What about your own country?
 

I know there are people here from a multitude of countrys, yet except for the occasional Canadian thread, you don't see much discussion about other nations.

I would like to hear the opinions of some of the posters on this board, anonymous and otherwise, of their own governments.

It seems to me a lot of people spend quite a bit of their time just bashing the U.S. in general, when they don't even live here. Is your own house in such order that you must go outside of it to criticise? Or do you find fault at home as well?

Do they dislike their own leaders , or just the terrible U.S. of A? Do they consider their own Governments above reproach, or evil as well?

Anyone from France? What about you?
Anyone from Germany? How about it?
How about the Mid East?
Asia?
Africa?

Just curious, thats all.

The government here sucks big time, a bigger shower of wasters you will not find anywhere else, our health system is going down the drain and they seem just to spend more and more money on stupid things,changing the fleet of government cars yet most of them dont have more than 10 thou miles on the clock. and give themselves raises whenever they want, and I wont even mention the amount of corruption tribunals that are ongoing at the moment costing us tax payers even more and the end results in no charges just one big white wash

originally from asia (india), now in US

Now that explains why you don't sound like you're from Texas.

Australian. Love the country, not crazy about the government. I feel qualified to comment on some US affairs because I grew up there.
I don't really think that there's THAT much Yank-bashing going on. People have opinions and they want to debate them, and let's face it, America and her actions are a great topic to talk about.

From the Netherlands, as you probably know...

The country: goodish, although there's always something to complain about.

The government: er... it used to be good, but then this right-wing politician was murdered by a left-wing moron (first political murder since WW2). Ever since, the political landscape has been in turmoil. The right-wing guy's party got a large number of seats in parliament, and started a coalition government with two other parties. After a while, the party started some internal power struggles, and practically fell apart, ending the coalition after some three months.

We've had new elections a few months ago, and the politicians have been talking since then. It seems a new coalition is in the works, which would finally lead to some stability... we can only hope.

Apart from that whole mess, everything is fine; proof that politicians aren't *that* important anyway... :)

From Sweden.

A good country to live in but I'm not satisfied with our politicians (but who is?). The main party Socialdemokraterna goes to an election bashing the politics of the right wing parties. After they've been reelected they run with the politics that they've bashed during the elections. This suits me fine since I belive in our right wings politics but I'm anoyed by the hypocracy.

Also I'm pissed that they have problems to keep the national budget out of the reds with the kind of taxes we have here.
VAT = 25%
Income Tax below 25 000$ = 30% +-2%
Income Tax over 25 000$ = 50% +-2%
Employment tax (on top of your gross vage) = 30%



EDIT: Since this came off rater negative sounding I must add that I love this country and I feel safer here than anywhere, but you must be able to see the flaws in a good thing in order to come closer to perfection:).

Germany:

Like i said in a other thread, i'm quite happy that the more left party SPD together with the "green" has won the last election. But they seem to be unable to start a couple of necessary reforms. right now i got the feel that we are in some sort of "freezed" status, which i quite bad.
After 911 they also tried to push some odd laws to fight "terrorism" which just were ment to cut civil rights, the so called "otto-katalog" was a bit scary.
But like I said, today it seems that nothing is happening.

with their foreign policy im quite satisfied, they tried to cooperate with other nation and with the UN and not to go alone. their strict "no" to the war was a bit harsh, I would have prefered a "no, but when the UN brings evidence perhaps yes" that would have been a more realistic stance. That the "no" was because of economic reasons i obvious, but all other nation did what they did out of economic reasons.

I hope we will be able to keep the arse-licking right wing partys out of the goverment. Their "yes, mr.bush we will do whatever you want" attitude is disgusting.

USA.

It's the place where my forebears decided was the best in the world.

I agree with their insightful assessment.

Maybe I am a little oversensitive to some comments, being fairly patriotic, and misinterpret fair criticism as bashing. If so, I apologize.

I agree that the U.S. has more involvement in World politics than many other Countries, thus warranting more discussion. If people don't agree with America's policies, thats fine also. I am just curious to see if there are generally negative emotions from people about their own government, or if they are satisfied with them in general.

I think way to much "Yank Bashing" has gone on - the foreign "Yank bashing" doesn't bother me nearly as much as the domestic "Yank bashing" that has taken place.

-

I hate my government because:

[list=1][*]They only look after the interests of the rich, and dont even try to pretend they dont[*]All the members of the government are good-for-nothing SOBs that sit around their asses all day, leeching on the taxpayers' money[*]Probably half the politicians in the country are not even professionals, they simply bought their degree [*]If Bush says: "jump", then the SOBs reply: "how high?, and btw, may we give you a complementary bj?"[*]The political parties are more interested in making the others look bad, tha to help the people who voted for them[*]We had a pretty gruesome civil war in the 80's, then a peace agreement was signed, making promises of progress, social improvement and a lot of good things for everyone. So far, some change has occured, not necessarily for the better.[/list=1]

btw, Im form El Salvador (for all of you that dont know, El Salvador is in Central America)

Edit: Although I must admit that we are better off than most of our Central American neighbors

U.S.A.

Love my country.... but fear my government.

You might be interested in reading about "World Systems Theory." It's a reworking of a political theory that originated from Central/South American social theorists to account for what you just described. Usually, country interaction is framed in terms of elites in our country (the US) exploiting underdeveloped countries. World Systems Theory argues that elites in our country work in conjunction with elites in your country to exploit the masses in your country for the economic gain of elites in our country and the appeasment of the masses in our country. That's only in a nutshell but you might gain some deeper insight into the political apparatus in your region (and it's cool that the theories were constructed by people other than dead white guys :) ). Also, you might be interested in "structural adjustment programs" and specifically, Globalization and its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz. He was the chief economist of the World Bank and winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics. It's one thing when pinko-commie Smooth criticizes our government policies, it's another when the person who used to create them leaves the organization and writes a book about everything he thought was being done incorrectly...

An interesting thread.

I hope more none Americans post.

Fabolous catalyst! More foreigners? Your input so far has been completely intriguing. Humans seem to organize the same way the world over.

England/(Great) Britain/United Kingdom

England didn't get mentioned in the first post and it irritates me that we are (rightly) seen as the 51st state - neither foreign to the US nor a part of it.

England is far from perfect - it is grey, the food is awful, the weather sucks, since the end of the empire we haven't really decided where we're going - but for all that it is a great place to live - free education and health care, great universities, plenty of culture with access to more in Europe, strong economy and we speak the primary language of the web and the world.

Currently Tony Blair is the United Kingdom. He is the centralist's dream (capitalism with a heart), an eloquent narrator (to see him next to Bush you wonder if they are speaking the same language) and a generally wholesome guy with exceptional intelligence and strong moral principles. I don't agree with all he has done (the war being just one of many issues), but he straddles the political world like an impregnable colossus.

Since my roots are from Estonia and I lived there for a number of years:-

Estonia

Estonia is part of the former soviet union in the Baltic Sea - just south of Finland.

Estonia has one of the fastest growing economies of all the eastern european countries and was recently invited to join both Nato and the EU. Estonia is a tiny country with only 1.5 million people - with roughly 1/4 of those being Russians.

Estonia depends immensly on the US's support and thus supports the US openly. They have even sent de-mining teams to Afghanistan and have made offers for Iraq.

Man, and I thought I was getting hammered with taxes.

Go Estonia.

I'm very pleased with the replies to this thread. Its so interesting to hear about other places. I'm learning tons about other countries and peoples perceptions of their governments.

Australia.

i'm not at all keen on our current government.
in particular, i'm concerned with Australia's direction in its foreign affairs.
in the massive attempt to strengthen the support of the US, i feel that we've once again isolated ourselves in our own region.

i can't remember too much 'Yank-bashing' going on around here. but i do remember quite a bit of heat being directed at 'old europe', esp France, for their opposition to the recent war. however, i don't feel any of this was truly offensive.

imo, the reason why American politics is so often discussed here is because, lets face it, American politics is something EVERYONE sees.
by this i mean that we are shown a lot of American media and politics. but i'm fairly certain that Americans are not shown ANY Australian politics.

in fact, Australia was even left out of your list in your initial post, crewsor.

Do you think Blair survives the war (politically)? From what i read a lot of british people are against the war and therefore against Blair, so do you think he will be reelected?

And for the British Empire:
I always get the feeling, that the UK still wants to be an Empire, a global player, and that is somehow the reason why they are kissing bushs ass.

Pacifier
The headline of The Guardian 22 April: "Blair reaps spoils of war with surge in support".
There seems to be a strong rule of thumb that any leader who wins a war (certainly if they win it 'well') gains political capital and popularity. Bizarrely this even seems to hold true when the population was anti the war in question. "Oh no, they shouldn't have taken us to war, but didn't they do well when they did!".

Will Blair win the next election? Only proof of some heinous misdemeanor would stop him. Looking only at him and his party you would have to say they were very strong. When you then look at the headless opposition, in particular the Conservatives, you wonder if the outcome could be anything but another landslide.

The Empire
I think we gave up the desire to an Empire a while ago, but we certainly want to be a global player and are one. We have the 4th largest economy ($1,414bn GDP), have a large international political network (including a permenant seat on the Security Council) and have one of the top ten largest 'roving' armies (on raw size we are 27th, but this ignores our quality, the fact that such nations as Iraq come in at 12th and that many of the higher 26 have been barracks bound for years). Its not our fault that we are dwarfed by the sole world superpower!

Yes, sadly thats true. But wasn't there an election in some parts of the UK a few days ago where the Labour Party lost?

Are they still that strong? I read articles that they have lost many members and support (money) from the unions.

Nice to see news from our Isle reaches Hades.
Yes Labour lost 800 councillors and the Conservatives gained 540 (with LibDem gaining 200).
The Conservatives would have this interpreted as the worse result for Labour in decades.
The reality is that the opposition party always does better at the local level, the Cons did so badly last time that they would have been truly awful not to make big gains, and the public wanted to send a small rebuke to Labour for going to war.

On the day of the elections a prominent Conservative MP resigned from his post saying that he could not follow such a bad leader as Mr. Duncan-Smith. This is the real story of their party. Utterly divided, with little momentum and no direction. New Labour may have been losing members (all parties are in our disillusioned age), but it still has plenty of sponsors and looks unstoppable.

hehe, ok nice too see some views from the inside. It was just briefly mentioned on some newssites .

Yeah, working just doesn't pay around here.

Agreed, Would be nice if our media would try to bring more stories about other countrys that are helping aid in the middle east. Instead they hang on every word the goverment says and belives that to be the whole truth.:mad:

Add fucked up taxation.

I live in Norway. Cold winters, summers were the sun never sets, tasty traditional food, fjords, mountain, anti-social people...

Norway is currently ruled by a christian democrat(KRF)/conservative (H) coalition, who're into a "privatisation is cool" and "religious schools are cool" thing. Norway has had some of the best schools and hospitals, but instead of keeping up the trend of well funded schools and hospitals, the conservatives wants large parts of it because they believe that free competition = quality for everyone, both rich and poor.

Oh well. They also want to cut the funding for our defence forces and instead have a small professional army for fighting abroad. Our countrys defence almost worse than before the Nazi invation in 1940 were Norway was conquered in about a day or so, because the Norwegain Army was focusing only on fighting an internal enemy (communists).

The current government also thinks it's cool to export norwegian electricity to other european countries. And when the winter comes and the watermagazines are almost empty (Norway relies on hydroelectric power) they go like: "Ooops, no more water, ey? Must be because it hasn't rained in a while, well people just have to pay more then *chuckle*. Thats the free market for you. The danes are willing to pay more for the power, so they can have it. If you want to heat up your house, you'll have to pay the price".

Obviously they've failed to notice that temperatures as low as -20C aren't really that common south of Skagerak...

So no, the Norwegian government is not perfect either ;)

Sorry folks, I didn't mean for the places I mentioned to be exclusive of any other places. They were just a couple that came to mind.
Thanks for replying anyway, of course I'm interested in hearing the opinions of people from a couple of the few places that did stand with the U.S. in the war......whether you agreed with the war or not is a different matter.

United States. Love my country, and I do not fear the government but rather understand the government. I have read and understood the constitution. I suggest that all Americans do the same as its not a difficult document to read and it explains how the government works and what rights the citizens have.

Know your rights or they will be taken away from you.

Quote from 4thTimeLucky:

"England didn't get mentioned in the first post and it irritates me that we are (rightly) seen as the 51st state - neither foreign to the US nor a part of it."

Sweet merciful crap! Iraq issue aside (though, it seems that's what you're basing if off of), Canada is way more of a 51rst state. Almost all of our economy is tied into theirs (thanks, partly, to a certain Prime Minister name Mulroney), up until Iraq we went where ever the U.S. went (which isn't always a bad thing), almost all of our popular English TV is American, and the list goes on.

I have a few problems with my country (ie. the government procedures, some social spending, the relativity at times, etc. ......... ask for specifics if you're interested), but make no bones about it: for me, it's Canada.

US here, I love the country, but I'm worried about what is happening to it. My biggest concerns are:

Major tax cut that affects mainly the rich during an economic recession.

Special-interest groups having too much of a say in the government.

New laws approaching and pushing at the boundaries of acceptable limits on civil liberties.

The narrowing of the separation of church and state. ex: AIDS relief funding only goes to countries without abortion rights and services, forcing schools to adopt abstinence-only education that will cause much more harm than good.

The corruption of free trade and the warping of NAFTA to prevent tarrifs on exported goods but allowing them to be placed on imports from Canada and Mexico.

The favoritism of the rich and the special treatment of corporate executives who screwed millions of people out of their savings and retirement funds.

The preference of punishment over rehabilitation in regard to drugs.