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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (12706)	6/23/1999 6:45:00 PM
From: truedog	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

to: Neocon from: truedog Re: poison ivy I am happy to hear that your son has basically recovered from the poison ivy. He is fortunate that the itching was not too severe. I have first hand knowledge of how bad it can be. In the late '50s, my tentmate and I were "given" the task of stringing wire from HQ company to all the other companies in the battalion.By the time we were were finished, it was pitch dark and we hadn't even been given time to pitch our pup tent yet. Being creatures of comfort, we felt around for a nice soft place and found one with some low growth that seemed a good place to sleep. When we woke to reveille, the top kick looked at our tent site and started laughing. His only comment was "you guys are in for it". Sure enough our entire bodies became covered with those terribly itching and oozing blisters. The doctor decided we needed the series of three shots to combat it but, his idea of giving shots was much like that of throwing a dart at a target. I am glad your boy was spared such an ordeal. The only thing that had a positive note, was that the shots seem to have given me a life long immunity to the nasty weed. Just some comments you might find slightly amusing. Regards, truedog

To: Neocon who wrote (12706)	6/24/1999 5:38:00 AM
From: MNI	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 17770

Glad to hear your son is better now. On the other question: don't believe you impress me less by claiming to be unsuccessful ! On the question of interracial marriage, I think he is wrong for Germany. Maybe he extrapolates his Belgian experience in the wrong way? Or is he a fan of those rightist Belgian parties? For the marriage of Boris (I don't know how many years it is ago) it has helped his appeal to the media that his bride was a real beauty. Definitely for those Germans who are interested in sports, maybe seeing sportsmen as heroes, there was never anything wrong with Boris' wife. The site cited by Gustave could have been made by a German or an American youth, and nobody would see a reason to laugh or anything wrong about it (except for Gustave). I think he had a similarly wrong perception about the role of the media. The media aren't racist in any repressive sense. Surely repressiveness, opposing to interracial or international marriages and so on may be found in some parts of the population. Especially for the former east part we have to consider the old regime didn't teach open-mindedness. In general I dare say the vast majority of Germans is quite open, or let me say surprisingly open, in the intercultural sense. It is true though, that people in the street often aren't very helpful nor friendly when asked for the way or time by strangers. But it is true non-respective whether this stranger is from a German town or from a different planet. Finally, it is truely annoying how uniformly Germans tend to think that German is an easy language. It is because most of us learn only English, where it is quite easy for us to reach a level of everyday communication. Additionally teachers tend to be nice to the pupils, not telling about mistakes, but about the correct bits of language. They are frightened the pupils might lose the fun in learning. So the majority of Germans actually have no idea what it takes to learn a language, and what it is like to be lost without words in a foreign town. Consequently they behave incomprehensibly arrogant. Those who have tried either French, Russian, Spanish or Latin tend to behave differently and nicer when somebody tries broken German with small mistakes, or when another language fails to be understood. The same bonus applies to the behaviour of most of our immigrants. On the other hand it is true that Germany is playing a partly bad game on asylum seekers. Once people are here, their position before law is quite good, or at least not so bad. But in bilateral contracts with all our neighbouring countries we have ruled that those countries should use their police force to prevent trough traffic of asylum seekers to Germany. It is what I call double-tonguedness. I pointed that out in a previous posting. For the visual media it is clear that some persons might use some extraordinary or exotic looks as a self-marketing strategy. As far as I can see, this belongs to multiculturality also. Also it contributes to a normalization of non-white looks in Germany. But this normalization has taken part anyway, and at least for Western Germany, since long. The same marketing principle applies not only for non-white looks but for any kind of minority we can think of. A crude case of self-marketing was documented in my latest posting directed at Derek. On the other hand I don't know what the situation would be in the US (or in Belgium, France ...) so I cannot make the comparison claimed. MNI.