Metros are fun!

My experiences…

Amsterdam – not much fun, only the central part of the city is really underground and the rest is just some sort of lightrail. Ugly as hell.
Rotterdam – ditto.
Brussels – Effective, but it’s confusing that some tram rails also run underground.
Paris – Good. Like the old stations.
London – Great, but rather expensive when compared to other cities.
Prague – Absolutely beautiful, built by the Russians but with more modern (less kitsch) stations. At one day of total boredom, i travelled all three lines all the way 😀
Minsk – Two lines only, and in the centre of the city it isn’t really necessary (the centre isn’t too big) but nice anyway. Worked still with good old zhetony (coins) in 1995.
Moscow – Cathedral stations to educate the working classes. Beautiful.
Nizhnii Novgorod – One line only, but it’s some 50 kms long. Didn’t travel it all the way though.
Bucharest – Those dirty, smelly street orphans don’t only sing heartbreaking christmas songs, they are also after your wallet and your patience.
Beijing – Not too many lines, but effective enough for longer distances. The bus is a lot more fun though.
Sofia – No real metro i think, but underground tramways. Which makes it possible to find yourself driving your car on the rails in some tunnel.. spooky!

I already know my country quite well, so i like to travel. I guess it’s not really about how beautiful the place is where you live, but more about what you’re used to. If you live near the Norwegian Fjords, i think you would really be amazed to see Death Valley and vice versa.

Sean,

No need to answer this question if you find it inappropriate, but since you are more in the know than the bulk of us: do you find the publicly available anti-Saddam pro-war evidence sufficient, or is it the stuff you know through work to be the decisive factor when it comes to your opinion?

Just curious.

I don’t think the US really failed, but that is with the 20/20 hindsight that communism could not survive competing globally with capitalism.

What it IMHO quite effectively did was, while appearing defiant against communism, being a fairly good sport in what effectively was peaceful coexistance with the Soviet bloc – the ‘genuine’ Communist ‘threat’ (Sean, does your employer take pride in the Bomber Gap-myth it created? Probably the best PR-scam of the second half of th 20th Century 😉 ). I seriously think that the US governments, with exception of the Reagan administration, found a rather nice balance between appeasement with the Soviets and living up to it’s self-proclaimed Commie-hate.

What the US did fail to realise was that a lot of communist uprisings had genuine and justifialble roots in the position of the people in those countries. I think it failed in realising that it could be a whole lot more productive to support and guide counter-repressionist movements into relatively low-key revolutions with some redistribution of wealth and true Western-style democracy, rather then supporting the right-wing dictators. By not doing this, it actually gave a few countries (Cuba and Vietnam) away to the Communist sphere of influence.

Originally posted by Geforce
Cliches indeed.

Maybe France can concentrate on transport in this war. Somebody will have to bring the caufins with American soldiers back, not?

Now Geforce, that’s a rude remark! Also, i thought the Americans have multi-purpose chemwar suits now. A soldier can fight in it, and if killed all you have to do is zip up the chemwar suite and you have a bodybag. Really convenient, and it puts a lot less effort on the logistics train.

Anyway, it all makes sense now. This whole war is not for oil, it’s not against Islam, it’s not even to make Iraq the Sweden of the Middle East. It’s all a massive plot to finally get rid of Fidel Castro!

Just think about it…

-1- The US attacks Iraq, and by doing encourages anti-US sentiments amongst Arabs and Muslims even more.
-2- Many more enraged Muslems join Al Qaida.
-3- After Iraq has been defeated and subtly discarded into media oblivion, the real War on Terrorism is continued.
-4- Since Al Qaida has grown tremendously thanks to the War on Iraq, there are plenty more AQ-suspects to apprehend.
-5- Those AQ-suspects who survive the beating-up sessions at Baghram and future US WoT-strongpoints will be deported to Guantanamo Bay.
-6- Gitmo gets a bit overcrowded.
-7- In a subtle ploy, a massive breakout happens at Gitmo. Rumours about CIA-involvement in this are plausibly denied.
-8- Thousands of Islamic fundamentalists (after all, those who weren’t AQ-members when they were arrested certainly joined the club during detention at Gitmo) roam across Cuba, and mobilise the local population against Castro while taking up a nice fundamentalist version Islam.
-9- The hideous evil, unreliable and unstable communist Fidel Castro is beheaded in the best Saudi-Arabian way, Sharia is proclaimed in Cuba, and the US welcomes the new government on it’s southern border. The threat of Communism against US’ soft underbelly has finally been removed! A great victory for the Free World and Democracy, and a massive defeat for the Axis of Evil!

Wasn’t Vanilla Ice in one of their real-action movies? That’s cool enough.

I’m a bit old for the TMNT stuff i guess… i’m more of the Star Wars-era (not the original one, but of the Empire Strikes Back-generation), and i think i found TMNT not violent enough back then. Despite all the cool options Shredder had, he never put them to good use… damn shame.

Sauron,

I have absolutely no clue why the South hasn’t signed the armistice in the last decade – especially during the detente which started in 1996 and during which quite a few positive moves were made by both sides. From 1953 till the late 1980s, the South had been a rather opressive military (and, from about 1980 on, semi-military) dictatorship which refused to sign the armistice as it negated their one-Korea dogma.

It’s an interesting country (well, both are 😀 ). A few acquaintances of mine were planespotting in the South last fall (and a few friends are going next month), and they said it was a rather relaxed country to do some planespotting, not unlike Taiwan or Germany and certainly less hostile than France (it has to be said, they are improving!) and Greece. Despite the fact that 113 is the national emergency phonenumber to report spies…

Well, before the US can actively withdraw from the region, South Korea should sign the 1953 armistice pact. Until that time, there is no way the South can communicate with the North on the same level as the US can. It’s unfortunate that the current crisis broke out thanks to a lack of diplomacy on Bush’s conto – i doubt North Korea would have acted like the insulted kid it is now if they weren’t all of a sudden put into the Axis of Evil just because a few disgruntled Arabs flew a few airplane in American buildings. ******* as Kim Jong Il might be, he had nothing to do with that.

It’s not that the South Koreans actually need the US presence anyway. Three squadrons of F-16s (two of them Wild Weasels, the other IIRC still flying long-in-the-tooth Block 30s) and a few A-10s together, a batallion of helos and a bunch of tanks (in total some 40.000 men) are negligable when compared to the South Korean military.