Re: Whinging ( was Whining) from foreigners.

>Freedom ain't free.  If the French (or anyone else)
>have a problem with paying the price they can go back
>to being serfs.  

That sentence sounds like a pretty good whinge from a Foreigner to me.
What
do you think, Derek, me good mate? 4 out of 10 on the snivelometer? **

>Life ain't all hanging out in cafes,
>smoking unfiltered cigarettes, drinking cheap wine,
>and writing incomprehensible poetry.

..it's not? (apart from the cancer-sticks) Say it ain't so!
Actually, any group whose life consists mainly of hanging out in cafes
and drinking
cheap wine (poetry optional) sounds as if they've got a pretty good
thing going,
more power to em I say.

Which brings us to on-topicness.

There's been enough Xenophobia ( no, that's not the right word - phobia
implies
fear, and for all his faults, the FMA isn't afraid of no steenking
Frenchmen
wiz outrageous accents) - as I was saying, enough Xeno-whatever on this
list
to show that in 150 years time, it's not totally beyond the bounds of
possibility
to have 4 major and quite a few minor powerblocs stupid enough to be at
daggers
drawn.

I can imagine some net-traffic in 2180 from a combat engineer in the
Caliphate
claiming Saddam Hussein won the Gulf War, because he was still in power
afterwards
and the Coalition gave back all their territorial gains in Iraq in order
to
make peace. And because SCUDs easily penetrated the vaunted US Patriot
missile
shield. And being contradicted by citizens of the NAC, who point out
that Iraq
invaded Kuwait, was thrown out, and that the Coalition thereby achieved
their
war aims, and only the Kurds ended up with the short end of the stick.
While having someone from the OU remark on the stupidity of it all, and
request
an end to inflammatory topic names. (HINT!!)

Because in 2180, 1990 will be as far back in time as 1812 is from today.

So keep that in mind in all discussions.

** For the hard-of-thinking, or those just too damn tired of this whole
schlemozzle,
this is to point out to readers that to Derek and myself for example (ie
Aussies),
The Full Metal Atkinson is a Foreigner. Or as they say in the classics,
one
man's Mede is another man's Persian. Or is that one man's fish is
another man's
poisson?