Culture Shock or Science Fiction?

[Fan Of Arabian Horses]

Hi you all!

Europe had decided for the future! Watching the European Song Contest I was really pretty nice surprised. The winner of the contest looked like martians from the Dominion performing a Hard Rock song which sounded like their battle song while offending the Deep Space 9. Now I?m not longer anxious about the future. If the Dominion will come we European only have to refer to The European Song Contest Winner of the year 2006 and they will adopt us as their relatives.
Did anybody else see this event? What was your impression?

Europe for Dominion!

Michael

[Jamie (K)]

I don't know whether a song contest is going to bring about some outer space dominion, but the European Union in Brussels has been acting pretty strange over the past couple of years. They seem to be from another planet.

First they thought that the size of tomatoes was fundamentally important enough to put in a constitution.

Next they started to demand that member countries force doctors to perform abortions even if their religious conscience won't allow it. (Why not get some other doctor to do it, instead of forcing someone who is against it?) This rule brought down the Slovak government recently. The funniest thing is that who is to blame depends on which newspaper you read. The leftist papers say the Vatican caused it, and the other ones say the EU caused it.

Most recently, some lady named Baroness Emma Nicholson has advised the Romanian government to ban all adoption of Romanian children by foreigners. Many foreigners had been adopting children from Romania -- including physically and mentally disabled children, who needed more care than they were getting -- but now these children have to stay in Romanian orphanages, which by all accounts can still be pretty hellish. This lady is Romania's EU "coach", and if they don't follow her direction, they may not get full membership.

I think if there's another war or severe outbreak of hostilities in Europe, it will probably be caused by totalitarian bureaucrats in Brussels.

[Conchita]

[Jamie (K)]

Does anyone know how many European governments now finance the development and promotion of pop music groups?

I think France started doing that in the 1970s or 1980s. Then Sweden started to, and somewhere along the line the Irish began doing it too. Are there any others?

I don't know if these efforts have any success, but we don't see the effects in the US. We probably hear more music from Mexico, Colombia and Cuba -- free of government subsidy -- than we get from any of those countries that have tax-funded commissariats of pop music.

Conchita, think about it: Most Israelis are of European origin. They're over there all alone, and they can't exactly enter Middle Eastern music competitions.

[Conchita]

[Fan Of Arabian Horses]

Hi!

First of all I wanted to say, for me it is absolutely correct that Isreal shares to the Song Contest. By two reasons:
- the first is Jamie?s argument
- the second is that Isreal has a seperated position at their continent

About financing the Song Contest I would say that commercial companies will do that while expecting good profits. For instance the telephone providers. Because to vote for their favourites people must make a phone call. As it isn?t for free -I don?t know how much it is- I can imagine that they will make a good profit from millions of calls.

At last I liked to say about the EU: Jamie, although the EU politicians seem to come from the far outer space I dread they are all European habitants. In the 1980?s there was a practice to handle with politicians who could not be used in national politics. They were voted for the Europian government! I think this practice didn?t change until now. And here is my suggestion for a new member of the EU government:
Phillip Missfelder! Having the egg shells behind his ears still he was a header in the JU (Organisation of young CDU members). Feeling important a few years ago he complained that people in the age of 70 and higher would get new hip joints paid by common health funds. Of course he was been scolded for that and he disappeared for a short time from the political scene but nowadays he is best connected to the NRW government..... My order to him were to find rules concerning the colour of caps of the garden dwarfs in European front gardens.

Michael

[Jamie (K)]

[Jamie (K)]

[Yankee]

[Conchita]

[Fan Of Arabian Horses]

Hi Jamie!

Sorry that I don?t quote back but I dread it needed to much place.
Please let me start with "having the egg shells behind his ears". It is a German idiom as you mentioned and refers to just now sliped out birds,crocodils or snakes. Amy gave the correct meaning of that "wet behind his ears" or "Greenhorn". It?s only a bit more drastic I think. If you want you can use it for my English skills.

But back to Mr. Missfelder and his ridiculous saying. That time when this young man -not just finished his studies- made this mad expression the national health funds had been rather empty, so that the rate of pay for it for employers and employees were -and actually are- rather high. The employers complained that the costs of production could be in a world comparision much too high if especially their costs would not get lower. So Mr. Missfelder -whatever his intrinsic intention had been- tried to suggest that the elder people not neccesarily must get the full health support as they will be not productive any longer. What he forgot, I think, is that exactly this people worked hard after the world war II to enable him to make sayings like he had made.

Like you mentioned the EU is good for silly rules sometimes. So my intention was to give Mr.Missfelder the possibility to work in the big politic without being able to prepare bigger damage.

Michael

[Jamie (K)]

[Conchita]

Perhaps I shouldn’t make statements like that without knowing more about history and politics, of which I admit to being quite ignorant, but your last post tells me that you do think like the average American. Not only don’t you reject the Israeli occupation (a glaring euphemism if there ever was one), but you also seem to justify, even defend it. Are you really saying that a whole nation has to suffer or be doubly punished, because of one man or of one wrong government? And that, since they are going to suffer anyway, the world might just as well leave them to their own devices?

We have kept silent for several decades already, so why don’t we continue to turn a blind eye for a few more? All I can add is shame on the world it we are not able -- or, at least, don't seriously try -- to stop the carnage .

[Jamie (K)]

Conchita, you tell me I "think like a typical American", but you think like a typical apologist for the radical Muslim cause who gets her news primarily from CNN or from European media with a similar slant. I get my information not only from mainstream sources, but I specifically look for press reports form Arabic countries (although I can only read the ones in English or French). Even according to Palestinians quoted in the Arab media, a lot of the "atrocities" are not what they look like on TV. I think particularly of one Arab report that said that most of the destruction the media showed in a refugee camp was actually caused by Palestinians booby trapping buildings and corpses in order to kill Israelis. Then CNN goes in and just tells you, Israel was here, look at the destruction. This is a common technique (as my students from Israel, Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo and other places tell me), but the media act like they don't even know about it.

I am not talking about "one man or one wrong government". There is an entire ideology of death in that place that's focused on the destruction of all Jews. They SAY it! Am I supposed to ignore what they really say?

Have you ever talked to Israeli soldiers or non-Jewish visitors to Israel about how Palestinians are trained to perform for the media?

Yes, Arabs do have democratic rights in Israel, and many Arabs serve in the Israeli military. (One Israeli army veteran even claimed to me that the Israeli army would be "nothing" without its Druze Arabs, many of whom serve as officers.) If you don't believe me, it's easy to find the information on the web. However, you don't get much in the way of democratic rights in any country if you send 11-year-old girls into pizzerias to blow everybody up.

By the way, look at the statistics on who blows himself up. Did you know that most of them are from prosperous families? This is not caused by poverty or oppression.

Anyway, if you want to have some fun, watch these videos from the Arabic media: http://www.memri.org/video They have English subtitles. I especially like the one called "The Muslim Woman Magazine". That lady is very cheerful. There's another interesting soap opera featuring a Jewish man who murders a Christian boy in order to use his blood to bake mazzo. With this kind of Nazi-like stuff filling people's heads, no wonder their thinking is distorted.

[Conchita]

Your comments ‘you think like a typical apologist for the radical Muslim cause’ and ‘Anyway, if you want to have some fun’ are immoral and hurtful, as are several others. You keep on talking about ideologies and seem to be blinded and biased by your one-sided political view, whereas the issue here is ‘human beings’. Palestinians, Arabs, Israelis... they all mean as much to me as you (believe it or not) or my family.

I do not intend to watch your videos: Palestinians and Jews themselves are my ‘media’.

How can you be so sure that your thinking is not distorted, Jamie? You should know by now that the way we think is always influenced, from the moment we are conceived, and hence easily biased and distorted, too.

We should drop the discussion now. I tactlessly started it and would like to have the privilege to end it, too, if you don’t mind.