion this can interrupt the flow of "conversation".
In addition, in some of the exchanges with Russia as the main topic, I believe some of my posts were refered for moderation without a good reason, just to remove them from the discussion. Either to disrupt the discussion, or purely maliciously.
This moderation system here is a bit flawed. A post should not disappear when it is refered to the moderators, but ONLY be removed AFTER it is reviewd and found to breach the rules. In this way the moderation option is less likely to be abused.
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#20 - Menedemus
#22 - Rob_Hob
I figured out the bot operates using a database of prohibited words and symbols. It appears to be updated from time to time to take account of people who deliberately misspell obscenities to bypass it. I imagine this is done by a human being periodically but otherwise it is an automated process.
The characters that are banned are ones which could be used to introduce htm mark up language to prevent high jacking. Commonly these will be things like currency symbols (which is why it won't let you type the GBP symbol). The problem is that these are also widely used in web addresses so if you attempt to post a web address containing anything other than alphanumerics, chances are it will be modded out automatically.
However, if your post appears then vanishes, it is 99% sure that someone hit the 'Complain' link because, at that stage, no human being has looked at it. Why they would do that is beyond me but it is all I can think of.
PS. Menedemus. Would be interested to know what was in that post if you have a minute.
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threnodio @ #23
Unfortunately as I did not think my comment could possibly offend I did not keep a copy!
The link is http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7646556.stm
In essence, I was suggesting that if the extradition on conviction were in force this guy would be returned to Germany without test for a prima facie case being tested.
Under 'normal' extradition rules a person may only be extradited from the UK if there is a reciprocal offence on the UK Statute Books.
In this case no such law exists so the guy could not and would not be extradited in normal circumstances.
Further proof that the proposed extradition without test for prima facie case (the link to which is in the last paragraph of Mark's item) is bad for justice for the individual as individual countries could extradite for the most unusual of offences that other countries might not consider a crime.
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#19 threnodio, yes, even my Russian media tells me USA will be on the horse 10 yrs more.
menedemus I managed to read your comment before it was licked away by a passing by cow. This grabatising of people in one EU country, after they were found in breach of the law in another EU country, may I vaguely hope it is about EU citisens?
(Imagine for a visiting Russian to study in advance laws of 38 countries!)
And what if an Englishment violates the laws of France - not the French one violates French laws, but a subject of another country? Will Germany grab that Englishman then?
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#24 - Menedemus
I absolutely agree with you on the principle. In this particular case, there may be a loophole. I notice the indictment refers to material 'of an anti-Semitic nature'. That might just meet the test for the British offence of inciting racial hatred. If so, there would be equivalent legislation and that -I think - is enough.
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#25 - WebAliceinwonderland
Yes. If there is a warrant for your arrest issued by any EU country, you are can be arrested in any member state.
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WebAliceinwonderland @25
Unless Russia joins the EU you are safe where you are in St Petersburg - in fact . . . . I'm split between moving to Russia or the Maldives Islands the way it's going!
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threnodio @26
Toben has been detained in custody and a court in the UK will determine the prima facie case. He represented himself at first hearing and has claimed "abuse of process" already.
We can but await the outcome but my fear is that a precedent may be set here.
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The EU Arrest Warrant is a very dangerous instrument, sign of things to come. The EU is slowly becoming some sort of police 'state'. One already has seen persecution and intimidation of whistleblowers. One sees how EU decisionmaking is removed from the influence of directly elected (national) parliaments. One sees how EU politicians award themselves doubly goldplated pensions and how they don't have to pay income tax.
Back on topic, it is no surprise the anti-democratic EU wants to use this 'crisis' to grab more powers for itself (whilst posing as a 'saviour').
When are people finally going to stop accepting the unelected EU politburo's orders? Who do these unelected anti-democratic kommissars think they are?
As usual, the first proposal seems benign enough, but is meant to get the foot in the door. Once that is done, proposals will be incomplete, so as to increase the change of member states demanding more complete regulation, and then the anti-democratic commission will gladly step in claiming 'the peoples' have asked for 'more Europe'. This process is known as 'gearing' (aka engrénage), the way the EU usurps competences which it doesn't yet possess.
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#29 - Menedemus
Tobin was arrested in transit and is an Australian national. I imagine the government has no authority to confiscate his passport (probably the Crown has but it would require Australian High Commission authority) and bail was not granted to prevent him simply moving on.
You may be right about a dangerous precedent but, if the extradition goes ahead, I will not be satisfied with the headlines. I will want to read the law report before condemning it outright. There is an alternative which is expulsion but I cannot see the courts risking him being extradited to Germany from a non-EU country.
There is another issue here too, becoming more common in the internet age. Where were the websites hosted, where was the material uploaded from and where was it written? If not within German or UK jurisdiction, Tobin may have an out.
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Mark mardell asks:
"Why doesn't the European Union have a single regulator to oversee banks?"
Because it cannot regulate its own accounts which the auditors have refused to tick off for years. 14?
Because the "EU" contains too many people from countries which have a string tradition of corruption e.g. Italy. I could not possible want an Italian to regulate my bank. That would be yet one more reason to try to escape from the "EU".
Because the "EU" is trying to impose a Greater European Reich on an unwilling population. It uses any excuse to try to extend its powers. It would use the camouflage of regulation to gain access to our private details, which it would misuse.
Because we seem to be moving towards a pan-European police state: European Arrest Warrant, European Gendarmes etc. Cooperation would be OK but they want to turn cooperation into integration and for that reason all cooperation becomes suspect.
GET ME OUT!!!
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#28 Menedemus darling you are welcome.
Only remember it's Wild West here, if you seem to have too many laws, we seem to have too little.
That is they are, someplace in the books, heaps of them, and they are very nice to read, I mean our Constitution is the loveliest of all in the world. Has all freedoms of the US best pre-historic standards + all freedoms that was possible to borrow from others. It was Yeltsin times and since that all our Governments dearly regret they missed the point and allowed such a hilarious, individual-protecting, generous constitution to be accepted, they'd gladly incinerate it.
Problem is nobody minds it, whole books of criminal, administrative, whatever law chapters were never applied in practice.
Separate laws here are fished out only when someone in power needs a suitable law.
So remember if you come here doctors aren't going to be responsible for your health, not one was yet sewed here, police is not going to pick up the phone, if somebody drives over you he just drives over and away, and it will be your problem to find him and catch him and tie him and drag to a useless court. Who will eventually take a decision but no one will be going to fulfill it. And if you ensure your life in advance, the insurance company will run away with your money. In fact, I don't know anybody who has a health, life or house insurance. No idiots.
I hope this explains why Russians think that so long awaited capitalism and democracy proved to be utopia. Charles Dickens Great Expectations Part 2. So when West insists that we should have more democracy Russians hide in the corners and mentally plead "Oh please, not more!"
Compared to our previous USSR now life became so dangerous.
So I'd think Maldives will be a more organised direction.
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I am thinking ab emigrating to Belorussia.
They live like in our Stalin times, a softer version. When someone is late to work for 10 minutes, Stalin put those to prizon. Belorussian chap fires from job instead.
But things work there like a clock. There a police officer would pick up the phone and actually come to your resque if you phone and scream blue murder. And if someone drives over a child, they find who it was, it won't be the duty of parents.
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WEP #13
"MarcusAureliusII
I have no problem with the U.S wanting to keep its Sovereignty and even being protectionist. I see this as good sense.
just as internationally agreed regulation for banks would be good.
The two concepts are not mutually exclusive."
Of course they are. When you don't control your money, you don't have any sovereignty. The US will not allow an international body to reach into America to tell it what to do about money. Many of us would like to see the US pull out of every treaty it's involved in except for bilateral trade which we can always renegotiate.
"This is not a Soveregnty issue as such but it is about protecting national institutions from abuse and corruption."
You must be joking. Your own government is as corrupt as it can get. It's fighting investigation of itself for paying Saudi Princes up to two billion dollars in bribes to get 44 billion in military contracts. It claims this investigation would jeopardize its national security.
"An internationally agreed set of rules for all banks world wide would help protect from this problem reacuring."
Who are you kidding? The EU's own books cannot be certified by accountants for over ten years. How do you think banks in China or Saudi Arabia would comply. In Switzerland, just the thought of opening up their books to find out which drugs and arms dealers are laundering money is a national anathema. Besides, for the most part, it wasn't violation of the rules which created this current mess, it was the rules themselves.
threnodio #19
#17 - WhiteEnglishProud
" The bottom line is that there are roughly 300 million people who may not agree on much but are damned sure that freedom, democracy and tolerance are the only true values worth standing up for. These are values we share here in Europe and we should be supportive of them wherever we find them."
Who are you trying to kid? Europeans talk and talk and talk but when it's time for action there is no action. Every generation of Europeans since WWII failed to defend freedom, it was very unpopular to talk about it. From Czechoslovakia being sold out to Nazi Germany before WWII, to its reluctance to fight the USSR in the cold war (it had to be dragged kicking and screaming by the US just to allow America to station troops, missiles, and warships there) to the refusal for the most part to send troops to Iraq even though it was its own oil imports at stake (the US got most of its oil elsewhere) to its unwillingness to send adequate troops to Afghanistan (except for Britain.) Afghanistan is a war the US will have to fight almost entirely by itself just like Iraq if it wants to win because European so called NATO allies are fair weather friends, parade ground soldiers who even when they go to Afghanistan in small numbers are often restricted in what their governments will let them do. In the Balkins they were helpless and hopeless. Give me one example of where Europe has fought for freedom in any meaningful way ever. In the Falklands for the sheep? America does not need Europe. We'd be far better off severing all ties.
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Marcus Aurellius II
I told you I'd get over it.
I just did.
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35 Markovetsky!
What was the profit for the Europe to allow you to station your troops there post 2ndWW?
All communism-spread-around-the world ' romantics and idealists expired in Russia by that time.
From 2ndWW on there was ZERO threat for Europe that USSR will expand further into it.
We took what was pre-agreed by Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill, before Berlin.
We didn't take an inch more. Though we could, Red Army having got Austria. But Vienna was not in the deal, so USSR let it
go.
The freedoms you blame Europe doesn't fight along your side whole-heartily in places - are questionable, to say the least.
Who did you bring "freedom" to - in your overseas expeditions? You are a failure in foreign policies, that's why they don't want to ride along you in it. Iraq, Afhganistan and Pakistan look far from freedom.
Even Russia looks a better freedom, come to think about it! I guess only because you haven't been there.
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And why did Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill strike a deal at all?
It was a swap - we take backwoods, Eastern Europe, in exchange for USSR stepping into the war in the Pacific.
At that point you were not yet sure your bomb will work. What was more dear to USA - future of operations in the Pacific - or "Easties" ? Easy choice.
Japan did not declare war to USSR, it fought you, but not us.
There was no reason on earth to Russia, having just survived and barely liberated itself, and having traced the beast back to its den in Berlin - to start a war with Japan!
The last thing anybody wanted here.
However this was the price set for us to pay for the Eastern Europe. For two months after May9th armies were re-located - across the whole space- from Berlin - to occupied China! The deal was we declare war to Japan in August and fight Japanese in China. Trains and trains went non-stop the whole summer across Russia. oldiers wanted to get home - and instead they were sent to fight a new war - in China!
And we fought it, honestly, and lost millions there in 1 month. More than the whole Europe combined in the whole war before.
Took most China. You think it was easy?
And would have lost far more, but luckily at this point USA dropped the bloody bombs and finished off the disaster.
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Nanotchka;
I don't know where in Wonderland these fairly tales come from but they are quite funny and fantastic. The USSR entered the war against Japan a few days before the Atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The purpose was to enter before it was over so that it could sieze northern Islands from Japan. As a result, Japan has had bad relations with Russia for 63 years and it will not get better until the Russians return Japan's land. This is something they say they will never do.
Had the US not remained in Europe during the cold war, the USSR would have extended its empire all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. As it was, the US and the USSR fought through surrogates all over the world including Asia, Africa, and even in South America as Cuba tried to organize a revolution in Venezuela (where Guevera was killed) and would have taken over Chile had Allende not been assassinated. As it was, not only was Austria barely saved from being taken prisoner of the Soviet slave empire, so was Greece.
Communism was also making inroads in southeast Asia, not just Vietnam but Laos and Cambodia. We believe that American prisoners were kept captive in North Korea for many decades. During the 1973 Yom Kippur war, as I recall Sadat suddenly threw the USSR out of their Country when it appeared they were about to stage a communist coup. The Soviet efforts to take over the world nearly ended in the extinction of the entire human race.
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Marcus.
Much of what Alice writes comes from the 'official' history of the Soviet era but some of it is surprisingly close to the truth despite the revisionism.
The appeasement at Munich was not so much an attempt to secure 'peace in our time' as a recognition that intervention at that point was doomed to failure. Britain and France were simply not ready. Keeping the powder dry for a further few months was probably one of the key factors in the eventual outcome. The occupation by the Soviets of the Baltic States was unconscionable but Roosevelt did sign up for it. It is true that Stalin honoured his commitment not to remain in occupation of Austria. The repression of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1966 were contrary to the Casablanca agreement but Stalin was long dead.
The partitioning of Europe in a literal and physical way tend to indicate that the Soviets had no territorial ambitions beyond the Iron Curtain within Europe and, while they doubtless could have expanded, they were aware of the cost in an age of mutually assured destruction. The US conventional presence in western Europe although large and expensive was mainly symbolic and the risk of a conventional war never great.
The determination of the USA in the last century to seek to dominate Latin America led to some of the most sinister covert activities committed by either side in the whole Cold War period. The trade off in the Iran Contra affair was shabby and the forced removal by force of the only Marxist government ever to be freely and fairly elected by the people in Chile was about as reprehensible an act as one can contemplate flying in the face of everything the US claimed to stand for.
The Brezhnev Doctrine, or Kissinger's Domino Theory, have been largely discredited. In south east Asia, the British had effectively dealt with the communist threat on the Malay peninsular before Vietnam kicked off. The ignominious departure from Vietnam - what were you doing there in the first place? - left both Cambodia and Laos unresolved. If Chile was your moral nadir, Vietnam was your strategic nadir. The French fouled it up and you conspicuously failed to fix it despite massive firepower and terrible losses. A complete waste of money, resources and human life.
The Yom Kippur was was an invasion by Egypt and Syria and, while both were voluntarily client states of the USSR at the time, there is no evidence of a wider communist plot. Sadat was president of Egypt - not a likely person I would have thought to throw the 'reds' out of Israel.
You are correct only in one respect. The Cold War was mainly fought by client states. Its main purpose was to secure influence in regions which were susceptible to political alignment on idealistic grounds - which pretty much excluded Europe - and its ultimate outcome has far more to do with the failure of the economic model than any military considerations.
The United States did not 'save' the free world. She played her part and sought in return the right to build it in her own image. This belief in your moral superiority has done you no favours and may be coming back to haunt you. It certainly does not justify the high handed arrogance with which you treat your allies and friends in this context.
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#39.
Three ha-ha!
As a specialist in looking-glasses, I assure you Americans are surrounded by mirrors.
Whenever you glance - you see only yourself.
All your ideas about the war is to fly over and bomb from the height.
You don't have a clue how to fight on the ground, strong dis-like for this kind of war.
I see US history text-books have missed a minor trifle - war on land in China.
How do you plan to stand against China in future, I wonder, if you skip history?
We fought there, on the ground, took China.
And took OUR islands, grabbed by Japan in the perv. Russo-Japanese wars, in the turn of the 19th-to 20th centuries.
What an ungrateful war partner you are! No wonder other don't want to join you.
The moment you got equipped with the first in the world nuclear bomb, you have forgotten that Russia destroyed Japanese armies in China, and FYI - they didn't plan to surrender a sec. They formed a new Jap government, unhappy with their emperor, who chickened out after USA bombed Japan.
We fought there, in the total meat-grinder, on the land, for 2 weeks like hell, and for 2 weeks more destroying disagreeable leftovers here and there.
It's you fight for years. USSR got prepared, and stormed China at once with multi-million groups, from 3 directions at once, at 01:00 the night 8th to 9th August, as was in the Stalin-Churchill-Roosevelt deal. And swept it clean in 2 weeks.
It's your way to sit in occupied lands for years and do nil. When we start the war we make it.
And you have clean forgotten that Eastern Europe USSR occupied in the result of the agreement with USA and Britain.
The moment you got a nuclear bomb - we immediately became "chokers of freedom."
And you began your teaching lessons to the world, what freedom is, and still continue.
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#40 threnodio
My ideas ab Chinese operation are not taken from Soviet propaganda.
They are from the British film, documentary, lasts 2 hours and a half. Black and white, old film, in English. First I thought it is American, I honestly don't know who made it in 1960-s, but the voice is not American, it is your BBC English.
Russian voice-over bad translation, I was catching the English words.
I saw it 3 years ago, at 4 o'clock in the morning, shown at that time no doubt that hardly anyone would be able to see it.
Soviet propaganda view-point on the war in China is IT NEVER BEEN EVER. We have never strepped into China. It became communistic simply because it loved our ideas of Communism. Great Patriotic war stopped 9th May 1945, period. Eastern Europe simply asked to be joined to the USSR. Their most hearty desires. There wasn't a Roosevelt-Stalin-Churchill deal, that we declare war to Japan in 3 months EXACTLY after Berlin is taken.
All the trains relocating Red Army from Europe to borderline with China went in total secrecy. In Russian history this is called "unknown war". Everyone who fought there signed a pledge of secrecy.
If he said he's been in China he was shot.
Trains moved camouflaged, with closed up windows and platforms. Surely all Russia knew. But noone dared to say a word.
The Soviet propaganda standpoint was:
We never stroke any deals with capitalists.
And never helped USA.
This is impossible by definition.
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Alice, you really do live in Wonderland and not just on the web. You need to get some history books that were not written by Soviet and Russian revisionists. Russia lost a war to Japan in 1905. I think it was President Theodore Roosevelt who helped Russia negotiate the peace treaty to make the defeat less humiliating to the Russians than it already was. The US fought all over the world on the ground. In the Pacific against Japan island by island, in Vietnam, in Europe against the Nazis, and in the most recent invasion of Iraq in 2003. Saddam Hussein was expecting another aerial bombardment, not a ground attack and was taken completely by surprise.
It is true that American military strategy invariably begins with taking control over the skies. It makes whatever happens next a much more one sided affair. The USSR entered the war against Japan only a short time before the end. It was the US which accepted the surrender of Japan and MacArthur ran the country for several years until its Parliamentary government was installed. Strange, the Japanese regarded him as some kind of god during that time. Russia played no part in it. China was taken by a Communist army led by Mao Tse Tung. The role the USSR played was merely to supply them with weapons. The function of the USSR in WWII was to supply an endless stream of bodies to march to their deaths against the Wermacht to keep as much of it tied down in the east as possible so that the US could defeat the Nazis in the west while it along with Britain bombed their cities and factories to rubble. And that is what the USSR did losing somewhere between 10 and 20 million while being supplied by the US with money and arms. Yes I know about the soviet tanks, big deal. It was by sheer numbers of soldiers who would be shot in the back by Soviets if they didn't march forward to be shot in the front by Nazis and the Russian winter which defeated the Nazis in the east, not any special courage or cunning.
Your brain has been "grabatized" by some of the best liars in the world. It might shock you one day to actually learn the truth for a change.
BTW, there isn't and probably never will be a reason for the US to go to war against China. China is the dirty factory of semiskilled hands which spews industrial waste and chemical pollution all over its country to build America's products which would cost far more to manufacture cleanly and safely here at home in the US. It's also a large source of funding. If you want to read who is really at war with China, read Harrison Salsbury's book "The Coming War Between Ruissia and China" which actually started in 1959 even though we in the west didn't know it. In a recent book about Russia, a former KGB agent says that after the US and NATO, China is seen by Russia as its main enemy. Another good book was written in the 1960s by the Soviet dissident Andrei Amalrik "Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?" These books have extensive references on Google. Read some of them and learn the truth if you can stand it.
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#42 - WebAliceinwonderland
I am not talking about Soviet Propaganda - I am talking about the revisionist view of history from an academic standpoint, mainly for western consumption. They could hardly pretend the Chinese war did not happen could they? But please don't ask me to name my sources because I studied it years ago and my books are long passed on to other students.
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Marcovsky!
At any moment anyone on this God's green Earth can get hold of an acquainted German and ask who beat them - allied forces combined, USA or Red Army.
Easy.
Also, Germans are very accurate re data.
Their books say that in their frontline from the White to the Black sea Germany kept 95% of its ground forces.
German data for year 1941. This is the max from the 2ndWW.
To 74% of its ground forces ? German data for the end of 1944.
This is the minimum there was employed to fight Russia.
The front length inside Russia was 4,000 km, 1941.
6,500 km in 1942.
Western front at its max 800 km.
North-African ? 350 km.
Italian ? 300 km.
Russian?German front existed 1,418 days.
Active war in it 1,320 days.
Italian front. 663 days. Active 492.
Western front. Duration 338 days. Active ? 293.
North African front. Duration 973. Active ? 309.
_________
About how exactly successfully you fought Japan.
Japan occupied China in 1937. The capital, Pekin, was taken 29 July 1937. Occupation of China was done by Kwantune Japanese army, who didn?t agree its actions with the Japanese emperor in Japan, but from the ver. beg. acted independently.
Left-overs of Chinese army, so-called Gomindan, stepped back into the Southern China and formed there a government in exhile with the capital in Chuntsin city.
By 1941 Japan controlled all Northern and Central China.
__________
In 1938-1939 Japanese Kwantun army from China tried to grab Russian Far East and Mongolia. We fought them and won 2 big battles: by Hasan lake, and the Khalhin-Hol battle.
Kwantun army shrank back into China. These victories stopped further Japanese expansion North, and taught it not to fight USSR in the following years 1941-1945.
Which was very timely, because USSR wouldn?t survive two fronts ? Eastern with Hitler and Pacific with Japan.
Meanwhile Vichi government in fallen France stroke a deal with Japan ?for the combined ruling of Indo-China.?
8 Dec 1941 Japan attacked British Hong-Kong, The Phillippines, Thailand and Malaya, simultaneously Pearl Harbour, 7 Dec in fact because of the time difference.
21 Dec 1941 Thailand surrended to Japan.
25 Dec 1941 Japan took Hong-Kong, approx. at the same time fell US bases in the small islands, Guam and Wake.
In Jan 1942 Japan attacked Birma, Dutch East India, New Guinea and Solomon islands; took Manila, Kuala-Lumpur and Rabaul.
15 Feb 1942 fell Singapore. 130,000 captured by 35,000 Japanese army.
Then Japan took Bali.
9 March 1942 allied forces surrended in Java.
Britain was kicked off Rangun in the border between Birma and India.
8 May 1942 surrended 80,000 American troops in the Phillippines.
Having practically destroyed all aviation forces in South-East Asia, Japan began aviation raids to Australia.
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I have always been completely mystified by the Japanese decision to attack Pearl Harbour. If Japan had pursued her Asian interests without involving the States, I think there is a fair chance that the US would have embraced isolationism, Russia could not have sustained a land defence on two fronts, mainland Europe would have been lost and Britain either bombed into the ground or forced to agree to German terms and the war would have been lost.
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The Germans said that fighting the Russians was like an elephant being devoured by ants. That and the Russian winter which is why Napoleon lost, not the great Russian army which was not so great. As I said, the function of the eastern front was to tie down as much of the Wermacht as possible for as long as possible so that the allies could bomb Germany flat and win in Africa and on both the Southern and Western fronts in Europe. Russia did this by supplying an endless parade of human cannon fodder to be turned into corpses. Interesting that in the Gulag Archipelago, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn said that once Soviet red army prisoners were liberated from the German POW camps, they were immediately arrested and put into Soviet prison camps for having committed the crime of having seen the outside world beyond the Soviet borders even though it was only in prison.
I had an intersting chat with a German schoolteacher on a plane ride (NY-Paris) one night around 1973. I asked him what they taught students in Germany about Hitler and the Nazis. He said they told them he had done a "lot of bad things." That was about all they said in those days. I don't think they even began to come to grips with the truth until the 1980s and I am not sure they still fully accept it. For instance, an American historian wrote a book after uncovering strong evidence for the fact that was long denied and still is that the vast majority of Germans knew or at least strongly suspected exactly what was going on in the concentration camps insofar as the mass murder of helpless people as many Germans who worked there sent home photos and letters as souveninrs to their families. In a visit to Savanah Georgia in 1989 I got an entirely different perspective of the Civil war from a local tour guide than I'd gotten growing up and being taught in New York City schools. And of course, many European revisionists of the history of the cold war would have you believe that it was Pope Paul II or Gorbachev who brought an end to the cold war and that trillions of dollars of American military hardware including 20,000 hydrogen bombs and hundreds of thousands of American military personnel stationed in Europe and the far east for over 40 years had nothing to do with it. This brings up an interesting point. Someone said, I can't remember who, that history is a pack of lies played upon the dead. Personally, if someone from Europe tells me something, I say there's about a one in a hundred chance that I will believe it just based on who said it. And worst of all, many times I think they actually believe what they say. How fortunate that there are countless thousands of hours of actual filmed documentary evidence of these eras in history to refute the revisionists and now an internet where it cannot be surpressed.
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Markovsky, have a look here how Russian Marshal Derevyanko takes Japan capitulation.
Sitting at the table signing the paper.
Recognise your own ship Missouri?
2 Sep, Tokio gulf.
McArthur stands behind Derevyanko and bla-bla-s something into the microphone for the journalists.
Unlike you aaaaah-n-educated Aaaah-merican I know the capitulation was signed by:
McArthur for USA
Freiser for Britain
Konstantin Derevyanko for USSR
Bleimi for Australia
Kosgreiv for Canada
LeClerc for France
and Hsu. Jun. and even - Chen! from China.
victory.rusarchives.ru photo 498
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Marcus
No one ended the Cold War.
It simply fizzled out. The Soviets simply could not sustain their own economic decline, the defence of vast tracts of the old continent which did not want them there, the repression of the Warsaw Pact, the advent of new technologies which made a nonsense of their attempts at censorship and the tide of their own public opinion.
Nobody drove the Soviets out of the Cold War. They simply walked away. The only real winners were the countries of central and eastern Europe who seized the moment.
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threnodio, why did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor? Simple, they completely misjudged what they would be up against and what the ultimate consequences would be for them. The course of history they set upon led directly from Pearl Harbor to Midway, the Battle of the Coral Sea, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. How many leaders of other nations have made the same mistake?
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Nanotchka, that is the protocol allies must adhere to...even if they hate each other's guts and some of them had little or nothing to do with most of the actual fighting.
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#49
See, that's what I mean about lying threnodious. The Soviet Union was smashed. It was blown apart literally. It wasn't just Afghanistan or the vast empire it had to sustain. It was additional trillions of dollars Reagan poured into the arms race. It was the MX, the Pershing IIs, Star Wars, a 600+ ship navy. Soviet military commanders demanded the same and it bankrupted their entire society. It turned what had been a political and military conflict that was a draw into an economic war the Soviets had no chance of winning. They were as stupid then as they are now. Even with all that new hardware the Americans were developing, there was never even the remotest possibility that the US could have or would have lanuched a first strike against the USSR. Their own buildup as a response to America's was a complete waste of money and resouces. By the time it was over, they couldn't keep East Germans from flooding west through Czechoslovakia. They couldn't sustain Poland. They couldn't even keep Roumania. Gorbachev tried desparately to save the Communist sytem by reforming it and by sobering up a population that could only sustain its miserable existance by staying drunk. To this very day he is a died in the wool Communist. He wanted the Dubczek solution, Socialism with a happy face. It never would have worked but his own stupid party bosses revolted, staged a coup d'etat and that was the end. Even the Soviet public wouldn't stand for it anymore. They were tired of living in hopeless poverty, perpetually lied to, kept as prisoners in their own country, and they were beginning to find out that America was a very different place than they were told it was. When Yeltsin visited Washington DC and asked to see a typical American supermarket, he said if Soviet Citizens saw that they would be in open armed revolt. The USSR just died because Reagan's team finally killed it off. Europeans hate that and they will NEVER admit the truth of it. Half of them still romanticize it and wish they could have been part of it too. Only they would have done it better....in their dreams. The EUSSR may not quite be the USSR but trhey will try to come as close to it as they can. They're making great progress. Now only a few thousand voters in Ireland stood in their way.
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the link to photos doesn't come through I'll send it to threnodio direct.
Markusische, there isn't much even to look at ! in the allies/USA part of the Russian war photos archive. Though a good attempt was done: "Red Army entering XXX city on a US tank cordially provided by this ally."
"Workers un-pack food packs arrived from USA in help to the USSR." etc.
But the total numbers - nothing to look at.
I can see more even of Poland, with who no one in his right mind would tell Russia is on best terms with !
I can see lots of British pilots.
Montgomery this Montgomery that. Montgomery everywhere. Berlin.
The convoy ships.
Every Russian ally in the war is there.
_______
I don't think you can tell much about 2ndWW to a Russian. Defective idea from the very beg. I mean the war in Europe. Pacific front - would always be interested to hear.
It's softie Europeans, relaxed in the peace and comfort of the past decades, who you can put macaroni on the ears to. In spectacular bunches. About how exactly you won the war in Europe.
England - graciously forgave you for not stepping on their side in the beg.
Imagine Jugoslavia, speaking our language, not to fight on the Russia side!
_____________
How you dare to put the Stalin infamous order 228 "No step back" to reproach Russia. We, ourselves, blame Stalin for all - but not for that!
Where would you be now without that order - to shoot anyone who steps back!
It acted short time, and most awful time, when Hitler troops swept all Russia up to Ural mountains. We stood with back to the Urals. If we continued to retreat - that'll be the end. Behind Urals Russia was empty - no army, no cities, no fortifications - easy stroll for Hitler army to the Pacific and unite with Japan. End of the war. To let Hitler cross Urals equalled end of Russia.
And without USSR surviving Europe didn't stand a chance. Maybe America did. and would have helped. But it is a speculative direction. In any case lives of millions Europeans and millions Americans were saved by this Stalin order - no step back or you are shot straight on the spot.
And you dare to put it against us!
You haven't sniffed real war. You were not occupied. You fought comfortably, by your army. We lost 8 million army, and 28 million civillians. Wonder why? Because army was swept away by Hitler at once. Who fought the war here - cannon fodder as you nicely put it - were children, women and old. Civillians, who went to the front, and became army. Often armed with guns without bullets. And not because Stalin "made" them to fight. Because there was no other way. This - or surrender.
To surrender = death. You are "Europeans".
We are - slavs=gypsies=jews - in Hitler future world definition. We were not to exist. That's why we fought.
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#47 MAII,
You mentioned "How fortunate that there are countless thousands of hours of actual filmed documentary evidence of these eras in history to refute the revisionists and now an internet where it cannot be suppressed."
Do you mean that you actually believe documentaries, if so it explains many of your comments. Remember that what is filmed is firstly just showing the opinions or politics of the producer and secondly satisfying the need for it to be newsworthy. Good news is bad news don't forget. As for the old black and white films, well we all know they were sanitised for public consumption and simply conveyed the message the spin doctors of the time wanted to put out.
I recall an exchange we had some while back when I pointed out to you the difference in size between the bomb bay/payload of a WWII Lancaster and that of a US Flying Fortress, and how all US films during the war and just after showed an endless stream of bombs coming from such a small bomb bay. Remember that MAII, as my late father always joked about how the US filmmakers had to stack multiple planes above each other to get a large enough stream of bombs.
Do you still believe documentaries? I certainly don't and that applies equally to current day documentaries which are often so politically motivated to be little more than fairy stories much of the time.
On another matter it seems both France and Holland want a European rescue fund for banks that fail, whilst the Germans don't, I take that as a hint that none of the banks in France and Holland are safe and that the Germans don't want to fund the inept French any more.
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@threnodio (46)
The attack on Pearl Harbor made a lot of sense. If Japan had been able to knock out the carriers that had been present there, it would have given them a lot more time. Essentially, there never would have been a battle of the Coral Sea (Japan could have invaded Australia unimpeded) and also no battle of Midway.
Without Australia as a base for operations in 1942 I believe the Pacific war might well have lasted years longer.
Also, why was USA in Vietnam? Well, post 1945 France demanded her colonies back (how typical). And former US ally Ho Chi Minh asked the USA for help to sustain the newly proclaimed independent republic of Vietnam. The USA declined. The French were finally kicked out in 1954 (Dien Bhin Phu). At that time the USA started sending 'advisers'). Kennedy finally started pulling the advisers out, having been convinced by his brother Robert that ground troops were necessary (a little known factoid of that era is that it was RFK, the 1968 'peace' candidate, who told JFK to go into Vietnam. South Vietnamese president was assassinated in november 1963. Why would Kennedy remove the one element that might bring stability if he was going to pull out completely?
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Buzet23, I know you don't believe those documentaries. I know most Europeans don't either. For instance, all of those invented photographs and movies of Jews supposedly in concentration camps with those fake GIs supposedly liberating them. All of those piles of corpses, all fake. That Hollywood invention of Americans landing on the moon, all done with special effects. Of course we gullable Americans who believe all that stuff are always wrong and you Europeans who don't are always right.
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An extract from St. Petersburg newspaper, in the wake of the conflict with Georgia.
"How the modern Western media would describe the Russian Great Patriotic War".
Russians bullied nazi into attacking them in 1941.
The night 21-22nd June Russians were most arrogantly asleep thus brazenly provoking Hitler aviation to bomb sleeping cities.
Having cunningly allured non-suspecting the trap Europeans in, Russians continued their evil tricks and assaulted the key values of peace and democracy of the Western civilisation. In the typical arrogant Russian way they most shamlessly tried to kill German peacekeepers, some even ran toards the tanks with the pistols.
Slavs across Russia behaved towards the Hitler troops worst. Children and women took German trains by storm and locked up in there, then travelled in cattle train comfort to Germany where they grabbed best German lands.
On these lands they built camps, quickly surrounded them by pricky wires, and set electricity onto the wire.
Then slavs got equipped with own security armed by machine-guns and helped by dogs, to protect their settlements from Germans, and shamelessly burnt themselves up in stoves - without paying the rent!
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Ah dear what a mess
A MAII say's some evidence is unequivicable however Buzet 23 is right that video and photographic evidence can be presented in a way that is not aways correct historically.
I suggest MAII googles the 'hidden in plane site' documentary about 911 for an example of this.
Which sugests useing photographic and video evidence that the US fired a cruise missile at the pentagon and military planes not passenger ones crashed into the towers complete nonsense but neither the less exhibited as fact.
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#52 - MarcusAureliusII
Yes, I see exactly what you mean about lying and there is none so stupid as those who lie to themselves. Do you seriously believe that the Soviets would have attempted to match the USA, system for system, warhead for warhead? In your dreams.
Long before Star Wars was operational, the Soviets had decided on this policy. When Brezhnev died in 1982, Andropov was already a sick man and appointed essentially as a stop gap. Konstantin Chernenko was the logical successor and came to office on Andropov's death. Chernenko was known to be on the reformist wing and already had Gorbachev under his wing. Chernenko's premature death came as something of a suprise and a little early for a tidy accession but the policy was already clear and had been carefully orchestrated between London and Washington. It was the classic and carefully stage managed good cop bad cop routine with Reagan mouthing platitudes about the evil empire while quiet diplomacy continued with London. In 1984, he was invited to the famous Chequer's summit although not yet in office. It was unusual for someone of that status to be afforded a head of government summit and, in retrospect, it was clearly stage managed. At the end of the meeting, Thatcher famously remarked that this was 'a man with whom she could do business'. The Central Committee and the Politburo clearly wanted someone who would be acceptable for a new dialogue. This sealed the succession to the degree that Gorbachev was appointed 3 hours before Chernenko died.
It is also worth mentioning that, notwithstanding the famous Brandenburg Gate moment with JFK (Ich bin ein Berliner),
The West Germans had continued to pursue Schmidt's Ostpolitik. Moscow's desire for dialogue can therefore be traced back to the beginning of the eighties.
By denying Polish First Secretary Jaruzelski's request for assistance in suppressing Solidarity in 87-8, Gorbachev sent a signal that the Soviet Union would no longer intervene in the 'internal affairs of sovereign nations'. This gave the green light for the Hungarians to open the Iron Curtain with Austria allowing the East Germans who had transited through Czechoslovakia to the West. The Hungarian 'Changes', the Czech 'Velvet Revolution' and the fall of the Berlin Wall followed within weeks.
It is simply not true to say that the United States and Reagan in particular engineered the end of the Cold War and to say so demonstrates a woeful lack of understanding in depth of the events in their context or - more likely - a determination to claim all the credit with an arrogance charaterised by such childish things as deliberately misspelling user names and blabbering nonsense about the EUSSR.
I have written elsewhere of my affection for the Americans and my respect for their institutions. It does not mean I will sit by and be lectured in terms of propaganda that would do credit to the Soviets of the past. Your arrogance does you not credit whatsoever.
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Markofsya,
I think I found what's, how to put it elegantly, a minor disturbance with your opinionated opinion. (I am also awfully opinionated so I will think about this as well).
You are putting "cutlets and flies" together.
In that war, God knows, there was place for everyone.
One shouldn't combine all good together and all bad to allocate some place else.
What has Moonwalking to do with concentration camps. When would Buzet23
say - "on behalf of all Europeans" - he "doesn't believe in Holocaust" !
You must mean it is not a crime in UK to deny Holocaust... ?
oj. I am afraid it is not a crime in Russia as well. But I can't imagine anyoone here who would deny it. If someone says it in the street, I mean, nearby, say, subway passengers may happen to have relatives there dead and deal with him first, without awaiting any laws. In fact can't imagine at all. Most likely people would do nothing. Will simply think a mad man, what to do, sick.
forget about propaganda. can't you think for yourself. where the credit is due to, where guilt, where-blame.
Russians are at advantage to you, we never listened what "they up there" said.
don't you know by yourself, at home.
who you would, how to say, "go to (the dangerous in war trip of) reconnaisance to?"
my grandfather closed doors to the younger brother of my grandma, his wife.
who was one of the first soviet commendants of berlin.
he was a fighting general, not "a rat in the army supplies waggon train". shed blood. hero. liberated europe.
and became an occupant.
to sit in the safety in the garrison behind high walls, and scare locals by the very fact of his presence on their land.
funny my grandfather didn't need to go read a newspaper or ask his local party committee opinion. about the difference between a fighting man and occupating man.
there was a family scandal and split.
my grandma screamed to the skies.
but you don't really need external advice to know what is good what is bad. all main things are simple.
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56 - MarcusAureliusII
For the record, Belzec, Sobibor, Trebinka, Auchwitz-Birkenau, Sachsenehausen and Buchenwald were liberated by the Soviets. Dachau was liberated by the British.
That leaves Flossenburg and Mauthausen-Gusen as your contribution.
Don't believe everything you see at the movies.
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Alice In Webland, who made up your story, Izvestia or TASS? We know the story of how the Russians and Nazis signed a secret non aggression pact, invaded Poland at the same time, carved it up, occupied it, and murdered hundreds of thousands of its people. We know how the Soviets dragged the Polish government officials and army officers into the forest and shot them in cold blood, mafia execution style. Why should we think any better of the Soviet Communists than of the Nazis? We also know the USSR was totally unprepared for Operation Barbarossa. It only proved there is no honor among thieves. Stalin was a fool to trust Hitler just like Chamberlain was. Both nations paid for their leader's stupidity in an ocean of their own blood. While Brits elected Chamberlain and would like to forget he ever existed, Russians look back on Stalin with Nostalgia. As I posted before, many say it was a lie that he murdered 80 million Soviet citizens. It was hardly much over 40 million. They didn't keep meticulous records of their victims the way the Nazis did.
WhiteEnglishAshamed, I am not surprised that you would say this. This is one of the typical reasons I detest Europeans and Europe so much. It's filled with this kind of lies born of hatred and jealousy.
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I think the Russian-American vendetta began when our armies met in Germany.
That "meeting on the Elbe".
All was peaceful between the armies, but some competitiv-ness was already in the year.
On the 60th anniversary of the V-day I read memoirs of war veterans from all sides, Germans included. It was a Dutch project, a journalist went around, took photos, and published most memorable things people remembered from their war.
There was one American there who wrote - sorry I don't guarantee word-for-word - but what was essentially this:
I first met Russians on the Elbe. They began drinking even before we met. Their unit was very comraderie - not though more than ours. We all wanted to show to each other how brave we are. One chap from our team decided to teach Russians how to jump with a parachute. He jumped down from the 3rd floor of our HQ building and broke his ancle. In reply Russians decided to teach us how to drive a truck. They drove their truck backwards from a very steep hill and somersaulted. The truck squeezed out two of their people to death. But they didn't stop to celebrate even after that. I noticed they have no concern for their life. When we celebrated victory, they had no fire-works, and shoot real guns. It was total Wild West. But they were so happy about the victory, they didn't care for anything.
May be it was because we were all awfully drunk on that day.
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#61 Thank you, threnodio.
I would also think Buchenwald was ours, not liberated by G?I?
It goes down memorised in the language. Like, I am not very fat. From that category that is normally described "will hide behind a fishing rod." Was never able to get an additional kilo or two, to become plumpy and beautiful, as much as I tried. So, most friends when they see me say
"oj. Alice. our buchenwaldsky krepysh."
meaning Jesus Christ! a typical buchenwald strongie.
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Marcus
If you hate us that much, why don't you take yourself off to PowerLine and play with the other facists?
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64 - WebAliceinwonderland
Yes - I said Buchenwald was yours.
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Americans hated Communism and the USSR long before WWII. The alliance was merely one of convenience. The enemy of my enemy is my friend blah blah blah. The mass murderer was popularly known in the US as "Uncle Joe." When Germany fell, Patton wanted to take what was left of the German Army and keep going right to Moscow. That's when Eisenhower fired him. It was Eisenhower's decision not to head for Berlin but to allow the Soviets to take it. The Red Army surrounded Berlin with 22,000 pieces of artillery and just kept firing and firing. Then they went in fighting street to street, door to door, killing men and raping women as they went.
If America had not entered WWII, the Allies would have lost. They almost lost anyway.
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"we know the story of how the Russians and Nazis signed a secret non-aggression pact..."
Nothing else? Good.
If my mind clicked in the same way, on meeting an American, I'd think: "Oh. Here goes an American. A nice sample, at that. Now, what do we know of them? Napalm, yes, and there was something else... Ah! They're the only nation in the world so far who dropped nuclear bombs on cities. Turned civillians into a blazing ball of fire. That girl, something with paper cranes, right. That's them."
Katyn was crime, murder and black unwashable spot. Most Russians share this point of view. Don't tear hair on their heads about it most of the time, though, because shooting of Polish officers was a drop in the sea of blood.
Own Red Army was beheaded at the same time in the same style, and in far larger scale.
Stalin was always afraid of the coup. Had hallucinations that the military plot against him.
Hope US kids are brought in the same critical understanding about US crimes.
We split Poland, together with Germany, all true.
What am I to do now about it, "to shave, to have a hair-cut, to take a photo and hang up."
We were at least headed by the world-recognised monster at the time. With all decent Russians able to say a word against - pre-cleaned away in the prev. Stalin decades. Rotting in the camps in millions, those who were still alive.
When you bombed Hiroshima, having practically won the war already, there was no need. And you were headed by a yet another democratic president. with the freedom of speech, right? vote, and all
The worst thing about Poland is that they were foreigners. When Stalin killed own Russians, you seem not to mind it.
Well, here are bad news. Stalin didn't consider Poland foreigners. For centiries they were a Russian province, and only for 2 decades - not. The saying here goes, even now: "A hen is not a bird, Poland is not abroad." (Kuritsa - ne ptitsa, Polsha - ne zagranitsa).
Anyway how Stalin mind worked I cannot tell.
As my father used to say : Scoundrels - are very difficult to understand. Practically - impossible.
However I don't want to be compared to the US. Our crimes and faults are for us to repent and not to repeat.
Re Stalin - he is not nostalgia here. He has passed the full cicle - from hero - to "blame all on him" - to character in anecdotes.
We have out-lived him, over, he's reduced to a joke.
With much pleasure I can tell you that He has been put down "nizhe plintusa"
- lower than a plinth / skirtling-board.
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67
The allies wouldn't have lost without you.
Your allies were Europe, the threat to them was Hitler. With all the respect - NOT Japan.
Hitler was doomed after Kursk and Stalingrad. A matter of time. Having failed in Russia, he was doomed. We'd have traced him to Berlin anyway, a matter of time and lives. And meet up with the English from the West.
When you have opened the 2nd front!?
When all was decided already in Russia, by 1944! Waited, and watched, to join the winner's side.
Taking Berlin without Americans? Easy. Only matter of additional lives. But at that time - may I remind you - Russia didn't care for the price anymore.
More likely that you'd have lost to Japan without allies.
Mark, news for you. This millenium, October 4th, Marc realised USA didn't win the war.
From my subective clearly Russian point of view I'd even add that Russia won it.
Will you live with this kind of news till the morning?
We are all worried for you.
I agree with threnodio, you better try to process the unusual idea in solitude.
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Nanotchka, in the mind of the KGB, Springfield New Jersey is a Russian province....and Russians invented jazz.
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Here birds
do not sing.
Here trees
do not grow.
And only we, shoulder to shoulder,
are growing down into the ground.
The planet burns and swirls around.
Above our motherland - smoke.
And this means - we need a victory.
One, for all, and we won't care for the price,
One for all, and we won't care for the price.
A deadly fire - awaits us!
And still - it's powerless.
Hesitation -off - here goes - into the night -
The last one,
Our tenth,
Marines',
Batallion.
Our tenth,
Marines',
Batallion.
The moment this fight is down,
Another order is given,
And the postman will turn nuts
Looking for us.
A red rocket is flying up.
Machine-gun beats, un-tired.
And what this means - we need a victory.
One.
For all.
And we won't be tight fisted to pay the price.
At some point later we'll remember this.
And we shall not believe ourselves.
As to today - we only need a victory,
Only one - for all, only one -
And we don't care for the price.
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#70 - MarcusAureliusII
Jazz is, of course, folk music and therefore an improvisatory art form. You tend not to find it in notated form until into the 20th century by composers such as Shostakovitch and Stravinsky . . . . . wait a minute . . . .
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Dear moderators, don't worry about the authorship rights of the song. The author is dead. 50 years by Russian law have passed. And as you see it is awkward - I translated it myself.
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Nanochka, too much LSD, too much PCP, too much KGB. When the US entered the war in Europe, Nazi Germany occupied the entire mainland of Europe in the south and west, much of the east, and a lot of North Africa. Britain had a dagger to its throat. The USSR would have been dead meat without the US entry into the war. Had Hitler listened to his generals and not tried so hard to capture Moscow, the USSR would have fallen. But Hitler was an idiot general just like Saddam Hussein. BTW, Saddam Hussein's idol was Stalin in case you did know.
Even at the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 the Nazis might have won the war. Patton fought a battle, marched his troops for four days and went straight into another at the Battle of the Bulge. The American and British planes couldn't strike the Nazis because of the weather. No other general ever did anything like it. Patton is one of my favorite movies. I hope you get to see it one day. Geroge Scott did an excellent job portraying him.
The only reason the Soviets were able to take Berlin is because the US with the help of the Brits and Canadians destroyed Germany and wiped out their army in the West. Without that, the USSR would have been a Nazi colony.
They tell you Europeans nothing but lies and you believe them. Why should I be surprised at any of it. European attitudes are formed by a mythology invented for them by their leaders and lying historians. It will inevitably lead them to disaster. I've said many times that the US should get out of Europe while it still can, disengage completely, and leave them to do whatever they will to each other, never to interfere in their affairs again, just as President Washington advised and warned. Perhaps Obama will do just that if he wins. McCain would still support Europe. A terrible mistake.
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#74, MarcusAureliusII,
Have you forgotten your happy pills once again, you're really excelling yourself tonight, your references to the holocaust and landing on the moon (post #56 in reply to my #54) show how deluded and wayward your views are. Still the rest of us out here have learnt to take little that the media say at face value, and maybe WhiteEnglishProud is right in #58 that you probably think the USA landed on Mars, or was it Venus or a moon somewhere, or maybe even a film set somewhere secret. I'm just wondering how you view the collapse of tower 7 on 9/11, I'm sure you believe it was natural causes from damage as the alternative was forced demolition or incredibly bad construction, the latter being something unthinkable for you I guess.
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Markonchik-pomponchik.
Dear distant moonwalking friend.
You've learned a couple of packaged phrases and begin repeating yourself, for the lack of arguments. What's Patton. Quite maniacy. Though soldiers loved him. You don't have to tell me all you saw in movies about the war. We know your commanders better than you know ours. No books. Own contacts. Family data.
In fact I am sure you aren't aware even about what your own commanders did in war, to say nothing of ours.
Test 1 What order Eisenhower took off his coat and clipped onto his English lover. (hint. Berlin, May, 45)
Test 2 What was drunk by the Am. commander when meeting Russians.
And who was it.
Try to concentrate and think.
I am surprised at my patience with you, however it does seem unlimited. The whole process of talking about the war with the kindergarten graduate is funny.
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Buzet, as it happens, just by luck, I had to recently research a project and came across some conclusions about WTC7. It appears and is entirely plausible that WTC7 collapsed because pumps continued to opperate which supplied diesel fuel to generators from storage tanks through lines that were leaking. Once this fuel caught fire, the heat continued to weaken the steel on the ground floor right through the concrete. How do I know? I once worked in the largest steel mill in the world and also saw a great deal of steel being rolled. Although steel melts at around 2950 F and is rolled at around 1400 F, it will soften and weaken at much lower temperatures. The prevailing theory has it that structural failure of a single column on the lower floors led to a cascade failure of the entire structure. This sounds entirely plausible to me but what do I know, I've only been a degreed engineer for 39 years.
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I am not certain whether it is more funny or more disturbing that our lunatic Yank is still being more or less treated like a sane human being that can be affected by intelligent discourse.
He is--with an obviousness so blatant it cannot be missed--a deranged hate-filled sociopath.
He is patriotic like a cult-member and seems to regularly show a sort of detached delight at the thought of Europeans being slaughtered.
The really disturbing thing though, of course, is that he is not altogether unrepresentative of American national character.
My heartfelt thanks though to all the debaters trying to futilely enlighten him. Fascinating as always!
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Nanotchka
Here's a quiz for you. I'll try to make it as easy as I can so that you have a fighting chance.
1. What color was George Washington's white horse?
2. Who is burried in Grant's tomb.
Bonus question for you in case you managed the two above. If a plane traveling from East to West crashed exactly on the American Canadian border, where would the survivors be buried?
Yeah we heard all about your commanders Zukov and the rest but ho hum, how many of them ever had a big movie made about them since Alexander Nevsky? I even knew the General who beat Napolean in Russia once upon a time but all those Russian names sound alike to me. Isn't it bad enough I had to remember that prima donna Montgommery when I was in school? How many French Generals can you name? I can't think of even one. Foch? The only German one I remember is Rommel. It's the kind of thing you look up in a history text. They weren't real people anyway, just names in a book to me. How many of the Russian generals who lost the Russo Japanese war in 1905 do you know?
I saw this woman on the Discovery channel. Flying her B2 bomber is the number one passion of her life.
http://userpages.aug.com/captbarb/bomber.html
I'll bet if the President of the United States sent her orders to nuke Moscow (just an example) wild horses couldn't keep her out of the cockpit. She was one determined woman. And if that President was Sara Palin, after tonight I think she might just give that order. Women's liberation has grabatized America :-)
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Mark: Did Mandelson mean to imply that national regulators are unable to collaborate and co-operate without international oversight ?
Ashill: The shift will remain gradual for only as long as USD are globally redeemable for petroleum. When 'petrodollar' is no longer synonomous with 'greenback', is when the real economic-tectonic shift will happen.
mcdv-1975: This 'gearing' process is how most powers are further drawn to centralised control, whether at EU level or national level.
MarcusAureliusII: How were European oil imports at stake in pre-invasion Iraq ? Have you considered the French intervention on behalf of the freedom of a certain baker's dozen of colonies, which was meaningful enough to bankrupt, then overthrow that intervening government ? If you wonder about the continuing involvement of the USA in Europe, I suggest that you start by reading A geostrategy for Eurasia by Zbigniew Brzezinski; certainly not in the footsteps of G. Washington. I believe that many attitudes in many different places are formed by mythologies that are written by historians, backed by political leaders, cast broadly in several media. Is there any destiny truly manifest ?
WebAliceinwonderland: Most of us in the West aren't aware of how influential the battle of Khalkhyn Gol was. My understanding was that the USSR war effort against Japan was concentrated in Manchuria, and that casualties were numbered by tens of thousands rather than by millions.
threnodio: The Japanese decision was based upon Khalkhyn Gol. In August 1939, Zhukov had thrashed the Japanese on the border of Mongolia and Manchuria. This led to a loss of influence of the Japanese army, who had recommended conquest of eastern Siberia, in favour of the Japanese navy, who recommended conquest of the Dutch East Indies. Japan could not pursue the naval strategy without diminishing the effects of the 'undeclared war', viz the American embargo of oil, iron, and steel (the USA had supplied most of Japan's oil prior to the Japanese occupation of French Indochina).
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#77, MAII,
You may well be a degreed engineer or is it an engineer with a degree or a design engineer but that doesn't mean that you're any good at it. In my 39 years of working with computers I've met a lot of IT programmers and software programmers with high level degrees who didn't understand the basics of good practice in programming and who created problem after problem (some were Americans also BTW).
I saw a youtube 'documentary' the other week that is doing the rounds in the French speaking world and whilst your explanation for tower 7 could be correct, the time lapse and other circumstances are difficult to explain by that, just as the actions and words of the fire service were odd, and as for the collapse, that really does look like a controlled explosion as it dipped in the centre first. There are many 'experts' saying that it was a controlled explosion, maybe there was an organised crime link or maybe the secret services did it as both had offices there and a lot of files got destroyed, did you also hear of that in your sanitised documentaries as many documentaries are banned from being shown in the USA.
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Can't reply to all at once, need evening and now day-working no time.
Generals' names easy.
Russo-Jap war lost in 1905.
Port Arthur navy was commanded by Russian forgot the name but foreign name, need to look up indeed.
On the ground war was lost by Russian general Kuropatkin.
No doubt, no books needed, as my granddad bought a flat in St. Petersburg (for 33 golden roubles, his first award for a navy ship built) next door to Kuropatkin's ? adjutant? military kind of junior assistant.
Old man retired from service.
Granddad with Kuropatkin's adjutant together have spent many a pleasant vodka evenings. The assistant had a present from Kuropatkin - Kuropatkin's own ? podstakannik - glass holder, that silver thing you see in movies about Russia. How we take tea. A silver glass holder with a handle, to prevent burning fingers holding a hot high glass of tea. With first letters of Kuropatkin's name engraved on it.
Granddad got it as a present in his turn, and drank tea all his next life until death exclusively from this glass holder. I was never allowed to touch it.
When he died, my father inherited it and continued family tradition. He wouldn't have evening tea without that thing once in his life.
When my father died - now my brother drinks tea with the help of Kuropatkin's podstakannik. and spoon. Awfully lovely,
I tried to grabatise both from my brother several times, or at least the lovely spoon! but did not succeed. So this is family memorabilia daily reminding us about the war of 1905.
__________________
Of German generals you mention Rommel, I'd say far nastier was Buderian. We were flirting with Germany before the war like mad, which resulted in all their generals and pilots studying in Soviet military academia and institutions.
Buderian we taught in the city of Tula, he graduated from the main Soviet tank armies' commandment academia in Tula.
And became a total stab in the back soon after, commanding all German tank divisions during the 2nd WW. We taught back then this ambitious young leutenant apparently too well.
__________________________
Of French military yes alas remember only De Gaulle and Normandia-Neman regiment glorious pilots.
____________________________
Rus generals who won the war 1812 with Napoleon (and give me a break ab snow! Napoleon was kicked out of Russia long before Christmas) - each and every of them has a portrait on the walls of the Gallery 1812 in the Winter Palace.
"There is a chamber in the palce of the tsar
Which walls not gold nor gilded are...
tra la la
..but memory of 1812 year
to every Russian heart dear."
If a general was so very well killed that not even a small miniature was left of him to make a portrait later from, there is AN EMPTY FRAME in the Hemitage instead, but each has a place. 250 faces there I think.
Fieldmarshals were: Kutuzov (the one with 1 eye and a black stripe across, who left Moscow on fire to Napoleon and won Borodino battle), Barclay de Tolli and Bagration.
Barclay de Tolli's grave Bolsheviks blew up in 1920, as he was a wrong "tsar" general.
Bagration grave don't know where it is must be in Georgia as he was Georgian.
Kutuzov died soon after the war from wounds, this took place in Germany, his heart was extracted by his adjutant and he brought it in a box home to St. Petersburg.
Where around heart of Kutuzov buried in the native ground was built
Kazan cathedral, the second largest in St. Pete.
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MA #79.
1. The colour of the Washington's white horse we define unequivocally as polka-dot.
2. In the Grant's tomb were buried ? of course Children of Captain Grant. Together with Juilles Vern.
3. The survivors have wide options where to be buried in. With 3 wars on hands, why, Pakistan, whenever. However we unequivocally again hope all these red eye passangers were peaceful folk and are still alive in their respective homes.
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79. MarcusAureliusII:
"Bonus question for you in case you managed the two above. If a plane traveling from East to West crashed exactly on the American Canadian border, where would the survivors be buried?"
If one of the survivors was MA2 I'd bury him anywhere I could and as soon as I could. Other survivors I'd patch up and send home.
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WebAliceinwonderland:
I love your English and regret that Russian isn't one of my languages.
Why do you play with MA2? Are you a psychiatric nurse or a masochist?
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77.MarcusAureliusII:
" I've only been a degreed engineer for 39 years. "
So now you're a bored pensioner with nothing better to do than flit from website to website annoying people with your xenophobic rants?
Xenophobic isn't too hard a word for you is it?
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# 78, Joember's. "..trying to futilely enlighten him."
Yes, I was also thinking it is kind of hopeless. and ought to be stopped.
Not even that, I mean, there must be ? around 350 million Americans?
Even if, after all trouble and many a sleepless night spent in the net, we manage to streamline one of them into a ship-shape format...
there are still 350 million minus 1 left.
However this one gives hopes! From time to time sends sensible signals! Is it in the good Christian tradition to let a soul perish.
Besides, he is a lonely voice here, it is un-sporty, I mean, we are a whole gang, should give him a start. (MA you've used already plenty of the stocks!)
He is lost, forgot the road to his native continent, honestly thinks himself a descendant of red indians or green aliens from a flying saucer. can't get to grips with himself.
Technically speaking I, a Russian, should have no voice in this forum as well. I thought, since Russia is planning to become friends with Europe finally, somebody has to start talking. Can't trust the task to Kremlin, so, voila.
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Jan_Keeskop
The US does not import much oil from the Middle East. It wasn't American oil imports at stake although oil is fungible. That is why it is so laughable when one country say Venezuela says it will not sell to another, the US. As long as it sells to someone, the only change will be due to the increased inefficiency of getting oil to places more expensive to transport to. Saddam Hussein's threat to the region was real. That is why there was a coalition in 1991, Kuwait would have been just the beginning. The reason 9-11 happened was because the US had troops on sacred Islamic ground, Saudi Arabia even though they were there to protect it from Iraq. The presence of American troops there was the reason Osama Bin Laden gave as the reason himself but people didn't seem to be listening. They made up every other reason under the sun. By eliminating Saddam Hussein, there was an end to it in sight however long that was. Left alone, even if Saddam Hussein had complied with all of the sanctions, as soon as they were lifted he would have been right back at what he had been doing before the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. For so many reasons, the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was correct.
Buzet23
I didn't see this in a "documentary" prepared for the media. I was reviewing a proposed design for a project and became concerned about the risk to nearby equipment some very large underground diesel fuel storage tanks posed should they ever catch fire. I was concerned about the conduction of heat from the burning fuel. The articles I came across on the internet documented the risks these types of tanks and the fuel in them pose in the way of fire and explosion not only to equimpment but to structures. These tanks have become fairly common in many places including high rise buildings because they are used to power diesel generators that support telecommunications and data processing equipment when there is a power outage. The article I came across by accident was a technical article which analyzed what happened to WTC7 and this was one of the most plausible explanations put forward by the forensic structural engineers who analyzed it. They were not looking for media sensationalism or publicity, they were professional experts trying to understand how it happened so that they could avoid further instances of it. I am certain that the analysis of the debris would have shown a clear difference between the steel members having failed as the result of one buckling under heat and a cascade failure of the rest and many or all of them having been destroyed by explosive charges. Conspiracy theories may be fun but they are useless when you are trying to get at the truth and real evidence points in a different direction.
Nanotchka;
I understand why you forgot the name of the Russain navy commander in Port Arthur, it was a foreign name. On my side of the looking glass, all Russian names are foreign. That's why I forgot them.
I'm glad you grandfather was on such friendly drinking terms with General Kaputsky. It's always nice to know that your army is commanded by someone whose tongue is oiled on a regular basis. But Kaputsky was lucky. Had his drinking buddy been a Nazi spy, the war might have ended differently and when Kaputsky had been discovered to have given away military secrets, he'd have been....kaput :-)
How interesting to learn that General Cutsitoff had his heart removed and returned to be buried in his native soil. That is usually where the movie begins only at night he rematerializes and rises from the dead, a Wurdilak.
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Shtrafnye Batalliony
(convicts, let out of all Soviet prizons, if they wanted to go to the front)
One only hour is given for artillery fire.
During one hour only infantry has break.
Only one hour - before the most horrible business
For some - until the medals,
To others - until the hanging.
In the time left we do not write home a single line.
Instead, we pray to the Gods of War - artillery.
For we are - not ordinary soldiers - we are -
"shtraff-niki"
We aren't to write "If I die - consider me a communist."
Vodka before attack? What a crap.
We've had all our vodka before the Siberia campus.
That's also why we do not shout "Hurray".
With Death we are playing "silence".
Enemy thinks: "These are morally weak."
Behind him - our fields and cities burning.
Well, think again, and start cutting woods into your coffins -
Into the break-through go straffnye battalliony!
So, here is 6 noll-noll,
and starts artillery fire.
Well, Gods of war, come on! without resting!
One only hour, before the most horrible business.
To some - until orders and medals.
To others - until the scaffold.
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Technically speaking I, a Russian, should have no voice in this forum.
Alice:
Everyone is entitled to have there voice heard.
Sometime when you get fascist xenopobes like MAII i wish this wasn't the case.
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I don't even beilive he is truely an American i think he is an Iranian double agent sent to make everyone hate America
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Alice,
It's called Field Sports in Britain. We used to call it 'Blood Sports' but that is no longer politically correct. It is also illegal now. Basically to took a dumb animal. either terrified it or made it really angry so that it was some kind of battle, then killed it. The Spanish do it with bulls. Trouble with cattle is that they are placid creatures and it is no fun simply walking up to something and killing it. So you have to make it really mad first then kill it. All very civilised. Do you still do bear bating in Russia?
The thing is that, all the time we are killing animals for fun, we tend not to do it so much to each other. Think of us as picadors. We are not going to kill anything, just wind it up ready for the kill. It is a lab experiment really. Where is the break point? When will the 'Engineer goes berserk in Walmart' moment come?
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#88 MAII,
For once your words are reasoned and it could well be that you're right and this was the reason, as you say conspiracy theories are always interesting but sometimes some of them are actually true. One of the 'facts' touted in the documentary I saw was that a couple of weeks before the incident there was a total power outage during a weekend whilst cabling was installed, the claim was that all camera's, security locks etc were deactivated for that time period. If the collapse was no accident then it was suggested that this was the ideal time to install the explosive charges.
The other question I have is that whilst diesel does burn, it is not truly explosive so what would have made tanks built underground fracture and then catch fire. The collapse of the neighbouring towers could have caused a fracture but the fire, um, not so sure.
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Nanotchka, it is a very touching poem. But while I don't doubt its sincerity, I think it lacks veracity. I don't think they were volunteers. And they did not get the dignity of a hanging, they had armed Soviets behind them, armed Nazis in front of them. If they didn't march forward to get shot by the Germans in the front, they'd be shot in the back by the Soviets. It was better for their families for them to be shot in the front. If the Soviets had to shoot them, their families would get a bill to pay for the bullets. They were great patriots. Your heroes and defenders of your land. They were so brave that when they couldn't get vodka in Afghanistan, they drank the antifreeze out of the jeeps, trucks, and tanks. I think the Mujihadeen would have been smart to drop off a few cases of cheap vodka before an attack. Within a few hours they could have just walked in and killed them all in their sleep.
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WhiteEnglishProud, just bring a case of Twinning tea around and I'll show you how to throw it into a nearby harbor.
threnodio, the English made great sport of small animals like foxes but when it came to anything really menacing the hunter became the hunted. You certainly were a turkey shoot for the Germans. And just think, Werner Von Braun became an American hero by putting men on the moon three times. I'll bet he got more reward from America for the moon shots than he ever got from the Nazis for the V1s and V2s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro
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Buzet23
You are wrong about the possiblity of explosive mixtures of air and diesel fuel in storage tanks. Explosion is a real risk due to the confinement of the air fuel mixture within the tank. I'm surprised they don't require something like nitrogen blanketing over the fuel inside the tanks to prevent just such an occurrance. Diesel fuel is like gasoline in the sense that it is a mixture of hydrocarbons with an average of C10 where gasoline is C8. Volatile components will vaporize and mix with whatever gas is above it including air. The Cetane rating is the combustability coefficient of a particular grade of diesel. Another issue in my research was whether it would be better to have double walled fiberglass tanks or steel tanks. My own opinion is that steel would at least be electrically grounded and reduce the possibility of an electrostatic spark igniting the air fuel mixture while friction between fiberglass and the fuel itself could create just such an electrostatic buildup. The design in question was in an area prone to earth tremors and earthquakes so this was definitely something to consider. The NYC Fire Department had according to one document been reviewing the codes regulating the storage of diesel fuel in high rise buildings as the result of the findings in the collapse of WTC7
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our so called european partners have for years been wanting to bring the uk under there thumbs and becouse they have never had the power to militarily bring us down they are resorting to friendship and breaking us financialy, stripping us of rights and freedoms our forebares fought so hard to give us is typical of euro tacktics and hitting banking they know will inflict more problems upon us.
as a nation we should be allowed to vote as to wether we wish to remain or leave this european group, before our government becomes nothing more than a pupet to some faceless eurocrat.
it makes you think why did this government of ours go back on allowing the vote? were they bought off by euro funds?
will we ever know the truth?
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Marcus.
I suppose I should apologise for the last comment but you were pushing the envelope when it came to being offensive this time.
Buzet.
The video suggests to me - and I am no expert - that the building actually imploded. While a controlled explosion would certainly aim to cause the debris to fall inwards, so would the diesel theory. If I am right - and I am sure Marcus will correct me if not - the diesel fumes igniting would burn up much of the oxygen causing a semi-vacuum which would tend to suck debris inwards. I am naturally sceptical about conspiracy theories as it is but the diesel ignition theory sounds perfectly plausible to me.
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sure I come what part of Iran you in?
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#95 - MarcusAureliusII
I think it was Khrushchev who complained that the US was winning the arms race because your German scientist were better than their German scientists.
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The French have once again blockaded there own port of Calais causing a large backlog of freight traffic across the Channel.
With Ferries not running and the Channel Tunnel running at about 40%(remember the fire)
What about there precious freedom of movement now?
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#92 threnodio
Good angle, to look at, from this perspective.
Some things you do without thinking.
So, it might be combined genes in me, speaking up? Bear-baiting, from the Russian side, and something like fox-hunting, from the English.
When did our engineer goes berserk?
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#101 - WhiteEnglishProud
Oh that's nice. Are trying to keep Mandelsson in or Baroness Ashford out? Any English sheep on fire yet?
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#91 WhiteEnglishProud - "iranian double agent" - good point. He might be Marc ibn Makhmud ibn Hussein after all.
Why did we happen to have so nasty a case here?! Sheer "Carrying of the Cross." Surely there are improved versions?
But no, we got this Aurelsky-Disastrovsky model. In so bad need of an upgrade.
First I thought it's a classic Texas edition. Houston or about the same latitude. But he says he is a New Yorker. but then he also says many other things.
From the reconnaisance point of view of course handy to have a talking head ...
never too many...
(Sorry I need to go clean father's guns, check munitions in the cupboard, I think mum again put the cartridges behind the cherry jam jars, and mixed flour bags with the gunpowder bags. And exercise a bit in throwing knives into the kitchen wall lining wood. Getting out of practice, life was getting so peaceful lately, you know. but what if a MA-model materialises here.)
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#101, WhiteEnglishProud,
I've suffered from these French morons and their perpetual strikes on a number of times as I've lived in Belgium a long time. It seems pointless to complain as I've never heard that any compensation has been paid by France in the past. Technically they should be prosecuted and fined by the ECJ but the likelihood of them paying the fines is nil, so the freight operators, truckies, passengers keep on suffering because striking is a way of life for the revolting French or should I say the French who are revolting.
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89. WebAliceinwonderland:
"Shtrafnye Batalliony"
Alice, does that mean "Punishment Battalion"?
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They like Mandy in Europe don't they. He fits in perfectly, although its not a tight fit no more.
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Mavrelkansky- amerikansky, may it be you are jealous with the Russian capacity for vodka?
There is a popular novel here "Moskva-Petushki", in which basically a retired alcoholic travells in the train to the Petushki-suburb, and on the way nostalgically remembers all kinds of drinks he had in his life. Of which hardly one was supposed to be drinkable, in the first place. Including filtered antifreeze, o'de'cologne of his grandma, various laquers for the wooden flooring, car window cleaning liquids and pharmacy tinctures. One recepie per every train station on the way.
The novel was published when a "dry law" ? don't know the English word, - like when you had ? butlegers ?
was introduced in the USSR, which drove masses of male part of the population towards unorthodox solutions. That Afghanistan time, by the way.
So the novel became immensely popular and used as "a 100 recepies" book. And was prohibited as well, together with the alcohol.
The "dry law" ended in Russia by Perestroyka, FYI.
Gorbi barely managed to cancel it, otherwise we'd have not perestroyka but full revolution instead.
(This is also for you about "winning the cold war.")(when is the V-day, by the way, if you think you won it?)
As the saying of that time went "tra la la ...
if vodka won't be 5.25 (for the bottle, again) - we'll go take Winter Palace again!"
No amount of alcohol can spoil fighting skills of a real Russian. Neither working skills.
Can't think what it can spoil in a Russian, in fact, except liver collapse and early death.
But while still alive - don't worry.
A drunken Russian doesn't "tell secrets" as you wrote, to the enemies either. The more drunk - the better form displayed.
Genetical training. Some of Russia's peoples in the North can't have spirits at all, fall down basically dead. Native Tatars can't drink much either. But if one is sure of his family-tree...
My grandfather - for example - was from Volga. I think he was sure about his roots.
When he retired he took it a habit to drink a litre of vodka per day. As simple as that. Led a very organised life.
Woke up at 6am, had tea, something to eat, worked in the garden, talked to his apple trees and birds or whatever. (never knew me and grandma never woke up before midday to have coffee and whipped cream etc.) (Grandfather called us both spoiled rotting bourgeousy.)
Don't remember this daily litre of vodka reflecting on him in any way. Maybe a habit. Maybe a healthy life in the suburbs.
Grandma though screamed a lot about it, and after 20 years or so of daily litre consumption collected all relatives, and decided to scare granddad very well. Brought in a doctor, to look scientific and scary, and check grandfa's heart.
The doc worked for his money well, scared grandfa about consequances of this life style as much as he could, but then entered the next room where all were awaiting the verdict, and said "Heart like of a 20-year old boxer. Sorry. But I said to him all you've asked."
The novel was later used
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AliceDoesn'tLiveHereAnymore
It wasn't me who went berserk, it was a Frenchman who took out his aggressions and frustrations in life out on a helpless MacDonald's restaurant in France. The way I hear it, although he did considerable damage to it and was cheered on by an insane French mob, in the end the restaurant won. MacDonalds still reigns in France.
I've only been to one bullfight in my life and that was in Madrid Spain in 1973. It was truly barbaric. The bull never had a chance. When he first appeard, there were about a dozen spears sticking out of his back and he was bleeding to death. He was probably half dead before he even started and a good thing too because otherwise he'd probably have killed everyone in the bullring including the horses. There was a Catholic Priest in the stands cheering on the Matador and the rest of the whatchamacallits. I think there were ice cream vendors or something else being sold too, kind of like a baseball game. A pleasant sunny afternoon sitting around watching the diversion. It was rather gruesome as all these "civilized" Spaniards enjoyed watching an animal being mercilessly and painfully destroyed for sport and as soon as it was over, I ran to the nearest bar to have a few rounds just to get over the brutality of it. I know, it's an art and I just don't understand it. One day I'm watching French TV (when I lived in Bordeaux) and there's this cow in a pen. A guy walks over to it nonchalantly and completely by surprise, he takes out a rifle and blows its brains out. The cow crumpled like a cheap tent of course and I was as blown away myself as the first time I saw the shower scene in Hitchcock's movie Psycho.
#71 The birds don't sing, the trees don't grow. Must have been near Chernobyl. Did you know on that fateful day in 1986 the USSR almost came to an end? BBC interviewed Gorbachev many years later and socilitied questions from "Have Your Say" for him to answer. I sent mine in and they asked it of him. I asked how it felt finding out that American intelligence and leaders on the other side of the world knew more about what was happening in that building from what they could see from their spy satellites than he did sitting in the Kremlin just about a thousand miles away in his own country. He got very angry at that question and denied it furiously. The more he denied it, the more certain I was that I'd hit his hot button. Oh how they all denied anything had happened for as long as they could. But what could they do when radioactive fallout began landing all over Western Europe and getting into the food growing in the fields and the milk from grass the cows ate? Thirty days after the accident, radioactive fallout with the Chernobyl reactor's signiture was detected on the lawn of Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murry Hill New Jersey. IMO, this was the beginning of the end of the USSR, the final real nail in its coffin. How much have they actually told you about the accident and how many people were needlessly exposed because the authorities would not tell people to remain indoors? Did you know the operators were frantically calling German nuclear power plant operators to get advice on how to slow down the core? How many died throwing material at it that they thought would moderate it with no more protection than a paper suit? It took a year and a half to find the core once it melted through the floor. They've excavated under it to pour as much concrete as they could to slow it down and built a sarcophagus of concrete and steel around it but who knows how long it will last. I haven't heard about it in a long time but at one point they were worried it would collapse.
Threnodio #72
Add music to the list of things you don't know anything about.
#70 - MarcusAureliusII
"Jazz is, of course, folk music and therefore an improvisatory art form. You tend not to find it in notated form until into the 20th century by composers such as Shostakovitch and Stravinsky . . . . . wait a minute . . . ."
Shostakovitch and Stravinsky never wrote a single jazz composition between them. As for notating folk music you don't know what you are talking about either. There are reams of it from Chopin to Dvorak, from Liszt to Smetana. Much classical music is based on folk themes. Grieg wrote tons of them. I'm not sure that Shostakovitch or Stravinsky wrote much music based on folk themes. Of their most famous music, Shostakovitch's symphonies (the 5th is the best symphony written in the 20th century IMO) The Age of Gold, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, Petrushka, the Firebird, L'histoire du Soldat, I don't think any of them are based on folk themes. In fact, Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps) is I think polyphonic atonal or something technically groundbreaking. Funny, first time I heard it when I was about 16 years old, it seemed so strange yet not having heard it for several years, one day when I heard it again for about the 300th time it sounded so familiar. Odd how perceptions change so much over time.
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#109 - MarcusAureliusII
I really do not advise you to take me on on the subject of music. I was deliberately winding you up and you know it. I refering to notated jazz. The Rite of Spring and the Firebird contain several references to Russian folk music, Petrushka, although mainly original musically is a styalised version of an old Russian folk tale. Shostakovitch composed two pieces entitled Jazz Suites in the first decade of the last century and Stravinsky drw on it heavily, especially but not exclusively in the Ebony Concerto which he wrote for Benny Goodman. Of the 15 symphonies of Shostakovitch, the fifth is the one which, in many ways most closely adheres to the prrinciples set down in the doctrine of Soviet realism and is almost entirely tonal making it more accessible and therefore very popular with those less likely to appreciate his more adventurous works of which, in my opinion, the fourth is outstanding. I am not going to bore everyone else with any more of this but please leave the music to someone else.
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Greypolyglot, #85, #106.
"why do you play with MA2? are you a psychiatric nurse or a masochist?"
your question is haunting me the whole day today. not for love, not for money. was simply stupid. happens. must be playful by character and over-played.
"shtrafnye battliony", yes, punishment battalions. from German schtraf, I think, a fee, or a tax. consisting of those who "pro-shtrafilsya", became subject to a tax or a fee, guilty in something.
many songs here from the war times, most still popular. actually, reading ab Mark Mardell's experience in this war survival training course, for BBC journalists, wanted to translate for him "war correspondent-at-a table-song"! (Korrsepondentskaya za-stolnaya). Very energetic.
Around V-day every year there is a splash-up in those songs' singing, some cases very funny, like when teenager pop darlings, or someone with a multi-coloured "irokez" on the head standing up, or heavy metal clinging knights metal gear groups - all suddenly start singing war songs! about how they sit in the dugout, and bullets whistle above, and all. The pop stars tend to pick up most "girl appeal" songs,
"about you bushes were whispering me bla bla bla,
in the snow-white fields by the Moscow a ahh ahh
to you I cannot walk at all
and to death there are only 4 steps...ah ah ah." Girls get extatic, and all happy.
However even this helps to keep old melodies afloat, and with melodies and texts old time songs stood well. Poor modern singers rarely get hold of a good composer or a good text.
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A mistake
We're buried some place under Narva
close to narva, close to narva
We're buried some place under Narva
We were - and we aren't. Niet.
We lie the same way we walked - in pairs, po-parno, po-parno
We lie the same as we walked, po-parno,
and - A very good day to you all!
Our common Priviet.
Doesn't worry neither enemy, nor wake-up
neither enemy nor wake-up
Doesn't worry neither enemy, nor wake-up
Up-frozen lads.
Only once we have heard - as if to, as if to
Only once we have heard - as if
Trumpets are trumpeting again.
So well, what - stand up! such and such, so and so,
So then - stand up, rank and file, this and that, so and so
For blood - it isn't water.
If Russia is calling its dead
Rossia, rossia
If Russia is calling its dead
it means
good grief! trouble again.
So we stood up, in crosses, and badges
in crosses in badges
So we stood up, in crosses, and badges
In the snowy smoke.
We look around - and we see - there was a mistake done, a mistake done a mistake done
We look around and see - it is a mistake done
And we are - good for nothing.
Where in forty-third lay down infantry
infantry infantry
Where in the 43rd lay down infantry
For nothing. In vain.
There in first powder snow is roving a hunt
okhota, okhota
There in first powder-snow is roving a jolly good hunt!
Jaegers are trumpeting.
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An invented mythical past.
A denial of present reality.
An unwillingness to face a bleak future.
Therefore no possible rational course of action to avert it. Blinders on the horse, blinders on the driver, blinders on the passengers. Going breakneck speed down a road that leads over a cliff like a Greek tragedy listening only to its own voice.
Why does Russia deny it is part of Europe? Peas in a pod with a common destiny.
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It's Not Yet Evening
Eshyo ne vecher
Four yrs rambled in the seas our fregate
In storms and battles our colours didn't fade out!
We've learned how to patch the sails,
And how to plug holes with the bodies
A whole Spanish esquadra follows us on our heels,
It's still at sea, we can't avoid encounter.
But our Captain said - Cool down there, chaps.
It's not yet evening. Eshyo ne vecher.
Here enemy fregate turns to us her side
And its board gets coloured in smokes
A return volley - at chance, without looking,
Fire and death away! Good fortune's with us!
We used to get out of worse troubles before
But it is bad with wind, and leaks in the hold
However, the Captain sends us his habitual signal: Yesho ne vecher. It's not yet the evening.
A hundred eyes stare at us through tubes and binoculars
And they see us - from smoke grey and angry!
But they will never have the chance to see us chained
To oars in the galleys
Un-equal fight! Our ship is craning heavily!
Save our Souls, human souls!
But our Captain shouts - All aboard the enemy ship! It's not yet evening. Eshyo ne vecherrr!
Who wants to live. Who is gay and merry! Not a lousy linen bug!
Prepare your hands for the hand-to-hand fighting!
As to the rats - oh, these can leave the ship.
They'll only stand in the way of the reckless fighting.
And the rats were thinking - Oh, hell knows them, why not?
And dully jumped overboard, saving themselves from shell-splinters
And we - we were standing board to board
with the fregate
Eshyo ne vecherrr! Eshyo ne vecherrr!
Face to face. Knives to knives. Eyes to eyes.
Not to become the prey of crabs and octupuses,
Some - with a colt! Some - with a dagger! Some - in tears! We were leaving our sinking ship
But - No! They won't send it to the bottom!
The Ocean will help, shouldering it on its shoulders
For - you know what - ocean - it proved to be - our side
And rright was our Captain - Eshyo ne vecher!
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Nanotchka, you seem preoccupied with war and poems of war. Which side will win...in the war Russia is waging against itself?
Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,--
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm."
Then he said "Good-night!" and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.
Meanwhile, his friend through alley and street
Wanders and watches, with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.
Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade,--
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town
And the moonlight flowing over all.
Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay,--
A line of black that bends and floats
On the rising tide like a bridge of boats.
Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse's side,
Now he gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns.
A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet;
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.
It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer's dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.
It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, black and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.
It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadow brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket ball.
You know the rest. In the books you have read
How the British Regulars fired and fled,---
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard wall,
Chasing the redcoats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.
So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,---
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.
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How could the British man-of-war be fighting Middlesex? when was that?
Are you sure it's not your Charleston with she-crab soup?
(and about "Doesn't live here anymore" - forget about it. 25 yrs next door guaranteed.)
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The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
1807-1882
Written April 19, 1860; first published in 1863 as part of "Tales of a Wayside Inn"
It was the 18th of April in 1775. America was 13 colonies of Britain on the verge of war.
Has this war ever ended? Do wars ever really end? Is an end to a war often an illusion? Is a peace treaty just a worthless piece of paper? It's become clear WWI never ended, it just went into suspended animation for 60 or 70 years. I think many wars seem to end that way but one day come back to life. The wars England and France fought to rule the world seems to be going very badly for them right now. The EU is their current strategy and it isn't working very well. England has tentatively accepted temporary defeat but still doesn't believe the United States of America is an independent country. I'm not sure it accepts that any of its former colonies are independent now. Zimbabwe just taught it a lesson. Sometimes when I hear some of these ghastly English spout some of their inane nonsense, I wonder if we shouldn't lob a few in their direction just as a reminder. France has never quite gotten over its losses and I don't think it accepts them. It still views itself as paradise on earth which should instruct the rest of the world through its benign despotic rule how to live. Russia's war to rule the world is really a war against Europe and China, revenge for long past invasions. It too has not accepted defeat. Putin is living proof of that. He wants to rebuild the Soviet Empire and start from there. Fat chance, he'll be lucky if his own country doesn't implode when the price of oil crashes....if it crashes. How strong can a nation be if its entire well being depends on one product whose monetary value oscillates? Small wonder it wants to join with OPEC to keep the supply tight as long as possible. This is why the US should get out of being a European military power, it has no interests there.
The end of military battles and treaties are not necessarily the end of war. The US fought Mexico and captured not only Texas but much of the Southwest and West all the way to California. That was 150 years ago. Mexico's current strategy seems to be demographic by slow stealth invasion. It could work. Last year millions of invaders brazenly waved Mexican flags in an act of defiance in cities all over America. The US is countering with major countermeasures to import Asians to keep Latinos a minority. And increase in the black population and strong assimilation will help too. Would making English the official language of the US be a good strategy or counterproductive? Hard to say as Latinos become fully assimilated by the second generation just like everyone else in America.
The US fought Canada and lost. It has accepted that. The last thing the US wants or needs is control over Canada although I'll bet there are a lot of Canadians who feel they've been a colony of the US all along. In the 1980s when the breakup of Canada was a real possibility, several provinces dusted off petitions for US statehood. Now they are safely back in their drawers and forgotten.
Except for insignificant participation of the US in the expeditionary force to defeat the Bolsheviks and in the Boxer rebellion, the US never fought a war against Russia or China directly. It had no real cause to. It never should. In many ways, the US is China's natural ally. Not so Russia.
The US defeated Spain and I don't think the Spanish are eager to recapture Cuba, the Phillipines, or Latin America anytime soon. Likewise, Germany and Japan don't seem eager for a rematch with the US either although you never know when some future generations might rewrite history and find reasons and methods to reignite what we now consider dead and burried forever.
The US left Vietnam militarily defeated over 30 years ago but Vietnam is now surrendering. It can call its economy market socialism or whatever else it likes but it is becoming a capitalist economy just as China has. Too bad it didn't make that decision 45 years ago or it would have been far better off today.
The war the Islamic world is fighting against the US has only one possible outcome. That is because a billion people want the material fruits of market Capitalism including American culture more than they want Islamic theology. That theology will eventually be diluted to the point where it is unrecognizable but how many millions will die before this war ends? The US would do well to keep this war from being fought on its own shores the way President Bush has tried to.
In war the only rule is that there are no rules and the notion of international law and quaint platitudes of justice and humanity restraining one side or the other are prescriptions for suicide. Fight to win every way you can or die is the only rule there is.
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I knew it cannot be Britain. What's this vicious manner, anyway, to double geographic names to confuse poem readers and int'l travellers?
What for did you grabatise Middlesex over to the USA?
I also heard you've got 32 Moscow-s.
And how many Charleston-s do you have, by the way. One Charleston and one Charlestown?
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Nanotchka, we "grabatised" everything. We've got a Saint Petersburg. In Florida. Paris and Odessa too. But no Leningrads or Stalingrads. Those we've left for the Proletarians.
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Good because you won't have people for those.
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Wonder how it looked like.
Dusty sunny road with wooden barracks on the sides, one a saloon, those funny flip-flop flopping short doors with holes.
Inside the whole company, and a sheriff with that choking leather rope ? with the clasp ? on his neck says:
Guys, I thought about it, let's call ourselves -Moscow!
Shouts: Yeah! Sure! Why not!
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Keep it going Alice and Marcus. :=))
This thread has been a joy to follow!
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Nanotchka, worse than that, Moscow Idaho is a prison camp. You don't want to go there. Once you're in you will never leave. We only know about it by rumor, nobody has ever lived to tell about it. More horrible than Moscow Russia.
Actually, it looks like a fairly typical small town in America.
Here's their home page
http://www.moscow.com/
There are some photos in their gallery. Looks like there's a university, golf course, a large medical center, and I'll bet lots of hockey moms just like Sara Palin :-)
Moscow Pennsylvania has a population of only about 1800 people and is only 2.7 square miles. It's in Lakawanna County not far from Scranton where Joe Biden is from. Very picturesque.
Anyway, I count 17 Moscows in the US. I think the one in Idaho is the most famous of them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_(disambiguation)
There's also one in India, Scotland, and Ontario Canada.
Do you think yours was the first one? :-)
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About wormwood. (Chernobyl, in Ukraininan).
Was predicted by Nostradamus but nobody listened as usual.
Russians didn't listen because in Russian wormwood is polyn', who the hell knew Ukrainian Chernobyl = Nostradamuses' disaster predicted to take place "in the place called wormwood."
Live and learn, so to say. (and think twice before calling 17 places "Moscow")
No, we knew nil, which was very deadly bad - not for Ukraine - where it happened - but for Belarus 1./, St. Petersburg 2./, Finland 3rd./
The wind blew vertically up, from the South up. Very unusual manner. Normally we have it from left to right, from England to Siberia - 70% of the time, from Siberia to England - 15% of the time. (when it gets cold in England).
Chernobyl is located on the Northern tip of Ukraine, so Ukraine was not touched by the fallout. Belorussia, St. Petersburg and Finland was.
I was ill taken to a hospital by emergency that morning after Chernobyl. but I didn't know what it is, and neither did doctors. finally they let me out.
But then, nobody but me seemed to be ill. but then I am very how to say un-substantial and perceptive. without back-ups.
When we got to know - from rumours, passed over from person to person - all ran to buy iodine to drink water with drops of iodine (somehow considered here a way against radiation) (floklore recepies) and drink vodka (another national recepie for all ailments) And close windows and doors and plug all holes under the doors by cotton and sit at home - but it was too late.
All Soviet radio said "a minor fire at the station."
About level of awareness - my mum worked for an meteo institute that had a contract with Chernobyl. And they stopped selling money. They called - and Chernobyl strangely didn't answer. Mum called her friend in Moscow - for a sec - chief country's ecology inspector - and Ministry of Ecology didn't know either. Said same thing - they phone to Ukraine - and nobody picks up the phone!
And only when that Moscow's inspector lady saw people with prams in her own apartment staircase - run-aways from Kiev - streaming by all trains to Moscow, saving their children - she asked them - are you from Ukraine? what happened there? and that's how chief ecology inspector of USSR finally got the news.
What's there now - we don't know either.
Is the sarkofagus holding more or less, or collapsing? It is Ukraine. Independent democratic country. A very organised place, as you can judge by the news, and all.
First sarkofagus there was built by Russians who all died after or became slowly dying, Ukrainians ran away. The next sarkofagus will have to be built I don't know by who, but it better be. I heard Ukraine is trying to convince EU to sponsor the project, but who'll work there.
It stands desolate, and nobody comes near for miles. Actually, not a bad question, what happens there. Russian engineers (who all died there) said they give guarantee it'll hold 10 years. I think it's far past the time, but Ukraine is busy with political things.
One thing that worries me much more is that Ukr. station was not the only one in the USSR built on that project. The other one is 30 km away from my house, here, in St. Petersburg. Same time, same date of construction, same design.
Most of the country, and Finland, are now much more interested in the conditions of the St. Petersburg nuclear plant...
We don't know what happened in Ukraine. Good if local mis-management. And if a technical bug, in-built into the design?
St. Pete station is watched day and night, all ran around it like around a sick baby, since Chernobyl. Any wink in it or suspicious behaviour in any way - all Finland is here with inspectors and all Moscow. We can only hope monitoring can help.
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To add up - it's England who lives on gas. We get energy from St. Pete nuclear station. For heating, for all.
The most desirable thing is of course to stop it immediately (that is, for 20 years already since "immediately").
But all North-West of Russia feeds from that nuclear plant, I think Finland was before as well, and definitely were the Baltic states.
Finland has its own nuclear station built since that.
Gas pipes are not in Russian villages, only in big cities.
My dacha is 17km from the city. 9 miles?
No gas.
Heating there? I'll tell you. For a stove, for a Russian winter, you need 15m cubic (15 times 1 cube) of cut-wood. Pine-tree or birch-tree. You order a truck which unloads in the street in front of your house.
Then you ran around the village and try to convince various USSR gastarbeiters living in clusters by nationality to go work a little bit. (gasterbeiters these days are awfully spoiled) You borrow an electric sow? that cutting thing, or working on benzine, from neighbours. Pay gasterbeiters and they cut you those trees you bought into the size that can get into your stove. Then you carry ut-wood back and forward and arrange in such a piles that it is not under snow, in the shed or something, and that it dries up a bit in the air draft. Voila.
I don't live in winter in dacha, as you can imagine. I carry cutwood very very badly.
Even worse I carry ashes out, daily to be brushed out from the stove.
Besides, the enterprise also includes going to the well after water with a bucket, 3 blocks away. In summer you do it on a trolley. I do. Until I collapse. Because somehow I need 120 litres of water a day.
In winter I am to go after water with sledges. Thank you very much. Cold water, at minus 30.
I have the sleigh, that my grandad used. I keep it very carefully. You never know
Same service as advertised in the leaflet about our village in 1903. "Buy a spot of land by St. Petersburg - only 2.5 golden roubles. There are wells done on the corners of every 3rd street. And lampposts with electricity along the streets."
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Anyway MAII, what's this sudden sentiment on Chernobyl? If US is in sudden excess of money, you've just given away 1 bln to Georgia - sure if you wish you can finance your other fav. democracy, Ukraine, and help them build a second sarkofagus.
Will be much more practical.
Giving money away, as I understood from the recent blogs, does not contradict rules of capitalism, that you're worried about? (like, capitalism won't survive a state help-out to the banks).
And how did you picture another solution in USSR times? Like, Moscow would address UN for help? We've just been addressing, in modern times, over Georgia, before Russia has applied any force - excessive or un-excessive. UN got stuck puzzling for 4 days. Why not a month?
Apart from telling people honestly - I don't know what could have been done. Maybe of course, you'd have sent urgently a whole shipment of 500 special protection costumes. Or people in the knowing how to hush down a fire in the flaming nuclear station. As if anyone tried it before.
Russians who worked there by bare hands, pouring cement onto flaming nuclear reactor, are total heroes. We were not besieged with volunteers from other countries.
I know the phrase "Someone's heroic deed -is somebody else's mis-management ."
But it doesn't lessen what the people there have done.
They went there the next day. And they knew where they are going.
What were the engineers to do - wait for the UN rushing to help?
By the way, about UN.
Rus. Minister of Agriculture, Gordeev, said last week a smart thing.
"When Russia joins WTO, WTO will stop functioning properly. Any organisation we join - stops working. We are part of the CIS (commonwealth of ex-USSR countries) - and it doesn't work, now - same happened with the UN, not to mention the Council of Europe.
I think we should as a priority join NATO."
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No sudden sentiment about Chernobyl Nanotchka. Just curious about how much they told you and when, that's all. I assume that by now everyone in the CIS knows what happened because of access to the internet.
I worked on a nuclear power plant project myself. It was cancelled, it was never built. It was supposed to be built in Nebraska. This was in the mid 1970s. Precautions for American nuclear power plant design and operation are extreme. The NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) is very strict. Nobody left alive knows how to build one to their satisfaction anymore, it's a lost art that would have to be relearned if America ever decides to build more nuclear power plants. There have been no nuclear plants built since Three Mile Island around 1978. All of the engineers who knew how to design the plant are old and retired or dead. I don't think foreign designers could begin to satisfy the NRC. American companies still know how to build the reactors though.
The Soviets never built containment buildings around their reactors. These are massive concrete and steel structures designed to contain a serious accident to the core. Soviets said radioactive pollution was strictly a capitalist problem, no such thing could happen to a socialist reactor. I think there is one American reactor of the Chernobyl design possibly in Hanover Washington. It is a very early one and may already have been decommissioned.
Shorem was a reactor built on Long Island east of New York City. It was completed but never operated because the owner LILCO (Long Island Lighting Company) could not devise a plan for an emergency evacution that would satisfy the government. Too bad they didn't realize that before they spent one billion dollars on it.
Iodine is the correct thing to take in the event of a radioactive accident like Chernobyl. The thyroid gland takes it up preventing it from absorbing radioactive iodine instead which would likely result in thyroid cancer.
http://www.fda.gov/cder/guidance/4825fnl.htm
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#127 MAII in fact I never looked up Chernobyl/Cherny stems/Black stems/black grass/wormwood
in the net.
I don't think anyone here did. You still don't understand one strategic thing about Russia, that is we don't trust media, own or foreign, Soviet, Russian, BBC or CNN or anything in print.
We are curious of course, but only for entertainment or fashion or cooking recepies, or some geographical data, or weather, or car models, how to say - for non-crucial in importance things.
These we trust only when you hear it from an alive person speaking to you. A neighbour an acquaintance a friend.
Someone you can come back to and hold responsible, who is connected to you, mutually depending, like you can come back later and say - why did you lie to me? no bisquits for you any longer!
We don't trust doctors and politicians of all calibres - only friends and acquaintance. Doctors and politicians stand one thing in Russian mind - both are "cure-ing/fixing you." When someone lies to you here, the most common thing to say is "Stop cure-ing/doctoring me!"
Russians are very friendly. Neighbours are your rightful catch, you can break up into any neighbour door at midnight and ask for a loan of money or medications, this is taken for granted. Being "a bad neighbour" is very un-recommended. Once you refuse your neighbour in something the bad reputation will haunt you for generations.
"In 1924 my grandad asked them for garden rakes and they...."
(I was warned before I went to live in London a bit, that one shouldn't knock in neighbour doors asking for salt or en egg missing at home at the crucial moment of making a pie. Like, this is not normal there.)
(Though I'd say when my swimsuit flew away from the balcony into the neighbour yard, in spite of supposed to be un-friendly neighbours not to be disturbed, they brought me back my swimsuit in no time at all, and stayed talking for hours. It looked like they'd gladly come before, only had no formal reasons.)
So, word of the mouth is trusted better. How would you think we'd all survive here if we listened to all that is told by doctors and politicians? And did what they expect you to do? You wrote before earlier "grey something, slaves of the state." The task of the state is indeed to make you grey agreeable sheep. The task of the person is to do the opposite to what is told. On balance, we survive.
________
OK, an anecdote times 2nd WW.
A man is going to the deadly battle in the morning. Sits in the dug-out and writes last good-bye letters. And writes that fashionable back then standard thing, a note to put into his breast pocket:
"If I die in this battle - please consider me a communist!"
Then he thinks a little bit and adds:
"And if I don't - please, don't!"
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Nanotchka, here's one I heard about during Soviet times. A rumor had it that a store had a rare item for sale, oranges. A line (queue) forms early in the morning around 5 AM waiting for the store to open. As word gets out, people continue lining up and soon the line is heading down the street and around the corner. It gets longer and longer. Seeing that this line is holding up traffic, a group of policemen come by to see what they can do to shorten the line to clear traffic. They announce "all Jews off the line." And so all the Jews leave. The line is shorter for awhile but continues to grow. Then they come back and announce "all those not members of the Party must get off the line. And the line gets shorter again. When the store finally opens and it becomes clear there are no oranges, word gets out quckly and as they leave one guy turns to another and says "see, the Jews always get the best treatment."
I am amazed that now when a society that was starved for so long for information except from a government channel it didn't trust because it knew what it got was often lies finally has access to the entire world, it has lost all natural human curiousity to explore it. It reminds me of Sartre's play "No Exit" where three people are locked in a room in hell. Each adores one of the other two and detests the other of the two but is spurned by the object of affection. One is a lesbian, one is a coward who deserted the army, and one is a woman who killed her baby. They spend most of the play torturing and being tortured by the others. In the end, they find the door has been unlocked but choose to remain voluntarily throughout eternity to keep at it. It will be interesting to see if future generations of Russians not traumatized by the tyranny of communism have the normal curiousity most of the rest of the world has. I also heard that half the KGB's domestic efforts were spent repressing people from speaking their minds and the other half spent their efforts trying to find out what they were thinking.
I'm surprised to hear what you say about neighbors. I had the distinct impression that people were suspicious of their neighbors in Russia and wished them ill especially if they had bad luck themselves or if their neighbors had good fortune. I heard an old Russian saying has it that If I lose one of my eyes may my neighbor lose both of his. This is not confined to Russia. A friend was studying nights for his MBA (masters of business administration) at NYU and had to learn a saying reflective of another culture that would give insight into it. He chose the Romanian saying (probaby misspelled) "Sa capra moire viccanulli" which means "may your neighbor's goat die. It's interpreted to mean that if you have bad luck, my your neighbor have luck that is as bad or worse. I had the feeling similar sentiments were common in Europe, especially in Eastern Europe.
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Alice,
I salute your forbearance and perseverance.
We have seen fewer and and fewer xenophobic rants from MA2 of late.
Spasiba !
Maybe the Yankee redneck is beginning to soften and to appreciate the Russian doll.
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130 greypolyglot
Vse-gda pa-zhalsta! Always welcome!
(now this one is difficult, but I wrote as it sounds)
And thank you for the compliments.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
MA,
since you wrote. about neighbours.
I thought about it, yes, there are neighbour limits. By practical, dacha village standards.
I can break into the garden of the three Smirnoff sisters to the right, fence to the right. They won't wonder seeing me in their land at night looking for my cat.
I feel absolutely free to help myself to the stocks of cut-wood of the Colonel's family, over the fence to the left.
Jolly Roger cannot eat Colonel's five cats rambling in my flower-bads.
When I once found a cat tail in my yard, I thought I would have to sell dacha.
But luckily the tail proved to have fallen off by itself. Old accident of a cat under a car, from which times the tail was gradually drying away.
Opposite the road as well. In their garden I collect nice apples and survey with a proprietory eyes their flowers, which one to ask to ? "copy".
We all know how our fence door catches work, all the tricks. Neighbours aren't supposed to use street entrance either.
To your immediate neighbours you should walk by using a couple of free-moving boards in the fence, that you can move aside and squeeze through the hole.
If they'd enter my dacha through the street entrance, by knocking and all the formalities, my first thought will be they are angry with me for something, and came formally to announce the war.
However - these relations affect only immediate neighbours. One more house to the left or right in the street - I'd first look up in the mirror at myself before going, put on a clean jumper, and would formally politely knock at their gate. Or - even phone before going. True. Don't know why. But this seems to be the rule.
Violated only if 2 neighbour families managed to quarrel seriously and profoundly for generations. Otherwise - one's immediate neighbours - is your back-up, help, 911, bank and ambulance.
This is old roots of surviving by a community. Russians were never awfully lucky with tsars and various governments, so there are strong traditions of surviving by a group. Maybe that's why communism planted itself so easily here. The idea "all common" appealing to old genetic understandings. Communism was not invented by Russians, you know, but nobody else in the world seem to have fallen for it so easily and exploit the idea to such hilarious degrees. Other countries simply got vaccinated and got out like a duck, "dry out of water".
As the old saying goes, God needs Russia as experimental field, so that others won't repeat its mistakes!
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Nanotchka, I don't have a dacha. I don't have a fence. Not a real one. I have an invisible fence. It's a wire burried under ground around the perimeter of one acre of my land. It is not there to keep people out, it's there to keep my two big dogs in. If they go too close to it, they will first hear a beeping and if they continue, they will get a nasty electrical shock in their neck from their special collars that receive a special radio signal from the wire. It won't injure them but it hurts a lot. I tried it and I know. If they forget, they cry because it hurts so badly. The system is approved by the ASPCA. It keeps them from wandering away and getting lost or into trouble. If President Clinton had one, his dog Buddy might be alive today. Somebody's dog got lost and people looked for it all over the region. They found it and returned it 4 months later. It had wandered away about 30 miles.
I don't have a wood pile. My fireplace burns gas. I have fake ceramic logs that look like oak and vermiculite which looks like glowing embers. It looks like a real wood burnig fire but there are no ashes. I turn it on, I turn it off. No muss, no fuss, no bother and all the heat goes up the chimney. My fireplace is a toy just there for amusement. My house is heated with three 100,000 BTU per hour gas fired furnaces.
If I had fruit trees and the deer and birds didnt eat the fruit, my neighbors would not come to pick it. That would be stealing. Although it would never happen, you can shoot people who come on your land and in some places get away with it. I'll bet Texas in one. There is no doubt you can legally shoot and kill an intruder in your home. That is called "justifiable homocide." No jury would convict even if a DA was foolish enough to bring charges. Tresspassing is illegal so I would have to go bring fruit to them as gifts unless they asked my permisson to pick it themselves. New Jersey isn't called "The Garden State" for nothing. I have a sign on my front lawn warning tresspassers to stay away. That is because strangers came to play with the dogs, even to feed them. I though they might be casing the house for a burglary. I also don't want any door to door salesmen comeing around.
The only Smirnoff I know about is the brand of American vodka. I prefer Scotch myself. American vodka has no flavor, at least it used to be illegal to sell flavored vodka here but the law has changed. It's also illegal to put liqueur in candy the way the French do because children might eat it.
Toccata and Fugue will not harm a cat or any animal or person. It's a good thing to because between them they are well over 250 pounds (100+ kilos.) They love everyone. If someone broke into my home while I was away, my only hope is that they will kiss the burglars to death. Even the police come to play with them.
About 5 years ago we rescued a stray black kitten. We used to feed it and play with it. We called him/her? Pasacaglia. I thought about adopting it myself but with two big playful young dogs, a kitten might have had it too rough. The humane society advised against it. They captured it and we learned a few months later they found a new home where it was adopted.
The Communist Manifesto was written by Karl Marx, a German Jew. He despised Slavs and said they were an inferior race. I'll bet they never told you that at Komsomol (???????????????? ???? ????????). His theory was that Communism would first be adpoted by industrialized nations. He expected that agrarian societies like Russia would have to experience the industrial revolution first. Marx's ideas came from the worst abuses of workers by capitalists during the industrial revolution. Mao's Communism was a peasant's revolution, not a revolution of the proletariat. Go figure. Now they are going though an industrial revolution but are no longer really Communists. You can put lipstick on a pig but it is still a pig. Ask 99% of Americans who are furious at the Wall Street bail out bill that passed Congress this week.
If Russia is god's experiment, it proves he is far from perfect. I don't think anyone knows how to fix it.
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MA, collector of antique Soviet jokes,
here is an antique one:
When God was distributing virtues, he had 3 in stocks: to be honest, to be clever and to be a communist party member. At that, any person could have been blessed with only 2. So,
If you're honest and clever - you aren't a member of the communist party.
If you're honest and a member of the communist party - sorry.
If you are clever AND a member of the communist party - well, are you honest then in your intentions?
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MAII # 134
As the newspapers here used to exclaim before in such cases :
Two worlds, two systems! (meaning the drastic difference)
(so far I see in common only dogs and cats)
What a capitalist you are with your acre in New Jersey! I looked up acre in the wik and it says less than a football field but not much less. A dacha is 10 times smaller, normal dacha is 42 meters one side and 32 meters the other side, and then you multiply 42x32 and get don't know what.
Saw once the invisible fence for dogs, and collars, was interested but of course un-appliccable in small dacha conditions. And indeed it is constant worry they can get lost.
With arms was discussed here several times but always 75% against. The idea being that being armed people would simply kill one another instead of quarreling. Only guns for hunter society members and antique collectors are allowed, but no pistols.
Marx, yeah, we knew, despised slavs, but officially of course we were not supposed to know. So again, someone read somewhere, told another Russian, until all Russia knew.
I could never tell Marx from Engels both with beards and the holy trio incl. Lenin decorating all my kindergarten walls and school walls. Dear familiar faces I grew up with. These days children don't even know who Lenin was. TV was asking several times. No idea. Lucky kids.
When I was translating my Russian university diploma grades for a British university, the list looked very impressive and I am sure the entrance smth commission in Britain was falling off the chairs:
"Marxism-Leninism philosophy. - Excellent."
"History of the Communist Party of the USSR. Good. "
"Political economy (!!!). Excellent."
"Scientific atheism. Excellent."
etc.
I am sure all loved the last one in particular.
But in fact I don't remember much trouble with those, they were for a "tick", like, "done", included as compulsory items into absolutely all colleges, professions, universities, be you a medical nurse or a engineer. Nobody was much demanding.
Students viewed these as other mad disciplines like Latin - learned the night before the test, passed, forgot forever. Until the exam time.
Back to 2 systems. These days I won't do what my father did, but would rather call the police. Criminals also became different, narcomans, aggressive. In USSR times it was more relaxed. Father once came to dacha in winter and found a burglar in the house. First he found the fridge on the road. Apparently the burglar tried to carry the fridge away, but got tired, and dropped it on the road. So he returned back to the dacha and drank vodka and got happy asleep embracing his bags with smaller grabatised things. Father didn't call the police. Because laws here are strict. Steal one lousy old fridge - to prizon for 5 years or something. If not 10. Plus breaking the doors. Plus drunk. Life of the man - to the dogs. So father woke up the burglar and kicked him out. The burglar was big, but father said he didn't fight very much. So father got asleep finally, but in the middle of the night woke with a new idea: What if the damn burglar didn't go away far, but got asleep on the road, drunk? At minus 20 the man could be dead. He damned it all, dressed up, and went into the road to look for the burglar. Exactly so. Hardly woke him up in the snow pile again, and dragged back to the dacha. The burglar woke up much better by this time, and attempted some fighting. So father kicked him out again. etc. all in all troublesome night running back and forward on the edge btw burglar waking up too well and killing father, Vs not very awake and getting frozen on the road. Tricky balance, said hardly was able to get rid of him finally by the morning, that he walked away.
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MAII where are you lost to? Don't know what to reply to people who let burglars go? (Menedemus by the way will be disappointed that the circus is gone from town, think at least about him.)
To cheer you up I'll provide some quotes from famous Russian politician Zhirinovsky,
I think he is our Parliament speaker or smth. He tried several times to become a president, but never had enough votes for. Though many Russians voted for him or his party, on the basis "Nothing will change for us anyway, but at least with this one we'll laugh a lot!"
Nowhere it is said what to do when national anthem is performed. To stand, to lie or to crawl. Motherland you have to love!
If McDonalds is such a nice restaurant - why our people die at 57 ! Hamburger - is it meat? As was saying the sailor from "Potyomkin" - filty stuff, that's what it is! Trample it, but don't spot your boots.
O! An airplane amerikansky has fallen. What a pity damn it all. Must be, another one will fall down shortly. But what to do - democracy. Terrorists also have the right to travel to any country. They ought to have freedom.
Lukashenko - our common president!
I didn't graduate from the airborne force academy. Any commando landing operation that I will throw out of the plane - they'll all smash out.
What Kopperfield? Lenin was also applaused to in 1917, and now they don't know how to clean him away from the Red Square.
When X was cleaning potatoes in the army service - I was preparing the 3rd world war!
We ought to love Motherland - and - such is the fate of any opposition party - to exploit all bad that takes place in it.
Our party - is slightly more right than the centre. By degrees, approx. 15. But no one will ever learn where is in Russia centre!
For nobody who has past - don't vote !
Young men - they are most wise at 25. No life experience. Life experience - it is fires, divorces, shake-overs, fraud, this is several revolutions and several wars, you understand me.
The most horrible thing that X has done - and the whole world knows about it by now - is he gave the order for my complete murder. There was already bought a rifle with an optic goal-setting, the performer has arrived to the place of the future crime, he listened to my talk to the people - and his hands fell down.
Politics is by 70% dirt, so I always put on clean costumes.
"Arguments" - this is not a Russian word. "Facts" - also foreign, no doubt. Russia doesn't need any arguments. We have one argument - to Siberia! Facts we don't need either. When I become the president, we won't have any "facts". And rightly so they are scared of me! because all who hasn't run away yet - will be cleaning Belomorcanal! the most weak-nerved ones can already start packing.
I like such journalists as John Reed. Wrote an article - died - buried.
These full moon days - most impressive days. When you do mass propaganda in these days - any one can be elected a president. Even Stalin they'd elect. Even me.
Foreign ads on TV - hostile in all respects!
Total fraud and bad teeth. As you had bad teeth - you will have them! No toothpastes will save you! And the dandraft in your head - as you had it - so you will !
Damn communists as you are will torture out the country. She will stop multiplying totally.
A woman - she gives birth to a child. Real sex with her - this is pervesion. And when she is used as an object of erotic pleasure - this is insult to the nature. That's why the humanity has figured out: want to have fun - select yourself a partner. Erotics is possible only between reps of the same sex.
England - a rich country, but they have mad cows. Why did their cows get mad? From their, British, democracy!
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Alice,
You have worn Marcus out!
I have actually thoroughly enjoyed the dialogue between you and Marcus - it has been fascinating.
He's gone to get one of angry pills because he had gone all soft and gooey and was actually responding to your charms and telling us things such as naming his foundling cat "Pasacaglia." Anyone who loves their dogs, such as "Toccata" and "Fugue", is an alright guy really!
This thread has shown a side of the American who supposedly hates Europeans with a vengeance very much more likeable than some of the past comments have given Marcus credit for.
Three Cheers for you, Alice.
And for Marcus too; but he'll hate the idea of the British cheering him!
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Menedemus, darling, please write it down for the history, that the 2nd round of the Cold War between Russia and USA has been won by Alice.
(In the best traditions of the old battles, one to the field from each side.)
Victory day we'll set as ? 4 November 2008, 04:00 Moscow time (GMT+3). In fact no problem will be set automatically courtesy of BBC. Media coverage we've got already, now, this is what I call handy.
Unconditional gentlemanly surrender signed in? at? - in Mark Mardell's Euroblog.
In the presence of Menedemus, Buzet23 and threnodio - on behalf of England.
Dear allies.
I think I can safely add here signatures of Joember, WhiteEnglishProud and greypolyglot.
Jukka_Rohila may join up for Finland and JoeBiden for France. (to sign victories without France is not classic)
Now, all seems set, swell and capital and harasho.
But please Menedemus hurry up with the document for the future generations because Aurelius may wake up there in New Jersey football field and plead something not-guilty in absentia or something.
xxx Alice
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Congrats Alice
I ,like Menedemus have really enjoyed this thread.
Love hearing the random things about society in Russia that you never hear anywhere else.
Its just a shame that the Russian Leadership don't share your enuthsiasm for dialog with other nations.
The reason MAII was destined to lose was he assumes all people aree with what there governments do and therefore all Europeans are week all Russians are bad etc.
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Thank you, WhiteEnglishProud.
Menedemus is also right BTW with cheers to MAII. Without his Doom's Day posts like aah! all are bad, bad, and we are getting from bad to worse, to say nothing of you! nearly forgot! take care and take cover - but it won't help you! mind it! dated, signed "Hate Europe Truly Yours" facsimile
you'd never know "random things ab society in Russia. MAII precious in this respect. How do you imagine it otherwise?
I come to a European blog and say: "Now, take your seats in front of TV, children, I'll tell you a story about Russia. Once upon a time, in a black black room there was a black black hand.."
Seriously, MAII suspiciously knows too many things about Russia - and Europe - so well hated by him, which points straight - he cares.
I see him he sees himself as that? forgot the name? with the lanterns on the tower, in the long boring poem he quoted by Longfellow. One lamp if attack from the shore. Two if from the sea. So there stands MA, jingling? lamps.
That is - his best re-incarnation! Nearly forgot what he wrote about Russian filedmarshals!
Now, Jan_Keeskop has also visited me with congratulations, suggesting to be a mediator in striking the the peace treaty with MAII, from the US side, and wondering what I'll take from Aurelius in reparations.
Like, every victory naturally is followed by signing a peace treaty, agreeing reparations in it, due from the defeated side.
Clean forgot about reparations!
Jan_Keeskop's idea is I might demand USA re-names all double-names they borrowed from other countries for itself.
This is well but not interesting, will anyway act in the US favour exclusively. None of their double names' places, like 17 Moscow-s, or Paris or whatever is seemingly doing any well. Places named genuinely fare much better, even if a simple "New" is added to "York".
Should I take Alaska back?
With that woman, shooting from the hip? A joke.
Curious. A Russian can't think about anything to want from USA. Something to eat? to wear? really. never thought it will be such a problem. Their Fifth avenue is so disappointingly narrow street. In San Fransico you can't swim, undercurrent. Monopoly I've got already. Our SU-s fly better. Their cars are awkward big. Jesus Christ.
Hermitage is better than Met. Money they have not.
Poor Americans. Looks like it's the other way around, I need to send there some humanitarian help.
There ought to be something to be jealous about!
Pentagon? what would I do with it.
I've been there. can't think of anything.
_____________________
Now, OK. MAII, here is the list:
Charleston - 1. Including paradise and magnolia gardens, forgot the plantation names, but you know. (Crocodile farm you can keep.)
Rockefeller skating rink - 2.
Evening view on the still sea with hills and mountains in small islands. Colour - ought to be orange-yellow, native long boats in the sea included. Oahu.
And - to build one highway in Russia by captives' forces. (A spade I will give you).
From where to where - doesn't matter.
We have none, so make your pick on the map. From Moscow to Vladivostok, or the other way around. Your choice.
C'est tout.
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Not all of them are weak WhiteEnglishProud. Some of them are strong enough to climb out of their hole and leave. And guess where many of them go.
Nanotchka, your grandfather is proof of an old American saying which has it that no good deed goes unpunished.
It was interesting finding out about a place that is so isolated from us it might as well be on another planet. Not undeveloped but some would say misdeveloped. Even today for many of us, Russia seems like it must be another world. I had a friend once who loved taking photos. He visited the USSR and was arrested for taking photos of the Moscow train station. What did they think he was a spy? We had spy satellites that could photograph the nails in your shoes from outer space. That sounded unusual until I heard of I think a Brit who was arrested at an air show in Greece for photographing airplanes. I think they kept him locked up for about six months. This was around five or ten years ago. Now I think you could be arrested in the US for videotaping public buildings. They would want to find out if you were a terrorist planning an attack.
Here's one I heard a long time ago during the Soviet era. The difference between Capitalism and Communism is that under Capitalism, man exploits man while under Communism it's the other way around.
Because of Soviet censorship, Soviets had a very interesting sense of humor. Their jokes had a wryness to them all their own I'll bet the new Russia lacks. It seems to me it is a far less intelligent and intellectual place than it used to be or is that just my imagination.
The reason I let you win the second cold war is that I felt you should feel like you at least won something. Winter is coming so I hope you can wrap yourself in it and keep warm. Me, I live with a nut who had a 9000 BTW air conditioner going in her room fighting 300,000 BTUs of heating. Can you believe it, air conditioning and heating at the same time? talk about wasting money. Not so smart. So I blocked off the heating vents in her room and opend the windows. It's getting down into the low 40s some evenings now (about 5 to 7 C.)
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I was going to go to Charleston in October 1989 on a cruise that went to Bermuda and Savannah but....hurricaine Hugo blew it away. I went to Newport News Virginia instead. Saw Colonial Williamsburg. Still I wish I had seen Charleston. Liked Savannah very much. Live oak is beautiful to look at but don't touch. Millions of tiny red bugs will get on you. Savanah was a planned city by Oglethorpe. Every one of I think 19 public squares has a park, places of worship, beautiful old homes from the Federal era. Then beyond, the Victorian area, also very nice to visit.
The world is coming to an end Nanotchka. Are you watching it on TV? Crashing down around all of us day by day. How will the world end? Here's a poem called Fire and Ice by one of America's most famous poets, Robert Frost.
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
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MA, that's a good relaxed way to surrender we like that.
I see you like giving girls a chill-out! Don't worry for my winter provisions though, we have central heating by city council command "switch on!" since end Sep., be it plus 30 or minus 30. And then it goes on till May 15, again, be it then +30 or minus.
Inside homes it's not a problem. Problem is outside. Waiting a bus... Walking the dog...
And the amount of rowan-tree "rowans"
I see - signals an extra cold winter.
Intellectual life post-Perestroyka here, yes, to the dogs, great Russan literature blossoms only under repressions and oppressions. When it has no one to oppose it gets lost and blank. But as you know there is a new hope here, possibly we'll be able to get a good read again.
"Another planet", yes. I also always viewed USA and West in general in astronomic terms, that is, mentally linked studying geography at school to learning astronomy. Since mum explained me "oh, that's behind the iron curtain, you'll never get there"
I thought - what the hell the point to learn about all those abstract theoretical places, same use as studying crater names on Mars. May be they don't exist at all and they write silly books about them to torture schoolchildren for nothing.
To this day remember my genuine indignation at seeing sea under the wing of the airliner, flying from London to Ireland.
I was sure it's one island, where from water?
Same shock I had flying once (pure chance) to Hawaii, when in the plane they informed me it's gonna take another 5 hours. I mean, isn't Hawaii USA's number something state, and how can one possibly fly there so long if USA has just ended already by Los Angeles?! Contemplated for a while the plane is taken by the terrorists.
Charleston I dearly recommend you to see before we began issueing Russian passports there. There I went on purpose, like, I knew, approximately, where I am going to, because acquaintance Americans long ago in Moscow told me "Alisa, you'll feel there at home. The nearest to your St. Petersburg that we have in the USA."
Charming relaxed place, nobody runs mad like in Moscow or USA elsewhere, but all wear hats and go in evening dresses to parties.
Only to one mad place I got there, someone collected money from me into a mug in the street and gave me a badge and a silly leaflet, inviting to I didn't know what.
There they gave me a long skirt and a bonnet, and with a lantern in hand I wondered a night in the forest, among a thousand or two of likewise crazy folk, taking part in some historical restauration of the Civil war, on the good side of course.
After many stop overs by fires in the forest, where historical figures told heart-chilling stories about awful yankees, I graduated a total Confederate by the early morning hours. All were happy Russians now know who is the only decent people in the USA and who is a nasty folk, and expressed an earnest hope I will tell all others at home.
I promised and to this day have only 2 flags for all occasions: one from a Soviet submarine round-the-world tour, the other a confederate flag Ad alternate these on my birthday and other national holiday occasions.
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When I was in Savannah, I took a guided tour. The hostess was the quintessential Southern woman, warm and friendly, very charming, extremely pleasant and polite. I'd say in her early to mid 60s. They speak in a slow easy manner we call a Southern drawl. Then we passed this one large house. Suddenly she changed 180 degrees. She became very angry. You could see it in her face, hear it in her voice. "That is where General Sherman stayed when he was in Savannah." (Sherman marched from Atlanta to the sea and burned down half of Georgia on his way.) You'd think he'd come through there a month ago. It had actually been about 125 years earlier. I guess they teach the Civil War differently in the South than they do in New York City.
Yes I think Russian literature could use the help of a cruel brutal despotic dictator. Putin does show some promise but does he have the makings of a Joseph Stalin, an Ivan the Terrible or a Peter the Great? I wish he would grow a beard and a moustache and dye his hair black. I also would like to see him about a foot taller. What's this nonsense with Kung Fu or Judo or whatever this Oriental marshal art is he made a video of? He needs a broadsword, a shield, and a helmet. How else would he follow in the footsteps of Alexandar Nevsky? Who would the enemy be, Britain? China? Luxembourg? Think of the glory Vlad Putin could bring to Mother Russia by single handedly defeating the invading foreign devils from Luxembourg with just his sword. I'll bet those men in business suits would be surprised as hell when they got off the plane to be greeted by Count Vlad in full battle uniform ready to slaughter them. Natasha I need more vodka to give me strength to get those last stragglers still in the back of the plane.
The world is covered mostly by water. It's about as far from Hawaii to Los Angeles as it is from Los Angeles to New York City. There are those who also wish the Emerald Isle was connected to Britain by land. Those would be the Protestants in Northern Ireland.
I remember once Comrade Vlad Posner said that the Soviet government had built a Russian style village in the US. I guess if they got homesick, they could go there to remind them of what they are missing.
I am glad that Russia has seen fit to make your birthday a national holiday. How fitting now that you won the second cold war, a cause to celebrate, wave your two flags, sip vodka, and eat caviar.
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From Portugal
Sometimes its wonderful to be small, and our own Banks here seem to be coping much better with this crisis. Were actually technically not in a reseccion, unlike our Spanish neighbours, so no need for the EU to wave the big stick at us, and the banks are reasonably careful who they make loans to. Very old fashioned, but its kept the local economy and banks out of the headlines, and for that we are very thankful.
More information on local situation is on the national English language newspapers site, www.the-news.net
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Re the above comment, I forgot to make a live link to help anyone follow up on the local Portuguese financial situation:
http://the-news.net/
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MAII, I liked your Robert Frost, "some say the world will end in fire, some say - in ice", can have more.
May be this will be in tune with you.
...in battle there's a kind of bliss.
in terror of the black abyss.
And in a wild and stormy ocean, 'twixt waves and skies as dark as death...
(I think you like it already)
- Arabian sandstorm fierce commotion,
(even better!)
And, mighty Plague, - in thy hot breath!
All, all, that threatens, that destroys -
brings inexplicable strange joys!
(aaaaah)
to mortal heart - a premonition, it may be, of immortal life.
(and, to put it simply)
Happy the man, who sees that vision
Clearly, amid the passions' strife.
good old Pushkin, 1836 or something
(Small Tragedies' serie; Feast During Plague)
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Nanotchka, you force me. This comes from....your sequel.....Through the Looking Glass. Believe it or not, I memorized this poem....because it makes so much sense to me :-)
Jabberwocky
Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
If you don't understand all of the words, don't fret. More than 99.99% of the English speaking world doesn't either. Here is a place to look for an explanation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabberwocky
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Thank you MA, I never looked up explanations to words there before, and only now looked in wik now that you advised. Happy to see Rus. translation keeps strict to the meaning, well, at times jumping btw lines, in order to keep it rhymed, so borrowing later words to upper lines, and visewersa. wiserversa. could never manage this one.
Twas brillig. And the slithy toves...
Rus starts: Warkalos', hlipkie shor'kee...
Twilighted; sickly-slippery polecats
were frolicking in the grass..
At that, rus. approx. "twilighted" is combi between "was getting dark" and "boiling pot cooking was about to get ready".
Twas brillig is explained in wiki as it ought to be time post 4pm, about to get things ready for the 5 o'clock tea, presumably something to eat as well, so then - twilighted with the pot ready to take off the stove - seems a fit replacement.
"sickly-slippery" in one word allright for "slithy"
"polecats" (in fact more like shore-shove-polecats, shovepolecats), may be more or less OK for the English ones? forgot who they are? birds? or those who live under Sun-dial clocks? eat cheese and have a nandle for opening tin preserves?
polecats might eat cheese, and shove-polecats might be applied for opening tins, one would think.
so it is fit which is important, I'd hate to have Rus. children mis-informed by Soviet propaganda. When it is "hrabro-slavlenny heroy!" (bravely-glorifying hero) - it is that "O frabjous (day)" so we understand eachother.
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Here's one you might enjoy byArthur Guiterman. I was reminded of it during several trips to Newport Beach California earlier this year. It suddenly hit me that Southern California is completely sterile....in every way imaginable. :-)
Strictly Germ-proof
THE Antiseptic Baby and the Prophylactic Pup
Were playing in the garden when the Bunny gamboled up;
They looked upon the Creature with a loathing undisguised;?
It wasn't Disinfected and it wasn't Sterilized.
They said it was a Microbe and a Hotbed of Disease;
They steamed it in a vapor of a thousand-odd degrees;
They froze it in a freezer that was cold as Banished Hope
And washed it in permanganate with carbolated soap.
In sulphurated hydrogen they steeped its wiggly ears;
They trimmed its frisky whiskers with a pair of hard-boiled shears;
They donned their rubber mittens and they took it by the hand
And elected it a member of the Fumigated Band.
There's not a Micrococcus in the garden where they play;
They bathe in pure iodoform a dozen times a day;
And each imbibes his rations from a Hygienic Cup?
The Bunny and the Baby and the Prophylactic Pup.
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