Velvet Revolution

[Caid Ivik]

At 17th november 1989, police violently ended student protests in Prague and Bratislava, sparking an avalanche against its own government. Hundreds of thousands rallied in next days in every larger city in Czechoslovakia, founding an initiative VPN, Publicy Against Violence. This psychological strike hit the communist reign with a full strength, becoming a rare type of nearly bloodless revolution.

What was the situation? Socialist Czechoslovakia was a country, where you needed a political permission to get on university, where you waited few years for a car with maximum velocity of 100 km/h as there weren't enough, where it was dangerous to let children play on sand because of pollution and ignorance of Cernobyl threat, where to watch the austrian television was considered as a diversional action... No need to continue. Political system, which pridefully declared itself as discoverer of the historical determination of marxism, fortunately showed how terrible was its mistake. System, which came up on ruins of the Third Empire with support of the massive Red Army, ended by a revolution of its own people, thought to be already controlled, which simply discovered and independent, free soul within themselves. And soul is a term, which didn't fit into marxist view. As well as freedom, which we have last 15 years since then.

[Davidu]

Don't worry, Caid. We know what was like before '89. We had rationalised food between '83 and '89; 2-3 hours of TV every day and "lights out" (litteraly) after 10 o'clock. No hot water ( or no water), no heat and sometimes no electricity whatsoever.

The idiot ( Ceausescu) even cancelled a project for an attack helicopter that could engage two tanks at once. Whan the model was presented in Paris in '85 it was the best attack helicopter ever build. That bird could have paid our external debt.

I really hope Edric starts a topic about out revolution/coup in dec '89. I really have to say some things about that. About how to kill lots of people and create a state of insecurity and make people shoot eachother in the streets for nothing.

[Anathema]

Is the velvet revolution celebrated in Slovakia to the same extent like western nations celebrate the liberation by the allies Caid?

[Caid Ivik]

This year was the celebration larger than in previous years. If I would compare it, for us is the rememberance for '89 revolution on perhaps even higher level than '45 liberation. When someone died during the battle with Germans, he became a hero. But when was someone shoot on the boundary or executed as a "diversant", his name and full existence was erased. Also, the war lasted only for 6 years, while communism 40...

[Naib_Mishu]

Noroc Davidu!  ;D

Communism is a dissease. There is nothing right about it. Unfortunately it is still present in our country (Romania) because the ex-communists ar still in charge. the president we had for the last 15 years is a former kgb agent and is personally responsible for all the deaths caused at our revolution. he is also responsible for not acting when we had the chance to rightousley take back moldova and the serpent's island. Our revolution was a more of a coup than a revolution.

[Dante]

Methinks Edric might be getting tired of repeating himself... Still, we'll see. I'd be interested to see what he'd say.

[Edric O]

Noroc Davidu! ;D

Salut! Vad din ce in ce mai multi romani pe aici... dar majoritatea sunt doar in trecere. Sper ca tu sa ramai.

Communism is a dissease.

I wouldn't know what a "dissease" is, but if you mean a disease, then I'm afraid your metaphor is rather too cryptic for me. Do you mind explaning what the hell you're talking about? And, while you're at it, please define "communism" for us. [this gets them every time - most of the people who think stalinist regimes were communist don't really know what "communism" is, and usually only have vague ideas to the effect that "communism is bad"]

Unfortunately it is still present in our country (Romania) because the ex-communists ar still in charge.

A lot of ex-capitalists were in charge during the 50's. Does that mean Romania was still capitalist? There's a reason why the prefix "ex-" was invented, you know. And besides, look at how all those "communists" you're talking about abandoned communism and declared their love for capitalism mere days after Ceausescu had been overthrown. Not very "communistic" of them, was it? With friends like that, communism doesn't need any enemies.

...the president we had for the last 15 years is a former kgb agent and is personally responsible for all the deaths caused at our revolution.

First of all, moron, there is no such thing as "the president we had for the last 15 years". Iliescu was in charge for 3 terms: 1990-1992, 1992-1996 and 2000-2004. In case they didn't teach you in school, 2+4+4=10. And 10 != 15. Also, for your information, from 1996 to 2000, our president was Emil Constantinescu.

[explanation for non-Romanians: A popular slogan among the supporters of our current opposition parties is that "Iliescu and his gang have ruined this country for the past 15 years". While I sympathise with them somewhat, I'm afraid this slogan is factually incorrect. The current opposition was in charge from 1996 to 2000 - and they did a pretty disastrous job, which is why they try as hard as they can to pretend that the years 1996-2000 never existed]

Second of all, how is Iliescu responsible for anything that happened during the revolution? He had no control over either of the two sides.

...he is also responsible for not acting when we had the chance to rightousley take back moldova and the serpent's island.

Oh, excuse me, I hadn't noticed you were one of those nationalist loonies.

Our revolution was a more of a coup than a revolution.

A few thousand people in the streets chanting "down with Ceausescu" sounds like a revolution to me.

[Edric O]

Methinks Edric might be getting tired of repeating himself... Still, we'll see. I'd be interested to see what he'd say.

Of course I'm tired of repeating myself. Which is why I have created a standard reply for these situations. :) Naib_Mishu, here's some information you might find useful:

1. COMMUNISM is a socio-economic system that consists of a free association of human beings who put all their property in common and co-operate so that each of them will be better off than if he was on his own. The guiding principle of such a society is "From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need". Communism can also be defined through the things that it seeks to abolish: Private property and the State. In other words, communism is a system with no state and no private property (or with a very limited state and very limited forms of private property).

Although communism has existed in many small communities throughout history (from the early Christian Church of Jerusalem to various workers' communes in the last century to any present-day Jewish kibbutz), it has never been tried on a larger scale, and there have never been any communist countries. The old Soviet Union and all the other countries that followed its example never even claimed to be "communist countries". The West used to call them "communist" out of convenience and for propaganda purposes. They called themselves "socialist" countries (hence "The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics") and they claimed to be on the way toward communism. Neither of these things was true, of course, and more explanations are given further down. The leaders of those countries were blatantly lying when they claimed to have socialist systems (given the fact that they lacked democracy, a vital element of socialism), but claiming to have a communist system would have been a much bigger lie.

2. SOCIALISM is the intermediate stage between capitalism and communism, in which the means of production are under the control of the people (as opposed to capitalism, in which the means of production are under the control of a rich minority). Broadly speaking, socialism means economic democracy. A socialist economy is a planned economy democratically controlled by the people, and which therefore produces what the people need, not what brings the greatest profit. A socialist economy also involves extensive social services and full employment. As part of the basic human right to Life, every individual is guaranteed certain basic standards of living (food, clothing, a decent home, free healthcare and free education). Beyond those basic standards of living, however, an individual is free to earn more and grow richer, through his/her own work. Socialism does not create absolute economic equality, but it does reduce inequality to very small levels - much smaller than the absurd inequality that exists under capitalism. For example, the poorest person in socialism would earn about 3 or 4 times less than the richest person in socialism - whereas the poorest person in capitalism earns a few hundred million times less than the richest person in capitalism.

Also, it is very important to note that a planned economy will produce what the people need only if it is controlled by the people. If it is controlled by a small minority (like, say, a group who calls itself the "Communist Party"), then it will serve the interests of that small minority instead of serving the interests of the people, and the resulting system will be no better than capitalism. It might even be worse (see stalinism).

3. So what was the case in the Soviet Union and the other countries who followed its model? Well, the means of production were the property of the state, but the people had no say in what the state did with them. Therefore, since the people did not control the means of production, this system was obviously not socialism (in order for the Soviet Union to have been socialist, it would have needed to be a democracy. That way, the state would have controlled the means of production, and the people would have controlled the state. So, by transitivity, the people would have controlled the means of production). The system used by the Soviet Union and its Cold War allies is a type of oppressive dictatorship which we call STALINISM, because Joseph Stalin was the one who created it (afterwards, many other dictators followed his model). Stalinism tried to make itself look like socialism in order to benefit from the very good reputation that socialism and communism had at the time. But eventually, it managed to utterly destroy that reputation...

I hope that clears things up for you. If it doesn't, feel free to ask me anything. You might also want to look over some older topics such as What is socialism?, What "capitalist exploitation" means and Communism and human nature.

[Edric O]

And since I'm on the topic, I will reply to Caid's initial post as well:

What was the situation? Socialist Czechoslovakia was a country, where you needed a political permission to get on university...

Let's take a look at the statistics, shall we?

Percentage of 18-22 year olds of working-class backgrounds studying in universities or other institutions of higher learning in the year 1960:

Yugoslavia - 56%

Czechoslovakia - 39.3%

Poland - 32.9%

Great Britain - 25%

France - 5.3%

West Germany - 5.2%

(source: the collegeboard)

Hmmmm, "political permission" or not, there were almost twice as many students from working-class families in universities in Czechoslovakia than in Britain, and eight times as many as in other wealthy countries like France and West Germany. The stalinists had many flaws, but when it came to providing education to the people, they were always far, far ahead of the capitalists.

...where you waited few years for a car with maximum velocity of 100 km/h as there weren't enough...

Now this is a far more reasonable criticism. The stalinists never made good cars, for some reason (they had the means to make better cars if they really wanted to, but preferred instead to make very cheap cars).

...where it was dangerous to let children play on sand because of pollution and ignorance of Cernobyl threat...

Well, Cernobyl wasn't exactly the fault of the Czechoslovak government, was it? Nor was it the fault of the Soviet government, for that matter - their crime was that they covered it up (which is understandable, given the international situation of the Cold War), but the accident itself was just an accident.

...where to watch the austrian television was considered as a diversional action...

This is another good criticism - it hits the heart of the problem with stalinism, actually. The stalinists never cared much about human rights, and democracy was out of the question.

[the people] simply discovered an independent, free soul within themselves.

It was more a matter of "the government is oppressive and needs to be overthrown" than the poetic event you make it out to be.

And soul is a term, which didn't fit into marxist view.

I'm a marxist and the soul fits very well into my view. Remember not to make such sweeping generalisations in the future.

As well as freedom, which we have last 15 years since then.

Oh, there's certainly more freedom in some areas (like civil rights and the political process) - but less in others. All those 18-22 year olds of working-class backgrounds, for example, don't have nearly as much freedom to decide what to do with their lives.

[Caid Ivik]

1.Statistics are here very uncertain due to few important factors: whole society of CSSR was considered as a "working-class", according to its constitution, and this number was so high as there were many technical schools here, tough their grades weren't hard to reach. This numerical onanny is a nonsense, as the quality provided was very different. You can't refute a fact, that intellectual, and even higher technical grades (those equal to western levels, like ie in sciences) could be attained only with clear relations with the Party.

2.Volkswagen or Fiat were making perfect cars very cheaply as well, and yet with better performance than government's Zildas.

3.My parents knew about it from austrian television, which they could watch because my uncle was a good electrician. If state should primarily protect its citizens, here it not even unjustificably failed, but even went against its own sense. And for what? To maintain an "aura of perfection" around the Soviet government?

4.Surely, if you would say to any surviving communist that he is a "stalinist", you would feel his fist on your face. But you can say, it was a common practice...

5.The government was oppressive for three generations. It was a moment, when its manipulative tactics simply failed and people lost cowardness. Change in thinking was significant, altough you don't admit it.

6.Perhaps then you are more marxist than Marx himself...

7.Surely. If they followed the rules of the Five-year Plan.

[DukeLeto]

Edric covered most of what I would have said, but I have to answer on one point:

he is also responsible for not acting when we had the chance to rightousley take back moldova and the serpent's island.

I'm afriad Moldova may disagree with you.  They are a soveriegn nation, and are recognized as such by the United Nations.  You cannot simply "righteously take them back."  That would be like the UK deciding to "take back" the United States!  Preposterous!

[Dante]

But oh so very enticing...

[Naib_Mishu]

ok,

first of all i'd like to admit my mistake and apologise. i don't know what i was thinking when i made this stupid mistake. it is true, iliescu wasn't president for 15 years, but for 10.

I have read what edric said about communinsm and socialism and i do not agree with one thing.

Communism wants to allocate resourses farly but efficiency is lost.

Under capitalism thousends of companies fight for control over resourses and thus strive to find ways to use them as best as possible. A single organism cannot find a better way to harvest, exploit and distribute resourses better than thousands of companies that are compeating. It will lead to waste and inefficientness that gets worse and worse in time. This is way Gorbachev wanted to change the system. Unfortunatley it was too late.

A few thousand people in the streets chanting "down with Ceausescu" sounds like a revolution to me.

It was a coup planed by Moscow witch had agents in all of the goverments of the east block countries. Illiescu was the one appointed by Gorbachev for Romania. Him and his people incited romanians before the revolt started. I know this for a fact. Where my mother was working she saw how people she knew that were from within the party and the Securitate came and spread anti-Ceausescu pamflets. The proof about Gorbachev's relation to Iliescu can be found here:

http://www.ziua.net/index.php?data=2004-11-17 (in Romanian - cauta in sumar)

Edric covered most of what I would have said, but I have to answer on one point:I'm afriad Moldova may disagree with you. They are a soveriegn nation, and are recognized as such by the United Nations. You cannot simply "righteously take them back." That would be like the UK deciding to "take back" the United States! Preposterous!

Maybe the Moldavian goverment may dissagree but most of the people there won't. They certainly wouldn't have dissagreed if we would have invited them to unify when they declared their independence from the soviet union,  but Iliescu was more an ally of moscow than of his own people.

Edric: "The stalinists never made good cars, for some reason (they had the means to make better cars if they really wanted to, but preferred instead to make very cheap cars)."

Like Caid said, Fiat and Wv also made cheep cads but those were good cars. Our cars would come appart as they were driven away from the factory. Why? Mercedes and BMW have to compete on the market. to do so, their cars have to be better then those of the competition. Dacias, Zeldas, Ladas, etc had no competition on their home-markets. no matter how bad they were the buyer wouldn't have a better alternative. also, the workers didn't get promoted or had raises if they did a good job, noe were they fired if the did a bad job. The result came in the form of some awfull cars that you had to wait for years to get one and that broke down constanly

Second of all, how is Iliescu responsible for anything that happened during the revolution? He had no control over either of the two sides.

He didn't? The "terrorists" were his people. even after the army joined the people and the securitate capitulated, the "terrorists" were still sniping people at random. In other cases people were turned against eachother. For example some people were armed and formed "patriot guards". They shot other people thinking they were "terrorists". 2 army platoons were orderd to fight eachother at the airport in Bucharest each thinking the others were terrorists. The aim of all those useless casualties was to produce mass hysteria and fear. When there is fear people look to a leader. That leader was Iliescu. That's why i think he should be in a prison right now instead of being president.

And one more thing. Please excuse my English. It's not perfect but i think people can understand what i'm saying

[Davidu]

Mishu:

[hide] care esti frate? sa mor io daca te stiu... da' oricum, bine ai venit! [/hide]

Edric, the revolution was set up. All the KGB agents discovered by the Security that were peacefuly neutralised (taken out of office, etc) emerged during the revolution as "dissidents".

And what about that thing at Otopeni? The Security troops were send to the airport to defend it, while the army troops over there were told the "terrorists" were coming to attack them. Guess what: the security troops (2 or 3 busses full of men) were shot down. A handful escaped and surredndered.

The same thing happened at the Ministre of Defence. A Security Squad was send to aid in the defence of the building, and at the Ministry they were told the "terrorists" are coming to attack. Those men were shot down in the street and their bodies were left there for more than a week. They were enemies of the people weren't they??? The squad leader was the guy that discovered a KGB agent within the Ministry of defence. Guess who called at the Ministry to warn them of the "terrorist" attack. The KGB agent... now a respectable dissident.

Again what happened at the television was set up. Remember those "unidentefied" helicopters? Oh yeah.... they were army choppers. They were ordered to hide their insignia and attack the Television that was held by "terrorists", while at the television were army tanks, soldiers and people that came to defend it against the foreing agents, the "terrorists".

Eventually the army shot down it's own helicopters. The helicopters were ordered radio silence.

Did you know the soldiers that were taken out onto the streets those days ( December) were recruited in October. They knew nothing about army, or foes, ... damn, they were all greenhorns!!! They shot out of fear.

Oh, and Iliescu had control over both sides. Not him alone... that's right.

You know the soldiers that shot Ceausecu died out of "accidents"?? His helicopter pilot died of an accident also...

The revolution leaders were callind the people into the streets for nothing. At least after Ceausescu died, what was the need for all the shooting??? Do you remember that every day the shooting started at & o'clock in the evening and lasted to 10?? How precise!

We'll see the truth at Discovery Channel in about 50 years I suppose. Too late to punish anyone.

[Edric O]

1. Statistics are here very uncertain due to few important factors: whole society of CSSR was considered as a "working-class", according to its constitution, and this number was so high as there were many technical schools here, tough their grades weren't hard to reach. This numerical onanny is a nonsense, as the quality provided was very different.

Keep in mind that those statistics were from 1960. That means that all 18-22 year olds had been born in 1938-1942, which was before the stalinists came to power. So their "working-class background" (or lack thereof) was measured in relation to the capitalist society they had been born in, not in relation to the new society of the CSSR. As for the quality of education in the CSSR, I don't know much about it, but I do know that education in stalinist Romania and the Soviet Union was excellent, particularly in the exact sciences. And there were plenty of international competitions that proved this fact.

You can't refute a fact, that intellectual, and even higher technical grades (those equal to western levels, like ie in sciences) could be attained only with clear relations with the Party.

Party connections certainly helped, but they were not absolutely essential. And besides, this was an effect of the corruption that is natural in all dictatorial systems; Party connections were a de facto requirement for attaining high intellectual distinctions, not an official one.

2. Volkswagen or Fiat were making perfect cars very cheaply as well, and yet with better performance than government's Zildas.

One of these days I'll have to look into the inner workings of the car industry in stalinist countries; I've always wondered why they didn't make better cars when they clearly had both the knowledge and resources to do so. Maybe it was a politically-motivated decision.

3. My parents knew about it from austrian television, which they could watch because my uncle was a good electrician. If state should primarily protect its citizens, here it not even unjustificably failed, but even went against its own sense. And for what? To maintain an "aura of perfection" around the Soviet government?

You're talking as if I supported the Soviet cover-up, which I don't. But the answer to your question is yes: the Soviets did not want to appear weak in front of the Americans by admitting they've had a nuclear accident.

4. Surely, if you would say to any surviving communist that he is a "stalinist", you would feel his fist on your face. But you can say, it was a common practice...

Um, what? What do you mean by "surviving communist"? If you mean one of the old Party members from before 1989, they're all declaring their eternal love for capitalism these days. If you mean a present-day communist, then you should know that most of us are pretty hostile towards stalinism.

5. The government was oppressive for three generations. It was a moment, when its manipulative tactics simply failed and people lost cowardness. Change in thinking was significant, altough you don't admit it.

I don't admit what? Of course there was a change in thinking - but it didn't come about overnight.

6. Perhaps then you are more marxist than Marx himself...

Certainly not, but Marx is only the creator of Marxism, not the absolute authority on all things Marxist. There have been many prominent Marxists - such as Lenin, for example - who disagreed with Marx on several important points.

[Caid Ivik]

1. This is rather inaccurate analysis. Families, which had children in 1938-1942, had dramatical life during the war. Many lost everything there, in socialist countries there were further losses for large portions of society due to various reforms and also systematic oppression of certain classes. For example an evangelic priest became a miner, so was his son a "working-class" then? He had enough education from home for intellectual work. However, as he was blacklisted for his father, he hadn't very good perspective. Some people were able to attain high scientific or technical grades, surely, but these had to follow the system. You called it "corruption".

2. Well, difference between Skoda 120 (1981) and Skoda S105 (1973) was only that it had a worse esthetical design. On the other hand, MiG-29 from same time as 120 is a fighter with equal performance to western types of that time and a decade older MiG-23 hadn't. What I try to show is, that perhaps those resources and knowledge where elsewhere.

3. No, only justifying it. Such "Potemkin's village" behavior was typical, and still is, in Russia. Here it had terrible outcomes, so I simply can't understand why you try to do so.

4. Not sure about situation in Romania, but KSS in Slovakia is calling for return of the ancien regime and Zjuganov in Russia too. Altough it's sure these parties enjoy capitalist possibilities as much as possible ;D

5. Not overnight, but could be said it wasn't more than a month. Clash of already enough fanatic students with police pushed thinking of others. Your reply seemed to use hegelian evolutionary logic, which wasn't the case. There are always more possibilities, China used another in the same time, for example.

6. We can track roots of marxism back to Hegel or ie Spinoza, which had also differences between each other, to make an exact map of your (or mine or Marx' or anybody else's) syncretism is impossible. I hadn't time for deeper analysis of Marx, however I'm sure materialism is extremely important part of his teaching.

[Edric O]

First, I wish to reply to Naib_Mishu:

I have read what edric said about communinsm and socialism and i do not agree with one thing.

I just gave you the definitions of communism and socialism. There isn't anything to disagree with - I only told you what communism and socialism are. I did not get around to making any actual arguments in those posts.

Communism wants to allocate resourses farly but efficiency is lost.

Are you talking about communism or socialism here? Methinks you didn't pay much attention to my explanations...

Under capitalism thousends of companies fight for control over resourses and thus strive to find ways to use them as best as possible.

Indeed. But keep in mind that they strive to use resources as best as possible in terms of bringing them the highest possible profits, not in terms of giving the maximum benefit to society. Furthermore, as any biologist will tell you, competition is a wasteful process. It does promote advancement, but it is a highly inefficient way to advance. This is because a great deal of resources must be spent in the act of competing, and the fact that so many different entities do the same thing (in our case, the fact that so many companies make the same products) means that at least some of them are redundant.

Besides, I must stress the fact that capitalism is more than just a market, and, in general, the communist objections to capitalism don't have much to do with the market at all. Communists oppose private ownership over the means of production and capitalist exploitation. The fact that communists also oppose a market economy is actually just a side effect. Our desire to implement a socialist economy (which is a planned economy, but not the only kind of planned economy) comes from our desire to implement economic democracy - in other words, we wish to give the people democratic control over the economy. When this control is indirect, we have a socialist economy. When this control is direct, we have a communist economy.

A single organism cannot find a better way to harvest, exploit and distribute resourses better than thousands of companies that are compeating. It will lead to waste and inefficientness that gets worse and worse in time.

Why? Physically speaking, there is no reason why a single large organism wouldn't be better than many smaller competing ones. It's quite the other way around, actually. Highly organised and "planned" systems are typically far more efficient than chaotic ones involving lots of individual competing entities. The human body, for example, is far superior to a human-sized blob of single-cell lifeforms.

Even within capitalist economies there is a natural tendency towards less chaotic competition and more economic planning. Look at corporations, for instance. A corporation is a planned economy in miniature - in fact, some present-day corporations are bigger than the entire national economies of several stalinist states.

Edric: "The stalinists never made good cars, for some reason (they had the means to make better cars if they really wanted to, but preferred instead to make very cheap cars)."

Like Caid said, Fiat and Wv also made cheep cads but those were good cars. Our cars would come appart as they were driven away from the factory. Why? Mercedes and BMW have to compete on the market. to do so, their cars have to be better then those of the competition. Dacias, Zeldas, Ladas, etc had no competition on their home-markets. no matter how bad they were the buyer wouldn't have a better alternative.

As Caid already pointed out, the resources and ability to make better cars certainly existed, but they were being diverted elsewhere (mainly towards the military).

Now, the problem you present above is one of incentive for the economic planners. Simply put, in a stalinist system, economic planners had no reason to allocate more resources and expertise to the car industry if they didn't feel like it. But keep in mind that the problem is lack of incentive, not lack of market competition. Market competition is ONE way to provide the necessary incentive, but it is by no means the ONLY way. The same incentive can be provided, within the context of a planned economy, by a democratic system. If you read my descriptions of communism and socialism, you know that democracy is vital to their existence anyway. In a socialist planned economy, the planners must answer before the people in democratic elections. So if they do a bad job and their planning sucks, they will be replaced. This provides them with the needed incentive to perform well.

To use the car example, in a socialist system the poor quality of the cars would make the people vote against the current planners in the next elections. They would vote for some different planners, who would allocate more resources and expertise to the car industry.

also, the workers didn't get promoted or had raises if they did a good job, noe were they fired if the did a bad job.

Well, we can all agree that those practices were just plain stupid. A socialist system would certainly reward good performance, and penalize bad performance to a limited extent (keep in mind that all people would be guaranteed a job and a certain minimum standard of living, and no penalties could take those rights away; the point is to encourage hard work through rewards, not through punishment - and leaving a man without a job is out of the question).

[Davidu]

After that lucid explanation, I remembered why I'm so proud we live in the same country Edric.  ;D

I'd like to have my own small-to-medium buisness one day. I'd like to OWN it, privately, but, on the other hand I don't want some HUGE corporations to wipe me out of buisness.

So, that's me: a little bit socialist, a little bit fascist; a little bit democrat, a little bit dictatorial... In balance.

[Dude_Doc]

I'd like to OWN it, privately, but, on the other hand I don't want some HUGE corporations to wipe me out of buisness.

But the question is, what can you do about it if a big, profitable corporation decides to wipe your firm out?

[Barbarossa]

But oh so very enticing...

But oh so very impossible...  ;)

[Dante]

That's it, you just stay there in your false sense of security...

[Barbarossa]

No offense intended but the U.K government is practically Bush's... Erm, Bitch at the moment so I doubt there will be any British Imperial plans for the Americas in the near future...  ;)

[Dante]

Who said anything about the government? Bunch of spineless wastes of space...

[VigilVirus]

Davidu...just wait, one day Microsoft will come to your house - even if your company has nothing to do with computers  ;)

As for UK taking over the US, anything is possible. Personally, I would welcome a union between the two, either US overtaking UK or the other way around.