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Yup. China is an empire. Russia too. We mistake many empires for nation states, just as the nation builders we mistook different tribal configurations for nation states. Britain is lucky that it (or England) was a nation state before it became an empire and it never lost that ancient character. We must realise that much of the world is made up of empires or tribes, always has been, and these institutions have a character different to nation state. Much of Europe used to be an empire (Roman, Habsburg, Holy Roman, Napoleonic) and the EU still reflects that aspect which bubbles away deep in its character. Thank God we got out of that one. 🤣

I know it's common for people (dealers, eBay sellers) to misattribute the tides on 1895, 1897, 1902, but I'm looking at the NGC slabbed offerings, and they often seem off. I'm not wrong am I, that these two 1897 labelled as High Tide aren't actually high tide? https://www.ebay.com/itm/186136288294 https://www.ebay.com/itm/232339243134 It rather muddies the waters more if every available slabbed "High Tide" isn't, (or Low Tide for 1902), and lends credence to every other seller thinking they also have the rarer tide. The damage NGC does is infuriating, doubly so as they're raking in so much, while throwing fuel in this fire. They need to work a bit on earning expertise credentials.

Yes. And no. Judaism embraces all Jews, including those who are atheists. The defining of what exactly Jews are is one of the trickiest things, and probably unique in world history.

I love Paris. I lived there over 20 years ago and went back for the first time since last week. It has not changed. I ate in the same Jewish delicatessen on rue des rosiers (4eme) as I used to 30 years ago as a student. The fashion is identical as it was then; and I suspect then as it was in the 60s. It is a marvel to me how somewhere can be connected by the Eurostar, yet be so categorically different from London. Vive la difference! I love both.

I have since discovered that George de Saulles died of peritonitis after surgery for appendicitis.

Calling a spade a spade is good - and that applies to each of the bad actors (individuals or institutions) in current conflicts. Attributing aggression to “the Russians” as a people comes close to the same category error as the snippet at the beginning of this thread “but for her people being slow in thought and backward”. In my view, the category error is between a people (the Chinese, the Russians) and the culture and historical system (imperial). Perhaps I am splitting hairs in this instance, but the mantra I often resort to is “culture matters, race not at all”. There is an unfortunate reversion in our current culture of identity politics to invert that - to assume that one culture is no better or worse than any other; and that somehow race is important. The reversion is back to the imperial mindset of the snippet. Woke mindset is an intellectual and moral cultural regression. We as a people can do better than that.

Too many people are anxious not to cause upset, but you need to call a spade a spade. Russia may take a typical empirical stance in its treatment, and may be only one of several players operating in this manner, but there's nothing wrong in specifically calling them out for what they are doing because the reason for and scale of the operation demands it. They are the major aggressor on the world stage at the moment because the war is the only really significant conflict between two nations on any scale, and with Russia promising to go to the next place which wants to be free of Russian interference when they've finished in Ukraine it would be a moral abrogation to just shrug our collective shoulders and say Ah, but they are an empire, so excuse them. Obviously there are other active areas of conflict such as Myanmar, various African states or Gaza to name but a few, but these are generally internal affairs despite attempts to draw in external parties. The problem is that they all have the same modus operandi. Legitimate military targets are hit, but this is accompanied by a very healthy dose of indiscriminate shelling or bombing of civilian targets.

That seems to me the default for all systems of empire and all systems of tribalism. Nothing special about Russians there. They are an empire - like the others. Like China. The mistake we make is thinking they are a nation state. Like the UK. It is the imperial nature of Russia that caused both Kissinger and Obama separately warned against the escalation in the Ukraine. Know your enemy.

I didn't. I was quoting Paddy's post and expanding on their innate inability to take on board the right of alternative cultures to exist. Any neighbour is viewed as a threat to be conquered/pillaged/eliminated. Problem is, that requires them to claim the world, because up to that point they would always have a neighbour. Saving grace is their inability to breed fast enough to replace losses in continuous conflict.

I wouldn’t single out the Russians. There is not an empire in the whole of human history that has not been expansionist. Human history is the ebb and flow between the two poles of tribalism and empire: the one gives way to the other, back and forth, the world over. The birth of the nation state in Western Europe (and the Westphalian system that it became) is an historical anomaly and alien to much of the world relative to endless tribalism and empire.

They've had the same mentality for hundreds of years. The problem is not that they believe themselves superior, also that they also believe in destroying the cultures they overrun and the Russification of everything. They've been killing Ukrainians for centuries for what they are. Or take the Circassian genocide where they reduced the population from 1.5m to 30-40K in a few years as a result of starvation and forced migration. Any neighbour not under their control is to be invaded and at the least, a puppet installed. Dudayev was precise in his 1995 analysis of how Russia would turn out post the collapse of the Soviet Union. Then they killed him........... All this crap about denazification is complete bollocks. There are Nazis in every country on this planet - usually a small percentage. Problem with Russia is that they are in power in the Kremlin. Hope springs eternal that one day they will make the connection between their actions and why only the likes of Trump and Orban think Putin is great. Then they can drag themselves into the 20th century.

In fact he was only 41. So far I have only found that he died after a "very short illness". In his obituary in the Numismatic Chronicle, his former employer John Pinches suggests that overwork contributed to his death: "It is to be feared that his devotion to his art, which kept him working early and late, weakened a constitution never very robust and helped on the end so much to be deplored."

From a pre-ww2 stamp album page header. No wonder we lost everything! Children would have read this.