[Rhodes22-list] Politics- reply to Rummy on Steve's Comments

[Ronald Lipton]

Is that a batten in your box - or are you just glad to see me...

Well at least you got out before they started feeding dioxin to folks
they don't like.  I was also in Moscow and Siberia about three years
ago.  Moscow had every appearance of a booming city new restaurants,
expensive hotels, and homeless folks.  Siberia was another matter. We
passed a "tent city" where people lived in corrugated metal shacks, in
winter - in Siberia!  The city I visited, Novosibirsk, is the academic
center of Siberia, and hosted both defense and civilian research 
laboratories.
I was impressed by the high quality work and dedication of these folks,
in the middle of nowhere, with almost no funding, being paid a pittance.

When I came back home I spent a lot of time wandering
around my neighborhood mumbling "this is much nicer then Siberia".

Ron
On Dec 21, 2004, at 10:42 AM, stan wrote:

> you can see I am behind on my mail ......
>
> You were there a little after my two visits - I was there just when 
> things started to disintegrate and they told me I had better go home 
> to play it safe.  I wrote a piece for Buckley's magazine which the 
> editor sent back with a note saying very funny but not appropriate for 
> them.
>
> An interesting couple of weeks for someone who doesn't mange to get 
> out of this country.
>
>
> PS:  the IMF new style main that was mailed to you does not have the 
> batten in the box.  We will send its batten (too big for that box)  if 
> you elect to keep the sail.
>
> stan/gbi
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ronald Lipton" <lipton at fnal.gov>
> To: "The Rhodes 22 mail list" <rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
> Sent: Thursday, November 25, 2004 12:22 PM
> Subject: Re: [Rhodes22-list] Politics- reply to Rummy on Steve's 
> Comments
>
>
>> Stan,
>>
>>  I was in Russia/USSR in October of 1991, just after the failed coup 
>> and
>> when Yeltsin was consolidating his power.  Also no toilet paper, but 
>> I knew
>> enough to bring my own.  The infrastructure was falling apart (the 
>> Soviet
>> Union might have lasted another 5 years if they had enought duct 
>> tape).
>> It was an interesting and sobering experience.  One of the things 
>> that most
>> impressed me was the overall spirit of pessimism in spite of the 
>> dramatic
>> and postive changes which were occuring.  Part of this is national 
>> character,
>> part is the result of being beaten down for decades (if not 
>> centuries).
>> One of the stengths of Russia continues to be a great intellectual and
>> cultural tradition that has endured despite the years of the gulag, 
>> Lysenko,
>> and communist indoctrination.
>>
>>
>> Ron
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "stan" <stan at rhodes22.com>
>> To: "The Rhodes 22 mail list" <rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
>> Sent: Wednesday, November 24, 2004 3:37 PM
>> Subject: Re: [Rhodes22-list] Politics- reply to Rummy on Steve's 
>> Comments
>>
>>
>>> Rummy,
>>>
>>> you hit a sore spot.  I was in the USSR just before they imploded, 
>>> (just to show you how they were getting everything wrong) because 
>>> their space program mistook me for an expert sailboat builder and 
>>> invited me to show them how to make sailboats from their fiberglass 
>>> nose cone operation, and my biggest problem was wiping my ass.  No 
>>> one had toilet paper.  What a mess the country was in.  Nevertheless 
>>> they were turning out tanks like crazy.  When I asked them why they 
>>> would be doing this while at the same time run their big gas lines 
>>> on the surface of the streets of Moscow so that one bomb from us 
>>> would be worse than Mrs. O'Leary's cow, they said they had no 
>>> interest in war but did not know how to close down the tank line.  I 
>>> think that the USSR was finishing up its run irregardless of our 
>>> strategies.
>>>
>>> stan/gbi
>>>
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: <R22RumRunner at aol.com>
>>> To: <rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
>>> Sent: Wednesday, November 24, 2004 2:35 PM
>>> Subject: Re: [Rhodes22-list] Politics- reply to Rummy on Steve's 
>>> Comments
>>>
>>>
>>>> Steve,
>>>> The economy was so bad after 12 years of Republican spending that 
>>>> it was the
>>>> slogan that got Clinton/Gore into the White House: It's the economy 
>>>> stupid.
>>>> Remember?
>>>> As for Reagan's spending on the military sending the Soviet Uniuon 
>>>> into
>>>> collapse, there are those that believe it would have imploded all 
>>>> by itself
>>>> anyway. They couldn't grow enough crops to feed their people, let 
>>>> alone produce
>>>> enough toilet paper. Now that would irritate the masses.
>>>> You might want to check with your doctor and see if you have any 
>>>> early
>>>> indications of alztheimers. Oh, and since you work in the state 
>>>> budget department,
>>>> me thinks they might want to hire an outside auditor to come in. 
>>>> Can you
>>>> say: E-N-R-O-N?
>>>>
>>>> Rummy
>>>> __________________________________________________
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>>>>
>>>
>>> __________________________________________________
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