Recent Russian immigrants are leaving Israel in large numbers (mostly those who are not ‘legally’ Jewish, primarily for Germany and Poland.

Russia is in a very tough spot, caught between the U.S. and China in the emergence of the 21st century balance of Superpowers. They are maneuvering themselves rather clumsily, like half-educated drunks stumbling across the world stage. It is a very dangerous situation.

Give them a small role in demilitarizing both North Korea and Iran (i.e. pulling down those regimes) and then…

a serious effort at democratizing the Russian regime. How? God knows, but it has to involve the emmigrants returning with more than just money and molotov cocktails on their minds! I would like to see a study done of the civic and social attitudes of Russian emmigrant high school and university students in eastern and central Europe—and Israel. Much is at stake.

True, but at least three current members see themselves as being greater than or equal to the rest put together (or have only abandoned such pretensions in the recent past).

This is not to beat up on prescription in general. I’m quite sympathetic to lexical prescriptivism, for example. Historical usage gets to weigh up against popular usage, and the former isn’t necessarily destined to be subverted by the latter (and nor should be feel ourselves obliged to help that process along).

I just wanted to reaffirm the fact that, if I had a girlfriend, then it would be because I would previously have made a solemn vow that me and her would not have this kind of conversation.

(I like this getting in first – it makes a successful hijacking of the thread much more likely – hee hee.)

The language pedant strikes again.

And who invented the linguists’ quasi-religious doctrine about its being evil to prescribe? And do they apply it when bringing up their own children?

I’m so glad that America has no such problem, and that Rumsfeld, Addington, and Yoo have all been indicted in the D.C. district court.

“The logic of gradual integration” misses a key point: Russia, as Doug says, sees itself as an equal to the EU.

Note the unease with which Russia views Ukrainian membership.

Doug M.

Second, Russia would break all of the Union’s institutional arrangements. Almost twice the population of any other member states, famously spread across eleven time zones. In Germany it’s currently fashionable to say that security starts at the Hindu Kush, but Russia has land borders all across Asia and a geographic dispute with Japan. A Union that had to call in Colin Powell a couple of years back because Spain and Morocco couldn’t come to terms over a pair of uninhabited rocks is not in the least bit prepared to deal with Russia-sized problems.

Further, Russian elites see their country as co-equal with the Union as a whole. Accepting that in certain circumstances Malta will exercise a veto over Moscow’s wishes is not part of this view.

EU enlargement will eventually reach an end, around 2020 if the former Roman provinces in North Africa do not join, rather later if they do, and Russia will not be a part of the Union.