Its this sort of thing that has me already in the paperwork forms being signed off getting duel citizenship in Ireland and moving to the EU. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/puppyeyes.gif" alt="" />
just being an American citizen and living here makes it so that many people in the World hate me before they know me. Even some people here on the forum. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/sad.gif" alt="" />
I can understand that.
Many of the decisions politiciansof the U.S. make are not understandable (to put it mildly) here in Germany, and it good parts of Europe.
The height was reached when Mr. Rumsfeld called "the Europe of the un-willing" (those who didn't want to support Mr. Bush's war) as the "Old Europe".
You cannot imagine how insulting and disciminating that was ! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/memad.gif" alt="" />
Unfortunately, many people's mind patterns go like this : "Government = Country". So, many here believe that what Mr. Bush and "his" government says, is the explicite expression of what the whole country thinks ! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/exclamation.gif" alt="" />
Only those interested in the details and those more reasonable realize that this isn't the case - like in every country.
Mr. Bush isn't well respected here anymore, and even worse since Mr. Rumsfeld's "Old Europe" insult. I'd like to condemn him just because this saying ! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/memad.gif" alt="" />
The fact is, as I had written once in German in a different Forum, that the U.S. and it's companies acts - from the pooint of view <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/exclamation.gif" alt="" /> of many europeans - like they were superior to anything else <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/exclamation.gif" alt="" />
Like Bush for example : Treating prisonders in the Iraq as if the "Convention of Geneva" didn't exist ! The Government isn't even willing to accept lawsuits from the world court in Den Haag ! (At least that's how I understood it).
This "acting like everything else is inferior" is supported by Mr. Bush's religious references ("God's chosen country"), which are absurd, because he and likeminded people simply cannot tell what God's will is. The Bible is a hole book, yes, but it isn't necessarily God's Will, but instead a collection of tales everyone learns who studies Theology.
Companies often act as if they were working only for their country. Just an example : LucasArts for example, or Hasbro 8for the collectors) made so-called "sweepstakes" (i still don't know to 100% what this word actually means), giving away prices. However, only people living in the U.S. could participate, then, as if there were no Star Wars Fans in the "outside world" at all !
That's what I mean. There is a tendence especially with Computer Games Publishers, which I formulated as "bigger, better, first". (One of my favourite example is "Age of Wonders : Shadow Magic", which was published first in the U.S. , although the game was developed in the Netherlands ! You can re-created this feeling considering that <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> and <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/beyond.gif" alt="" /> were relesed in Germany first, first to any other country in the world. That feeling is the same I always get when I see a game being released in the US first, because a Publisher decided to do so.)
[Maybe Publishers do so because they believe it would be "patriotic" to publish a game in the U.S. first ?]
This leads in non-US countries to the impression as if they were treated as being inferior to US citizens, thus leading into ant-americanism.
You as a citizen cannot do anything against it; to me, it's rather the mind-pattern that works in the government and in companies leading into these results.
So, this kind of mind-pattern needs to be changed, to regain respect and reputation, especially for treating other countries equally, and thus not imposing the impression that everything else was inferior.
It's
very complicated.
Alrik.
