Whew; I’m exhausted just from reading this thread! If the rest of you will please permit me a small hijack, I’d be grateful.
**Henry, ** I think the sugar in the Russian-bottled Fanta is getting to your brain, and perhaps your brain is moving rather faster than your typing fingers. My mom complains about my tendency to do the same thing; sometimes I string together ideas in a sequence that makes perfect sense to me, but not to anyone else, because some of the intermediate links in the logic sequence were in my brain only, and were never converted into actual words.
So when you mentioned Kohl and Hitler in the same post, did you mean that Kohl got farther by using economic strength as a means of promoting German influence in Eastern Europe/the Soviet Union than Hitler did by using military force? Or did you mean something else? Please clarify.
Also, give it 20 years, and I bet the Estonians will be doing just as well economically as the Finns. Out of all the places I’ve been in the former Soviet Union, Tallinn was the only place (in 1989, anyway) where I felt that people generally took pride in the excellence of their work…and maybe it was because Estonia had been under communist control for a shorter period than the other places I traveled, but economic conditions, especially the food situation, were much better there.
Henry, don’t be a fuckwit. IRC, Greece is part of the European Union. Ergo, you do not have to share a border with a member country to be part of the EU. And your “it looks better” corollary: :rolleyes:
Yes. Japan, China, and the Four Tigers together would be larger than the United States’ economy. If you were to put all of them together. But I didn’t say that. I said Japan, the United States, and the EU are the three largest economies in the world. The Euro is worth about as much as the dollar. Hence, the EU is a large competitor of the United States now
See my above response.
A One World Currency? Psssha.
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That would be your completely unbiased assertion, right?
If You mean the word “stubborn”, it is a small internal joke; The Nordic countries has always assumed that we, the Finns, are the most stubborn. Even Stalin said:
“The Finns are incredible stubborn. You have to hit them on the head again and again, until they learn.”
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Yeah. So?
Errm hum.
You were the one who said, and I quote from above “But they have oil, so they can afford to be outside EU and pee in the Atlantic if they want” (bolding mine). Then, I stated - quite correctly, IRC - that the North Atlantic was running dry. Then you respond with scathing sarcasm to show how obvious it was that the oil was running out. Which is it then? Is there still oil for the Nords or isn’t there? Because you’re doubling back on yourself.
No offense, Blackeyes, but: Economist Nit Pick Time.
This is one of my pet peeves. I’m not sure if you’re even guilty of it, or if you just chose your words poorly, but here goes.
The fact that the Euro is worth more than the Dollar right now doesn’t say anything about the EU being the largest competitor of the US right now. In fact, that static fact alone doesn’t say anything about either economy at all.
What’s important is how much is was worth, say, 2 years ago. That needs to be compared to what the rate is now, and lo and behold, the Euro has indeed appreciated when compared to the US Dollar. (Top of my head: about $1.05 to the Euro now, about $0.85 to the Euro two years ago.)
But the Euro could have been worth 0.10 dollars (depending on how it was defined at the moment of conception), and it still could have appreciated 10% over the last year. Obviously, the Euro was initially set at a rate close to $1 for simplicity, but that fact alone says nothing about the underlying economies.
We all know that Yen rates are different. What is it, like 10,000 Yen to the Dollar or something (I honestly have no idea at the moment)? As in the example above, that fact alone says nothing about the Japanese economy. Not all currencies started out as “one-on-one”.
Hickory6, you provide an interesting view of how many Americans are fat, dumb, hamburger eating, imperialistic bastards.
[sub]The moral of the story: if you see just one idiot in a crowd, don’t automatically assume a significant part of the crowd has lost its mind. Thanks.[/sub]
Yes, partly that, but I think 1) it is also my English. If the reader reads, not just running through it, the reader can usually understand me.
2) Partly it is the total different background from 99% of the other readers. Sometimes only multi-cultural people can understand what I am referring to.
Like You do, as I have seen from many posts.
There is also the opposite, where I am totally out what it all is about: A thread about “What car would Mohammed use”.
A picture where an Arab is moving rockets from one place to another with a mowing-car. The joke, if we can call it so, is about the bumper-sticker “What car would Jesus use”. I have not seen American bumper-stickers, except in Hollywood pictures, so I thought that it was about Saddam moving his supposed missiles, before Mr. Blix and the other UN-guys comes and inspect.
Just a comment: You know how many times people with different culture can, by mistake get offended.
3) The guys are not at all used to switchback-thinking (Am. = rollercoaster-thinking), usually longer stories should be written in a merry-go-round-style.
In an other **American **cite where I use(d) to write poetry and that kind of stuff, the guys did not read “so fast”, because You do not read poetry like that, and we got along just fine. I learned a lot from the American guys and got nice answers, and even got some E-mails, so positive, that I first believed that it
was some kind of American humour.
4) Guys can’t even grasp someone’s very good English, because they are just waiting some contra-argument. And then attacking fiercely.
Then, to the next question, which I just comment shortly: 1) - The bad guy gets his candies by threat.
The good guy gets it by being polite to people.
(But it is not to say that the guys are similar, quite the opposite).
2) - The bad guy, with moustache, gets what he want with cannons.
The good guy by using his brains
(But it is not to say that the guys are similar, quite the opposite).
3) Stalin got half of Europe “on his side” by killing, torture, black-mail, terror etc.
USA got half of Europe on “the free world side” by using Marshall-help, good policy etc.
(But it is not to say that the guys are similar, quite the opposite).
Is this clear now? People seem to get hurt so easily.
There is also a Finnish joke about this German-Russian-Finnish-business:
Four Finnish guys are looking at the TV-news in the early 90’ties, after that USSR has broken down. On TV the Germans are negotiating with the Russians about Big Business.
One of the Finnish guys jumps up and cries: “Fuck, now they are doing it without us.” (Conquering the immense Russia[n market]).
Now, the joke is extremely self-criticizing.
We, the Finns, did fight on the same side as Hitler, against Stalin.
The guy is jealous, because it used to be the opposite: the Finns made big deals with USSR and the German called our politics “Finlandisierung” and did stubbornly reject almost all deals with USSR.
Finland was bankrupt in early 90’ties, and unable to push any money in an attempt to get “a foot in the door”. The other guy was conquering our “front-yard market”. (We were the only western country with a common border to USSR, together with Japan. And India, if You count it like a western country.)
I can understand that this kind of cartoon, or joke, can be very strange for a citizen that do not know the background. If the joke is offending, it is offending the Finns, but we just laugh about it.
Just a side-note, it took some 10 years for the Finns to get back on feet again, and that was not EU that made it. Mostly our Nokia phones and other phone-operating systems that we made outside EU; China, Balticum, Russia etc. EU had its systems already ready.
The ministry counted that because Nokia and others, the citizens would not need to pay any taxes for 2 years, but has to pay because the government has heavy debts. That was some 3 years ago and now the situation has changed again. But that is another story.
About Estonia:
Estonia is doing fine, but the question was about comparing two very different farmers.
How the fuck are You reading my posts?
I clearly admit that You were right in the question of Greece!
And of course Greece is a part of EU. Where do I have said otherwise?
From yesterday Greece is the Chairman-country of EU. We have news here in Europe too.
About economics; just read what Coldfire wrote. I wrote the same in the earlier answer to You.
I wrote: “5) It will make everything the next 5 years or so, to get EURO as the only currency in as many countries as possible. Later as the number 1 currency in the world. Later.” Blackeyes wrote:
Your reading abilities? Or something else wrong? Maybe reading too fast?
Tell me also what does “Errm hum.” mean? That You did not know what You meant in Your first post?
About the Norwegian oil You already got an answer from Duck Duck. (Thank You DDG ).
P.S. If You are very young, please forgive me for writing back in this tone.
If You are older, You just deserve to learn something and not just stab people without reason.
Actually Coldfire, with American Jews it appears that it’s tied to how orthadox they are. Or at least the two are related. One of the problem a lot of people have with statements about Jewish Lobbying in the US is how people who cite it make it sound. People who use the term Jewish Lobby make it sound like there is this international cabal of people who are dictating US Foreign policy. And believing in that ranks right up there with beliving Stalin’s brain is being kept alive in a barrel of Sake in the Phillipeans.
If you look at what lobbying goes on in Washington DC you’d see that invidual corperations have much more power to influence what the government does. Yes there are pro Israel lobbyists, but they are outnumbered and out funded by the lobbyists who are trying to get viagra made into an over the counter drug.
And it’s not a situation like what happened with Cuba. Israel doesn’t really have any natural resources that we require for the running of the US, nor does it have any particular foodstuffs they can export. Yes they buy US weapons, but they use probably use the aid money the US gives them. So basically there is no economic incentive to interfere. I use this in contrast to Cuba, and the LARGE amount of money thrown around when US citizens and companies had their assessts siezed and the hit a few produce corperations took when they lost their land.
Politically/national interest wise… that’s a whole 'nother can of beans. The US HAS to support them and the lobbyists be damned. I imagine part of it has to do with some of the US actions during WWII. But most importantly Israel is in the middle east and isn’t anti-american. You’ve got Turkey and Israel who don’t have the religiously fueled anti-americanism going on. Turkey’s problem is that it’s the only secular muslim state, and islam and secular don’t exactly work too well together. The ruling government doesn’t exactly have free reign to throw their support behind the US when their population shares cultural, family and religious ties with their anti-american neighbors.
But then there is Israel… Nice Israel. They need help, they aren’t culturally or religously tied to the rest of the countries in the middle east. I bet if the US sells them lots of weapons and gives them aid they’ll let us use their territory as a base should we ever need to move 2 million troops into the area. Don’t forget they are right next to that lovely suez (spelling?) canal. Strategic waterway and useful staging point.
Its a situation where the land Israel occupies is of strategic interest and replacing the Israeli government with a Muslim government that is friendly to US interests is impossible. A handfull of lobbyists aren’t dictating policy here folks. Political and global reality are.
Just an observation over here in re the “Jewish Lobby”. The point’s been made that pro Israel lobbyists are not all Jewish and not all Jews are pro Israel. Of course, that’s true, but there’s something else going on here that bugs me.
All lobbies promote a cause, have an agenda and do what they can to influence the government. That’s what lobbies do. In fact, its all they do. If it don’t try to influence the government, it aint a lobby.
Folks like the OP don’t seem to see anything sinister in a lobby promoting its agenda. When it comes to Israel, though, they go all apeshit about how the Jews “manipulate” or “control” the government. Like the nutjobs who complain about “ZOG”.
There are many powerful lobbies in the US of A, some of which are associated with specific ethnic groups, the anti Castro lobby for example. People will agree or disagree with the agenda of these lobbies but you never see anyone describing them as evil shadowy conspiricies, secretly controlling the President like a he was a puppet.
Obviously, being anti Israel doesn’t mean you hate the Jews. But very often, especially recently, people are simply using criticism of Israel to voice ugly antisemitism.
Hey OP, you really worried about Israel joining the EU because it isn’t in Europe, or are you mad that the Jews are attempting to become your evil overlords?
I’d be willing to bet whatever country you are in has (along with having an obviously flawed school system) not only a Jewish lobby, but a Catholic lobby, a Muslim lobby, and a whole slew of others. Their interest in influencing politics is wholly outside of who is, or is not, in the EU.
Please explain your phobia a bit more so we can either address it or mock it. Are the elders of Zion living under your bed?
