Quote Originally Posted by KLAPA
Yep - yet they are still there at the behest of the "host country" - and they do not arbitrarily - and with military force - IMPOSE a government on those countries such as the Russian's did.
Thank you but you are not able to speak for me or any other European. We can speak for ourselves. I am European but not Russian. I do not want American bases in Europe and I am certainly not scared of Russia, never have been, other than while watching American films where they are villified. My views are not at all uncommon. In the countries where these bases are located, in Western Europe, for the most part, local people do not like them. The Germans still feel uncomfortable about complaining due to their legacy, but soon enough the US will be asked to pack up and leave. This is what the Japanese tried in Okinawa, but the USA plain refused to leave, for two decades! It should be interesting times when we get to that situation in Europe. I'll spare you the embarrassment of posting pics of anti-USA graffiti that is common near the American bases.

Quote Originally Posted by KLAPA
They do not take things from those counties - they guard the countries against the CONTINUED threat of the Russian's.
You can't be serious or have you been smoking something? What are you doing on this forum if you are so paranoid and suspicious about Russia? And PS - there should be no apostrophe in "Russians" in your sentence above.

Quote Originally Posted by KLAPA
Nobody trusts you - and for good reason!
Funny, that's exactly how lots of people around the world feel about the USA, so how's that for the pot calling the kettle black? This is a forum where (mainly) Russians are helping people who want to learn the Russian language. How about showing some respect to the hosts here? Or wait a second - let's just force them to become pseudo Americans in a cheap USA clone, that's more the spirit of people like you, isn't it!? I am totally apalled at the tone of your post!

I just watched on Эхо Москвы a talk with Riga's mayor Нил Ушаков, as you can tell by his surname he's Russian, by his personal name one can tell how much Russian he is,
Ok - but half of Riga's population is Russian (at least) so it is not very surprising. The mayor is democratically elected. And hopefully he was not choosen purely on the grounds of his family background. No doubt he had to do plenty of campaigning in absolutely accentless Latvian to get elected to the post.

The thing that was shocking is that there is another town in Latvia called Daugavpils that I visited. It is the second largest city in Latvia, close to the border with Belarus. Pretty much everyone there is a native Russian speaker. You hear no other language on the streets. Yet absolutely everything in the town was written in Latvian. It was practically comical. For example, in the supermarket, in restaurants etc, signs outside shops, streetnames etc. It was like a parallell universe. Imagine a village in England where everyone was speaking French.

The market reflected the reality of the situation, everyone trying to sell something had put up handwritten signs in Russian.

And I compare with Finland where I spent lots of time. Everything is double signed. As a Swedish speaker I have no trouble at all. If I lived there permanently I'd try to learn Finnish but like Latvian it is a very hard language with very few speakers