This seems to be important to you. I'm willing to accept your donation so that I can more quickly answer in the affirmative.

manx@paypal.com

Can't say I disagree with you and I didn't really want to get into a big argument about the Spanish elections. I like Spain. My guess is that they may have elected the right guy, but it sure looks like they reacted to the attack and voted the way al qaeda wanted them to vote. Whether or not that is true, it would be hard to convince the planners and attackers that they didn't impact the election and hard to convince them that their tactics-mass murder of innocent citizens--are not supremely effective in certain parts of the world.

You have to get to the socialist country BEFORE you get the handouts.. thats how it works.



/me runs for cover!


*sorry... couldnt resist.. you just painted a big red target on your forehead :D *

You're talking about government sponsorship. I'm talking about personal charitable contributions. That is what's supposed to save the world once Ustwo eliminates welfare, right?

I haven´t checked this thread in a few days so I´ll just lump all my misinfomed responses together. Before elections here in Spain, Aznar was a genuinely hated individual. Some of the largest anti war demonstrations in the world took place here. I hit the streets of Barcelona with a million people. A million. 99% of the Spanish people were vehemently and vocally opposed to Aznar´s pro Bush stance!
There was no love lost for the short little mustached fool before the March 11th attacks. Basically they reinforced the strong public opinion that it was a bad move to get involved in the first place.
Here in Spain we live with an enormous islamic culture dating back as far as written records. Morrocans and Algerians are easily as prevelent, if not more so, then Mexicans and people of Latino heritage in the US. Because of this there is an understanding and respect for the culture and beliefs of these genuinely good neighbors. High school graduates here can pont out Iraq on a map. North Korea and Cuba also. High school grads in the states these days seem barely able to spell their own name. Education is awareness.
Preventive attack mentality has only served to create more hatred and hostility. Terrorists in Iraq? Yeah sure, there´s a whole bunch of the shitheads there now. I really doubt that they were flocking to Fallujah before.
Like Iraq? You´re gonna love Iran.

Stay and Fight. **Edited - I am leaving it right there. **

you go and fight. If you´re not in Iraq at the moment you should probably keep it to yourself. If you are, sorry, not my fault.

No no no. Stay and fight. Fight to get a better congress, a better president, better governors and legislatures. Better schools too, so that, if people do decide to vote for the kind of folks they did last election, then at least they will have good reasons, as Art tends to, and not knee jerk reactions.

Not all fighting is about guns and bombs.

ok alright . I had you all wrong. my sentiments exactly.

So in other words no one is really leaving.

*Sigh*

Ustwo, paypal me a mere $15K, and i'll leave right now

First let me just state that this is only my opinion, and that I am completely convinced that while it is only my opinion, I am completely right. :D

If someone wants to take the opportunity to experience life in another part of the world, I have no qualms about it. There are innumerable good reasons to do so. To leave because the person you wanted to win an election did not or because a certain person did, is not one of these many reasons; at least if you truly believe in democracy. As of yet, no one can prove to me that this was a rigged election (ask the people in Ukraine about those), so like it or not George W. Bush is the duly elected President of the United States. To leave a country where we truly have the ability to make a difference in our government, is showing a great lack of respect for those who have worked and fought and died for us to have the power to do so. I get very frustrated when I hear people want to leave. What this country needs are people who want to get involved and work to make this an even greater country. Do we have problems? Of course we do, but walking away from them is no answer. If you don't like what is going on, if you don't like what this administration is doing then get involved. Work with community groups, talk to your representatives, write letters, Hell RUN FOR OFFICE!!! To leave the country is the only surefire way to guarantee you will not have a voice in how our country is governed. If you truly feel this is your only option, then I will join the chorus of others who have said, "Don't let the door hit you on the way out." What I would prefer is that you join me and many others as members of the Loyal Opposition. Those who are proud to be Americans, but are stiving to change the direction this nation is headed and to shine light on the errors, misjudgements and any wrongdoings of this administration and conversly support this administration when it makes good decisions. America should never be about throwing in the towel, it should be about picking yourself up off the floor and getting back into the fight.

It strikes me as strangely ironic to hear all this talk about who's country this is from right wing, mainly christian oriented people.

As I understand your cultural history, you came to *my* country because *your* country was too conservative for your ancestors' tastes. Now that *your* countries are firmly liberal in your views, why not go back?

I mean, it's just strange that people landed here, killed my ancestors, and then make all these wierd claims that I shouldn't let the door hit me in the ass as I'm leaving "their" country.

Just a reminder: just because you took something over doesn't make it yours--never was. funny how I have to go to your ancestors' country to get away from your ideas and social conditions.

/signed by a real American.

The last time I checked, the only requirement to be a real American was to be born here, which I believe we both were.

If we are talking about ancestors, several of mine were born here as well.

If we are talking about when our ancestors got here, it is a matter of degrees, with your ancestors getting here a few thousand years before my ancestors, which in terms of the age of this planet and how long life has been here, is a blink of the eye.

this pollyanna talk about picking yourself up and getting back into "the fight" seems absurd. it presupposes as operational precisely the set of relations to the states that most of the folk who are considering leaving have found undermined by the act of collective self-immolation that was this past election.

i think that even a far right militant would understand that if you are going to leave it requires some planning to do it, each step of which is another opportunity to think through the decision. i suspect you will be seeing people leaving over the next couple of years. that anyone would imagine that it is possible to simply pack up your toys and leave in a week or so operates with a view of what is entailed that derives more from sitcoms like "sex in the city" (in which everyone wears 2000 dollar outfits every day) than it does the world in which people actually have to make a living.

but whatever--this thread has been more about the right deploying ugly little variants of their particular way of resenting those who oppose them politically than it was talking about what might really be at stake for folk who are thinking of leaving.

Would I leave (the united states of) america? Not yet
I live in MA. My Famly and I hate bush and the right wing. If I had no job and famly attachments I would leave. There are many places I would like to go and Canada is far closer to my view of a good Gov't then USA is. If a draft is started, or if bush gets any more asertive about the constitution I will atempt to leave the country.
Though if secession...

I just want to point out that it's really fucking hard leaving this country for Canada. There's endless waits and paperwork and money involved.

That being said, if anyone wants to donate to me moving to Canada I'd be more than willing to take your money :)

You know MML for the first time ever, and without any hesitation, I wholey 100% agree with you, and could not have said it better myself.

The ironic thing is there is a growing theory based on some very interesting archeological evidence that the 'first' Americans came several thousand years earlier then expected and were in turn wiped out by a second wave from Asia. Be quite ironic if true don't you think?

well, obviously I'm not talking to you then.

of course, I've seen a picture of you, and anyone can see a picture of me. ;)

(so I don't get to pick and choose my ancestral heritage)

quite ironic...that is, if your ancestors were part of that first wave and mine part of the second.


EDIT: both you and lebell focused on the very minor point of what I was stating.

It isn't, "I was here first, you leave"

It was, "those of who came here out of religious persecution, don't tell the people who were already here to leave when they don't agree with your values"

Actually, the point I was making is that is irrelevant whose ancestors were here first, you personally were not here "first".

Nor do I see people who came here out of religious persecution (which, btw, was not usually because they were more liberal, but because they were different than the established state religion) telling you to "leave".

What I see is people saying that if you are unhappy here and want to leave, then leave. Several more of us are saying that this is a silly thing to leave your country over.

I have not seen anyone in this thread saying, "America: love it or leave it".

I'm having trouble finding anything that's correct in this post.

Since so many here question the validity of US media, here's something from the BBC:

"Spanish voters rejected the Popular Party three days after the attacks, even though it had led the opinion polls in the weeks leading up to the election."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3560561.stm

While it may be true that a majority opposed his war stance, they couldn't have been too "vehement," judging from the election results.

This is unadulterated crap. My son lived in Madrid, and everyone he knew hated the Moroccans, in no small part due to their habit of mugging Spaniards.

They can practically wade over, but they arrive with nothing and have no qualms with forcing the locals to "donate" to them. In addition, Moroccans are well known to be a major conduit for bringing drugs into Spain.

It's also worthy of note that most of the train bombing suspects are Moroccans.


And yet, many of the people posting on this thread are vociferous in their demands for an increase in the minimum wage, and government giveaways to these same losers.

point by point.
1. El Pais, (leading Spanish newspaper) showed Aznar at 30 to Zapateros 70 about 2 weeks before elections. This is taking to account the fact that Spanish polls are notorious for being conducted in upper class districts. El Periodico put Aznar at 40 to 60. La Vanguardia said he was lucky if he could wrap up 40%. No, the polls did not come out in his favor. Sorry BBC is UK. This is Spain.
2. Your American son and all his American pals in Madrid do not mean shit. Didn´t they get the hint? Americans are way more hated than anyone else on this continent. Your sons 4 week Spanish fiesta probably consisted of overpriced rotgut sangria in typical tourist bars which (surprise) attract the sleaziest and most desperate kind of Morrocans. Your son? Everyone he knew hated... Yeah, I´m sure thats true. McTourist. or should I say McRacist?
3.If you can accept 2nd hand uninformed info concerning a country you personally know absolutely nothing about, you should really get pissed off at the rest of the world for being so accurately informed about the arrogant ignorance being spewed by worldly scholars such as yourself.
unadulterated crap. Yeah, That pretty much sums it up. You best school you self, fool.

Here is my non-paritison answer to the question. If you are unhappy about the way the country is going get involved. No changes will ever happen if you just leave and give up altogether. That's weak in my opinion. Either party that would choose to retreat rather than stand and fight are weak. So if you are a democrat or republican who's unhappy about the way the country is going, then voice your opinion. The country needs diversity so that we can continue to grow and better suit the needs of everyone.

Point by point:

Personally, I disregard polls once the election results are in. I don't plan on posting any quotes in Spanish, so I'll therefore be limited to English ones, even if you don't like them.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe...ain.elections/

"With 99 percent of ballots counted, the opposition Socialists were ahead slightly with 34.7 percent to 33.9 percent for Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's Popular Party.

It was the first time since 1991 that the Socialists won more votes than the Popular Party in local elections.

But it was only a slight gain for the opposition over 1999 results, and only a slight decline for Aznar's party, which held on to the mayor's seat in Madrid as well as control of Valencia and smaller cities and towns in central Spain."

http://www.economist.com/displayStor...ory_id=1817707

"Only 200,000 votes out of more than 23m cast separated the two main parties. The PP was a single percentage point down on its previous election showing in local and regional elections, in 1999, with 34% of the vote to the Socialists' 35%. Looking on the bright side, Mr Aznar declared that his party “now has more mayors and more local councillors than any other”. His PP not only held its old bastions but even stormed a few more, such as Burgos and Granada. It did well in Valencia. In Galicia, whose coastline was besmirched by the Prestige's oil, the PP got 41.5%, only four points less than in 1999.

The party's biggest swoop was on Madrid's city hall, where Mr Aznar's wife, Ana Botella, number three on the PP's slate, will now make her political début. The mayor-elect, the able and ambitious Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon, though not close to the prime minister, has suddenly emerged as the PP's new star.

Indeed, he is already being talked about as a possible replacement for Mr Aznar when he steps down from the top job, as promised, before the general election."


So I'm having difficulty with this statement:

Especially since his wife was elected to office! By the way, I'm not short and I don't have a mustache, but even if both were the case, I'm unaware of the effect either has on the worth of an elected official.

You can say anything, but other than classifying my son as an American, you're still 100% wrong.

My son learned Spanish from birth. All of his friends in Spain were Spanish, except for one American exchange student. Spaniards were unable to detect from his speech that he is American. In fact, at parties, he enjoyed it when someone he didn't know would say, after talking to him for a few minutes, "I hear there's an American here." His response was usually, "There is? Let's go find him." He was routinely accused of bullshitting when he told people he was from the US, during the year he lived there.

Additionally, while my son was in Spain, I was hosting a student from Madrid. For a year. That was helpful when I started making some very adrenaline-charged phone calls the day I turned on the news and saw the Madrid train bombing results. I guess this student (and his mother, for that matter) are also racists, because they didn't like muggers and drug dealers, either.

Since I see very little in your response other than personal attacks, I'd be interested to hear you mention how these Moroccans, who sneak into Spain with essentially nothing, are able to support themselves, since they're not citizens, and therefore can't legally be employed.

I can tell you what my son observed: (1) They sell pirated DVDs on the Metro. (2) They mug people on the Metro (my son observed one mugging, and his American friend, a rather large kid, kicked the asses of five Moroccans who tried to mug him. As luck would have it, he broke one of their jaws, so this particular one got arrested at the hospital.) (3) They sell drugs.

Okay, I'll qualify that. A LARGE NUMBER of them do.

Irrelevant personal attack noted and ignored henceforth.

So to wrap this up, every news source that reported on the elections contradicts your statement about the popularity of Aznar.

If you have any information about how well-loved the Moroccans are in Spain, I'd love to see it.

If you want to stick with your other personal attacks/name calling, and assertions about my "arrogant ignorance," fire away. I don't believe they helped your case, whatever it was.

I guess because I'm new here, I can't find either a personal comment or sarcasm in this post:

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...&postcount=124

To Tarl Cabot and others,

Please PM the mod if you have a question like this.

-lebell

Interesting Iberian Update
 

1. actually if Aznar had been running it would have been close. The PP, popular party ran his succesor, Rajoy, an extremely bellicose, elitist and very uncharismatic politician. The vote in Spain was the lowest turnout since Franco died. Only 77% of the eligible voters showed up. All time low. Pathetic ain´t it.
2. Your son surely speaks better Spanish than I do but I don´t talk English too good neither. His experience in Spain, good or bad as it was, can´t really have been anything but a spanish speaking Americans brief impression. No matter where you´re from, 1 year in a foreign country is far too little time to be any sort of authority.
Generally the Morroquis that enter Europe through España do the shit work that the Spanish don´t want. Picking fruit. Washing dishes. Lots and lots of illegal plentiful construction work. Dangerous scaffolding 6 floors up. 600 bucks a month. 12 hours a day. The Arabs and Pakistanis flipped when they learned I was an American lugging buckets of cement all day. But. I didn´t have work papers either and I had to eat.
Basically they do what the latin Americans are doing in your neighborhood. Working 2 shit jobs you don´t want, living with 8 people in a 2 bdrm. apt. and sending money home to support family.
and 1. DVDs and CDs are total Chinese Mafias. They hire some Pakistanis for the streetsales but no, definately not an Arab scam.
2. I´ve seen quite a few muggings in my time in many parts of the world. Especially in America. That must mean most muggers are American.
3. They sell drugs. I know. I buy them. Best hashish in the world round here. I´d only be upset if they sold garbage. Vodka tonic for you and a joint for me. Cannibis is not a real heavy concern of most informed folk.
It´s also worthy of noting that almost all the 9/11 bombers were Saudis. Yet Bush went after Iraq.
So anyway if Aznar had been running he might have won. I doubt it. It was nonetheless a pretty obvious rejection of his partys politics.
I´d be interested to see what you can show me about the general dislike of Morrocans here. Apart from your well spoken spanish son and his friends.
I think maybe you should realize that reading the UK press and analyzing the figures really does not give you any sort of understanding of a country and the mindset. Shit, sure wouldn´t work for the US would it? Te deseo mucho suerte.

He LOVED Spain, in spite of getting his pocket picked in Barcelona, which I believe you're near. Sent back gorgeous pictures from there.

I don't want to beat the Moroccan topic to death, but my exchange student shared his opinion. I'll just leave it by saying that when my son was coming back from a party or club on the Metro after 2 a.m., he avoided groups of Moroccans, due to what he'd witnessed. Maybe your area is better--he wasn't in the best part of Madrid, by any means.

Also, he experienced no anti-Americanism. I had told him to avoid talking politics. Most of the people he met were more interested in hearing him talk about life in southern California than in talking about Bush.

I take that back--he had an English class, and the teacher didn't like him, because the teacher's English wasn't very good. So score one for anti-Americanism.


He agrees with you on this. BTW, if you've seen some of my earlier posts, you might remember that I once mentioned living on the second floor of a house that had illegals living on the first floor. That's where he learned Spanish. Which was kind of funny, because due to his accent at the time he arrived, all of the Spanish kids thought he was a Mexican.

When I worked construction, I got tired of lugging buckets of cement, and managed to move up to cement finisher. Much easier.

I was told by a person in the know that penalties for drug use over there are stiff. Don't get caught.

Another thread, another time.

A friend who was advising us prior to my son's trip stressed several points, among them:

1. Get a secure holder for your money and passport, because there are a lot of pickpockets (as I said, my son forgot that once too often).

2. Stay away from the Moroccans, because if you get caught with hashish, the penalties are severe. That was all it took to make me dislike Moroccans--While I have no problem with your lifestyle in regard to hash, I did not want to fly over to try to get my son out of jail.

3. Stay away from the gypsies.

4. Don't make the "okay" sign with your thumb and forefinger. :-)

Muchas gracias, igualmente.

Hehehe I made that 'mistake' once. Though I find it strange we should know they think its insulting, but are not required to know our version :rolleyes:

I've seen this article, I actually have it in my AIM profile. Canada is lookin damn good right about now. All I need's a good canadian girl to marry and then I can move to Canada!

Thanks for redeeming the thread, fellas :)

actually the soft drug penalties are almost nonexistent. cannabis is to a large extent decriminalized. France however is a bit nasty.