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2003-11-21 14:52 (UTC)
Progammeurs! Why not have a go with Caml? (From the ML family of
functional languages.)
The French O'Reilly book,
D�veloppement d'applications avec Objective Caml is
available online. (So is a whole bunch of Engleesh stuff, but 'ow is
zat a resistance of ze h�gemonie anglophone, hein?)
Also, my political commitments were put to the test last night in
Swedish class - we had to fill out administrative forms which included
an ethnicity section. The choices, for those of us who are white as
the ace of sn�, where "White (British)", "White (Irish)" and "White
(Other)". Since I am, as we have established, UKish, I ticked the
"(Other)" flavour. That, I'm sure you will agree, 'll teach 'em.
[Permalink]
2003-11-21 11:50 (UTC)
The informal Swedish pronoun "du" corresponds etymologically to
Engleesh "thou", but structurally to Engleesh "you" - in the
heady glow of '60's egalitarianism Sweden officially abolished the use
of the formal/polite "ni" (which wasn't actually widely used anyway -
allegedly more common were bizarre circumlocutions like "Vill Herr
Blah har ett glass �l till?" which meant you had to remember names
and titles, which meant more than just Miss/Fr�ken or Mrs/Fru
for wimmins since in the somewhat Germanic manner one was expected to
consider Brevb�rare (Postman) Svensson's job a vital part of his or
her identity). Anyway, post du-reform you could address pretty much
anyone as "du", except possibly prinsessan.
Which is of course why we're here:
"Visst f�r ni s�ga du till mig"
Det g�r bra att s�ga "du" till kronprinsessan Victoria.
Det s�ger hon sj�lv i en intervju med Dagens Industris helgbilaga
Weekend
"Sure, you can say "du" to me"
It's fine to say "du" to kronprinsessan Victoria.
She says so herself in an interview with Dagens Industris
weekendsupplement "Weekend". [Hence, presumably, the name - Des.]
(G�r det riktig riktig bra med prinsessan att man skulle s�ger
"du" till henne?!)
Swedish royalty, eh? They're just like you and me, only royaller.
(This is a knife that cuts both ways, but of course.)
[Tack till Anna Louise p� grund av l�nken]
[Permalink]
2003-11-21 11:13 (UTC)
(Swedish tongue-twister:
"Fly ugly fly, fly; and the ugly fly flew!")
But they don't all make it �ver �lands hav, as anyone whose school
biology classes involved mass Drosophila (for it is they!) slaughter knows.
That's not news, but
this
certainly is:
Biologists have produced a detailed map of protein interactions in a
complex organism - the fruit fly.
Wow! As our book-of-the year elect
emphasises, proteins are the teleonomic engines of biology. As the
same BBC story goes on to say, "In its complexity and simplicity, life
is a dance of proteins."
Genome-sequencing pr0n (bigger! harder! faster! yawn, yawn, yawn) is
water off a duck's back to anyone who knows anything (go read Monod if
you're still suffering from the impression that DNA is other than the
means to an end, which end is proteins) - this is the real thing, and
I am wildly impressed.
[Permalink]
2003-11-20 18:15
I phoned up to try to book tickets on the overnight train from
Riga to Vilnius for
the 30th of December. The nice person, who spoke not quite joined up
English (which I don't mean as a criticism - I bet Russian would have
been fine, and I could always learn Latvian...), told me I could just
come down to the station and pick them up if I liked. But I am of
course in England, so liking doesn't particularly enter into it.
Nonetheless, my name has been duly taken down, and is undoubtedly
currently inscribed on a piece of paper somewhere in Riga train
station and I am substantially more confident that the train trip will
work out, although this is not by any means the "and" of implied
causal relationship.
Singing:
O, Twinkletree
And all that stuff
Can't come soon enough
For me!
[anon., 15th century.]
[Permalink]
2003-11-20 13:17 (UTC)
When a door has instructions (doors should never need
instructions, but that's a long lost battle) to pull or push placed on
one side of a glass panel but not the other and the instructions are
therefore visible from the wrong side, the part of my brain that
should deduce on looking at the door that since the word is backwards
and on the wrong side of the glass it represents not so much an
operating instruction as precisely the opposite of such an
instruction is preempted by the part of my brain that decodes words
written backwards, either for its own amusement, since it is not a
skill I'm aware of having made any effort to acquire, or, as I suspect
is in fact the case, without even noticing that they are
actually backwards.
With hilarious consequences!
[Permalink]
2003-11-20 10:31 (UTC)
Excuse me, can we ransack your spicy
brain a little?
While standard MRI machines like those still found in many hospitals
take a snapshot of the brain, functional MRI is newer and more
powerful because it takes lots of these snapshots one after the other,
revealing how thoughts unfold over time. But the trend for using fMRI
to probe social and behavioural issues is prompting some scientists to
ask big questions about where this may all lead. Could it only be a
matter of time before neuroscientists have techniques that can reveal
secrets we would rather keep tucked under our skulls? According to
some leading scientists, this isn't a paranoid over-reaction. "The CIA
has been interested in fMRI for years as a means of doing
lie-detection tests," says Bob Turner, an fMRI expert at University
College London. After all, he says: "The brain can't lie."
Remember: Scott "You have no privacy;
get over it" Mcneally is first up for this once it's ready for prime
time.
The BBC is running a series of articles on EU enlargement, of which
the second
is now out, and is quite good. We extract the part about the great
constitutional debate as part of our obsessive coverage of that issue,
but the rest is certainly worth reading.
"In Polish eyes, the EU is progressing too much on abortion,
homosexuality, and on all sorts of minorities which are better and
better protected in the EU," [Janusz Lewandowski, a member of the
Polish parliament] he says.
The Polish Pope, John Paul II, has suggested that Poland might in
fact transfer values in the opposition direction - enriching the EU
with its own Christian traditions.
A word in your shell-likes, Polish gentlepersons? Two words, even, of
which one (1) is "off"? Happily, tying the Baby Jesus Amendment to an
agenda as conspicuously revolting as this is going to do a better job
than I could hope to do of discrediting it.
The Polish Government agrees and is spearheading a campaign for a
reference to "Judaeo-Christian roots" in the preamble to the EU
constitution.
The Greek government really ought to be running some interference here
and insisting on an explicit heads up to Plato, Aristotle et
al.. C'mon guys, don't be shy! And the Lapps should demand
recognition for the (alleged, but let's not be too scrupulous)
shamanistic roots of Santa Claus, and let's face it, Northern Yoorp
just wouldn't have been the same without the Thor and Odin fixated
Viking marauders, not to mention the obscure but hardly Christian
founders of the glad Twinkletree tradition.
This proposal points up another faultline in the European system of
values. Poland has some support from Spain and Italy, but France and
Belgium, which insist on a rigid separation of church and state, are
adamantly opposed.
Germany, the UK and the European Commission also believe that the
existing reference to "the cultural, religious and humanist
inheritance of Europe" is probably the best compromise.
A counter-rant,
then, and we'll let it lie (until next time):
"A truer picture would show our medieval monks to be rather
superstitious fellows, highly suspicious of anything that did not
explicitly smack of the spiritual. In [the monks'] view, knowledge
crafted by human means, by unaided reason was more likely to lead to
the devil," writes the eminent historian Dr. Stanley Chodorow. There
is good reason the Age of Faith and the Dark Ages are interchangeable
terms. The leading ecclesiastical figures of the day Pope Gregory the
Great (called the Stalin of the early church by Trevor-Roper), and
Augustine of Hippo condemned outright the study of pagan or profane
literature. For Saint Augustine, the monk who sought knowledge in the
Greek or Latin authors was no better than the Israelite who plundered
Egyptian treasures in order to build the tabernacle of God.
It's just a rant, Varied Reader, but there's no harm in a rant once in
a while, and I didn't even perpetrate this one.
[Permalink]
2003-11-19 19:20
Denmark's constitutional arrangements are of course much simpler than the
UK's: the Kingdom of Denmark is simply split between Denmark proper
(which is a member of the EU) on the one hand and the Faroe Islands and
Greenland (which are not) on the other.
You will be relieved to know that steps
have been taken to ensure that Knudella cannot excuse herself from
any future Traditional Greenland Dress exercises on the grounds that
she's forgotten her kit:
Kronprinsen Frederiks forlovede, Mary Donaldson, f�r en gr�nlandsk
nationaldragt af Nuuk Kommune.
Kronprinsfred's fianc�e, Knudella "Mary" Donaldsom, will receive a
traditional Greenland costume from Nuuk Kommune.
Which is duly modelled
for us by some passing royals of yesteryear, hoorah!
Meanwhile, fresh from her legal triumphs Kronprinsess Vickan of Sweden
has been teaming up with freshly (otherwisely) affianced Kronprins
F'leep of Spain to give
rather than receive:
The young princess was in the Spanish capital at the weekend to
present the first-ever Queen Kristina of Sweden business prize
alongside Prince Felipe.
Nothing, you will agree, says "thrusting, business-like, modern" quite
like the scions of hereditary monarchies.
[Tack s� mycket to Anna Louise and Birgitte for the linkages]
[Permalink]
2003-11-19 13:42 )UTC)
The Grauniad finds some space for Denis "Denis"
McShane's musings ("Denis MacShane is MP for Rotherham and Europe
minister"), but not enough for his tastes:
My friend, Pierre Moscovici, the brilliant Europe minister in the
Jospin [i.e., previous - Des] government, invites me to speak at a
meeting of the Socialist party in Paris. They have set up a group: A
gauche, en Europe (The Left in Europe). My constituency of Rotherham
beckons that weekend so I have to decline. But I make the front page
of Le Monde with my article "Tony Blair ou le r�formisme permanent"
(Tony Blair, the perpetual reformer) and Die Welt kindly ran a longer
version of my ideas earlier this month. (www.lemonde.fr or www.welt.de for GU readers with French
or German) I sent versions of the same paper to the New Statesman and
the Guardian but the left-liberal press in Britain have all but given
up discussing reformist social democratic thinking.
(Imagine passing up a tasty treat like that! Shame on you, Grauniad!)
That would be this
for Desbladet readers with both French and Internet. (Until it falls
into the pay archive, at least.)
Brushing past the reformist social democratic slander that labels
critics of Mr Bush Blair's foreign policy as Saddam-lovers - no more
convincing in French, naturally - and the smugness that comes of reaping the
economic benefits of Thatcher's systematic dismantling of union power
without having to take any of the blame for it, we get to the meat of
this reformist social democratic thinking:
La grande id�e de la "troisi�me voie" est qu'il n'y a pas de grande
id�e. La social-d�mocratie constitue pour le philosophe polonais
Leszek Kolakowski "une volont� tenace d'�roder petit � petit les
sources de souffrance �vitable : oppression, faim, guerres, racisme et
x�nophobie, avidit� insatiable et jalousie vindicative".
Cette am�lioration obstin�e est ce sur quoi le gouvernement Blair
va d�sormais se concentrer pour r�pondre � la question : o�
allons-nous maintenant ? 2004 verra de difficiles �lections
r�gionales, europ�ennes et municipales, suivies en 2005 par des
�lections l�gislatives, pour lesquelles Tony Blair ambitionne de
gagner un troisi�me mandat pour conduire le Parti travailliste des
ann�es 1990 � la deuxi�me d�cennie du XXIe si�cle.
The big idea of the "third way" is that it isn't a big idea. For the
Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski social democracy means "a
tenacious will to erode the sources of avoidable suffering little by
little: oppression, hunger, war, racism and xenophobia, insatiable
greed and vindictive jealousy."
It is this obstinate improvement that the Blair government is going to
concentrate on from now on in order to answer the question "Where are
we going now?" 2004 will see difficult regional, European and
municipal elections, followed in 2005 by a general election, in which
Tony Blair hopes to win a third mandate to lead the Labour party from
the 90's into the second decade of the 21st century.
So, a firm conviction that Good Is Better Than Bad and Nice Is Better
Than Nasty guides a programme which seeks to balance: a principled
commitment to ad-hocery; as much stealth Leftism as is compatible with
a deep-rooted concern not to frighten the horses (or perhaps slightly
less); and an unequivocal devotion to Our Glorious Leader, Tony Blair.
Perhaps surprisingly, I more-or-less go along with most of that (with
the exception of the personality cult).
But at least as interestingly the Guardian page invites
the reader to look up their MEP, whereupon it turns out Yoorpean
Parliament New Labours forms part of the "Group of the party of
European Socialists", and the least convincing part of Mr MacShane's
fine words is the pretence that they are usefully addressed at a wider
Yoorpean political Left: leaving aside the ineluctable unfolding of
the various historical dialectics, Blair's goverment ressembles that
of M. Raffarin (which is doing its best to tackle the worst excesses
of French unions, as Blair has never had to) much more than that of
the Old-School Socialist M. Jospin.
Mr MacShane can urge his Yoorpean colleagues to emulate Mr Blair's new
vision of a 21st century left all he likes, but Yoorp already has
parties with broadly similar objectives - it's just that it, quite reasonably,
calls them "centre Right".
As one of the few Anglophone grosso modo supporters of the EU qua
project, and with Yoorpean parliamentary elections coming up, it might
be wise for me to find out more of the lie of the land in Yoorpean
parliament rather than simply picking an allegiance by projection from
the UK's rather idiosyncratic political framework.
(I dare you to imagine, incidentally, just how hard the websites for
the various pan-Yoorpean political groupings suck. Behold, if you
dare, the Yoorpean Liberal
Democrats, the Party of
Yoopean Socialistes and the Group of the European
People's Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats (who
are the rightiste group - they call themselves "centre" but include
Britain's Tories - and have the word "Christian" in their
name, and this:
Representatives of Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches,
and the EPP-ED Group in European Parliament welcomed the symbolic
importance of the second preamble to the Constitution, drawing
inspiration from the cultural, religious and humanist tradition of
Europe. They asked the Intergovernmental Conference to recall Europe's
biblical roots in the preamble.
on their website, so forget it, persons of gender and/or otherwise,
just forget it.))
[Permalink]
2003-11-19 10:23 (UTC)
I have perpetrated a sonnet, as required:
When dwindles day to but a sunlit pause
And wintry winds in northern wastelands bl�;
When blighted Earth's clasped tight in Frost's chill claws
At long-awaited last, it's time for sn�!
Ye motorists by traction's lack beset -
Unless capricious Heaven sends but rain -
Ere Law's enforcement gives cause for regret,
Affix your tyre enhanced with stud or chain.
For soon julmust
our favoured drink'll be,
And soon proud pines in forests will compete
To play the r�le of sacred Twinkletree
And make each festive Swedish hearth complete;
But first - it's Forren, but no need to gloss't -
We gladly bid you welcome, sn�kaoset!
Preoccupations, isn't it?
[Updates: I keep having to tweak this to compensate for a congenital inability to count up to ten. *Sigh*. I'm not changing the barely sort-of syllable at the end of the couplet lines, though.]
[Permalink]
2003-11-18 13:55 (UTC)
Its been a long time, been a long time,
Been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time.
The
Zep, but of course.
But finally - finally - it's here!
F�rsta
sn�kaoset - nu �r det h�r!
- Fr�n nordv�stra Svealand och norrut blir det rej�lt med sn�. Det
ser ut att komma upp�t en decimeter nysn�, s�ger Jonas H�glund.
[From northwest Svealand and the north there's going to be some
serious sn�. It looks like there's going to be up to a decimeter of
newsn�, says Jonas H�gland [of the Swedish meteorological institute].
Seasoned sn�kaos enthusiasts will particularly admire the way the kaos
is firmly attached to the sn� (by chains, in fact) before said sn� has
actually arrived - this is a very sensible safety precaution that is
required by law in Sweden, and quite right too.
[Permalink]
2003-11-18 11:32 (UTC)
Because you deserve it, let's make with the linky-link and bricolage
ourselves up a tasty treat. (I got a spam nominally from "Lolita
Herring" today, so we're celebrating.)
1. M is for Mouse, who tramples your rights
It is seventy-five years to the day since the era of limited-time
copyrights gave way to the
Glorious Era of The Mouse:
In 2023, the copyright for Mickey's image expires - and anyone will be
entitled to use the famous image freely. It was due to expire this
year, but frantic lobbying by Disney led to a change in the law. If
Disney continue to make money out of Mickey, then expect more of the
same in 20 years time.
More precisely, copyright will be extended if Disney is still making
money and Congress is still packed with persons as contemptuous of the
public domain as they are greedy to chow down in Disney's trough.
It's almost cute the way the BBC pretends this is a thing that may or
may not be the case.
Ever since the Supreme Court of the USA ruled that it had no business
fixing the constitution's copyright bug it has been clear that
"pre-Mouse" and "in copyright" comprise an exhaustive classification
of materials. Celebrate the world's least entertaining cartoon figure
if you must - has The Mouse ever done anything even remotely amusing?
- I'll be at the wake for the public domain.
2 and 3. W is for Warmonger, who likes to start fights
With the headline Lika v�lkommen som dj�vulen sj�lv ("As
welcome as Satan himself," which is about as strong a term of abuse as
is available in Swedish) Aftonbladet may have
misjudged
the public mood in Britain, if not necessarily mine:
Pinsamt, feltajmat och politiskt riskfyllt.
Tony Blair har
m�nga sk�l att vilja st�lla in George W Bushs statsbes�k.
USA-presidenten �r den ende som kan dra en vinstlott.
[Embarrassing, poorly-timed and politically risky.
Tony Blair has many grounds to want to cancel George W Bush's
state visit. The US president is the only one who can profit from it.]
Or
not:
A majority of Labour voters welcome President George Bush's state
visit to Britain which starts today, according to November's
Guardian/ICM opinion poll.
The survey shows that public opinion in Britain is overwhelmingly
pro-American with 62% of voters believing that the US is "generally
speaking a force for good, not evil, in the world". It explodes the
conventional political wisdom at Westminster that Mr Bush's visit will
prove damaging to Tony Blair. Only 15% of British voters agree with
the idea that America is the "evil empire" in the world.
If, purely hypothetically, I happened to consider the USA to be the
most worrying regime on the world stage (filling the gap admirably
between the fall of the USSR and the immanent rise of China) and
neglect to mention Israel at all, is that still anti-Semitic, given
that I am after all Yoorpean? I merely ask or enquire for the
purposes of eliciting information.
4. K is for Kraut, which is German for cabbage
Concerns that future UK childrens may grow up ignorant of this vital
information have prompted
drastic action:
The German ambassador to the UK called on the government yesterday to
consider scrapping a move to allow teenagers to give up learning
modern languages at 14, warning that the change would result in pupils
from deprived backgrounds being "shunted" against their will into
vocational subjects.
There is of course nothing that goes down better in the UK than a bit
of well-meaning advice from a German.
5. P is for 'pooters, invented by Babbage.
If you're shredding sensitive information - to reduce the risk of identity
theft, say, or to eliminate the records of your hated secret
police on the occasion of the crumbling of a regime forming part of
the previous most worrying geopolitical phenomenon - then there are
good ways and bad ways to do that:
Millions of shredded ex-East German secret police papers could be
pieced together by new computer technology. The documents - destroyed
in 1989 - are thought to be records on paid up but unofficial
employees and spies.
[...]
"Luckily, the Stasi tore the files directly into sacks so we
can almost be sure all the pieces of the documents are in the same
sack," [a spokesperson said].
That would be one of the bad ways, you see.
("Have you shredded the documents, Private?"
"Shredded, bagged, labelled and archived, sir!"
"Gott im Himmel, as we say in Germany.")
I remember 1989 -
our electromagnetism lecturer thoughtfully announced the fall of the
Berlin wall at the start of a lecture for the benefit of those of us
who had not been able to spare time from our their busy drinking schedule
to keep up with current affairs - but it still seems like another
world.
Which in many ways it was, and it was a whole lot scarier than the USA
has managed since, and don't for a moment think it wasn't.
[Permalink]
2003-11-18 09:36 (UTC)
England is England; Great Britain is an island comprising England,
Scotland and Wales; the United Kingdom is a state comprising England,
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
This is normally fairly uncontroversial, at least in Great Britain.
If, on the other hand, you want controversy on the subject, Slugger
O'Toole and especially his merry commenteers have that
covered, too. Sing ho for diversity!
I try always to refer to the UK (rather than "Britain") and UKish (as
its corresponding nationality) partly out of a desire for accuracy,
rather than an endorsement of any particular view on Northern
Ireland's political future, but mostly because Forreners often call
the collective entity "Britain" or (much worse) simply "England", and
clearly need to be put in their place.
For legal purposes I am certainly UKish, while for the purposes of
inane opinion polls I have been known to describe myself as "feeling"
Yoorpean first, Engleesh second, and British a distant third. (They
never offer UKish.)
Meanwhile, the various component parts of the UK have distinct
teams in several sports, although in rugby and the Olympics Northern
Ireland and the Republic of Ireland field combined Ireland squads.
Great Britain also has a combined Olympic squad, and as a result opts
out of some sports in that competition, such as Proper Football
("soccer") because the participation of a GB team in an international
competition would mean that FIFA (proper football's governing body) would
insist that only a GB team could participate in international
competitions in general, and that is simply unthinkable.
It's only now that I've written this out that I appreciate just how
luxuriantly elaborate it all is. (That, and I had to Google for some
of it.) And I've left out all the principalities, bailiwicks, and
protectorates of whose status I have not the slightest grasp. The
Engleesh are of course mostly tremendously proud of the limpid
simplicity of their nation's constitutional status, which they achieve
mostly by not having the slightest idea what it is.
[Permalink]
2003-11-17 19:37
Yoorp is notoriously full of persons who insist on speaking Forren,
but as we British well know, the only thing worse than a Forrener
speaking Forren is a Brit speaking Forren. Happily, there's
not much danger of that:
Three-quarters of [English] universities have axed some language
courses over the past three years, with "disappearing languages"
including French, Italian, Dutch, Swedish and Arabic. Government
departments are among employers short of language graduates.
What better way could there be to show our commitment to a harmonious
future in Yoorp than by scrapping compulsory post-14 second language
education in Engleesh schools? Any Forrener worth talking to (oh go
on, let's pretend) already speaks Engleesh anyway, after all.
[Link via Anna K, cosmopolite sans racines, whatever that means.]
[Permalink]
2003-11-17 14:26 (UTC)
Here's how:
Alle kan i dag blive prinsesse. Men du skal have b�de held og arbejde
for sagen. Det har ikke noget at g�re med, om du har S�ren Hattemager
til far eller er datter af grev �rn. Du skal bare have udstr�ling og
den magi, en prins kan falde for. S� kan du m�ske blive en af de f�
heldige udvalgte, der en dag kan blive dronning eller prinsesse.
Anyone can be a prinsess these days. But it takes a combination of
luck and work. It doesn't matter if your father is Joe Bloggs or
you're the daughter of Lord Fancypants. You just have to have the aura
and the magic a prins can fall for. So that you can become one of the
lucky few who can one day be a queen or prinsess.
Meanwhile the very beige lovely prinsess
Madeleine gives a masterclass:
Prinsessan Madeleine, 21, gl�nste som en filmstj�rna n�r hon i g�r
kv�ll var hedersg�st p� Innocenceordens stora fest p� Grand H�tel i
Stockholm.
Kl�dd i en midnattsbl� och glittrande aftonkl�nning h�lsade hon glatt
de 353 nya medlemmarna v�lkomna i Vintertr�dg�rden.
Prinsess Madeleine, 21, shone like a film star as the guest
of honour at Innoncenceordens grand party at the Grand H�tel in
Stockholm.
Dressed in a glittering midnight-blue evening dress she cheerfully
bade the 353 new members welcome in the Wintertreegarden.
(Does anyone else remember when especially glamorous film stars would
be likened to prinsessor, or did I just imagine that?)
While the decollatage on said sparklefrock is not perhaps as plunging
as on some of Her Beigeness's former frocks, she is wearing an actual
tiara and that has to count for something, surely.
[Link via Comrade Birgitte, who insists that her marriage plans
continue not to involve the aristocracy.]
[Permalink]
2003-11-17 13:39 (UTC)
These days, of course, anti-semitism is universally reviled by
civilised persons everywhere - even the Pope's against it!
- so thank Heavens for the Roma ("Gypsies"), as they say
in Hungary:
In a sarcastic commentary on recent controversial court rulings,
Hungary's Magyar Hirlap suggests some "improvements" to the judiciary.
One of the rulings was reduced compensation granted by a court to two
Romany victims on the grounds that the harm they suffered was less
severe because of the "primitive" nature of their personalities.
The paper suggests that on this basis it would be logical to pass
sentences according to the defendant's financial status or, as the
paper puts it, "the poor should automatically be punished more
severely than the rich for the same offence".
It adds that another option would be to regard poor people as being
born with suspended sentences.
"The legal practice already follows this principle, only its inclusion
in the law has been delayed for some reason," it says.
"Europe would be amazed at how much more advanced we are," the paper
concludes.
Hungary's Magyar Hirlap, Desbladet salutes you!
We remark that the EU has applied considerable pressure on the newer democracies of central Yoorp with regard to their minority populations and the outsorting of attitudes thereto, because frankly the EU doesn't get much good press, especially in ze Ingleesh.
We remark further that the BBC has a round up of Yoorpean newspapers
each and every single day, which suggests that the BBC has a bunch of
persons on its payroll whose day job consists of reading the papers.
I don't have enough languages at my disposal to join in, but I am
nonetheless insanely jealous.
[Permalink]
2003-11-17 10:19 (UTC)
This bladet has in the past railed against
the Papist plot to vandalise the proposed EU constitution by inserting
a statement alleging that Christianity is central to our Glorious
Yoorpean Heritage, and don't think we wouldn't do so again. But
today, instead, we have a BBC story about Poland's discovery of
persons
of Jewishness who somehow survived the Holocaust there:
One Pole is so scared that his family secret will get out that he asks
to remain anonymous. For 60 years he has kept to himself the fact
that the brother he grew up with is Jewish. As a baby, his brother
was thrown from a train transporting Jews to the death camps. The
baby was rescued by a woman who raised him as her own son, and as a
Catholic. His brother believes it is too late to tell him, as it
would disrupt his life and destroy his memories.
These are compelling stories, movingly told, so we will forgo
decrying the Bourgeois Individualism with which the piece is riddled.
Perhaps even more shockingly, we will allow the Pope to be presented
in a favourable light, just this once:
"This process has been supported by Pope John Paul II who declared
that Jews were the older brother. When their Pope speaks, Poles
listen.
"He is the most important figure in bringing together Catholics
and Jews. What is happening today in Poland is a normalisation."
Well, favourableish. Normal service will be resumed the next time he
comments on the Constitution, for sure.
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