>>- Which countries in the world have you visited in the last 15 years?

>Canada, Mexico, England, Belgium, Germany, and Nigeria.

Canada, USA, most of western - europe, turkey, greece. BTW, Nigeria is not a country you want to visit these days. My colleages are there this week to do an installation. Had to have armed guards.

>>- From which countries do you follow the news on a daily or weekly basis?

>America (obviously) and England.

BBC? As you know I don't have a high opinion of the US media. So basically the only unbiased news you've got is through the BBC? To clarify, since europe is so small, we have a lot of foreign news on the TV, esspecially anything in our neighbourhood (UK, benelux, France and Germany).

>>- How many languages do you speak?
>
>English, and a little bit of German.

Dutch, english and a littlebit of german.

>>- In how many countries did you sell your products

>Most of the companies I've worked for have had offices around the world. But, as I'm not a salescritter, the question does not apply.

Well as I'm responsible for making the product technically suitable for the market they are selled in, I have a pretty good impression of healthcare systems in: The US, Canada, UK and the other nearby western countries. We have to dive into several governmental layers of several countries to for example handle national and private insurances, billing practises, and annual government (e.g. CDC) reporting.

>>- In how many countries did you have to do research on a governmental level in order to adjust your product to their market?

>>Lets compare your numbers with mine and see how histerical this is...

>I will add one question to the list: how many countries have you studied the history of? To which I will answer: The US, Canada, Mexico, England, France, Germany, Poland, Russia, Australia, the Balkans, most of medieval Europe, Israel, Japan...I will admit to being a little weak on Africa and South America.

History is a subject at school and of course living in europe and visited a lot of places in western europe, I do know a great deal of history in europe. From ancient Rome to date. US history of course as well (many series on tv do outline it in one way or another). Discovery channel has some excellent series on history. Funny enough, I do not know much about Canada other than that the english and french participation and it struggle with the rest of the continent. As the dutch have travelled the seven sees in the 17th century much of that is part of our national history. You still see that reflecting in the names of UT participants who are of dutch origin. So indonesia, western indies, Japan, tasmania, south africa, you could easily add to the list. We at that time had a lot of wars and a lot of oversees buisnesses. One very good book which I really like is "The rise and fall of great powers" written by "paul? kennedy" That is the book I usually read when I'm in canada and suffer from a yet-lag and ussually wake up at 3AM. It handles the military, political and economical history of (mostly) the western world (but also some asia) from 1500 to 2000.

>>Give me the message, as I don't recall tracy ever was able to prove me wrong on the correlation of gun control and gun related deaths. There IS a correlation whether you like it or not. No-one is every going to convince me that the right to carry the gun is making thing safer in the US. Now tell that mr. cheney.....

>I will look up the thread.

>>You make a statment that is pretty harsh, you'd better prove it.

>I'm not the one making harsh statements here.

Yes you did, You implied that dutch politics differ from much of europe in the sense that we are more left than the others. I don't think that is true.

>>See the other message with the links. Further what I said (you can read it back again) is that there is no SIGNIFICANT left in america. And yes left and right are relative terms. And for the record: I'M AN EUROPEAN. so when I say that there is no )significant) left in the US, you could have known that it is relative from the world I live in. But of course you blindly ignorantly attack the statement as a static definition that applies in your world. Appart from that read the links, even the americans themselves doubt there is any left wing left.

>And here is where your train jumps track. You have never once tried to frame this in "relative terms" - only in absolute terms. I think we both agree that Europe leans more to the left than the US does. However, you did not say "there is no significant left in the US as compared to the left in Europe". You stated that what passes for liberalism here would be "far right" in Europe. Far right? Not a chance. Go check your own links. More to the right than in the US? I'd buy that.

Go ahead and read the links. US Liberalism is as far as far as dutch politics is concerned on the absolute right wing, to the right of dutch liberals. Since there is about nothing to the right of that, the conclusion is easily made. Now in one of the links there is a political map of where certain political movements should be place. Examine that and draw your conclusions.

>Furthermore, if we are going to assume anything, you should have assumed that this thread was a discussion of Jewish liberalism as evidenced in the US - since it was based on a US-published article. Are European Jews in the mainstream politically - in Europe, that is?

Jews certainly are present in european politics, but they do not gather in jewish political parties. You'll find them in several ones. Again europe tends to be far more secular. Even if a party is called christen democrats, you won't find their manifest scattered with religous statements or referals to the holy books. They mainly evolved through time to a secular party that holds on to christian values (family is the cornerstone of society, christian holidays).

I know a few who are in the left centre (PVDA) but you'll find them at the right (VVD) as well.

>Perhaps if you had made a comment in that regards, you would have contributed something useful to the discussion.

I said this:
I've made a statement before up here, that is both liberal and republican is far to the right of anything accepted in other countries (including canada).

So I clearly define the relativity of left and right here depending from which country you look at. Now I can't help it when people don't read what I say here. You could have known my statement was relative to the country you're comparing to. But OTOH one of the links implies there is an absolute definition of left and right (map). If you interpretate that map to US politics one could easily draw the conlcusion that there is no significant left wing in the US.


>>For example, where is the human right movement in the US? Such as did happen in the past for equal rights of blacks. Equal rights for both sexes?
>How about human rights in guantama bay?
>
>You've got to be kidding me. Or perhaps you haven't noticed the continuing debate over Guantanamo that's raging here?

So where are the results? How come the UN did not get the permission to talk to the prisoners. Why is the US not respecting the geneva convention?

>>How about signing the kyoto agreement,
>How about we don't agree with it?

That proves my point.

>>about recognizing the international court in The Hague?
>Same again.

Again proves my point.

>>Where is progressive america? The ones who are laudly calling for change? What is the political development in 50 years? Compare that to the rest of the world.

>Compared to the rest of the world? Lessee...most of Europe was smashed by its own governments in two wars. Most of Eastern Europe was under Russian domination.

>Most of Africa was trying to get on its feet after decades of colonial rule.
Most of africa was making a total mess on what the colonial age had brought them. Countries fell into war and poverty, as many are still today.

>Compared to the rest of the world, we haven't had to rebuild our system of government.

And that is exactly what I'm trying to point out here. Indeed the US had not to rebuild it as it served quite well. However, this also is a disadvantage in that there is an attitude of "It served us well in the past, so it will serve us well in the future". But these are different times. The most progression in europe has been made AFTER WWII, driven by the knowledge and realisation of the terror off WWII, The EU was born many decades ago and still is the driving force for a dynamic political map to create an economical and social union (military I think it still belongs to the NATO). A lot has changed in 50 years time politically. Religion for example is totally banned from politics. In this regard the european politics is far more progressive towards the future. Europe is by no means trying to copy the american model (Read jeremy rifkin about the european dream) but to do it better than that with an european ideology.


>We have free education through high school. Quality obviously varies from district to district. Infrastructure? You should see the amount of road reconstruction going on just in Houston. Rebuilding NO? It's happening. Want to know what else my tax dollars go for? I believe the federal and most state budget proposals are on-line.

We'll see. I might be visiting new orleans this fall, else my colleages will. As far as I have heard so far is that there is no serious rebuilding going one there. We were considering the withdraw from the conference up there as many other companies in our business were, but since there was a contract the financial consecuences were too high.

>>YOU CAN'T DO ANY COMPARISON WITHOUT GENERALISATIONS.

>Yes, you can. Give it a try some time.

What do you think is the opposite of generalisation ?? Can you draw conclusions on that? In order to draw conlcusions you must generalise to a certain degree or else you'll be falling into the trap of details. (Since you attacked me previously on these issue, note that we are talking relatives again).