Questions For Our Russian Friends

[Nobody1]

Originally Posted by SanteeFats

...and the people won't do anything to oppose them. IMO of course.

I'm not sure if this is true Santee. Manning, Snowden or the Occupy Movement are hopefull examples of active resistance and true American spirit.

And then there's this.

https://sofrep.com/63764/us-special-...-ops-in-syria/

[SanteeFats]

Originally Posted by Nobody1

I'm not sure if this is true Santee. Manning, Snowden or the Occupy Movement are hopefull examples of active resistance and true American spirit.

And then there's this.

https://sofrep.com/63764/us-special-...-ops-in-syria/

Nobody1 I did not mean people as individuals or small groups but as a whole. Sorry I didn't make myself clear.

[Estreeter]

Me Me Me I got my hand up and want to ask a question and a statement

Statement 1st
I ain't going to Russia I wanted to but not now, reason is in my question

Question
Russia closed down its casinos overnight as gambling was banned nationwide in 2009, why

No fun, I ain't going to Russia

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by AmateurEmale

@scoundrel: Robin Hood lived at a time of feudalism, not capitalism.

Have you forgotten the freer markets of medieval-to-Renaissance-era Italy? Free markets are the "spontaneous order" mentioned by Thomas Jefferson himself, and are whatever transactions happen whenever government doesn't try to stop them. [Think: drugs, prostitution, gambling, firearms... and other transactions tolerated by libertarians!]

And actually, I prefer Anakin Skywalker and Ragnar Danneskjold to Robin Hood.

Renaissance Italy is a good example of a society in which the government feared the people. Every walled town in Tuscany has its own Museo delle Tortura. Torture is the classic fallback position of a dictatorship which is shitting its pants.

Imagine if you can how free one would be in a world where Cesare Borgia or Cosimo de Medici is calling the shots. In many ways Vladimir Putin is like a Renaissance prince, except he has actually got more class. Mr Putin would kill you if it was a logical thing to do, but he wouldn't torture you for entertainment because that would be unprofessional behaviour. Every mafia don should watch Vladimir Putin and learn.

[deepsepia]

Questions for Russians . . . food:

Is there a city or region that has a reputation for great cooking?

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by AmateurEmale

@scoundrel: Robin Hood lived at a time of feudalism, not capitalism.

Have you forgotten the freer markets of medieval-to-Renaissance-era Italy? Free markets are the "spontaneous order" mentioned by Thomas Jefferson himself, and are whatever transactions happen whenever government doesn't try to stop them. [Think: drugs, prostitution, gambling, firearms... and other transactions tolerated by libertarians!]

And actually, I prefer Anakin Skywalker and Ragnar Danneskjold to Robin Hood.

Of course, Anakin Skywalker is actually better known as Darth Vader: coolest villain ever IMHO.

t is said that [Robin Hood] fought against the looting rulers and returned the loot to those who had been robbed, but that is not the meaning of the legend which has survived. He is remembered, not as a champion of property, but as a champion of need, not as a defender of the robbed, but as a provider of the poor. He is held to be the first man who assumed a halo of virtue by practicing charity with wealth which he did not own, by giving away goods which he had not produced, by making others pay for the luxury of his pity. He is the man who became the symbol of the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights, that we don’t have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, but the unearned does. He became a justification for every mediocrity who, unable to make his own living, has demanded the power to dispose of the property of his betters, by proclaiming his willingness to devote his life to his inferiors at the price of robbing his superiors. It is this foulest of creatures — the double-parasite who lives on the sores of the poor and the blood of the rich — whom men have come to regard as a moral ideal. And this has brought us to a world where the more a man produces, the closer he comes to the loss of all his rights, until, if his ability is great enough, he becomes a rightless creature delivered as prey to any claimant — while in order to be placed above rights, above principles, above morality, placed where anything is permitted to him, even plunder and murder, all a man has to do is be in need. Do you wonder why the world is collapsing around us? That is what I am fighting… Until men learn that of all human symbols, Robin Hood is the most immoral and the most contemptible, there will be no justice on earth and no way for mankind to survive.

This is a comment which Ayn Rand actually puts in the mouth of Ragnar Danneskjold in his novel, Atlas Shrugged. As comments go, I'd have to say it is the most half-baked and skewed misrepresentations of the Robin Hood legend I have ever seen. But of course the Robin Hood legend is like a touchstone of political philosophies: the question being, do you take sides with Robin or with the Sheriff of Nottingham and for what reasons? I think you and I are very different in our philosophical view of what underpins the basis system of right versus wrong: though of course this doesn't mean we would always differ on what is right v. what is wrong. We might share the view for example that Robin Hood was correct to rebel, but disagree over what should Robin Hood be rebelling against.

[SanteeFats]

Originally Posted by Nobody1

Entropy can not be destroyed.

So true just look at today's kids.

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

Questions for Russians . . . food:

Is there a city or region that has a reputation for great cooking?

Russia is not internationally renowned for her cuisine, yet I have cooked borscht and it was very good. Likewise I do believe Russia is quite good on smoked and cured meats, a bit like Poland. I have an idea that international isolation has hidden a number of different Russian lights under a bushel and that Russia could yet develop a reputation for her cuisine. Hopefully not 1,001 recipes for cooking with radioactive isotopes...

[Motorboater]

As a country. Politically. Do you feel you get picked on?

[palo5]

Originally Posted by scoundrel

... In many ways Vladimir Putin is like a Renaissance prince, except he has actually got more class. Mr Putin would kill you if it was a logical thing to do, but he wouldn't torture you for entertainment because that would be unprofessional behaviour. Every mafia don should watch Vladimir Putin and learn.

The western corporate media don't watch him. They just repeat what their leaders say. That's why they're such "Kremlin insiders". But you wouldn't read their garbage, of course