Venetian traders competed with Greek traders and there was no effective regulation between them besides mutual interest and some treaties.
I am not saying have no law or regulation of any kind. I am rather saying the regulation should be there to ensure a few basic features that if maintained ensure all other features that would be harder to manage.
Here is the regulation we need:
1. State and local governments must be required to allow communications cables to pass through their territory and connect to their residents without interference. A reasonable tax on those cables and leasing of the poles/underground pipes is acceptable however those taxes must not be so excessive that they cause companies not to lease the space in at all. This is the BIGGEST reason we don't have more competition right now. Leasing fees are very high and largely unaffordable for smaller companies.
The fee structure must scale with the business that leases the space. So if I want to put cable on 20 poles and I have 5 customers, I shouldn't be expected to pay AT&T rates for leasing every god damn pole in the city.
Furthermore, ISPs should be encouraged to both maintain their own cables and maintain the poles. As such, local governments would incur no expense because the ISPs would be paying for all upkeep.
2. Establish an internet integration cooperative that has two rules. First that anyone can join the network. Second that anyone inside the network must allow other groups in the network to connect to their network.
If a given organization doesn't want to allow a competitor to connect to the network then they're in breach and everyone else in the network can disconnect from them at will.
This system would self regulate. Yes, if any network became large enough then no one could afford to disconnect from them. However, if there are always lots of networks then no one can afford to disconnect.
3. Allow alternatives to the internet itself. Part of the reason we're getting this fast lane talk is that some organizations would like to bypass the internet entirely. Allow them to do that. The finance industry for example would likely like to have much of their communications flow over private proprietary cables. Same for the military. Same for the universities. Allow it. The more people running cable the better.
This includes private networks. Imagine if your neighborhood wanted to set up its own network that connected all the homes in your neighborhood together. The information and resources not being accessible outside your network. Allow it. Encourage it. The costs are meaningless. The cost of running a Cat5 cable around town with some weatherized switches spread about.
4. Require ISPs to cite the terms of their contracts in their advertisements. If they're slowing down traffic, then put that in the advertisement. Then customers can decide if they want to do business with them.
5. As to slowing down the traffic of other ISPs and not your own customers... that goes back to the trade organization I said we'd need. If a given ISP started filtering other member's traffic then they could have the same done to them in turn or other punitive actions.
Do the above and the internet would largely self regulate. Between the market forces and the trade organization most ISPs would understand that actions have reactions... and the ones that didn't understand would get crushed by competitors.
If you do that then the last mile will be controlled by a government union and the actual capabilities of that last mile will be set by that union.
Riddle me this... do you want the US postal service to run your internet?
I don't. So lets not do that.
As to competition, the real problem is in last mile delivery. Its very hard for small ISPs to get started without making extensive use of their competitor's cable.
This is because typically at the local level it is very hard to run your own cable. Not logistically or financially but legally. The local regulations on leasing poles and being able to run your own cable is arcane and often prohibitive.
There are also very high taxes either per pole or per customer or per some other metric. its very confused and the system was designed mostly by local governments to milk big ISPs and phone companies of revenue.
The issue is that while a big company can afford those taxes, a small company often cannot. Therefore the taxes effectively create monopolies because no one else can compete with them because of the leasing fees.
My solution for competition would be use interstate commerce legislation to relax and rationalize those leasing fees so they're uniform, accessible to small operators, and not so high as to bar small operators from running their own cable.
The internet should not fall under their purview. The FCC can regulate radio... we need something for that. We don't need them regulating the internet at all.
What we need are market forces. Competition. If the big ISPs had some they couldn't play games without threatening their market share.
That is how you regulate them. By letting customers vote with their feet.
This ignores the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs or the the fact that our sun will run out of hydrogen.
And even if we ignore natural methods of everyone killing themselves on earth, nukes, genetically engineered germ plagues, etc are just as deadly. We owe it to life on earth to survive. And that means getting off this planet.
No where have americans said none citizens have no rights.
It is true our intelligence agencies tend to not take foreign rights very seriously but they're intelligence organizations. If you were paying attention to the media, you'd be aware that European intelligence agencies were either doing the same thing or were simply accepting US gathered intelligence from this source.
That was the deal. The NSA spied on Europeans and then shared the intelligence with european intelligence agencies.
Did you not know that?
Consider what else you don't know and consider how free you actually are if your information is not getting through.
We're done here... you're clearly an idiot that is arrogant. There is no cure for that. I'm very sorry. The only cure for idiocy is education and the arrogant reject education assuming themselves to be superior.
its an utter crapshoot from my perspective... if it has a chance of working I'd like to see it funded. If these guys are just scammers then I'd be happy to see them come to bad end... ideally a fatal end. The same idealism that makes me value the attempt fills me with utter hatred at anyone or anything that would stand in its way.
Fusion power could be one of the biggest things to ever happen to not only our species but life on earth in general.
We are after all the great hope of our world. The other life on planet earth is utterly incapable of higher reasoning. If any life on planet earth is to survive it must leave the planet. And only we or something like us has a chance of doing that. Fusion power would extremely useful in this regard.
Anything that causes it to be developed must be encouraged. Anything that causes it to hindered should be flayed alive.
Here is a classification system you might prefer... its from the cold war.
First world.
Second world.
Third world.
First world included all powers allied with the United States. This was Europe, Japan, South Korea, former british colonies, about half of South America, etc.
Second world included all powers allied with the Soviets. This would be Cuba, China, Vietnam, etc.
Third world included all powers not allied with either the United States or the Soviets.
So if you want a more modern classification you can use that one... unless you have of your own that you'd like to define.
But keep in mind, Russia is not associated with our civilization in any sense.
Eastern Europe is probably getting pulled into our sphere one way or the other. But the Russians like the Byzantines are going to piss into the wind until they drowned.
As to the 21st century, that is what those terms mean. If you don't like them then don't use them. You do not get to simply redefine things to mean something else simply because you find little things like "history" and "facts" inconvienent.
Grasp this... I am not saying Russia cannot belong to our little club of nations. It was after all the intention after the cold war that the Russians would be rehabilitated and allowed in...
However, Russia is less of a western country then is Japan. And japan's history is so divergent from what one might consider western as to be unrecognizable.
As to the cold war redefining things... the cold war did not define Russia as a western country. If anything it highlighted its status as something else.
As to Russians on skype being westernized, I don't think you know what that means. By this sort of logic about half the planet might be defined as westernized.
Our civilization is hegemonic on this planet and through its obvious modernity, wealth, military power, etc has influenced every culture on earth.
So yes... the Russians have been influenced by us but then so have the Chinese. Just because I play starcraft against chinese people every so often and they tell me jokes in english doesn't mean they're western. It just means the internet is a cultural melting pot.
As to Spanish people being more different to you then the Russians, that means literally nothing. First off, the Spanish are extremely western. Second off, what you personally consider to be one thing or another is utterly irrelevant.
As to not caring about nitpicking, then don't contradict established classifications and waste my time. Ask Putin if he thinks of himself as Western.
He'll give you one of his patiented "i'm a tough guy" stares and then say "nyet".
As to redefining terms, I didn't do that. You did. Shut up. Do not argue with me when you're wrong. No no... hush. That's what the word terms mean. Get over it. No no... Zip it.
As to "scientific" and rational discourse, we don't just randomly redefine terms or ignore history when it becomes inconvenient. Your attempt to claim science is behind you on this issue is frankly baffling since science has nothing to do with this discussion. And your attempt to pervert the meanings of words is hardly rational.
As to avoiding squabbling over meanings, the way it works is the first person to define a term defines it.. that was no me by the way, but people thousands of years before I was born. So... that's a fixed quality.
The terms remain fixed and if you want to express a different concept then you come up with a different term instead of just using their term improperly.
As to space city, I really question whether the russians really knew anything of significance that we didn't already know.
Remember... we landed on the moon. They didn't. Yes, they did some experiments that we probably didn't do. But did they honestly learn anything that we hadn't already figured out?
As to keeping Russian scientists busy, don't look now but Iran and north korea already went nuclear.
It was a waste of money and time.
Russia just needs to be crushed. They're irrational just like the Byzantines that birthed their whole branch of the civilizational tree.
The Byzantines could have united with the Western powers against the Turks. They spat in the face of the west. Literally tore the eyes out of a Venetian diplomat's head... and for that brought the Crusade down upon them instead of upon their enemies.
And so the Turk crushed Constantinople which is now Istanbul.
This stupidity from Russians is not new. Its a very old story that always works out the same way. The Russians are too stupid to learn from their history.
We offered them peace. We offered them membership in our fellowship of nations. They have decided to take the path of their ancestors of Byzantium.
yes but we don't trust each other because we know that if we don't cling to our factions that rival factions will overwhelm and consume us.
So we stick with corrupt factions because for all their faults they're powerful enough to defend themselves while we individually are not.
to be comfortable taking a risk to disolve the factions the risk of a rival faction taking power would have to be reduced.
That cost of losing would have to go down.
For the cost of losing political power to go down the value of political power itself must be reduced. For that happen the government's power must be reduced.
For the government's power to be reduced you would have to go back to small government principles.
Small government principles are opposed by leftist factions and are seen as a trope of rightist factions. Therefore attempting to do this will simply irrtate the existing factional battle.
TLDR?
The only way to restore democratic principles is to go back to limited government. And the only way to do that is to defeat the factions that oppose limited government.
Effectively... the only way to fix the system is a giant populist wave to crush political insiders and restore constitutional order.
There are factions trying to do that already... but their chances of success are not looking too good these days. The forces that control this country thrive on the corruption.
You have a point with the NSA. That is a serious issue though its more complicated. It wasn't an attempt by the US to betray anyone so much as some intelligence agencies in the wake of 9/11 that became over zealous.
I do not think you can show bad faith in that situation so much a general lack of respect for the law.
Two powers are trying to take control over the internet and neither is worthy of it.
The US overstepped its authority in wire tapping everything. The NSA needs to have reasonable limits placed upon it.
And Europe has no right to dictate what people say on the internet. This starts out with limiting pornography and hate speech... and then very quickly it becomes about shutting down political rivals or ideas you simply disagree with...
The Russians don't have a right to dictate how the rest of hte world must live.
If eastern europe wants to join NATO because they're afraid of Russian aggression then what right does Russia have to oppose it? IF Russia really wanted to avoid this situation they shouldn't have intimitated eastern europe and instead made friends of them. But they can't do that. They can't help themselves. They enter every situation swinging their dicks around pissing everyone off and it makes everyone want to lock them out.
And in any case, if we wanted to be sneaky on the issue, we could have just created another organization just like Nato but NOT nato that eastern europe and western europe could join.
Happy now?
At the end of the day, these countries have a right to associate how they please.
Russia's behavior is only dooming the country. They have started the cold war again and that means the west is going to start choking the life out of Russia.
We've played this game before. You wanted to back to the war... You have it. We'll squeeze until Russia breaks.
People seem to forget what western and eastern mean.
It refers to the western and eastern Roman empire.
We are the children of the western empire. Our script is latin script. Our religious organization was generally the Catholic church... prior to the protestants etc.
The Russians are of the Eastern empire. The Byzantines. Their script is Greek. Cyrillic. Their church is the Orthadox chruch.
Western and Eastern...
As to what you consider eastern and western... just come up with new terms. Eastern and western have a meaning you don't like... don't impose your meaning on terms that are already defined. You might as well redefine what the word "is" means. In this context, Western and Eastern refer to the old roman empire and the child nations that grew up in its ashes.
Yes, Asian countries are often referred to as eastern... but that's because they're east of the western empire. By the same token the Russians might call the Navajo or Eskimo's western. Its a different meaning.
When speaking of the Russians in reference to the West... they are definitely Eastern.
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Venetian traders competed with Greek traders and there was no effective regulation between them besides mutual interest and some treaties.
I am not saying have no law or regulation of any kind. I am rather saying the regulation should be there to ensure a few basic features that if maintained ensure all other features that would be harder to manage.
Here is the regulation we need:
1. State and local governments must be required to allow communications cables to pass through their territory and connect to their residents without interference. A reasonable tax on those cables and leasing of the poles/underground pipes is acceptable however those taxes must not be so excessive that they cause companies not to lease the space in at all. This is the BIGGEST reason we don't have more competition right now. Leasing fees are very high and largely unaffordable for smaller companies.
The fee structure must scale with the business that leases the space. So if I want to put cable on 20 poles and I have 5 customers, I shouldn't be expected to pay AT&T rates for leasing every god damn pole in the city.
Furthermore, ISPs should be encouraged to both maintain their own cables and maintain the poles. As such, local governments would incur no expense because the ISPs would be paying for all upkeep.
2. Establish an internet integration cooperative that has two rules. First that anyone can join the network. Second that anyone inside the network must allow other groups in the network to connect to their network.
If a given organization doesn't want to allow a competitor to connect to the network then they're in breach and everyone else in the network can disconnect from them at will.
This system would self regulate. Yes, if any network became large enough then no one could afford to disconnect from them. However, if there are always lots of networks then no one can afford to disconnect.
3. Allow alternatives to the internet itself. Part of the reason we're getting this fast lane talk is that some organizations would like to bypass the internet entirely. Allow them to do that. The finance industry for example would likely like to have much of their communications flow over private proprietary cables. Same for the military. Same for the universities. Allow it. The more people running cable the better.
This includes private networks. Imagine if your neighborhood wanted to set up its own network that connected all the homes in your neighborhood together. The information and resources not being accessible outside your network. Allow it. Encourage it. The costs are meaningless. The cost of running a Cat5 cable around town with some weatherized switches spread about.
4. Require ISPs to cite the terms of their contracts in their advertisements. If they're slowing down traffic, then put that in the advertisement. Then customers can decide if they want to do business with them.
5. As to slowing down the traffic of other ISPs and not your own customers... that goes back to the trade organization I said we'd need. If a given ISP started filtering other member's traffic then they could have the same done to them in turn or other punitive actions.
Do the above and the internet would largely self regulate. Between the market forces and the trade organization most ISPs would understand that actions have reactions... and the ones that didn't understand would get crushed by competitors.
If you do that then the last mile will be controlled by a government union and the actual capabilities of that last mile will be set by that union.
Riddle me this... do you want the US postal service to run your internet?
I don't. So lets not do that.
As to competition, the real problem is in last mile delivery. Its very hard for small ISPs to get started without making extensive use of their competitor's cable.
This is because typically at the local level it is very hard to run your own cable. Not logistically or financially but legally. The local regulations on leasing poles and being able to run your own cable is arcane and often prohibitive.
There are also very high taxes either per pole or per customer or per some other metric. its very confused and the system was designed mostly by local governments to milk big ISPs and phone companies of revenue.
The issue is that while a big company can afford those taxes, a small company often cannot. Therefore the taxes effectively create monopolies because no one else can compete with them because of the leasing fees.
My solution for competition would be use interstate commerce legislation to relax and rationalize those leasing fees so they're uniform, accessible to small operators, and not so high as to bar small operators from running their own cable.
if you're in asia you're likely eastern.
Russia is in asia... you're wrong... get over it.
The internet should not fall under their purview. The FCC can regulate radio... we need something for that. We don't need them regulating the internet at all.
What we need are market forces. Competition. If the big ISPs had some they couldn't play games without threatening their market share.
That is how you regulate them. By letting customers vote with their feet.
Right, because look at how all our allies after WW2 were fucked over by association with us.
Oh wait, no they weren't... that was the Russians fucking over their allies.
Riddle me this, would you rather have been in eastern Germany or Western Germany?
Don't speak unless spoken to.
Cite the scientific paper itself then or your argument is merely a supposition.
All you're saying is that living in space is hard and we're not very good at it.
I agree. It doesn't change the fact that we must leave or we're dead.
You want to stay here? I give you the whole world. Every inch of it. Do as you will with it.
But let me leave first. And once I leave... when your ilk finally wise up and decide to leave... you'll find everything else is ours.
This ignores the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs or the the fact that our sun will run out of hydrogen.
And even if we ignore natural methods of everyone killing themselves on earth, nukes, genetically engineered germ plagues, etc are just as deadly. We owe it to life on earth to survive. And that means getting off this planet.
If you like... but am I wrong?
They just need to actually advertise for those positions.
Anyone seen the FBI recruiting for hackers?
Nope? Okay... so there's your problem.
If they're really serious they'll talk to the Pentagon about how to actually get recruitment flowing.
It requires things like "placing an ad"... in anything. And then manning the phone or email address cited.
No where have americans said none citizens have no rights.
It is true our intelligence agencies tend to not take foreign rights very seriously but they're intelligence organizations. If you were paying attention to the media, you'd be aware that European intelligence agencies were either doing the same thing or were simply accepting US gathered intelligence from this source.
That was the deal. The NSA spied on Europeans and then shared the intelligence with european intelligence agencies.
Did you not know that?
Consider what else you don't know and consider how free you actually are if your information is not getting through.
Stop and think.
None of those definitions cite Russia as western.
We're done here... you're clearly an idiot that is arrogant. There is no cure for that. I'm very sorry. The only cure for idiocy is education and the arrogant reject education assuming themselves to be superior.
Very sorry... would help you if I could.
It depends entirely on how you define intelligence and therefore its less a debate about evidence and more one of semantics.
That you don't already know that doesn't speak well for your own grasp of the issue. No offense.
precisely...
its an utter crapshoot from my perspective... if it has a chance of working I'd like to see it funded. If these guys are just scammers then I'd be happy to see them come to bad end... ideally a fatal end. The same idealism that makes me value the attempt fills me with utter hatred at anyone or anything that would stand in its way.
Fusion power could be one of the biggest things to ever happen to not only our species but life on earth in general.
We are after all the great hope of our world. The other life on planet earth is utterly incapable of higher reasoning. If any life on planet earth is to survive it must leave the planet. And only we or something like us has a chance of doing that. Fusion power would extremely useful in this regard.
Anything that causes it to be developed must be encouraged. Anything that causes it to hindered should be flayed alive.
For me to be anything but skeptical of this claim.
I want to believe... but seriously how many of us here are proficient enough in the physics and engineering to really have a clue.
All we can do is believe... and as much as I want to believe... i also don't want to be taken for a fool. I hope its real... but suspect its bullshit.
Here is a classification system you might prefer... its from the cold war.
First world.
Second world.
Third world.
First world included all powers allied with the United States. This was Europe, Japan, South Korea, former british colonies, about half of South America, etc.
Second world included all powers allied with the Soviets. This would be Cuba, China, Vietnam, etc.
Third world included all powers not allied with either the United States or the Soviets.
So if you want a more modern classification you can use that one... unless you have of your own that you'd like to define.
But keep in mind, Russia is not associated with our civilization in any sense.
Eastern Europe is probably getting pulled into our sphere one way or the other. But the Russians like the Byzantines are going to piss into the wind until they drowned.
As to the 21st century, that is what those terms mean. If you don't like them then don't use them. You do not get to simply redefine things to mean something else simply because you find little things like "history" and "facts" inconvienent.
Grasp this... I am not saying Russia cannot belong to our little club of nations. It was after all the intention after the cold war that the Russians would be rehabilitated and allowed in...
However, Russia is less of a western country then is Japan. And japan's history is so divergent from what one might consider western as to be unrecognizable.
As to the cold war redefining things... the cold war did not define Russia as a western country. If anything it highlighted its status as something else.
As to Russians on skype being westernized, I don't think you know what that means. By this sort of logic about half the planet might be defined as westernized.
Our civilization is hegemonic on this planet and through its obvious modernity, wealth, military power, etc has influenced every culture on earth.
So yes... the Russians have been influenced by us but then so have the Chinese. Just because I play starcraft against chinese people every so often and they tell me jokes in english doesn't mean they're western. It just means the internet is a cultural melting pot.
As to Spanish people being more different to you then the Russians, that means literally nothing. First off, the Spanish are extremely western. Second off, what you personally consider to be one thing or another is utterly irrelevant.
As to not caring about nitpicking, then don't contradict established classifications and waste my time. Ask Putin if he thinks of himself as Western.
He'll give you one of his patiented "i'm a tough guy" stares and then say "nyet".
As to redefining terms, I didn't do that. You did. Shut up. Do not argue with me when you're wrong. No no... hush. That's what the word terms mean. Get over it. No no... Zip it.
As to "scientific" and rational discourse, we don't just randomly redefine terms or ignore history when it becomes inconvenient. Your attempt to claim science is behind you on this issue is frankly baffling since science has nothing to do with this discussion. And your attempt to pervert the meanings of words is hardly rational.
As to avoiding squabbling over meanings, the way it works is the first person to define a term defines it.. that was no me by the way, but people thousands of years before I was born. So... that's a fixed quality.
The terms remain fixed and if you want to express a different concept then you come up with a different term instead of just using their term improperly.
As to space city, I really question whether the russians really knew anything of significance that we didn't already know.
Remember... we landed on the moon. They didn't. Yes, they did some experiments that we probably didn't do. But did they honestly learn anything that we hadn't already figured out?
As to keeping Russian scientists busy, don't look now but Iran and north korea already went nuclear.
It was a waste of money and time.
Russia just needs to be crushed. They're irrational just like the Byzantines that birthed their whole branch of the civilizational tree.
The Byzantines could have united with the Western powers against the Turks. They spat in the face of the west. Literally tore the eyes out of a Venetian diplomat's head... and for that brought the Crusade down upon them instead of upon their enemies.
And so the Turk crushed Constantinople which is now Istanbul.
This stupidity from Russians is not new. Its a very old story that always works out the same way. The Russians are too stupid to learn from their history.
We offered them peace. We offered them membership in our fellowship of nations. They have decided to take the path of their ancestors of Byzantium.
It leads only to brutality, murder, and death.
Queue the music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
yes but we don't trust each other because we know that if we don't cling to our factions that rival factions will overwhelm and consume us.
So we stick with corrupt factions because for all their faults they're powerful enough to defend themselves while we individually are not.
to be comfortable taking a risk to disolve the factions the risk of a rival faction taking power would have to be reduced.
That cost of losing would have to go down.
For the cost of losing political power to go down the value of political power itself must be reduced. For that happen the government's power must be reduced.
For the government's power to be reduced you would have to go back to small government principles.
Small government principles are opposed by leftist factions and are seen as a trope of rightist factions. Therefore attempting to do this will simply irrtate the existing factional battle.
TLDR?
The only way to restore democratic principles is to go back to limited government. And the only way to do that is to defeat the factions that oppose limited government.
Effectively... the only way to fix the system is a giant populist wave to crush political insiders and restore constitutional order.
There are factions trying to do that already... but their chances of success are not looking too good these days. The forces that control this country thrive on the corruption.
You have a point with the NSA. That is a serious issue though its more complicated. It wasn't an attempt by the US to betray anyone so much as some intelligence agencies in the wake of 9/11 that became over zealous.
I do not think you can show bad faith in that situation so much a general lack of respect for the law.
Alarmist claptrap is alarmist claptrap.
Two powers are trying to take control over the internet and neither is worthy of it.
The US overstepped its authority in wire tapping everything. The NSA needs to have reasonable limits placed upon it.
And Europe has no right to dictate what people say on the internet. This starts out with limiting pornography and hate speech... and then very quickly it becomes about shutting down political rivals or ideas you simply disagree with...
Both deserve to lose.
I do not accept that I must be labeled as such merely for slapping him down.
Countries have a right to be free.
The Russians don't have a right to dictate how the rest of hte world must live.
If eastern europe wants to join NATO because they're afraid of Russian aggression then what right does Russia have to oppose it? IF Russia really wanted to avoid this situation they shouldn't have intimitated eastern europe and instead made friends of them. But they can't do that. They can't help themselves. They enter every situation swinging their dicks around pissing everyone off and it makes everyone want to lock them out.
And in any case, if we wanted to be sneaky on the issue, we could have just created another organization just like Nato but NOT nato that eastern europe and western europe could join.
Happy now?
At the end of the day, these countries have a right to associate how they please.
Russia's behavior is only dooming the country. They have started the cold war again and that means the west is going to start choking the life out of Russia.
We've played this game before. You wanted to back to the war... You have it. We'll squeeze until Russia breaks.
Russia isn't western. Its eastern.
People seem to forget what western and eastern mean.
It refers to the western and eastern Roman empire.
We are the children of the western empire. Our script is latin script. Our religious organization was generally the Catholic church... prior to the protestants etc.
The Russians are of the Eastern empire. The Byzantines. Their script is Greek. Cyrillic. Their church is the Orthadox chruch.
Western and Eastern...
As to what you consider eastern and western... just come up with new terms. Eastern and western have a meaning you don't like... don't impose your meaning on terms that are already defined. You might as well redefine what the word "is" means. In this context, Western and Eastern refer to the old roman empire and the child nations that grew up in its ashes.
Yes, Asian countries are often referred to as eastern... but that's because they're east of the western empire. By the same token the Russians might call the Navajo or Eskimo's western. Its a different meaning.
When speaking of the Russians in reference to the West... they are definitely Eastern.