Foamy T. Squirrel

No, but their leaders know enough about Islam to make it their tool. Other religions are not immune to this misuse, either.

The heart of the problem is very old. Warlords derive their power by convincing their followers that their enemy is the cause of the problem, and those enemies are then dehumanized, and then killing them becomes justified. Directing a religious ideology against "infidels" has been useful, and Islam considers it a noble action. Hitler did that against the Jews, and Muslim warlords were doing that in Europe centuries before the "New World" was discovered by the Amer-Asians. Since then, the problem has never been resolved, and modern complexity has merely succeeded in heaping more and more confusion and violence onto the pile of bodies. I suggest Europe come up with a King Jan Sobieski pretty damn quick. The US is not adept at handling these situations, and its current administration is naive, weak, passive, and totally incompetent.

I inherited my father's letters. He had a forced vacation in Korea long ago. He did not have fun at Inchon, Seoul or Chosin. I inherited his letters, which he wrote daily to his mother. She never read them, fearing for the fortunes of her son. But I have, though most of the Chosin letters did not make it through, he did. Thank you for your service to your nation, Txfeller and Ozi.

I do not see how sucking money from the productive middle and lower classes for the purpose of re-distribution to politicians and their wealthy supporters or unproductive-but-voting poor masses helps the economy. If you don't like the rich getting rich off the backs of the middle classes, then I suggest you send an invoice to Pelosi, Feinstein, Reid, Jackson, the Clinton Foundation, Obama, and countless other liberal members of the "Vanguard of the Proletariat" who have gotten rich by professing "economic justice" for the poor.

Agreed. It's ridiculous as hell. But she has a classic face, is really cute, and has some friends we all pretty much like. With Diana gone, we need all the classic people we can get in St. Petersburg. Winter is coming. Even in Barcelona they are covering up in fleece, and in St. Petersburg, they also use saran wrap, I understand ... (keeps the heat in)... :lmao:

If you do not understand their relationship, then certainly you are not alone. The fluffy-tailed woodland creatures of the world have already decided that the whims of the Goddess are beyond comprehension and therefore unquestionable. Still, we :hugnkiss: and want her to be happy.

Then maybe their phones broke? :idk: Camcaps people once complained that they were paying to watch people sit on a couch and watch TV all day. Now they complain that tenants just fuss with their phones. Maybe Dasha and Demid are just getting REAL for a change. That could be exciting, especially since they're doing it in a free room! :woohoo: (PS: They're in a futon, laying down, but at least they demonstrate that there are actually humans inhabiting one of the apartments!)

I have no intention of avoiding war by the act of surrendering, either to an avowed enemy or to any government. Any other attitude invites enslavement, death, or more war.

Here we go again. This is what happened: I didn't get paid several checks during the Nixon, Ford and Carter administration on time because I was in the private sector and the business owners could not cover expenses (Their customer bases were dying). By the end of the Carter administration, it was because they couldn't borrow the money for operating income (Double-digit inflation, double-digit unemployment, lousy GDP -- that sort-of-a-not-very-good-thing.) Yes, I remember Ford's "WIN buttons." They stood for Whip Inflation Now. Carter didn't have a button: he had a sweater. The misery index got worse during all the years of the Carter administration, despite a liberal (aka socialistic) Congress. Reagan won by a landslide. Misery continued after the tax cuts; there was a minor course correction in policy ("We went too far." --Stockman). This lasted two years. After that, instead of the strategy of spending money immediately before it became worthless, the strategy was turned into invest, invest, invest. Unemployment and inflation decreased, and GDP and tax revenues actually increased. It became a good time to invest your money in a device that would generate new income potential. Like old garage hobby businesses like Hewlett-Packard or even new ones, like Apple. I took that train. Under Reagan, I bought a house by assuming a 19% interest (Carter administration loan) and refinancing it at 7.35% (Reagan era) which was then paid-off in 14 years. I had good credit so I didn't get that for loan for free from the CRA at taxpayer expense. (I'm ready to talk about the CRA and our long term miserable economy, but probably this is not a good forum.) My experience is that State Capitalism generally screws up natural economics big time and leads to bigger booms and busts. A government simply cannot continue to suck up wealth from the private sector that generates it and expect that more will be generated. Nor can it make up for the loss of value by printing Monopoly money. We need productive private sector jobs, not over-paid unproductive bureaucratic leeches. Got that? http://usdebtclock.org/ --- My previous post regarding Locke referred to the revolutionary idea (then liberal, now conservative) is that a government's legitimacy is created among men to protect their common liberty; not by a government to protect its own power over them. The citizens remain sovereign. At the time, that was an exceptional political concept.

The common theme, regardless of anyone's point of view, is that the entire mess is a giant cluster-fuck.

Or, you could just go there (take a sweater, it gets cool at night) and stop in at Крас Раб. You can meet Maya there since it's walking distance to her apartment, and tell her how much we love her. And if you don't like it, take her across the river to Diktatury Proletariata St, House 32A, Krasnoyarsk to California Pizza. It has pretty good reviews and and all the good tourist attractions are on that side of the river. (Sorry, no Texas style pizza is available in Krasnoyarsk...)

I saw only one pop-up try to appear before it was instantly nuked by my blocker. Everything went fine after that.

That's funny. It was under Reaganomics that I was finally able to buy a house and make $30K more per year. That pulled me out of the lower class ratings of the Carter misery index. But then, I've always been private sector, so I'm less enthusiastic about the future since the state capitalists are now so firmly in control.

Corboblanc is probably correct. Many of the St. Petersburg people are friends, and most are involved in the local theatrical scene. Diana was seen many times rehearsing lines, and occasionally CC members got confused by this. Same with Lev. And the theatrical and entertainment people of RLC are not limited just to St. Petersburg, either, as any seasoned CamCaps member knows.

The NSA's Utah data storage facility is rumored to be capable of up to 5 zetabytes, or the equivalent of 1.25 billion 4-terabyte hard drives. I think the bigger problem is accessing and organizing that much data. Between all my computers, I'm good for about a terabyte. And I'll be damned if I can find anything anywhere on 'em when I need to! :idk:

I just wonder if the pizza in Russia is finger-licking good. That's an important concept, since pizza is one of the primal food groups, along with chocolate, beer, vodka, and Leora. :P

PS: Freezing and lagging are programmed to occur whenever things are just getting really interesting on RLC. This is in addition to pillows that magically appear in the exact wrong place at the wrong time and the fact that Scooter, and now Carla's kitten, are trained specifically to block the action whenever a woman takes off her undies.

The spooky thing is that not only does the NSA track everybody, but browsers and search engines and operating system now ferret through all of you private emails and browsing history as "a way of helping you find stuff that fits your interests." Ain't that nice of 'em? >:(

I only read the book, which didn't come with much in the way of accents. There weren't any cute girls or romantic interests, just a really pissed off Mahdi and a general that the politicians hung out to dry.

Yes, our trusted friend, the humble but handy pizza box. Been a fixture here at CamCaps for years. We're especially fond of the ones with the big phone numbers on them...

Read about the fate of Chinese Gordon.

Actually, the US had nothing to do with Nanking. Or Czechoslovakia. That was none of our concern. Neither was Poland or France. It wasn't until some jackasses blew the shit out of our Pacific Fleet that the US decided to add combat forces to help the "Mother Country" in their fight against Japan's Nazi ally. And the Brits and their Empire certainly proved their worth in the Pacific Theater. And though it took years, the Brits paid us back. They didn't get the Marshall plan. Dude, I'm a Libertarian. I don't like the US being the world police any more than you do. But liberty must be protected. And you can't do that by protecting savages that want to kill you.

I'm talking about the works of John Locke here, not Karl Marx.

As we cowboys say in America, "Yep." It's home to a big port city and former gulag. Nice downtown, with nice architecture. There's also a KFC there, so they can get fried chicken. Nice higher center of learning across the river, too. If you can snuggle up with Leora or Maya at night, you'll find Siberia isn't so bad after all . . .

From my understanding of TxFeller's post, it appears that the sovereign powers of a nation should not be able to exert their rights to enforce their power.