(West) German industry actually had better equipment (e.g., machine tools, plants, etc.) in 1948 than in 1938.
It was the wrecking of the transport system that the German economy in.
If they actually take down a skyscraper 9/11-style, that really would be a Rubicon moment.
But they haven't, and the Emirati regime is nothing if not ruthless.
Not a popular opinion on this site, but I think Dubai will weather this much better than most people expect.
Yeah, there's panic right now. But a few buildings getting droned is hardly a knock-out blow. If anything, it's surprising how little damage has been done thusfar.
The Emiratis may be even less interested in obeying the rules of war.
This was apparently what the Foreign Office was really afraid of
My favourite AO3 fact is that it all ads up to only a few terabytes in terms of data. Storing text is really that easy.
FidoNet!
Every Anglophone man who has learnt Arabic thinks they are.
"We simply do not need to go chasing up and down after the vagaries of the next ignoramus to become President of the United States" - Enoch Powell
The last thing we had anything resembling it was Nixon's various machinations in the '60s and '70s (and even then, it all eventually stopped being anything secretive since Kissinger started leaking to the press).
What does Israel think its actual borders are? Every other country in the world can tell us.
So, I've just discovered an error on Wikipedia.
Citing Till Geiger, it says Ernest Bevin once wrote in his diary that being allied to the US was like being "Tied to the tail of a Kilkenny Cat".
In reality, Geiger claimed that Aneurin Bevan wrote that.
It was all so much simpler in the 1950s. Back then, there was a bipartisan consensus between the Soviet Union and the West that homosexuality was "degeneracy".
There's a funny moment in the 1970s where the US is despairing at the rampant spread of Communism (particularly in the Third World), whilst the Soviets are privately fuming that their sphere of influence is costing them so much money.
The two groups who are most uncomfortable with their respective sexuality are the far-right (closet gays) and the far-left (closet straights) 👌
It amazes me that his decision to abandon Britain's atomic sovereignty gets so little scrutiny.
His ability to annoy everyone is remarkable. The living embodiment of Margaret Thatcher's adage that if you walk in the middle of the road you get run over by both sides.
Arguably, the biggest flaw of the Obama administration was that it was stuffed full of self-consciously clever people who thought they were much cleverer than they actually were.
On a side note, most of their population are not citizens does make conscription and fascinating question for them.
Worth noting that most expatriates who work in the Gulf States are either South Asian or African labourers (who often suffer terrible conditions) and Westerners doing normal white-collar work.
He was apparently very charming which meant he was used as fixer/diplomat for a lot of stuff.
Trump achieved big swings among non-white voters in 2024. He couldn't have won if he just maxed out the White conservative vote.
They account for the bulk of demand nowadays. But, historically, the British community there was disproportionately wealthy and influential, plus the Emirati ruling families were very Anglophilic.
Yeah, that is new. You can read accounts of British people who grew up there in the '70s and '80s, and a common complaint was that there was fuck all to do. The UAE had a population of 1 million in 1980 versus over 10 million today.
There have been British diaspora communities in the Gulf since colonial days. Hence why the lingua franca is de facto English, the international schools teach a British curriculum, and there was an English-language TV channel there as early as 1977 (Dubai 33).
There have been British diaspora communities in the Gulf since colonial days. Hence why the lingua franca is de facto English, the international schools teach a British curriculum, and there was an English-language TV channel there as early as 1977 (Dubai 33).
Very reminiscent of all the positive stories you'd hear from British and other European migrants who went to Rhodesia until the Bush War heated up in 1974, and South Africa until the crises of 1985.
You can trace the GOP losing its mind to Reagan and his tendency to breezily bat away reality with homely bromides, but the real Rubicon feels like the 1990's with the development of a Conservative-media ecosystem totally unmoored from reality.
Every Republican administration since George Bush Senior has been a disaster of historic proportions, yet this has had remarkably little impact on public opinion.
Physical presence still conveys an enormous amount of stature.
Being tall, having a low voice, and sounding audibly middle-class gives you instant authority vibes.
