Cotterell
I suppose I should comment on the first Tallahassee story since the 2000 elections to make the big time. The Tallahassee Democrat, the local liberal rag, has suspended one of their columnists for what he said in an email. The Democrat is the kind of paper where, when you buy it on Sunday for the TV piece and comics, you flush the news and comment sections down the toilet so they won't infect the trash. I've been feuding with them for years. Their columnists were trying like crazy - still are - to find excuses for the bin Ladens of the world. So they keep this Cotterell guy around to give the place atmosphere. Cotterell had the effrontery to say that the Arabs had not been sincerely trying to negotiate with Israel for peace. Haven't they seen Arafat's box of baby wipes that he keeps around just to soothe his face from the effects of crying over all the innocent Israeli lives he has snuffed out? Here's Cotterell's statement from the Democrat story:
"OK, they can squat around the camel-dung fire and grumble about it, or they can put their bottoms in the air five times a day and pray for deliverance; that's their business," Cotterell wrote in his e-mail. "And I don't give a damn if Israel kills a few in collateral damage while defending itself. So be it."
Right on, Bill. Obviously, though, in this day and age, any reporter who mentions the fact that camels produce dung, or that Arabs burn it for fuel, is being culturally insensitive and probably speciesist as well. Why don't camels burn our dung? Hey, makes about as much sense as criticizing Cotterell! On a side note, I don't understand why the wire services and Drudge didn't pick up the Democrat story. Drudge went with one from the Sarasota Herald Tribune.

Gun control at work
Draconian gun control laws are having the predictable effect. Even the Independent cannot help remarking on the surge of gun violence around Britain. Wonder how many of these goblins would be dead if the reported attacks had happened in Texas? The Birmingham attack involved "sub-machine guns"! If all guns are outlawed, outlaws might as well arm themselves with the heaviest artillery they can lay their hands on.

Update
Say, you don't think sentences like this from British judges could have any relation to the outbreak of deadly violence? Nah. He's trying to be a poet, after all. The machete was obviously an artistic statement. Three strikes and you're a piece of cold dead meat, anyone? Now there's an artistic statement!

Warming blanket
Nights are getting cold here in Tallahassee. I'm getting tired of having either not enough or too many blankets on the bed, so I determined to buy what we used to call an "electric blanket". Down at Target, I looked in vain. Then I noticed a couple of packages that looked like electric blankets, but were called "warming blankets". The hairs went up on the back of my neck. Has our language, our culture, degraded to that extent? Are we so afraid of being fried in our beds that we wish away the horror by avoiding the dread word "electric"? In my mind that's always been a good word. And note the flabbiness of the new locution. Is there any such thing as a "non-warming blanket"? Do we actually have to resort to redundancies to reassure ourselves that the demons Spark and Fizzle will not spring out of our bed covering in the night, launch themselves on us and overstimulate our dreaming neurons to produce brain-destroying circuit overload?
Wait a moment. Non-warming blanket. Cooling blanket. There's an idea. It gets pretty hot and humid around here for eight months of the year. Maybe one could have a blanket with ice water or Freon - ha! to the ozone hole - running through little tubes in it to keep you cool. No need for air conditioning all night. Think of the savings. But then we'd have to think of something to call it. "Refrigerating blanket" might not be quite right. People are SO sensitive! They might get visions of waking up in the morning frozen into a block. Malfunctions are the stuff nightmares are made of - or was it "on"? So maybe "cooling blanket". But that doesn't sound quite right. A blanket is supposed to keep you warm, not cool. "Cooling cover" - too alliterative. "Cooling spread" - sounds like something you eat on toast when it's a hundred degrees out - hey, now there's an idea! "Chill sheet" - Jeez, makes you think of the morgue. I know! The Refresherator! Ho! You can't have it! I had it first!

Ingrates
The Independent is whining, like that's not obvious, that Australia didn't immediately go to the help of the Solomon Islands, in a remote region of which a cyclone has struck two small islands, when the Solomons government did not ask for help and didn't give permission for Australian aircraft or ships to even go to these islands. Australia gives twelve million pounds to the government every year, which apparently has few other assets and has blown every asset it has. And now the Euroweenies are complaining that the Australian taxpayer is not taxed further to rescue the oppressed citizens of this jerk government. What would the Independent say if there was an earthquake in Iraq, the Iraqi government did nothing and the Israelis went in to help without asking the Iraqi government? What if a hurricane hit Cuba and the US sent a fleet of airplanes from Florida, loaded with relief supplies, without getting Castro's permission? The yowls of protest would resound for years. There's no point to reading the Independent. It just raises the blood pressure. And nothing you could ever do will appease them. Impoverish yourself, give up every right you can imagine, flagellate yourself, praise their every action and they will just spit on you. The hell with them.

Wake up, Andrew!
Andrew Sullivan said a couple of things today that I disagreed with, so I sent him a little message. Lot of good it will do me.

Dear Mr. Sullivan,

About your post on the lesbian "parents", it is only
necessary to say that no man has or ever has had two mothers. The
concept is clear and has been for thousands - nay millions - of
years. To redefine something as simple as motherhood is arrant
self-deception. Even adoptive parents are always aware there's
someone called the "biological mother" - and father - out
there somewhere. What a redundancy! What sort of mother is a mother
who is not biological? The "legal" mother? The
"love" mother? What does "mother" mean, anyway?
I favor restricting meaning to the natural concept. Next thing,
you'll be redefining apple pie as "legally acceptable
apple" pie when it contains only Ritz crackers, the famous
"mock apple pie". What gay people have is a mock marriage.
It mocks itself.

To treat gay relationships as marriages is to destroy meaning and
create nothing new. The ties of blood will always be reliable. They
will always trump the thrill of mockery.

And about Herb Ritts - he did die of pneumonia because no one has
ever died of "AIDS". That's another mockery of logic,
cobbled up by the medical establishment to justify research grants.
But that's an old story, known to all who will open their eyes to
see. You obviously prefer blindness.
--

Update - now I'm ticked off
Maybe I'm going over the edge, but Andrew Sullivan has enraged me again by opining that Herb Ritts did after all die of "AIDS". So I launched a salvo of indignation:

Dear Mr. Sullivan,

You have said on your blog that Herb Ritts "...died because his
immune system was severely compromised by HIV." I challenge you
to support this statement with scientific evidence. Unless you can,
your assertion is false. And if you find such evidence, you might as
well send it to researcher Peter Duesberg and Kary Mullis, the Nobel
Prize winner. They would be very surprised to find such proof.

Put up or stop lying.

Oh, dear, I guess I won't get invited to any of his cocktail parties!

Have a PC New Year's!
Isn't it a relief not to have to worry about whether you're going to be attacked for saying "Merry Christmas"? Nobody minds a "Happy New Year!" But why is that? After all, our New Year has not always been universally recognized. Jewish New Year is not on January 1, nor is Chinese New Year. And the year numbers are all different. Islam's calendar started fourteen-hundred odd years ago, not 2003. I think the Chinese and Jews are over four thousand. This "Year of our Lord" bit is based on our oppressive Western Christianity, after all. How come no one gets upset about it the way they do about Christmas? You would think that the response to "Happy New Year!" would be, "Maybe it's YOUR New Year, capitalist Western pig, but don't assume it's mine. My cult doesn't even recognize the passage of time. How can you be so offensive!! Go invade Iraq for oil or something! I'm gonna sue!!" Hmm, maybe I shouldn't have mentioned it. Maybe next year, everyone having been cowed into saying "Season's Greetings" or "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas", the PC crowd will target the New Year thing and try to get us to recognize all the time-keeping systems as morally equivalent. Then calendars will be attacked for using Roman months, those nasty Romans who beat up all those nice Oriental countries. Publishers will make money flogging "multicultural" calendars, bearing all the year systems, in lunar and sidereal months, to the total confusion of everyone. Better enjoy the relative clarity while we can.

Benefits of Socialized Medicine

I've been reading Mendelsohn's Confessions of a Medical Heretic. It's a good book to read if you're feeling sick. Then you don't make the terrible mistake of going to a doctor so you can feel better. Reading through this thoroughly sensible treatise, I had a revelation about the real underlying purpose of socialized medicine. The proclaimed purpose of socialized medicine is to make it possible for anyone, no matter how poor, to have "access" (a loaded word if ever there was one) to medical care, translation, to go to a doctor or a hospital if he feels the slightest bit ill. The reality of socialized medicine, of course, is that the system is always overloaded, doctors and other staff have no incentives to treat you well and you have to stand in long lines to get anything done, even if you're nearly dying. So the net effect can be to keep anyone with any sense away from the medical system entirely. Who would queue up with contagious children and rheumy elderlies unless he absolutely had to? And that's just what Mendelsohn's saying. More people die because they go to the doctor or the hospital than die because they can't find or afford medical care. The way socialized medicine works out, sensible people go to the doctor LESS frequently than they would if they had health insurance or if the rabble were kept away from the medical system by high prices. So, according to Mendelsohn, sensible people are healthier under socialism than they would be under capitalism. A side benefit is that the silly poor folk who throng into the hospitals are being used as guinea pigs, given unnecessary and harmful prescription drugs and suffering unnecessary and often harmful surgery (M calls it "ritual mutilation"!). A good percentage, therefore, are keeling over who wouldn't have if they hadn't gone to hospital. And natural selection proceeds on its merry eugenic way. All hail Marx and Lenin!

Update - Life imitates life
Mindles Dreck, in Asymmetrical Information, reports on and analyzes the reasons for doctors' strikes in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. But my comment points out that they missed an important aspect of having fewer doctors messing with your life:

Robert Mendelsohn, in his book "Confessions of a Medical Heretic" documents several instances where strikes by doctors led to massive decreases in the death rate. Maybe Pennsylvania and West Virginia should try to drag this dispute out as long as possible. For the children and the sick!

Alternative Palestine
My sister sent me some generic article about the oppression of the poor Palestinians by the nasty Israelis. I won't bother you with it. But I think my response is on point:

While in a state of war with a stateless rabble of murderers, Israel would have to be insane to let millions of them back into areas they left voluntarily, hoping to return to a Judenrein "Palestine". The miracle is that Israel has tolerated terror attacks from Judea and Samaria and Gaza for decades. If the Arabs had won in 1948 or 1956 or 1967 or 1973, would they have created a Palestinian state? No. The Ottoman province of Palestine would have been split up among the Jordanians, Egyptians and Syrians, who would probably still be fighting over the worthless spoils. If a native "Palestinian" movement had started terror attacks on Damascus or Amman or Cairo to create Jew-less Palestine as a state, the Arabs would have massacred them to the last man, woman and child. Remember, the West Bank was part of Jordan in 1967. Gaza was "occupied" by Egypt. Israel liberated those areas and began negotiations that would have, if the Palestinian leadership had been half sane, resulted in the very first state of Palestine. But Arafat took the opportunity to miss yet another opportunity.

And how can "ethnic cleansing" exist when the "Palestinians" are not a separate ethnic group and never have been?

Where'd that come from?
Do you have anything in your house that seems to have popped up from nowhere? In my case it's a spheroid wicker overhead lamp suspended by a chain over my reading chair that I've been using for the last five years at least. I looked up at it today and thought, "Hey, wait a minute! Where did THAT come from?"
I don't remember buying it. I never would have. Was it here when I got here? Not that I remember. I checked with the little woman: " I thought you bought it" Nope. You know the kids wouldn't have let it in the house if they had the chance. So there's only one possibility left. It snuck in by itself. It was rolling along, perched on a truck loaded with moving stuff and fell out on the corner outside my house. It rolled down the driveway and, awaiting its opportunity, popped into the garage and tried to look natural, like it had always been there. And I, foolish I, picked it up and suspended it by a hook mere inches from where I have been soaking up everything from Objectivism to flying saucer lore. It's got a complete record of all my reading, for years. And, oh yes, we all know what it is. We all know that when the time is right it will extend a scrawny little green hand from the top of the wickerwork and detach itself from the chain and roll out through the garage door and with a "pfft" take off for the sky, kick into warp drive and arrive at its home planet in mere seconds. Then, when the authorities on ssxxqplgitt see what passes for thoughts in the minds of men, then can anyone doubt they will attack? Oh, yes, they will attack and destroy and cleanse the universe of our noxious beings. But wait a minute. Back in '96. Didn't I read some Wodehouse? I did, I did! Jeeves and Wooster and Psmith! They'll read it. And, to a noid, they'll die laughing. Hey, you know what I did? I saved the universe! That deserves a Scotch.


Hell for actors

What if, after they were dead, actors and actresses had to adopt the parts that they played on Earth for, say, all eternity? It would be up to God, of course, which parts and for how long. If God liked Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey in "It's a Wonderful Life", ol' Jimmy would be running a failing savings and loan for the next few millennia, chasing after Uncle Billy, crying, "Where's that eight thousand dollars, you old drunk!!" with Lionel Barrymore chortling in the background.
Oh, how the angels would laugh. But they'd get bored eventually. Then maybe they could pick on Bogart and make him play Sam Spade alternating with Cap'n Queeg: "You're taking the fall, baby, just as soon as I find those darn strawberries!"
Schwarzenegger, may he live forever, if he does die some day, will have a peculiar burden, having to worry whether he is to play Danny deVito's twin brother, a kindergarten cop, a Martian colonist secret agent rebel or Conan the Barbarian. Now that's diversity! A most interesting moment will occur when, one hopes not too soon, Charlton Heston knocks on the pearly gates. I can see the sweat starting to form on God's massive forehead already. He has to let him in. You can't consign God and Moses to the Evil One. But if Heston does come in, how could He refrain from letting him play God some day, some time? And maybe, just maybe, the angels would prefer Heston's performance.

123

Rethinking the War on Terror
Scrappleface, one of the funniest sites on the web, had a great bit about the Republicans' decision to adopt segregationist policies to appease Democrats angry about the Trent Lott tempest in a teacup. I just had to drop in the following comment:

In foreign relations, the Republicans have declared that they have decided that Osama bin Laden is not really as bad as they had thought.
"After all", a party spokeseunuch opined, "he did build all those day care centers, bar-b-que restaurants and discos in the third world. If we had only done that, he wouldn't have had to attack us on September 11, 2001."

Late news that bin Laden has been captured by the Sudanese police and offered to the Bush administration for prosecution brought this response: "We don't really think we have the authority to accept him. Millions of Frenchmen have bought a book declaring that the Pentagon attack never happened and the Jews were behind the WTC attack. That's reasonable doubt as far as we're concerned. We need to get on to the real business of the country, like making sure anyone who declares he's been persecuted gets lots of money and nailing down that thirty-five hour week and six weeks of paid vacation thing the French and Germans have been so successful with."

The Kabul Declaration
Has anyone else in blogdom, or in the regular US media, remarked on this agreement in Kabul, reported by the Tehran Times involving many countries surrounding Afghanistan promising to stay out of Afghan affairs? It sounds like, skeptic that I am, that this may be a major break in the centuries, nay, millennia of interference of every Asian potentate in Afghan politics. Maybe, just maybe "nation-building" or just plain allowing the Afghans to be free of outside influence, has begun in earnest. Come on, Fisk, Pilger, Chomsky, why don't you celebrate this evidence of independence and territorial integrity in Central Asia, by Central Asians? Hope rears its shining face.

Iraqi Darwinism
Vodkapundit has been opining that if we invade Iraq and topple Saddam, we need to be prepared to hang around for years and guide the Iraqis through the strait gate and down the narrow way to parliamentary democracy, capitalism and, presumably, pressure-group politics. All they really need is capitalism and the freedom to make it work. So I posted a comment:

The same people who say we shouldn't topple Saddam unless we are willing to nursemaid the Iraqi people for thirty years would scream the loudest if we refused to leave when the Iraqis said they were ready to go it alone. And that might be in five years, or six months, after the toppling. I think we should have done a lot more "nation-building" in Kuwait after the last war. Why leave a corrupt Sheik in power? But you don't hear anyone complaining about that. The fact is we can't control the political evolution of Iraq. We would be stupid to try. What we can do is make sure Saddam has no access to nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
***
I have a vision of a post-war Middle East where the Iranian students have installed a Turkish-style political system, including some power for the mullahs, and the Saudis have been dethroned. Assad in Syria and Mubarak in Egypt must also open up their political systems. The first Arab democracy is key, though. Turkey's democracy has not had an appreciable effect on Arab politics. Neither have Iran's spasmodic bouts of parliamentarianism. But a real functioning Arab democracy would spread freedom and individualism with blinding speed. The Arabs have always looked at the Turks and Persians as overlords, not models. But a true Iraqi democracy that was not seen as totally imposed by the US would make a real difference. Why, the Arabs might even realize that all of their people aren't more concerned with pushing the Israelis into the sea than they are with feeding their children and freeing their economy.

Christmas Contentment
Feeling pretty good about Christmas this year. My daughter's birthday is today. That always gets the celebrations started. We got our tree weeks ago, so the dreaded task of decorating is behind us. The house is full of food and presents. I gave myself an early Christmas present in the shape of Terry Teachout's biography of H. L. Mencken, which I am enjoying very much. I didn't know that Woodrow Wilson was such a monster. It makes sense, now that I think of it. How could anyone who could push the precursor of the United Nations and the Federal Reserve Board and prohibition be anything other than a contemptible fool?

I also finished Kary Mullis's "Dancing Naked in the Mind Field", an autobio by a Nobel winner that confirms all my prejudices about myths like global warming, the ozone hole and HIV not causing AIDS. The only jarring note in Mullis is his advocacy of astrology. Come on, Kary, we can give up all of the illusions left over from Sixties hallucinogenic fantasies. We don't have to hang on to any for nostalgia's sake. Astrology is worthless. Do you hear me? Fake, stupid, ineffective, non-functional, pointless and boring. Get over it. Go see Randi if you need help shaking the monkey off your back.

Message from the Levant

My sister in Egypt sent me a column from AlAhram by Edward Said that had a few interesting points about the Middle East. I can't find a link to the original article, so I've reproduced it below. Here's my response to her:

Well, what do you know? I actually agree with a lot of what Said has to say about Saddam and Arafat. They are thugs. And I share his rejection of suicide bombing and other attacks on civilians. But Said's basic mistake is to maintain that the Palestinians are a "people" rather than just an ad hoc group of refugees from the Arab world's obsession with destroying Israel. The security of Israel is and has been in so much doubt that it overwhelms the problems Palestinians have in getting their plutocrat mafia to share its Saudi and EU and even American wealth with them. I also disagree strongly with his picture of the "unrestrained" IDF. No army in the history of the world has been under such provocation and suffered such losses for so long and acted with such restraint. Any Arab autocrat suffering attacks from a group like the Palestinians would wipe them out to the last man, woman and child. Ditto for collectivists like Stalin, Mao, Kim, Ho, Castro and every minor Commie potentate. Also the French. I don't even want to think of what the Germans would do to them. What I find unbelievable is the leeway that leftists afford to Arafat and their shrillness towards the Israelis, who are only trying to survive. And of course, as Said well knows, the "occupation" is NOT illegal. Hostilities with the Arabs have never ceased for fifty-plus years and international law does not require a power suffering attacks from an area to allow those attacks to proceed unchallenged.
So Said is lying through his teeth as well. He and many others could well be surprised if, as I think likely, Bush manages to disarm and drive out Saddam without launching a full-scale war. Will he get credit for that if it goes well? Duh. And what other plan does Said have for relieving the Iraqi people of their oppression, which costs them far more lives every month than even the most ham-handed bombing campaign could?
Israel has freedoms, and economic success, in desperate wartime, that no Arab country has ever enjoyed. In sum, is Said blaming Arafat and the other mafiosi or Israel for the parlous state of the average Arab citizen? He can't have it both ways. I can't understand why he doesn't see that the campaign against Israel is and has been only maintained to keep thugs like Arafat in power. He should be for stopping the war orchestrated by Arafat but he can't bring himself to give up his reflexive anti-Semitism or the cherished myth of a "Palestinian nation" which has no historic or cultural reality. Otherwise, he's right. Eliminate Arafat. And Saddam and Assad and the entire Saudi royal family and Hamas and Hezbollah and Qaddafi and bin Laden, if he's not already a cinder, and the Israelis would with a great sigh of relief come to an accommodation with the Arab world and help them make their way to rationality and prosperity.

Note: I'm going to remove the Said article, because it seems to be knocking me off Blogger. I'll put it back in when I get a chance. RS.

Turkey and TAFTA

Jim Bennett has another column (via Instapundit) about Turkey and the European Union and how Turkey would be a much better fit in an economic union with the US and parts of Eastern Europe that aren't particularly thrilled with the idea of union with the declining social collectivists of Western Europe - see my Estonia post about four posts down. Maybe this idea will have some legs. I remember my sister telling me, after her visit to Istanbul last spring, that the Turks have a sphere of influence of their own in Central Asia that has unique cultural attributes. It's not Arab, not Russian, not Persian, but Turkic. With the discovery of oil and natural gas in many of the new nations with traditional ties to Turkey, we may see the emergence of a rival to the sclerotic states of the Gulf and OPEC. Perhaps in a few years the Palestinian psychosis will abate for lack of wealthy patrons. One can only hope.

La Fee Verte

Ken Layne has an interesting link to an absinthe website with all kinds of info about the "Green Faery". The description of what happens to you when you drink a bottle is fascinating in a macabre way. I'm thinking of trying it someday. The smoked caviar and snail eggs are calling my name, as well.
So, two new hobbies to try - shooting and drinking absinthe. Just as long as I keep them separated....

Whittle-ing the anti-gun nuts down to size

Rachel Lucas has posted a long but eloquent defense of gun ownership by a Bill Whittle. It's worth the time to read and print out and pass out at your next PTA meeting or gun nut convention or Republican Caucus. I have a sudden strong desire to go to the local range and learn to shoot. Think I will.

Restau-rant

What is it with restaurants that want you to do all the work?

For instance 1, Subway and Subway clones: I am sick and tired of ordering a specific sandwich from a menu, with a specific price on it and having people ask me what I want on it. Bread, please. Even though I know I shouldn’t, loving the Atkins diet as I do. Then fill the bread with the stuff that has to do with the sandwich you advertised. Don’t ask me if I want tuna salad when I ordered a fake crab sandwich. How many times do I have to say I want fake crab?

Then you do the work. Put on mayonnaise, mustard, relish, peppers, whatever makes the sandwich a good fake crab sandwich. Oh, OK, maybe you can ask me whether I want hot peppers or not because there are so many wussies out there who would faint if they got anything hotter than a tomato in their prissy little gullets. But that’s it! None of that “how much lettuce do you want?” nonsense. You’re the darn sandwich professional. You figure it out and do it right. Don’t do it right and I won’t be back and I REFUSE to guide you through the process, to train you in how to make a sandwich. For six bucks a sandwich you can train your own sandwich makers!

For instance 2, buffet restaurants: Terminate them with extreme prejudice. I do not want to go into a restaurant and pay ten bucks for lunch and have to work for half an hour in a kitchen putting together my own plate of food. Only in America! Oh, and maybe smorgasbrod-addicted islamofascist-coddling Scandinavia. I will not take a new plate every time I go up. I know your plan. You want to be able to bring over all your non-English-speaking buddies and let them work setting out food and clearing tables because with a buffet they don’t actually have to know any English to talk to people and serve their needs. Heck, the ones I’ve run into don’t even know the difference between a beer and a coke. All they say is “Go ahead, go ahead! Buffet for you! Leave me alone! Fill up your own plate, silly American! What you think I come all the way from Myanmar to figure out how to actually cook food the way you want it and serve it to you when you’re ready. Hah!”

Which brings me to the point. Meals should be civilized occasions. Civilized men take a civilized break and talk about civilized subjects. Like in Nero Wolfe’s brownstone. Or in that movie, “My Dinner with Andre”. Remember that? Would that movie even have been possible if Wallace Shawn and Andre had to get up every ten minutes, get a clean plate and decide what kinds of sushi to load up on and oh, yeah, let’s pile on some raspberry Jello, macaroni salad and a plate of soup. They wouldn’t have had any time to talk. These ridiculous restaurants only work because modern barbarians are more afraid of sitting at a table with nothing to talk about than anything that could happen to them at the buffet table. They’d rather ooh and aah about the six kinds of sushi than concoct an opinion about whether we should invade Pakistan or just let it implode.

Dream come true or nightmare?
Lots of stories on EU enlargement are popping up like mushrooms after the rain. John O'Sullivan has a dyspeptic view. The International Sentinel has another article, walking the sunny side of the street. The comments are interesting. The Telegraph is reporting, (via Drudge) that the EU is bulking up militarily. Sure. Give them twenty years with Hitler in charge and they might be able to take on one of our aircraft carriers. Let's see, the Ark Royal is 20,000 tons. The Nimitz is 95,000 tons. The Ark Royal can launch Harriers, subsonic but, oooh, they can land straight up and down! That's really going to help them up against F-15s!

Update - paradise in Estonia?
At least one potential Euro-borg absorbee is not that happy about the prospect. (via News Forum) And the information about Estonia's economy makes it sound decidedly like my kind of place. Maybe we can emigrate! Mmm! Lynx stew with a side of bear!