As Newton said. Ignorance begets confidence more often than knowledge.
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Yup! We defeated communism and it’s totally no longer a thing.
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That’s exactly how the current ESTA and visa questionnaires work. They literally have questions like are you a terrorist and have you severely oppressed people on religious grounds. I can’t imagine anyone answering yes to any of the questions, which, to me, makes them pointless.
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that’s hidden inside Trumpipulation:
it seems to be a strong narrative. I just can’t put my nose on what it actually means.
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Ooh! Ooh! I’ve got it! Just ask one question: “If you were a terrorist, would you admit it?”
Non-terrorists will answer truthfully, “No”. Terrorists, who always lie, will say, “Yes”.
Caught by their own evilness and pure logic!
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The current government with MP Rutte is not exactly known for tolerance and has a rather anti-immigration standpoint.
His minority government is tolerated by the rightwing PVV (“Freedom party”), led by Wilders. The USP of the PVV is “we’re against the Islam”.
Yet all those Fiats that rusted away in the 70s and 80s were made from steel the Russians traded for Italian-built Lada factories.
bug or feature?
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Unlike, say, a VW or Audi, when a Fiat dies it doesn’t help the environment.
I repeat; the USSR was very good at metallurgy. They just didn’t “waste” it on civilian products. Rocket motors, now, or tanks, or helicopter gunships…
Wrong way round. Plain old mild steel isn’t bad for the environment; the rust it produces is quite benign, the metal is easily recyclable straight into the furnace. Modern cast irons contain things like manganese and other additives, not so good. Aluminium alloys contain copper, and some of the recent ones contain scandium.
This is why it’s OK to use mild steel hulls and magnesium anodes on canals, whereas galvanised hulls are a no-no. Iron and magnesium oxide are everywhere in the environment, zinc not so much.
So an old dead Fiat reduces emissions if it’s replaced by a modern equivalent, and is largely and easily recyclable, whereas the emissions benefit of replacing a product of VAG is on average not that great, and it will cost more to recycle.
The VAG scandal is bad because the honesty of German engineering has been called very much into question, but in terms of overall real world emissions it’s pretty negligible.
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You have some evidence that the steel used in the Soviet military was of some especially high quality? I remember reading an article many years back about Magnitogorsk, their model steel town, which described the factories as wretchedly obsolete.
I’ve never since owned a car which had as good gas mileage as my old Fiat Strada (except possibly the 127 I drove in England). For sure the much newer Golf with which I replaced it was far thirstier. Both had comparable pollution control equipment (the Fiat was California-compliant). Building a whole new car and scrapping another because of one component (the skin) failing in the latter makes no sense, except maybe to junkyards (which want your scrap) and new car dealers.
I was specifically challenging to the notion that Muslims are primarily people of color, which isn’t necessarily true. With nearly 2 billion adherents, it’s a fairly homogenousheterogeneous group.
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heterogeneous?
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Yes, fixed. Thanks.
I do, but it’s covered by the Official Secrets Act. I can, though, say that for a while I worked on the development of tanks.
You must be one of Tom Watson’s Trotskyites.
- I am not a member of the Labour Party, or indeed any political party.
- You confuse an appreciation of the capabilities of a potential opponent with support for that opponent.
- Trotskyites would in any case be opponents of the Soviet Union - I suggest you read some history.
- I have also done appreciations of aspects of the metallurgical and manufacturing capacity of foreign companies who were suppliers to or competitors with British companies.
- I have no sense of humour whatsoever when it comes to my former professional life.
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The British academic and broadcaster Gilbert Harding visited the United States and filled in the visa form. In the section which asked if he intended to overthrow the government of the United States (I forget the wording; it’s a long time since I saw that form) he wrote “Sole purpose of visit.”
They let him in.
But those were in the days when the US administration was a great deal more confident and less paranoid than it is now.
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