No thanks

No red meat, Tandoori Chicken for me.

I like Masala and that weird rice you guys use

So rural Portugal or France, southern Italy etc are wealthy?

better off than their equivelents in Thailand or Malaysia. Take your pick, Per Capita GDP, PPP, UN’s HDI, or GPI.. while each individual counters may not be the most accurate indicators.. they ALL show the same thing when you compare Western Europe and most countries in Asia (the exceptions being Korea, Japan, Singapore and Brunei). You have no way around this

Su.. Don’t listen to the Mc Donald product. I just put it “as a matter of fact” 😀

would you like a nice beefy steak instead?

When was the last time you were in Kuala Lumpur or Tokyo??? :confused:

recently. You can pick some extravagant city you want, but there’s still alot of Kampungs and whatnot in Malaysia outside of major cities. You rarely see such a thing in western Europe. Likewise Rio and Sao Paulo in Brazil are modern cities but you got alot of Favelas on the outskirts and other low living standard areas. As for Tokyo, I alraedy said only Japan (and Singapore) has comparable living standards to Western Europe, while S.Korea is getting there.

In Europe they may be sold by European companies, but here apart from Philips, which is a minor player, you just don’t see any European brands in consumer electronics. Its pretty much all Japanese and Taiwanese. As for PCs and laptops, here Dell and HP are just two players in a crowded market fill Asian competitors such as Acer, Sony, etc. Regardless, all these retail companies are dependent on contract designers and manufacturers based in Asia.

and where is “here”. Japan is an exception because they do the same exact things European and American companies do, remain at the top while outsourcing all the manufacturing to cheaper places. Acer is an exception in an overwhelmingly crowded market dominated by American and Japanese companies.

But European “powers” like France, Germany, and the UK don’t really have much influence outside Europe. For countries in the Asia-Pacific trade and politics are defined by Pacific powers: Japan, US, and China. Also despite being called “developing”, countires like Malaysia and Thailand are just a prosperous as many Euopean countries.

no, living standards are rising, but Malaysia and Thailand are definitely NOT comparable to any western European country. Only Japan is.. Korea is getting there.

Also from a global perspective, who doninates manufacturing? China. Who doninates electronics and IT hardware? Japan and Taiwan. Who dominates car manufacturing outside the heavily protected markets of Europe? Japan, with GM and Ford still present in some markets.

and it’s just manufacturing. Who in the end sells the completed product? Usually American or European companies. Example: Taiwanese companies like Quanta and Compal may make the notebooks by contract, but in the end, it’s American companies like HP and Dell that are the ones selling it to retailers and being the main profiteers.. that’s how business works. Plus manufacturing is migratory.. one day it’s the US making something, then it goes to Japan, then Korea, and right now China..tommorrow some where else once China becomes too expensive.
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aside from this.. in the end.. incoming economic powers like China, India, Brazil, etc won’t have the same luxuries that the US, Japan and Western Europe had to get where they are at. Most of these countries already went past peak oil production in their own continents, and other areas still under their influence (the Mid East) are reaching peak. As long as the west controls the oil, they can control the outflow of oil to other new economies and indirectly control their growth.. after all India and China aren’t exactly energy conservative nations. All that’s left are Central Asian and Russian oil which are impure and expensive.. and even then, both US companies and European companies already have their hands in them.

You are suggesting that 60 out of 79 airframes have survived?

F-14A’s with early, unmodified TF-30 engines had a fairly high attrition rate.

Iran’s examples have seen 27 years of service without manufacturer support (except for “Iran-Contra”), not to mention an 8 year long war.

I keep posting that they were left with a huge aeronautical complex the size of the former McDonnel Douglas St. Louis plant, and after years, have their own manufacturing support.

All,

It is inevitable that all (well at least most!) of us will have a degree of national pride. Can I however suggest that form now on when debating the relative merits of different equipment or national forces we do not resort to slagging each other off but act in a polite manner.

If you agree with this please post a response!

Regards

FAR

you just cheesed off all the Chahneez, Hindoo, Pakistani and Albanian posters.. and GarryB. :diablo:

Also Hamburger, crobato, Chinawhite you all seem to be quite certain that Chinese idelogyes and philoshophyes are some how made chinese less willingless to concuere world, but Im not byuing that so easy. What are philoshpyes? Morrale and ethichal auchrorityes more than bit clever versions of religions, whos only task is to explain world from lack of sience and more importantly explaining to people why the current rulers are on power. Why would chinese/asian ideologyes be anyway better than European ones in that case?

it’s not just China. Japan had a very isolated policy.. Korea was a hermit kingdom, Vietnam wasn’t influential either. Only did Japan initiate major reforms the earliest. Thailand was a bit too late and too insignificant and China tried but they had some serious internal problems.. In the end it doesn’t matter.. oil powers economies and the west still has tighter control over them than any East, SE, or S.Asian country has. with most other regions already past peak production, and the middle east reaching peak within a few years, growth will slow down everywhere and no country will ever see the same dominance the US has in a long time. The end.