Geographically they're influenced one way, but, c'mon, they pretend to be half french speaking. If that's not a shot in the arm of european sensability I don't know what is ;)

Seriously though - politically speaking, the US, UK, Aus and Canada all being parters in their 4-way intelligence alliance binds them pretty closesly on a lot of issues. I assume that's gotta have some effect on the way of life in each country. Over here, we call it "Americanization", and it's usually a derogatory term.

[Edited by - Hodgman on September 12, 2010 11:28:21 PM]

You call it "Americanization", Rupert Murdoch calls it cutting production costs and the rest of the culture making machinery calls it keeping up with Rupert.

Quote: Original post by Hodgman
Seriously though - politically speaking, the US, UK, Aus and Canada all being parters in their 4-way intelligence alliance binds them pretty closesly on a lot of issues. I assume that's gotta have some effect on the way of life in each country. Over here, we call it "Americanization", and it's usually a derogatory term.

om nom nom culture. That is kind of unfortunate that culture in other countries are transforming into more of the media based US culture. Obvious culture in the US locally is very vast, but that doesn't get shown much on TV except in accents. If anything more of other cultures will begin to get pulled into the melting pot kind of thing happening here. I believe Wikipedia mentions that Australia too is a melting pot of cultures. I mean it didn't form out of nowhere. It was created by cultures mingling and it's bound to change over time. It's human nature to resist change, but it always seems to happen.

I don't think we'll see a world culture in our life-time, but it's happening slowly as we communicate more and more which only helps to bring up our differences in culture and ideas and fuel small disputes. Kind of expected I guess.

*goes back to his Chinese food*

Quote: Original post by owl
Muslims are normal people in non muslim countries. We don't need a musilm government that stones women to death, who forces them to hide themselves and considers their lifes be worth less than an animal's.

Traditions and modus vivendi,nothing more.What can you do with it? Right now?
Some number of generations must pass.Taby has mentioned Marocco before,I saw there the full range- from women completly hidden under black to EU and US-style dressed girls.
----
One of "hidden" women there has made me afraid strongly.Just imagine-I smoke at the hotel's room balcony and see the black siluette at the neighboring balcony moving towards me.It was very dark ,only street lights beneath.The first thought was "I see the ghost".
It was full-black dressed woman.In her arms( black gloves) was a black men underwear (just washed)[smile]

Well, as an outsider, 9/11 is, to my eyes... "just" another tradegy. To explain the "just another" part: I had watched, through the press, dozens of times before thousands of people dieing in wars, bombings, even in the heart of Europe(Serbia), close to my country. So it makes no difference to me if the victims are Americans, Serbians, Kurds, Palestinians or anything else. Of course, I realize that the twin towers incident was much more important, historically, and had huge consequences, because, well, it's USA that got attacked, but a human life is a human life, no matter the nationality.

Anyway, about the religion thing...as always, it's the least relevant issue. WTC and the Pentagon were/are, if I recall correctly, symbols of capitalism and militarism, not of christianity...the muslims didn't attack the Vatican in their 'holy war', did they? Religious fanatism is just there to fill the gaps of poverty and lack of education. It happened with Christianity too.

However, lately I've grown to be more sceptical about which "side" I choose...for example, a couple of years ago I would be full-blown against the US war in Iraq and such...however, the country was indeed relieved from Saddam, so that *is* a positive. The point is though, I'm not actually on site in order to evaluate the situation myself, so I have to wait to see how things turn out in order to form a definitive opinion. Heh, I must be getting old :P

Quote: Original post by Hodgman
The sad part is, then when it happened, there was a lot of non-surprise where I came from -- a lot of people seemed to think that, looking at history, something like this was bound to happen sooner or later.

In the months leading up to 9/11 I took an elective at USF (Tampa) called International Terrorism. The good professor, who was an FBI editor in her side job, was asked what the chance of a major terrorist attack occurring on US soil was. The answer: "any time, and sooner than later". Those words rang in my ear when I tried to go to cnn.com on 9/11 while I was at a station in the computer lab, and the site was overloaded and inaccessible.

Quote: The bad thing about 9/11 is that it's a great excuse to bring up all the Islamophobia out there...

No, that's the good thing. Islam is not a religion; it's a way of life and jihad is at the core. Islam seeks nothing short of the overthrow of anything non-Islam, and a take over of the world. And violent jihad is just one aspect; the soft jihad waged through the courts and human rights organizations of the Western world is another (and here in Canada at least, freedom advocates like Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn are putting the much-needed spotlight on these tactics, and of course in the UK and US there's the inimitable Christopher Hitchens).

People would argue that Christianity also used to be vicious and militant, what with the crusades and inquisition and such. But Christianity has been neutered by history and is now a tamed religion, and so, despite being an atheist, I have some respect for a religion that is foundational in the origin of the value systems and culture of Western civilizations.

Islam has nothing in it to ameliorate the oppression, inhumanity, and frankly, evil that are inherent in this most destructive and dangerous ways of life. It is the single biggest threat facing humanity--more than nuclear war, more than peak oil, and more than economic collapse. It is a politically correct cop out to argue that most Muslims do not support radical Islam. You can bet your ass they cheer its every advance towards world domination.

Quote: Original post by Prune
Islam is not a religion; it's a way of life and jihad is at the core. Islam seeks nothing short of the overthrow of anything non-Islam, and a take over of the world.
Islam has nothing in it to ameliorate the oppression, inhumanity, and frankly, evil that are inherent in this most destructive and dangerous ways of life. It is the single biggest threat facing humanity--more than nuclear war, more than peak oil, and more than economic collapse. It is a politically correct cop out to argue that most Muslims do not support radical Islam. You can bet your ass they cheer its every advance towards world domination.

Oh shut the fuck up. Really? You're university educated and you're still terrorised by those fear mongers? Really? Where the fuck did you get those bigoted fears from?

Have you ever been friends with a muslim? They're people, just like you. They go to work. They go bowling. They do 'normal' things. They don't sit in bed at night snickering at how well their plot for world domination is progressing via the political-correctness movement.

You may as well be saying that Jews are trying to control the world's finance, or that blacks are only good for manual labour, or that gays are trying to give you AIDS. Heil godwins law, you fucking Nazi!

Quote: Original post by Prune
Hysterical Paranoia

ಠ_ಠ

Seriously? Have you actually known any Muslims?

Quote: Original post by Rycross
Have you actually known any Muslims?

Unfortunately, lots. From the step-father of my best friend since childhood, to students at both USF (Tampa) and UBC (Vancouver) with whom I've had numerous interactions. But it is typical of the Mulsim to present their moderate face to the outside world, and indeed in terrorist publications it has been recommended that they do exactly so, in order to lower the guard of the host nations.

~~~

Quote: The west must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the "imminent" spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, according to a radical manifesto for a new Nato by five of the west's most senior military officers and strategists.

This comes from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jan/22/nato.nuclear

My suggestion is that Islam is a greater threat than some possibilities of WMD developments. A pre-emptive nuclear strike on Mecca and Medina would serve the West well in seeding deep doubt in the devout Islamists--if the holy sites go up in mushroom clouds, that would beg the question: "Where is your Allah now?"

Quote: Original post by Hodgman
they pretend to be half french speaking.

In fact, there is great distrust and ill-will between the English speaking majority and the small Francophone population, which is geographically segregated from English Canada, and overall not too happy to be under the Canadian flag. The French influence on Canada is fortunately minimal and most of us love the Queen and are proud to be part of the Commonwealth--even the odd immigrant such as myself.