44lucas

OK, this is coming from a Pole : It seems that lots of people hold their country in contempt, or if contempt is too strong a word, seem to idealise other places, sometimes as distant as Poland. Poland has its problems, corruption, slow economic growth, unemployment and murky politics among them. Sound familiar? i bet everyone could sign their name under that while describing his/her country, be it Canada, Poland, USA, heck even France and Germany. There is a large opposition to our presence in Iraq, even thou it didnt reach propotions of protests in other "old Europe" countries. The feeling that we ought to go there is common, because thats what a good ally would do (naive? I suppose we are out of touch with reality... uppss, i mean, "Real Politik") . Theres slight problem with that, however. We dont share the border with US. Worse still, we got Germans to the left and Russians to the right - this has always been our curse. It has also been our curse that we never really knew how to profit from that. over 75% of our trade is with EU. Next May we will be joining that club, and it would seem logical if we tried to listen to what others got to say. Instead we seem to do our best to antagonise our neigbours. It is a gamble which can pay off, but then again we can get ourselfs in quite a mess. This is my first post here so I'd like to take this opportunity to say hello to everyone here I suppose this is pretty apparent that this thread made me sign on this thing. but I like the way in which discussions here are conducted so I will gladly contribute, if I gain your acceptance, that is