Category: Countries

I’ve only been to Istanbul. What surprised me most was how much like Athens it felt. Especially Kadıköy. The same rickety elevators in apartment buildings, the same scenes of young people hanging out in outdoor cafés, the same traffic chaos. Even the same layouts and typographic excesses in newspapers. Also: How exceptional the food was. […]

More of the same. We have Haldeman’s notes of his meeting with Nixon, and we have forensic proof that we aren’t missing any of his notes for the day. Nixon was clearly starting to talk about coverup, but would not yet have elaborated the whole CIA National Security lie. Nixon didn’t wipe the tape because […]

The opposition Nixon was truly worried about was the China Lobby, who determined US foreign policy for a couple of decades. But by 1972, the China Lobby seems to have been spent. There was certainly opposition from conservatives, which is why it took Nixon to go to China to begin with. But their voices were […]

Such a highly specialised hypothetical, my good Dr Aziz Dida, deserves the soundest of empirical enquiry. Mercifully, we have for Europe an extremely sound and fairly reliable criterion to answer this question. Eurovision Song Contest: A map of the countries most voted by others Yes, there’s some static caused by large ethnic minorities. Whatevs. This […]

Is it really that bad to bring your daughter when talking to foreign diplomats and people of power? Why stop there? Why not bring the in-laws? And your cousin Vinny, who just loves sushi? Is it really that good to bring your daughter along? What are her qualifications for being there? What is the reason […]

Mehrdad, I feel bad when I pass on A2As from you that I can’t answer. I can’t answer this either, but let’s analyse this. Why was the EU formed? Really, for political reasons: with the hope that a closer financial, and then political union between France and Germany would prevent World War III. That agenda […]

What you’re after is a country with an exaggeratedly strong nationalism, to the point of chauvinism, but not spilling over into racism. So you want a maxed out civic nationalism. France invented civic nationalism, but they asssimilated all their indigenous minorities aggressively, and they’ve botched their assimilation of the Beurs, so that’s not a good […]

Vote #1 Emre Sermutlu’s answer. Because I’m just some random Greek. Emre Sermutlu’s answer to Why hasn’t Turkey adopted federalism if it is big enough and divided into seven regions? Turkish Quorans may know me as an interested neighbour (Greek). Being Greek, the para about Turks being forced on the defensive in Emre’s answer is […]

https://www.quora.com/profile/Nick-Nicholas-5 I am profoundly grateful to La Gigi, for asking this question, which has brought together three of the most fascinating personalities in living memory: I am also profoundly grateful to those who have already speculated about why on earth I would be so relentlessly fascinated by Nixon, because if they are, then they’re still […]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/19/us/mike-pence-hamilton.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news Originally buried in a comment at https://www.quora.com/Was-it-app… In response to: Well, if you believe what the cast of Hamilton did was appropriate, then you’d be okay that if henceforth every theatrical performance would include the cast’s comments on the political scene. … When Aristophanes invented comedy? That’s exactly what he did. Using the chorus […]