In France -- Paris especially -- smiling at a stranger is seen as a sign of idiocy or senility. That said, some of the warmest smiles I saw on my trip to Europe were from French people in Lyon responding to my own smile.

Then again, maybe they just felt sorry for the senile, idiotic American.

[Nerd-mode]The animation at 5:34 pits the Somua against a P4 with a KwK 40 L/43, which was first introduced with the F2 in early '42, almost two years after the campaign in France.[/Nerd-mode]

I ate at a high end restaurant in a small village in France. Food was delicious -- and the small teaspoon of mustard that came on the side is the thing I remember the most.

Or in Germany, or in Sweden, or in France, or...

Democracy is ALWAYS the lesser of two evils. No candidate (even St Bernie) is perfect .

Look at France. They've just elected Emmanuel Macron. Nobody has much a clue who this guy was yet he won nearly 2/3 of the vote. Why? Because the other option was Marine Le fucking Pen, someone who makes Trump look inclusive. Although at least she could string a sentence together, even if it was generally openly evil.

The point is that given the choice between mediocrity and evil, you be a grown up about it and choose mediocrity. Yeah, it sucks, but life sucks sometimes... deal with it. If you decide to "let the system burn", then you and your matrix trenchcoat that you thought was cool in 99 deserve everything you get.

I picked out this singular point of yours, because it seems like a very common issue getting worse over time.

The professional class has been rather successful at pushing a definition of "progressive" that is in line with their own interests. It's now mostly restricted to social issues, with SJW being the fringe element of it. Economic issues? Gone. Welfare issues? Gone. Foreign policy issues? Gone.

If you look at it that way, Obama has been good to the managerial class, the credentialed class, the professional class, the Silicon Valley types, the affluent liberals, everyone who was already profitting from the neoliberal status-quo. The rest, not so much. The opiod epidemic in the US, born out of mass despair, combined with your excuse of a healthcare system, is class warfare, plain and simple. "Die faster" is the message coming from not just the establishment, but also the professional class, aimed at the plebs, the servant class, the deplorables, the white trash, everyone not inside their bubble.

I've had more success in discussions by making it clear from the get-go that social victories mean very little when you are too poor to enjoy any of them. Your progressive issues mean nothing to me if you still insist on neoliberal economic policies that are a tool of class warfare against the poor.

It's as clear as day in France this days. The liberal intelligentsia calls you scum if you don't support Macron, the darling of the elite, who is liberal on social issues, but a hardcore neoliberal on economic issues. A spokesperson of the Melenchon campaign described his policies as "the Uberization of society", something in clear opposition of what the left stands for.

Describing my views as left rather than progressive or liberal has also helped in these discussions.

They're not gonna vote in favour of Brexit! - Bam!
They're not gonna vote in favour of Trump! - Bam!
They're not gonna vote in favour of Erdogan! - Bam!

And the nomenklatura is still either pretending to not know how much their policies have hurt the plebs, or they actually don't know, or they simply don't give a shit. No matter, result's the same.

France's up next weekend. The darling of the neoliberal elite, Macron, vs the nationalist Le Pen, with outsider chances for our boy Mélenchon.

Better strap in tight, we're in for a wild ride.

Not sure what competition this is, but that technique is certainly against the rules in Tour De France, as well as many other cycling competitions.

hmmm; would that be legal and effective in a race like the Tour De France?

Seems like a modern day Falling Down. In other news, god I love Frances McDormand.

*promote the Frances kicking scene

This is the 2nd video where the author got the Concorde story wrong... It became profitable 8 years into service (1984), largely due to BA raising ticket prices and making it more of a luxury. And the Concorde division remained profitable until the crash in France, when they grounded all Concordes while they investigated the root cause. After they started flying again, people were still wary to buy Concorde tickets, and airlines could get more profit out of 1st class tickets on larger, slower planes. So both BA and AF phased them out ~2003.

Your video, What The Fuck France - Le Café, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

No, I didn't confuse anything. Almost every single country benefits from 'illegal' immigrants as well as regular ones. France, for example, has thousands of illegal immigrants from mostly Islamic countries that provide services to it's mostly aging native population. We benefit no more and no less than any other nation from illegal immigration, as @newtboy mentioned, if you import food products or grow them locally you probably are benefiting from illegal immigration.

As far as your evidence, I hope this will suffice as 'some':

Steven A. Camarota, PhD, Director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies, in a Jan. 6, 2015 article, "Unskilled Workers Lose Out to Immigrants," available at nytimes.com, stated:

"There are an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country and we also admit over a million permanent legal immigrants each year, leading to enormous implications for the U.S. labor market. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that there are some 58 million working-age (16 to 65) native-born Americans not working — unemployed or out of the labor market entirely. This is roughly 16 million more than in 2000. Equally troubling, wages have stagnated or declined for most American workers. This is especially true for the least educated, who are most likely to compete with immigrants (legal and illegal).

Anyone who has any doubt about how bad things are can see for themselves at the bureau's website, which shows that, as of November, there were 1.5 million fewer native-born Americans working than in November 2007, while 2 million more immigrants (legal and illegal) were working. Thus, all net employment gains since November 2007 have gone to immigrants."

Jan. 6, 2015 - Steven A. Camarota, PhD

George J. Borjas, PhD, Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy at Harvard University, in a Sep./Oct. 2016 article, "Yes, Immigration Hurts American Workers," available at politico.com, stated:

"[A]nyone who tells you that immigration doesn't have any negative effects doesn't understand how it really works. When the supply of workers goes up, the price that firms have to pay to hire workers goes down. Wage trends over the past half-century suggest that a 10 percent increase in the number of workers with a particular set of skills probably lowers the wage of that group by at least 3 percent. Even after the economy has fully adjusted, those skill groups that received the most immigrants will still offer lower pay relative to those that received fewer immigrants.

Both low- and high-skilled natives are affected by the influx of immigrants. But because a disproportionate percentage of immigrants have few skills, it is low-skilled American workers, including many blacks and Hispanics, who have suffered most from this wage dip. The monetary loss is sizable...

We don't need to rely on complex statistical calculations to see the harm being done to some workers. Simply look at how employers have reacted. A decade ago, Crider Inc., a chicken processing plant in Georgia, was raided by immigration agents, and 75 percent of its workforce vanished over a single weekend. Shortly after, Crider placed an ad in the local newspaper announcing job openings at higher wages."

Sep./Oct. 2016 - George J. Borjas, PhD

Vernon M. Briggs, Jr., PhD, Emeritus Professor of Labor Economics at Cornell University, in an Oct. 14, 2010 briefing Report to the US Commission on Civil Rights, "The Impact of Illegal Immigration on the Wages and Employment Opportunities of Black Workers," available at usccr.gov, stated:

"Because most illegal immigrants overwhelmingly seek work in the low skilled labor market and because the black American labor force is so disproportionately concentrated in this same low wage sector, there is little doubt that there is significant overlap in competition for jobs in this sector of the labor market. Given the inordinately high unemployment rates for low skilled black workers (the highest for all racial and ethnic groups for whom data is collected), it is obvious that the major looser [sic] in this competition are low skilled black workers…

It is not just that the availability of massive numbers of illegal immigrants depress wages, it is the fact that their sheer numbers keep wages from rising over time, and that is the real harm experienced by citizen workers in the low skilled labor market."

Oct. 14, 2010 - Vernon M. Briggs Jr., PhD

There are more educated people than I that hold the same opinion, but let me give you an easier to understand, and absolutely true, example. How do I know it is true? When I was a much younger man, I worked for a roofing company. So I lived it.

The company I worked for was owned by a family friend, who had worked for most of his life in the field and had an excellent reputation. However, in the 90's around the time NAFTA was passed and (not related, I hope) illegal immigration spiked in Texas, he began to lose out to other companies. He did some snooping around and found out they were often charging hundreds of dollars less in their estimates than he could possibly offer, at least while still making a profit. He also found out that the two companies that were taking most of his business were staffed with illegal workers, being paid much lower wages than he could give to his legal employees.

Fast forward a year and he was close to declaring bankruptcy. Just like any type of labor where you pay your employees little to nothing comparatively to their compatriots in the same field, you cannot compete fairly. Net result, he was forced to let us go one by one, replacing us with illegals.

Obviously, I moved on, learned a different skill and began to make far more than I would have as a simple laborer. But the fact remains that an entire industry was undermined and radically changed by the inclusion of cheap illegal labor. This will not change if we simply ignore illegal immigration because it is the 'nice' thing to do. What it will accomplish is that young people will slowly find that certain jobs are out of their selection. It also will get worse the more accepted and commonplace illegal immigration becomes. I know for a fact that while I worked at Apple there were entry level support techs that were illegally here. Perhaps you will say that it is a benefit because it would prevent offshoring, but I disagree. What it does is make the working class poorer and doesn't solve the other issues brought about by illegal immigration, such as Emergency Rooms being flooded by people who can't afford insurance. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that it is common to go to the ER and see people stacked like cordwood because they can't refuse patients unless they are a private hospital.

As far as The Jungle, and my statement about it and it's author, I was merely pointing out that as much as you try to put forth that illegal immigrants have a bad life here in the USA, the fact is that we used to treat legal immigrants far worse. Perhaps it was a reach on my part, but it seemed logical at the time.

I doubt we will agree on any of this, but I respect your opinion. I live in a state that has a very large proportion of illegal immigrants, and while you are correct that they are generally not a criminal negative to society, they do have severe effects which I think you are overlooking. I do think that legal immigration policy needs massive change and businesses that exploit the almost slave like labor of illegals to make more profit should be punished severely. In the meantime, when we do catch illegals, they should be deported, not protected by a sympathetic politically motivated law enforcement group.

Is there a signed treaty? No. But the US SoS (James A. Baker III) and the German Foreign Minister (Hans-Dietrich Genscher) are on the record in 1990

Genscher is on video tape stating very clearly: "Wir waren uns einig, dass nicht die Absicht besteht das NATO-Verteidigungsgebiet auszudehnen nach Osten. Das gilt übrigens nicht nur im Bezug auf die DDR, die wir da nicht einverlaiben wollen, sondern das gilt ganz generell."

In English: we are in agreement that there is no intention of expanding the NATO security zone eastwards. This applies not only to the GDR, which we do not intend to incorporate, but in general."

Or how about Baker's words, Feb. 9, 1990, St. Catherine's Hall at the Kremlin:
"If we maintain a presence in a Germany that is a part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO's jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the East."

And the minutes show Gorbachev as having said:
"Certainly any extension of the zone of NATO is unacceptable."

To which Baker replied:
"I agree."

Again, no treaties, nothing. But some people, myself included, make the argument that unequivocal statements of a nation's highest-ranking diplomat are to be taken seriously, unless overruled by explicit, written agreements.

And from what we've heard from Gorbachev over the years, he took them for their words.

Admittedly, having been replaced by Yelzin who received massive "help" from the US might have made Gorbachev a little grumpy.

What remains at the end is this: NATO was created as a defensive alliance against the Soviets and wasn't dissolved when the Soviet Union collapsed. The highest-ranking diplomats of the primary players at that time (US, FRG) are on the record with promises that NATO wouldn't expand eastwards after the German reunification. Now NATO is closer to Russia's border than ever and the Ukraine had a democratically elected government (they were thugs, but elected) overthrown by forces that had massive support from the US. As a result, fascist militias wearing SS insignia are roaming free in Novorossiya, with government support.

If I were Russia, I'd be pissed.

But I'm in Germany, so now I have a strongman in charge of Russia, a thug who has journalists and opposition in general killed, on the one side, and the Americans who installed a Nazi-sympathising regime in Ukraine on the other.

What's not to like about it.

So when the US establishment then goes on a full-blown bender to position Russia as a scapegoat for now having to live with President Trump, they are playing with fire just to distract from their fucked-up domestic policies.

And we're not even touching on the hypocrisy of the US being outraged when some foreign nation meddles in their internal affairs. Of course Russia tries to influence US politics in their favor. Guess what, so does the UK, France, Germany, NZ, China, Japan, even bloody Luxembourg for all I know. Just like the US exerts influence on German politics (ie German Marshall Fund, Atlantikbrücke, etc), and on politics of every other nation of significance.