To: elmatador who wrote (11532 ) 11/15/2006 9:52:54 PM From: Maurice Winn Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 218415 All countries are the same, yes El M, sure. That's right. In Niger, the bosses sold other Nigers to people who hauled them off to the cotton fields and the stock whip. In Germany, they hauled trainloads of Jews to work camps, starvation and being gassed with Zyklon B. In Saddam's Iraq, they gassed the opposition and generally killed them any way they liked. In Islamic Jihad they do head-hacking, stoning to death, hand-cutting, and other fun things for the local yokel audiences if not the main participant. In NZ we are not allowed to be drunk in charge of a car. What a horror. But we do have repression - cut down a native tree of any size on one's own property and it's considered a hanging offence. I suspect that if one had money, it might actually be nicer to live in an Islamic country in many ways. One probably doesn't have to wear a crash helmet on a bicycle. We are a bunch of Mummy's boys here, with Nanny state telling us how to run our lives in every detail. Everything is forbidden. I guess those are all the same in your book. No country is better than another. No values better than other. No ideology superior to others. Isn't it strange though that people are wanting to bust into NZ to live, but NZers aren't wanting to bust into Iran, Iraq, concentration camps, Pol Pot's fun-house, Beijing's People's Republic of Joy, Freedom and Happiness, or Brazil's happy hothouse? NZers aspire to Switzerland, UK, USA and a few other places. I'd rather get ticket for not wearing a crash helmet when going for a walk in the park than having my hand cut off for blaspheming against a Mullah's mania. Mqurice