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Messages - Owlbread

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586
General Discussion / Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« on: November 17, 2014, 06:06:01 am »
This is the article about the departing leader of Scotland that I mentioned earlier. It's a good one if you aren't Scottish because she's writing from the perspective of an American observer.

587
General Discussion / Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« on: November 16, 2014, 08:25:29 pm »
Quote from: mainiac on November 16, 2014, 08:10:06 pm
Quote from: Owlbread on November 16, 2014, 08:02:23 pm
He's a senator, right?

No.

I never knew. Forgive me, I just assumed presidential hopefuls tend to hold office as senators or governors. In that case we may never know who the fellow was.

588
General Discussion / Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« on: November 16, 2014, 08:02:23 pm »
Quote from: MetalSlimeHunt on November 16, 2014, 07:52:55 pm
It hardly matters. Wealth of Nations is just a talking point for politicos because the schools cite it as the birth of capitalism. I've never met anybody who actually read it, and it probably has little relevance to modern economics by now anyway.

Stringer Bell read it. Don't you want to be as cool as Stringer Bell?

It's always worth taking a look at these books though if you start to get the sense people are talking about them and never reading them. You might find stuff that most people miss. I'm just trying to work out whether that Republican senator was Newt Gingrich. He's a senator, right?

589
General Discussion / Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« on: November 16, 2014, 07:20:42 pm »
On Wednesday, Alex Salmond First Minister of Scotland (our national leader) will step down formally and be replaced by Nicola Sturgeon.

In light of that, here is a quote for my American friends from an account by one of Salmond's economic advisors:

Quote from: Jennifer Erickson
Once, in America,  a prominent Republican politician was talking about how much he loved Scotland, but he didn't understand how the home of "the great capitalist Adam Smith" as the Republican put it could have ended up "so darn liberal". Alex smiled. "Well Senator, " he said. "I think you'll find that in Scotland, we read the whole book."

You should try that one if you ever get the chance.

590
General Discussion / Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« on: November 12, 2014, 03:28:13 pm »
Quote from: Helgoland on November 12, 2014, 10:35:41 am
I meant Armenia and Azerbaijan, but I see now that that Armenia was irrelevant.

Owlbread, Georgia is considered European, and thus it's reasonable to do the same for the whole Caucasus. To be fair, the border between Asia and Europe is ill-defined in that region.

Again though, at what point do we draw the border? Azerbaijan extends somewhat beyond the Caucasus into North-Western Iran. If we go down that far, why not include Kurdistan if we include Turkey? As UR points out Israel is sometimes considered a European country.

I think "Europe" is quite a nebulous idea, you know. It really is.

591
General Discussion / Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« on: November 12, 2014, 10:16:38 am »
Quote from: Helgoland on November 12, 2014, 10:13:29 am
Both countries are in Europe, and a possible war in Europe involving the US is certainly of greater interest than the continued bickering of some Caucasian nations with unresolved issues.

If we deem the Caucasian countries, including the South Caucasian ones, to be in Europe - surely we should consider Iraq and Kurdistan also European? And Western/North Western Iran?

592
General Discussion / Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« on: November 10, 2014, 05:22:44 am »
Quote from: Sheb on November 10, 2014, 04:42:27 am
According to wikipedia, the vote was a "participation process", because their "non-referendum popular consultation" was blocked by the Spanish Supreme Court.

Of course, the Spanish government has no intentions of letting a real referendum happens.

Yes. As I said the purpose of the vote is to take the results to the United Nations/EC and seek international support for a real referendum.

593
General Discussion / Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« on: November 10, 2014, 04:23:11 am »
Quote from: da_nang on November 10, 2014, 03:11:08 am
Quote from: Owlbread on November 09, 2014, 08:35:17 pm
A little bird told me that on a 32% turnout (2 million voters) Catalans voted over 80% in favour of outright independence
So roughly only 26% voted yes.

I have read that the turnout was 38%. But yes, we can apply similar principles to the Scottish referendum and create a far bigger No vote than was actually there. I think that unlike the Scottish referendum the turnout is far more relevant because this vote was basically just a huge opinion poll of 2 million people. We can determine whether the Catalans are actually close to winning on this basis. With 80% in favour,  drop 30-40% or so in against based on the missing No vote and it's still a victory.

594
General Discussion / Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« on: November 10, 2014, 02:46:40 am »
Quote from: smjjames on November 09, 2014, 10:55:27 pm
You'd think turnout would be higher for something like that.

I think it's normal for Catalonia. This wasn't THE referendum though - it waa a non binding symbolic vote to show there was big support for independence,  therefore Artur Mas can seek international support on this basis for the real refetendum.

595
General Discussion / Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« on: November 09, 2014, 08:35:17 pm »
A little bird told me that on a 32% turnout (2 million voters) Catalans voted over 80% in favour of outright independence

596
General Discussion / Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« on: November 08, 2014, 03:33:33 pm »
You see - I explained to Helgoland a while ago that I was wary of trying to split up Germany because it would lead to situations like this. My head is currently exploding.

597
General Discussion / Re: Kim-Jong Un advocates for Furries, more at 11 [North Korea Thread]
« on: November 08, 2014, 03:28:40 pm »
I have heard serious rumours that North Korea is now swimming in crystal meth; to the point that pretty much everyone is addicted. Is this true?

598
General Discussion / Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« on: November 08, 2014, 03:21:17 pm »
Quote from: Sergarr on November 08, 2014, 03:17:25 pm
Latin is a dead language because of migration, though. So no, this would be false.

Gaelic is also nearly dead because of migration, but Gaelic never had state protection. Latin didn't really die though - it just evolved into new languages.

599
General Discussion / Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« on: November 08, 2014, 03:16:45 pm »
Quote from: Helgoland on November 08, 2014, 03:13:19 pm
The Saxons were all over the place back in the day. The people we call Saxons today live in the east - their dialect is basically a shorthand for Ossi as far as our meia are concerned - in the Bundesländer Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt (I'd almost have written Saxony-Stop :D). Lower Saxony is just the big north-western part of Germany, encompassing large parts of the North German Plain. It's just a name, it has nothing to do with ethnicity or language.

My understanding was that the Saxons spread from North-West Germany (Lower Saxony, which is the original saxony) to the East, taking land from the Slavs as they went. Is that totally incorrect?

600
General Discussion / Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« on: November 08, 2014, 03:05:22 pm »
Quote from: Ukrainian Ranger on November 08, 2014, 03:01:31 pm
Owlbread,

Lets imagine we divided the world in a perfect way with a lot of ~5mln nations. I think the next step is to ban any migration, right? Because else ethnic map will be screwed in few decades and we will need to redraw borders again

Well, actually, it would be fine as long as the state governments still spoke Andalusian or Franconian or Neapolitan or Tuscan or something. The migration would never be bad enough that you'd need to completely change the state languages. I mean, according to the model I'm thinking of, "Franconia" would probably have the standard register of High German as a state language alongside Franconian. Just like Scotland would end up with English as a state language alongside Scots and Gaelic - despite the fact that English is not really native to this country in the same way as the other two. It's the same as French in Occitania.

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