first thanx for all the congratulatory messages all is going very well with akira, i must say we werent prepared for how damn cute she is...
  on to topics: im kind of amazed at how many messages ive gotten dealing with my off the cuff remarks about france, apparently a lot of people have bought into the current trends of nationalism... so let me try to get my real views out here;
   in 1984 orwell describes a nation state that is constantly shifting alliances between one of two other great 'superpowers', like his description of a culture whose middle and upper classes are virtually controlled by screens in their homes he hit the nail on the head to a degree... difference only that the number of superpower states is constantly shifting... for almost the entire history of the west every fucking country has had their fifteen minutes when they took their bite out of the rest of the world, this includes england, france, holland, belgium, germany, russia, italy, spain, switzerland etc etc and later on america... the point being that all through western history all of these countries have undergone constant shifts in allegiance with every variation at one time or another being at odds with some other collection of allied nations and anyone who thinks these various groupings indicate anything more than convenience is just missing the picture... every western nation has and will sell each other out at the drop of a hat, nationalism is just a way to manipulate masses of people...
... pretty soon the planet will just not be able to function with half of its population living off the other half and national divisions will be considered primitive... all of this carrying on about who did what for who in what antique war is meaningless in the face of current world problems; of just making sure the human race survives the next thousand or so years
i could go on and forgive for sounding preachy but i really feel that people who hold love of country above love of humanity are misguided...
finally i am totally in support of the people in the US military, that has nothing to do with what i think about american foreign policy i just believe that since the advent of nuclear arms the idea of warfare has become very schizophrenic and contradictory; whereby one cant destroy ones enemy without destroying themselves as well...
all for now, i dont know how this has turned into a current events forum but what the hell
love
chris