Which nation has the most disgusting nationalist culture?

Wow, tough one.

gotta go with the one i know best

williams has gone soft on canada >:(

in terms of amount of horror unleashed on the world, the uk surely wins. but their former colonies are doing better than anyone else's former colonies so eh, maybe not.

Latebloomer, check out some of the anti-Tibet groups on facebook. Disgusting

north korea

UK has a nationalist culture?

may run into trouble explaining imperialism in terms of 'culture'

if you rewind 50+ years perhaps.. or read the the Daily Mail

yeah, only if you read the mail, the telegraph, or the times.

present-tense, though, it's a bit anachronistic to talk about 'uk nationalism'!

happy St Georges day.

Substitute 'England' for 'UK' and you've got a race.

yeh, UK nationalist culture is a little awkward as a concept. i mean, i don't think there are many ways the SNP and the BNP can be lumped together in one catch-all term.

Parochialists?

http://www.strangecosmos.com/images/content/112386.jpg

xpost to self: (and i speak as an english-born SNP voter who -- when he moved to scotland 15 years ago -- was absolutely horrified by the idea of any party branding itself "nationalist" and refused to accept that the SNP could be anything other than a bunch of crypto-fascists. how i've changed. how my understanding has changed. still have a big problem with that word, though. what's wrong with just "the scottish party"?)

Parochialists

nah, that's just the english :) :)

parochialist English? "cough"

I'm going to take a negative approach here. Who can I eliminate? All these countries (and otheres besides) had or have some loathsome nationalists but some have little influence and for others, reagrdless of their influence, the country's global influence is diminished. French and UK nationalists are vile but feckless for the most part and I tend to laugh in their faces more than actually fear them. Korea's and Japan's nationalists are ugly but not likely to do much harm in the foreseeable future, I think, so it comes down to Russia, China and the U.S. I think in scales of evil, Russia's are probably worse, but the U.S nationalists show a really disturbing tendency to think, or at least say, that nuclear mass murder would be a good thing.

since the question is 'has' rather than 'had' i should strike my answer

i'll say china, since it seems eager to jump into the 19th century with both feet

I went with "culture" not politics.

A slippery slope somewhere nearby.

you got the best jpg, that's for sure

merci

Are other nations incapable of disgusting nationalism?

The worst are the Scandinavians.

Maybe the Africans.

Yeah, fuck them.

It's a good poll though. It's like a root, a root, rooting out the truth. Can't wait to take the results into the fucking office.

Korea's and Japan's nationalists are ugly but not likely to do much harm in the foreseeable future

http://www.uruknet.info/uruknet-images/iran-usa-1.gif

its easily a three way race here

not sure who wins it though i easily see china coming out ahead

i'm half-polish, so of course i'm gonna be down w/ talking shit about russia.

yeah China's quite disgusting ATM but I have seen the destruction wrought by Russian nationalists in other independent countries firsthand so I have to go with them. plus Russian nationalism is intrinsically disingenuous/dishonest, since it seems to always boil down to longing for the days when Russia was a superpower lording it over a bunch of other neighboring states with an iron fist

USA "nationalists" have yet to run riot in mexico city over some perceived insult by the local civic leaders, for example- they tend to keep to themselves and only blow up other americans. this would put them in the same minor league as nationalists in the other non-superpowers on the list (and not on the list) AFAIC

Chinese nationalists haven't figured out how to even really get away with espionage much less master doublespeak, the more I think about it the more they strike me as strictly amateur, especially the way they appear to all be on the party line. Russian nationalists and their government always seem to maintain a degree of repudiatability.

Poor Serbia didn't make the cut.

or germany, either ... i guess that's b/c they're pretty tame these days?!?

French and UK nationalists are vile but feckless for the most part and I tend to laugh in their faces more than actually fear them.

true dat -- except for national front cunts in both countries. aside from them, though, both french and british nationalism seem pretty weak to american sensibilities (though i am sure that some african and irish folks would disagree with that assessment).

american beer seems weak to my sensibilities

sorry, I just came over all disgusting and nationalist

ew you hasd war of 1812 in your pants

spoken like a dude from a country where stella artois is the most popular brand

Belgian nationalism FTW? Maybe not.

How about good old Hindu nationalism? Seems pretty disgusting at times.

spain?

Poor Serbia didn't make the cut.

Good call

by the way, americans/UKers voting for the themselves in this can take their arrogant faux shame and fuck themselves with it. i mean, i hate our foreign policy as much as the next internet blowhard, but come on.

oh shut up you stupid american pig

:-D

I thought the question was about nationalism? Other countries probably have worse ongoing human rights abuses and arguably dodgier foreign policies, but you'd have to go some to beat some of the puke-making arrogance of English and Yank nationalists' (and not just the far-Right nutjobs but yr regular everyday Joe/sephine Schmoes) assumptions about their respective countries' places at the centre of the universe.

^

to-and fro-ing between NV and Tombot's take, both are correct, but I can't vote for both.

hold on -- is that a wrench uncle sam's holding? he's gonna fix iran's toilet just like he fixed iraq's??

i'm half-polish, so of course i'm gonna be down w/ talking shit about russia.

yeah I'm with you..

American Exceptionalism trumps all; at least China has a policy of non-interference in other states' affairs.

o rly?

that'll be good news to everyone in sudan and zimbabwe.

lucky for them the americans will save them.

the word you're looking for is "liberate"

um really?

everybody's a ron paul fan now

thinking any government will ever do anything to help people in Africa/Tibet/etc. is extremely naïve.

From wikipedia entry on Ron Paul "he also opposes [other stuff and...] gun control. Paul is strongly pro-life"

no hypocrisy there then, oh no sirree.

xp thinking any government will ever do anything to help people in Africa/Tibet/etc. is extremely naïve.

fixed

jessie monster, what banrique meant is that the Chinese are funding the genocide in Sudan, etc. etc. The Chinese have their hands all over Africa and South America. Are you really that naive to believe they don't get involved in other countries?

they're investing in oil and mining for raw minerals, AFAIK, not influencing political decisions (although, obviously, money has effects, etc.). China has their hands in these countries for their own economic benefit, not to spread the wisdom of pseudo-communism and autocracy.

cap'n save a totalitarian evil empire over here

because obviously the world is divided into "good" and "evil"

So jessie monster, you're pretty OK with the whole supporting genocide thing, just as long as they don't promote pseudo-communism? You're an interesting character.

China is behaving like every other country does; it's pursuing its own interests. Just because America considers making everyone else like us one of its interests doesn't make us morally superior.

they're investing in oil and mining for raw minerals, AFAIK, not influencing political decisions

this is the first thing I have ever felt it worth my while to contributing to one of those execrable excelsior thread. China is influencing political decisions in countries all over the world.

um, American companies have their hands deep in Africa as well to get oil, i don't see anyone bitching about the US here

Where shall I start?

(See also british , french and russian companies)

i voted US

because obviously the world is divided into "good" and "evil"

-- jessie monster, Friday, April 25, 2008 3:20 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

ok so when china sent an arms shipment to zimbabwe to prop up mugabe, i guess you were just this sassy?

because no other country has certainly ever sold arms to a corrupt totalitarian regime, surely.

Mr. Que, China was mentioned, China is being discussed.

Where the hell did America being morally superior come in? Why does America -always- have to come into the debate? "China does some evil shit." "Well, America does evil shit, too, and it's also stupid!" "Uhhh, yeah."

None of us have mentioned America in this little mini-debate. It's like people hate America so much they'll support friggin China's absolutely mind-numblingly totalitarian dictatorship.

I'm not saying China doesn't do bad stuff, I'm just saying EVERYONE does bad stuff.

are you on some chall-ops shit now?

i'm just saying China is not the only country hands deep in Africa for economic benefit

ok so when china sent an arms shipment to zimbabwe to prop up mugabe, i guess you were just this sassy?

aren't they sending the arms back?

xpost:I'm not saying China doesn't do bad stuff, I'm just saying EVERYONE does bad stuff

Yes^

ha i am losing track of who is serious and who is ironical here.

aren't they sending the arms back?

south african dockers refused to unload it + international (including US) pressure said step off.

but i guess everyone equally evil for y'all.

if i'm reading right, thomas, you're part of the 'buchananite left'.

ha i am losing track of who is serious and who is ironical here.

-- Thomas, Friday, April 25, 2008 10:27 AM (Friday, April 25, 2008 10:27 AM) Bookmark Link

seriously

wtf

what's your point, jessie?

American Exceptionalism trumps all; at least China has a policy of non-interference in other states' affairs.

-- jessie monster, Friday, April 25, 2008 2:55 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

are you willing to take this idiotic shit back?

No angry words in the nationalism thread, please.

you're right, I shouldn't have said American Exceptionalism trumps all, just that everyone's equally bad.

thanks to China we gotta pay £4 for a pint of milk in ten years. grr angry grrr.

right, so it's not exceptional, and it doesn't trump all. whether it's 'equally' bad -- maybe.

xpost

I’m voting for the nation that wants humans to co-exist with fish!

American Exceptionalism refers to an attitude that has dominated American Foreign Policy in two forms--that we should either be a "model" for other nations, or that we should use our power to force nations to adopt our model.

there are books on it and stuff.

and a lot of people think it's the one thing that sets the US apart from other nations, especially in the 20th-21st centuries, so it's a significant part of how you look at American policy.

xxxxpost I'm more on the Bevanite Right but good zing :-)

http://msnbcmedia3.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/071011/071011_nobel_roosevelt_vmed12p.widec.jpg

i don't see anyone bitching about the US here

-- Mr. Que, Friday, 25 April 2008 14:23 (13 minutes ago) Link

I think you may have been reading littlegreenfootballs and not ILX.

American Exceptionalism refers to an attitude that has dominated American Foreign Policy in two forms--that we should either be a "model" for other nations, or that we should use our power to force nations to adopt our model [...]

and a lot of people think it's the one thing that sets the US apart from other nations, especially in the 20th-21st centuries, so it's a significant part of how you look at American policy.

-- jessie monster, Friday, April 25, 2008 3:39 PM (53 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

pretty dumb people i guess -- russia, germany, japan, pre-1950s britain and france, all thought the same way.

I'll let my professors know so they can change their syllabi.

The only thing my professors taught me at college was that AMERICA IS SIN. MORE EVIL THAN THE SOVIET UNION.

No one's suggesting moral equivalence b/w the U.S., China, and the Soviet Union, burt, but since the Spanish-American War the U.S. has been, shall we say, more vocal about its exceptionalism.

I think you may have been reading littlegreenfootballs and not ILX.

i don't know what this means, but i was talking about the posts on this thread from this morning.

and the French haven't? or the Swedish? or the Japanese? Every nation is vocal about its superiority. If the French had the power the US has, or if they had the power they had 100 years ago, trust me, they'd be using it. It's not like nations become holy good guys all of a sudden, it's that their ability to flex their muscle gets restrained or weakened somehow.

As far as the US being more vocal, it's because it had to be. Imagine being what, a 118 year old nation going up against countries that had been around for a millennium?

Actually, no, let's not think about this. America sucks, worse than China, the Soviet Union, and the Burmese military junta combined. End of story.

alfred's doing his gore vidal thing, it's cool i guess.

I don't envy his belly, that's for damn sure.

i'm gonna say russia, at the moment. not least because putin has his own fascist youth groups and has now co-opted the church, in true franco fashion.

So where does Georgian nationalism fit in to all this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOOa-8qO38A

This is between us, France and Yanks really, all three have a puffed-up sense of self-image but France's seems a little more deserving and grounded in realism in terms of what they actually contribute to the world (y'know, art, cuisine, a decent football team).

Whereas British nationalism hasn't really got over the fact that it isn't the 60s (hell, or the 19th Century) any more and as a country we seem to have less self-awareness than anyone else. Except the Americans.

Live and let live.

I'm using a fairly lightweight definition of nationalism here obviously.

"Exceptionalism" ? Ours is relatively recent...

Aside from the heavenly-blessed-and-always-exceptional Middle Kingdom (superiority from antiquity!) that's surrounded on all sides by barbarians, which other option in the poll is subjugating an entirely foreign (in language, culture, religion, custom and all cornerstones of nationalistic identity) peoples right now, one that's historically always been politically independent thousands of miles away from said option?

Woops. Forgot about Iraq. My bad!!

just that everyone's equally bad.

Is this true? It's 1939 and you have to side with one team of genocidal imperialists or another, do you wash your hands of them all and watch the bloodletting from the sidelines? (For US citizens only)

what drives me nuts about china is piddly shit like this:

Controversy
The game (Hearts of Iron) was banned in the People's Republic of China because the game depicts Tibet, Sinkiang, and Manchuria as independent countries, and Taiwan under Japanese control.[1] Paradox Interactive maintains that the game is historically accurate, and that it represents the "rough times" that China endured, as well as the incredible odds that the Communist Party of China overcame in order to win the Chinese Civil War.[2]

THEY SHOULDA BANNED THAT SHIT FOR BEING BUGGY AS FUCK

ha right

this is kind of funny too:

Like its predecessor Hearts of Iron, the game (Hearts of Iron II) is banned in the People's Republic of China. The main point of contention seems to be that the game portrays the various Chinese warlords as independent entities, while according to the PRC government they were nominally part of the Republic of China, represented in-game as 'Nationalist China'. Also, the Tibetan flag used in-game is banned in China. Paradox has stated that it will not reduce the level of historical accuracy in order to appease the PRC censors[citation needed]. Paradox have, however, made efforts to appease German censors. In the game Germany is represented with the flag of the German Empire as used by Germany until 1935, and not the Swastika flag. Laws in Germany prohibit the use of the Swastika. Additionally in the German version of the game pictures of leading Nazi leaders such as Hitler, Göring and Himmler were removed and their names subsequently altered, though this is not required under German censorship laws.

If you were German and you wanted to play a WWII strategy game, why the fuck would you get butthurt about Himmler being on your side?

Hope it's like Pro Evo and you get to be Badolf Histler or some shit.

The worst are the Scandinavians.

Har. Of course the "nationalist" tag is claimed by racisty types here as elsewhere in Europe. That's a disgusting ideology to be sure, but it's also a bit ironic how uniform it is, crossing national borders.

Also, I won't be an apologist for Serbia or anything, and don't want to have a count of who's worst and stuff, but once they're mentioned, much of the rest of the Balkans isn't exactly snow white either.

(The real Scandinavian nationalism is of course sitting back smugly and saying "Just you wait and see. It is our kind of system you really want, but we'll let you find out for yourselves".)

http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s236/mezxspectrum/jftG5F7x2UWF.jpg

Due to the wording of the thread title, I think it is necessary to stay focused on the present day. Although the USA has its disgusting low points, I think this contest boils down to Russia, China and UK.

UK's disgusting nationalism has the sort of enduring deadhead jingoist quality that tempts me, but I am willing to give the UK merit points for its strong tradition of giving political sanctuary to other country's malcontents.

China's disgusting nationalism, while also having a long and illustrious history, seems to me to have endured enough humiliation under European colonialism that it can be forgiven for suffering a sort of rebound into its current blind enthusiasm.

Russia's disgusting nationalism seems to me to just win by a nose. It has always had a flair for crudity and cruelty, and there is so little justification for its present floresecence, that I think I need to give it my vote.

Believe me, this was one hard decision, but I'm satisfied with my vote.

STEPHEN MCDONELL: Last night China's official Government spokeswoman Jiang Yu had a few words for Australians who are preparing to protest against the passage of the Olympic torch. In fact, she had a few questions for them.

IANG YU (translated): If there are demonstrators when the Olympic torch relay is being carried out in Australia, I want to ask these people, "What's the reason for your demonstration?" If you don't know China, you have never been to Tibet, know nothing about Tibet's history or reality, then you could come to Tibet to have a look.

STEPHEN MCDONELL: When she said this excited foreign correspondents asked if that meant they can travel to Tibet again. Well, no, she said, People will have to wait until these special circumstances have passed.

Madam Jiang went on to warn Australians against demonstrating.

Not that different from Rummy on Iraq but the situation is pretty fucking different.

Chinese officials, however, have remained skeptical of the existence of such a link. At a Chinese Embassy news conference Monday, senior public health officials said they doubted the evidence linking the contaminant to serious side effects. Instead, they urged a look at the U.S. facilities of Baxter Healthcare Corp., the Illinois-based company that imported heparin from China and distributed it in the U.S.

lol Australians demonstrating against the repression of the Tibetan people, conveniently forgetting their own repression and systemic abuse of the Indigenous Australians for over 100 years.

Jessie STFU and go finish your thesis.

I don't have any idea what point jessie is trying to make with this reverse rationalization of shitty behavior nonsense

>f you don't know China, you have never been to Tibet,

So ridiculous; let's extend the Iraq analogy. That would be like saying if you haven't been to Mosul, you don't <i>know</i> America.

What's so disturbing about these official govt memos and repeating the doublespeaky Orwellian "Tibet always WAS China / China = Tibet" is, if the current policy of displacing the locals with the ethnic Han continues, in a century or two Tibet as an entity will go the way of the Iroquois Confederacy.

lol @ my html - i was just on another site where that was the code. sorry

This is from the Kremlin's new history textbooks:

“The result of Stalin’s purges was a new class of managers capable of solving the task of modernization at a time of a shortage of resources, loyal to the executive power and faultless from the point of view of discipline,”

The fact that any real freedom, any civil rights have been stripped from the Russian people in a bid to make "Russia great again" is v. disturbing to me. The fact that most of the people inside Russia who attempt to oppose this get shot to death in the street means I'm voting for Russia in this poll.

UK's disgusting nationalism has the sort of enduring deadhead jingoist quality that tempts me, but I am willing to give the UK merit points for its strong tradition of giving political sanctuary to other country's malcontents

aimless: i'm genuinely interested (not in any pejorative way) as to what you (or indeed any non-brits; or, for that matter, brits!) think of as "UK" nationalism -- ie what image that phrase conjures up. like i said upthread: to me, welsh, scottish, and english nationalism are three spectacularly different entities with very different forms of expression (and i'm not even going to attempt to weave northern ireland into it) ... i'm pretty sure i know exactly what you mean, but i'm genuinely just interested from a scottish point of view.

Some people seem to be confusing a few right-wing crackpots in the British press with the overall culture. Britain doesn't seem a nationalistic country at all to me - quite the opposite these days. I can't imagine many countries worse at asserting their distinct culture or identity. Of course we have an hysterical press and quite a few batty right-wing commentators, but that's not the same thing.

In summary: people suck

but some people know how to party better than North American scum!

Moscow - the city of excess, parties, and fun: Don't even compare NY to it

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/ma...tmoscow124.xml

The saying "Moscow is the new NY" will soon be changed to: "NY is the new Moscow" (if America ever allows itself as much as fun as Moscow and lives up to it, that is).

--
If you've ever worn tight shoes, you'll know that the relief you feel when you take them off is so akin to euphoria it leaves you dizzy. Imagine a whole capital city, hobbled for 72 years of communism, united in that sense of deliverance.

Then try to imagine waking up after a night out in that city - or don't: it's a painful business. Inky nightclub stamps in Cyrillic script brand the back of my hands; my hair and, by proxy, bedclothes reek of cigarette smoke: and my head reminds me why, even in binge Britain, we choose not to chase each glass of wine with a thimbleful of vodka.

"This city is a sick place," shrugs Elena, the biggest party girl I know and the perfect companion as I set about uncovering whether Moscow lives up to its claims as the new New York.

She means sick in the LA sense of the word: when a place, style or person is so outlandishly hip, cutting-edge or viciously innovative that it prompts only that most contrary of adjectives. Others may prefer to use the same word in its original meaning. Not for nothing, I am about to discover, has Moscow been named the capital of excess.

My first night was gentle enough: dinner at Turandot (a new £30 million restaurant built in the style of an Italian palazzo, complete with waiters in 18th-century dress), followed by two bars and three nightclubs.

"We'll ease you in," laughed Elena as we arrived at a rave in an old factory where pornographic pop-art lined the walls and strobes bounced off eyeballs avid and dry from drugs.

Two £25 drinks later and we were off again in search of transport. Nobody takes taxis in Moscow. So far, so very un-Manhattan. Instead, they hail down any car that will take them: a Skoda, a Lada or, occasionally, something fancier, courtesy of a dignitary's chauffeur doing a spot of moonlighting.

We were in luck: a black Merc with leather seats and a siren on the roof pulled up. MPs in Russia are allowed them "for emergencies".

"Can we have the siren on?" I joked, as we sped, at 120 miles an hour, past endless construction sites, towards Solyanka, Moscow's answer to Soho House.

"Nyet," came the gruff reply. Two minutes and a 500 rouble note (£10) later, we were wailing past grey, gridlocked streets.

On arrival we were ushered through the VIP zone, into the VVIP zone, up a fire escape and through a kitchen into the VVVIP zone. You're nobody in this town unless you're forced to walk through a kitchen to get your shot of Stoly. There, a gaggle of women with machete-like cheekbones were dancing on the bar-top, below them a troika of men, looking skywards in awe as they guzzled champagne.

Muscovites have waited so long for their time to come that they act as though it will all be taken from them come morning. "See those trapdoors?" grinned one clubber. "People climb on to the roof to have sex - even in December, when it's minus 10."

Dimitri, my taciturn photographer, shook his head. "Is any of it really making these people happy?" Looking at the knicker-gazing businessmen by the bar, I'm fairly certain the answer is yes.

"You guys seem to think our women are all prostitutes," said Artemy Troitsky, an outspoken music critic and writer, often described as the Russian John Peel. "And you're sort of right. They will establish early on what you can offer them and tell you what their previous boyfriends gave them. Russian men have grown quite wary, but foreigners are easy prey."

The women are clearly high?maintenance: in clubs and bars, miniature chairs ensure that designer handbags - often worth as much as £2,000 - never touch the floor.

Culturally the capital is a frenzy of amorphous creativity, with one art form bleeding into another: bars are selling books, nightclubs sell clothes. All-night contemporary art museums (with their own DJs) are springing up across the city. Norman Foster has been commissioned to build 20 new buildings, and Philippe Starck is designing a whole village just outside Moscow.

"People forget that what Communism left behind was a skilled workforce," explains Tony Brenton, the British ambassador to Moscow. "Add money to that and it's an extremely productive combination."

And one that is attracting Brits with dollar signs in their eyes, such as Tony Blair, who is rumoured to have secured a £125,000 speaking engagement in the capital this summer, and Damien Hirst, who is to take his diamond-studded skull to Russia in June.

One detail says it all: Moscow is the only place in the world where movie billboards have the film's budget in the same-sized type as the title, as though the fact the new George Clooney epic cost £65 million makes it worth seeing.

Contemporary art is also big business. "Over the past seven years we have had this new class of people who want to buy and collect art," says Igor Markin, owner of Moscow's Art4 museum. "Some chose to buy football clubs instead, of course… I just heard that Roman Abramovich's girlfriend, Dasha Zhukova, has bought a space to open her own museum."

Abramovich's name is on everybody's lips: he is the ultimate success story, and a great supporter of the Russian contemporary art scene.

The following night, at the launch of the Moscow Photography Biennale, I met John Mann, Abramovich's PR director at his company Millhouse: "New York isn't as 24-hour as Moscow. I have two bookshops near my flat that are open all night, two supermarkets with everything you could possibly need, and I can have a drink at seven in the morning. In a few years' time, New York will be claiming it's the new Moscow, trust me."

Even fashion has caught up. Tsum, the gigantic Moscow department store modelled on Selfridges, has a greater collection of Balenciaga, Miu Miu and Lanvin than Harrods or Harvey Nichols, as well as exclusive ranges designed by Daria Werbowy and Naomi Campbell. The clothes cost 40 per cent more than elsewhere, but people still buy them.

"Don't forget that Russians lost everything three times, in 1990, 1993 and 1998," said Natasha, a Russian model shopping for the latest designer gear in perilous stilettos. "Now they are happy with their lot and happy with Putin. Everything is not affordable but it's available, and that's enough."

Russians are filling the capital's restaurants: at Sky Lounge, a huge New York-style eatery, businessmen tuck into millefeuille with sorbet of foie gras and fruit jelly. Vostok, another celebrity haunt, offers its cheapest starter at £30. Sushi is the latest craze.

Luxury has bred a new physicality. Men and women now work out, cut carbs and get mani-pedis in their lunch hours. But the real beauty staple is their weekly steam bath.

"The winters are harsh on our skin," said Sandra Vermuyten of marka:ff, a Moscow-based arts PR company, as she led me into a room heated to 120 degrees and full of naked beauties. It looked like a slaughterhouse: 40 women, like me wrapped in sheets, were draped across benches or lying on the floor, trying to escape the crushing temperature.

"You can't be the first to leave - it's a matter of honour," whispered Sandra.

Minutes later she started beating me with a birch branch - "to get the circulation going". I looked at her in disbelief. "Oh, I'm sorry - would you prefer me to use pine?" she replied.

When I finally escaped I felt two kilos lighter. "Vodka cocktail sound good?" chirped Elena and we hitched a ride to Krisha Mira - a club filled with giant Buddhas, where, at 6am from a roof terrace, we watched the sun come up over the Moscow river.

I've spent all-nighters in New York and LA and been disappointed to discover only a forced, self-conscious attempt at hedonism. Muscovites are suicidally serious about fun.

But if this is New York, then it's the New York of Brett Easton Ellis and Jay MacInerney, or the Chicago of the Twenties, where corruption and decadence, though spectacular to witness, can be a heartbeat away from despair.

"The thing I have come to love about Moscow," says Ambassador Brenton, "is that it is a highly urban, highly unpredictable place with a slight undertone of danger."

"As long as the oil prices stay the way they are," sighs Troitsky, "the lifestyle will continue. Politically we are in limbo, but for you guys, for visitors? It may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to visit a capital that burns money."

Jhoshea's memoirs had much to say of this

Aye, grimly. From the pov of the nationalist scots or nationalist welsh, the idea of 'UK' nationalism must seem extremely puzzling. But from the pov of an outsider, the internecine quarrels of the UK seem more like fraternal frictions than bloody power struggles.

The Falkland Island war was a good case in point. Don't try to tell me, for example, that the welsh as a nation jumped at the chance to conspire with the argentines, hoping to throw off the hated tyrrany of the english. No, afaics they ranted at the bloody argies along with everyone else in the UK instead of calling for a general strike to weaken the 'english' war effort.

The resemblances among the english, scots and welsh are more powerful now than any remaining differences. The pride of the scots or welsh may say otherwise, but let there be an outside threat or fear, and those affinities will pull 100x stronger on most scots and welsh than their nationalist pride in scotland or wales.

Robert Christgau - Ima'murrican, Gawdammit!

thanks, aimless -- very interesting, and i'm not going to disagree. (fwiw: i'd like some kind of federal model of independence that still allowed for formal recognition of the ties you're talking about). but "fraternal frictions": heheh, i like that and might even borrow it at some point in the future :)

gotta love vic's un fucking believable chutzpah in posting whole fucking articles from the internet

when I see fifteen paragraphs of totally insipid paid-by-the-line donkey shit that could have been summarizied into one sentence by any human being with an IQ greater than 50, when I see that kind of garbage posted on a thread, I think to myself "there's a fucking hero that should never be banned ever"

sarcasm off

J0000000000000000N

Vic_tl;dr_XI

UK's disgusting nationalism has the sort of enduring deadhead jingoist quality that tempts me, but I am willing to give the UK merit points for its strong tradition of giving political sanctuary to other country's malcontents

france also has a strong tradition re same. though wr2 the poles and 1939, it would've been NICE had either france or the UK actually DONE something so that they didn't have to fall back upon their strong traditions of giving political sanctuary to other country's malcontents.

seriously, my grandmother owed her life to the british.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

A little surprised!

holy shit

Putin's "We'll Die For Russian Superiority, Kill the Americans" youth corps have nothing on the US's Boy Scouts.

39 people completely unable or unwilling to see past their own front fucking lawn

or a bunch of canadians expressing displeasure at being unable to vote for themselves

oh for fucks sake

5/1 never forget

http://www.microformatinc.com/images/lincoln.jpg

39 people completely unable or unwilling to see past their own front fucking lawn

otm

would one of you 39 pls look up "nationalism" in a dictionary and then apologize to the thread - the question wasn't "which country pisses you off most," y'all

Tom I'll give you 2-1 odds that some of these dudes will think this post is itself a good indicator of "nationalism"

Shocked no one has mentioned Israel.

U-S-A! U-S-A! WOOOOOOO!

WE WON!

Manifest destiny is pretty disgusting, but go ahead and say that that isn't what you meant.

http://www.outragedpatriots.com/Outraged%20Patriot%20final%20header.jpg

Manifest Destiny was over what, 150 years ago? Might as well judge the UK on the British Empire, too.

http://gullyborg.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/malkin_1.jpg

i think people like to conflate "culture" with power/policy/whatever they feel like

~~BUSH~~<==666==8 USA USA USA 8==666==>~~HITLER~~

USA is satan, we will defeat them. Ertra kneels to pray or to shoot. We don't give up, we sacrifice. I am in USA now. I am going to school and have a good job in USA and help my country by sending a lot of money. I never buy BMW or Lexus. I only eat cheap food and save money to send to Ertra to defeat USA.

http://www.theodoresworld.net/pics/0507/Nahr_al_Bared_Palestinian_terrorist_camp.jpg

wedi shire zeng yerhwo seb beles ayndeli teshekemti ayndeli kab kne ertra kttketatelu twelu nedetatkum abotatna aflutna belwen atum eryrayat ESEYAS dea bun cab shwa begiee cab mekele endamtse bkofkum zeykonen nertra hadas hagaer ertra ertrea abilwa zelo gena dma ERTRAN ERTRAWYAN awald'n wedebna kulu neana kondafat lementi keneat hasadat adetatkum bgusmat zgbera znebera ESEYAS ESEYAS aytbelu keneat bknee natkum bhsdnakum zdehal sebay aykonen kem merahtkum adkum blementn rshatn tebelia kelas ESEYAS entay bele ktblu leahastie nai hagerat merahti koynkum terfkum mesakin.......

http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j251/mzing12/antichristossmweb.jpg

by the way, americans/UKers voting for the themselves in this can take their arrogant faux shame and fuck themselves with it. i mean, i hate our foreign policy as much as the next internet blowhard, but come on.

-- John Justen, Friday, April 25, 2008 7:31 AM (1 week ago)

i didnt vote for US but now i wish i had

WELL CONGRATULATIONS TO YOU

YES CIDERPRESS JOIN US. HELP US TO DEFEAT USA. GOD IS IN OUR SIDE. LET US PRAY FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF THE GREAT PIG.

uh

i think that tombot and J0hnd and i are kind of on the same page here

meaning that "yes i get it you have expressed your superior levels of self-loathing but seriously, get over yourselves", at least from my perspective

http://lonewacko.com/images/get-a-brain-morans.jpg

LOL @ outraged Merkins

would one of you 39 pls look up "nationalism" in a dictionary

I voted for Russia, but here's the Random House Unabridged:

1. national spirit or aspirations.
2. devotion and loyalty to one's own nation; patriotism.
3. excessive patriotism; chauvinism.
4. the desire for national advancement or independence.
5. the policy or doctrine of asserting the interests of one's own nation, viewed as separate from the interests of other nations or the common interests of all nations.
6. an idiom or trait peculiar to a nation.
7. a movement, as in the arts, based upon the folk idioms, history, aspirations, etc., of a nation.

Other dictionaries are similar. Some sources argue for a three-pole relationship between "nationalism", "imperialism", and "colonialism", but others don't see that distinction as antipodal (well, as antipodal as you can be in a three-pole system).

So I don't think the (rather sanctimonious) request for "apologies" is all justified, at least in terms of dictionary definitions.

But, y'know, I guess that one's meant for the people who tell their Internet buddies that they're sorry for things they can't and won't feel sorry for.

I'm also amused by the assumption that the "39" people who voted for the U.S. are all 39 of them from the U.S.!

I'm also amused by the assumption that the "39" people who voted for the U.S. are all 39 of them from the U.S.!

I found that assumption very odd

I'm not from there and voted for it, but I've just spent the last half hour trying to explain why and I can't do it in a civilized way, so I give up.

"Manifest Destiny" yeah, that fucker Polk should be impeached.

What a stupid poll.

The irony of this poll, incidentally, is that to some extent, one has to fall back on one's own nationalist culture, however inverted and self-loathing, to judge another's. All these nationalisms and others besides can blow me, fwiw.

I will be damned before I read this entire thread but was it ever actually defined what was meant by "disgusting"?

judging by the results it seems that disgusting has been taken to mean imperialist

though it seems like nationalist has also been taken to mean imperialist

I'm not terribly surprised that the USA won this little unpopularity contest. I mean, you could argue that the average American doesn't have the "my country right or wrong" attitude, or at least they cover it with a veneer of do-gooder talk about promoting democracy and the like. But when you come down to it, can you be surprised that people tend to resent the most powerful, richest country - especially one that tends to meddle continuously in other country's affairs and and does it all with an air of sanctimoniousness. I mean which of the countries on the above list has militarily overthrown not one but two sovereign foreign governments in the past decade?

I forgot to pull the leader for russia.

lever, damnit lever.

Your Freudian slip is showing.

As someone from a country where we only see our flag on the nationaly holiday, on days when one of our top sporters wins something or when some royal either visits the scene of a natural disaster (or squirts out yet another prince or princess the rest of us are going to have to pay for) I just don't understand pride in one's country, let alone the flag-waving "We're Number One"/daily Pledge of Allegiance type thing the US has going on. So I wonder what you're all so proud of, being the only country in the world that has used nuclear power on another and now unashamedly torturing people who only (see? I just can't explain in a civilized way so I'll shut up now)

"I mean, you could argue that the average American doesn't have the "my country right or wrong" attitude"

I assumed that was what the poll was about. It's not about the governments. Most folks in my neck of the woods definitely don't have the "my country right or wrong" attitude

Oh, and Stan M-fuck you

it's complicated...
xpost

Stan, your country almost entirely ceased to exist through apathy this year so I am hardly surprised you don't have much pride in it.

I guess it depends on where you go - when I visit the in-laws in supposedly liberal California, there's still American flags on almost every other porch, which does seem pretty weird to me (actually TBH the last couple of times this seems to have diminished so maybe it was a response to 9/11 or something). NB I didn't vote in this.

and now unashamedly torturing people

This is a fair point. The current US government's wink-wink attitude towards torture, extraordinary rendition, the Geneva conventions, etc. are plenty disgusting. It's hard to argue that the fact we've allowed this to happen doesn't somehow reflect on our culture.

and now unashamedly torturing people

with the acquiescence of many other countries who might like to think themselves above such things

Of course that makes it perfectly acceptable ;)

supposedly liberal California

In what universe is California outside of LA and SF presumed to be liberal?

This one?

At least I was under the impression that was how the state was seen by most of the US.

I am talking about LA anyway.

Stan, your country almost entirely ceased to exist through apathy this year so I am hardly surprised you don't have much pride in it.

Good point - it most certainly influences how we/I look at other countries (I think it's fair to say most Belgians find a lot of other countries almost sickeningly nationalist)

...thunder... lightning...

hahahahahaha if that had been said to a US/UK poster, that would have generated an angry response, but StanM is all "eh, that's true *shrug*"

Lots of good examples for our "all generalizations are wrong" thread, too. (including my posts)

At least I was under the impression that was how the state was seen by most of the US.

This is true. Dan's point is truer, however.

Yeah fair enough, I know just because that's how it's perceived doesn't mean that's how it is (see also "liberal media" etc).

Also my perception of flag-waving is also affected by my own country's disgusting nationalism, so pinch of salt.

NB I didn't vote in this.

Nor did I. Where is Stan M from?

Belgium

I think the citizenry's easy acquiescence to government torture (and other examples of hard-ons for authoritarianism) makes a case for the U.S. though I would have voted Russia.

did people not see the word "culture" in the topic?

Which is worse though, a culture where the worst excesses of nationalism are unashamedly embraced, or a culture where we decry the excesses of nationalism but do nothing to stop them from happening?

USA RIGHT OR WRONG BABY WHOOOO

imo this is the result of some mark ass foreigners jealous of our god-given right to urinate in the parking lot and purchase *world-class* snax from the lobby vending machine

btw why is russia gettin so much hate? i thought they got rid of the commies

i voted for France. because French culture is annoying and stupid.

^^pensée profonde, ça

http://green.yahoo.com/news/afp/20080519/sc_afp/japanenvironmentclimate.html

That's odd, because Tokyo has mandatory garbage separation/recycling, the most heavily used public transit system in the world (I think), and virtually no littering. I'm usually not captain save-a-Japan, and I think they have a profoundly ugly nationalist culture, but I think that article misses the point between "attitude" and "how people are actually behaving."