Ya know, I thought I understood this quote thing. I even went back and tried to find the info on writing the code. Couldn’t find it. What the heck is it?
You should be using a forward slash at the end quote instead of a backslash.
Boris: the number one reason our military stays out of politics (to the extent of a coup de estate (sp?)) is that most of us, and especially our leaders, take the oath and constitution seriously.
That is not the case in countries whose leaders have traditionally used “the divine right of kings” as their reason for being in charge.
Frankly, it is perfectly legal for an employer to ask you if you are gay. The reasons most don’t are:
[ul][li]they don’t really care[/li][li]they are afraid of a lawsuit[/ul][/li]
Even though asking if you are gay is legal (caveat, on a federal level it is legal, some state and local laws actually do prohibit it), someone who was not hired beacuse of sexual preference would likely find a lawyer to represent him or her and sue the dickens out of the company. Even though the company would probably win, they would have to hire their own lawyers to defend the suit. Further, there is some theoretical support for bringing such as lawsuit. Our federal civil rights laws protect people from job discrimination based on “sex.” Some legal theorists believe that this probhibits discrimination against homosexuals. However, that is not the current view of the courts. If the Supreme Court wanted to expand the protection, conceivably they could by accepting an appeal of such a case and just making a ruling stating that “sex” extends to protect a person’s sexual preferernce. Not that there is a lot of support for this view among jurists. Even if this interpretation were adopted, simply asking if you are gay would not break the law, but refusing to hire you because of it would.
As for smoking pot on the weekends, I personally agree that it’s none of their business. However, an example is useful in showing why the companies care. Let’s say you show up at the office stoned. First, you will probably be less productive than normal. Second, if you injure a coworker in your altered state, the coworker could sue the company on a negligence theory (e.g., negligent hiring, negligent supervision, negligent retention) and argue that the company should have known about your drug habit.
As for alcohol, most companies have policies that prohibit workers from using alcohol on the job or being drunk at work, for much the same reason.
Somewhat off the original post, but related to the thread. In Spain:
Burning the Spanish flag is illegal.
Inciting racial violence is illegal, though I’m not sure how thoroughly this is applied. There is a Nazi bookstore here in Barcelona that supplies racist material to much of Europe. It is still open, though the government has taken steps to close it down. The case has been in the courts for years.
It is illegal to insult the King or the royal family. It is legal to criticize him, however, and I’ve heard of no cases of anyone actually tried for lese-majesté. Still, the press and the political parties walk on tiptoes when dealing with the King.
If an investigating magistrate believes he has serious grounds to suspect you of a crime, you can be held in “preventative prison”. If you have money, your lawyers will find some kind of way to get you out eventually. If not, not. We’ve seen this come up recently in the fraud cases of Mario Conde and Javier de la Rosa, high-rolling Michael Milken types with political connections, and in the cases of government ministers like Jose Barrionuevo and Rafael Vera, involved in anti-terrorist death-squads. Those guys all kept bouncing in and out of jail before trial. Guys without the high profile just sit there and wait.
The libel and slander laws are much tougher than in the US. Pedro Pacheco, a politician, got thrown in the slam for calling one of his opponents a “crook”.
We have 6 broadcast TV stations here in Barcelona. Two are run by the Spanish government, two by the Catalan government, and two are in private hands. The government-owned stations are generally considered to manipulate coverage in favor of the party in power. Very recently the Socialist Party timed the relative coverage given on the govt-owned news to various politicians. Eight of the most-covered pols belonged to the Popular Party, in power. Only one was Socialist, the opposition party.
You can own a long gun for hunting or target shooting, but it has to be registered and you have to have a licence, which is not easy but not impossible to get. Pistols are very difficult to obtain legally but available on the black market if you have plenty of cash and the necessary connections. Petty criminals usually can’t get pistols, but the real professionals can.
The death penalty has been illegal since the death of Franco.
Discrimination on the basis of age is not only not illegal, but encouraged. The government gives tax breaks to companies who hire workers under 30 or over 50. Unemployment is about 15%. This makes it hard for you to find a new job if you lose yours and you fall into the 30-50 bracket. Sex discrimination is technically illegal but widespread…want ads openly call for “girls under 30” or “men”.
Prostitution and drugs are illegal but tolerated. The police bust big-time dealers and traffickers and pimps, but leave hookers and users alone. I guess if you shoot up in front of the police station, they’ll run you in.
Pornography is widespread and open. Right there at your newsstand you have the daily papers, the newsmagazines, and stuff imported from Sweden with titles like “Dopplefick”. Extreme violence and softcore sex are common on TV. I remember seeing “Reservoir Dogs” on one of the government channels at the dinner hour, and one of the private stations specializes in B-grade kung fu flicks and Italian shoot-em-ups.
Spanish is the official language and the Constitution says that it is the duty of every citizen to know it.
I know I’m being long-winded, but a few other points that I’d forgotten. In Spain:
The Roman Catholic Church is the established church and the government gives it some funding every year, which mostly goes to church-run charities and schools. There’s a check-off box on your income tax form, so you can say if you want a few bucks of your tax money to go to the Church or not. Most people check yes. The Church really doesn’t have too much power anymore.
Gay rights is not nearly as big an issue as it is in the US. Here gays are tolerated and generally left alone–there’s kind of a “what you do is none of my business” attitude among most straights, which is reciprocated by a lack of “in-your-face” attitude among gays.
Immigrants, mostly black African and North African, are none too popular, though there aren’t many of them. There was a nasty little race riot in Terrassa, a suburb of Barcelona, a couple of months ago. Gypsies are widely discriminated against.
I have never heard of anyone except professional athletes getting drug-tested in Spain.
Everyone has “free” health care. Well, it costs me 8% of my monthly paycheck, which my employer has to match, which is a lot more than I’d pay for health insurance in the US. Dental is not included and neither is anything they determine to be “optional”, which includes prostheses. Then again, I’m also paying for widows and orphans and stuff. Everyday care is lousy, but emergency care is excellent.
ha, too bad my Scottish Nationalist roommate is out of town, this could be fun 
Seriously though android. It is true that Americans tend to identify with our ancestors’ homelands more than Europeans do. But things aren’t quite as simple over there as you put it. You aren’t just British; you’re English, Welsh, Scottish; I hear there’s a Cornish movement coming back as well. I know at least some Scottish who don’t consider themselves British.
Meanwhile in France there are Bretons, Basques and Catalans, amongst others. I know of Bretons who don’t consider themselves French; the Basques in France probably don’t either, and dunno about the Catalans (I believe some of the Catalans in Spain don’t consider themselves Spanish - Lawrence??)
Here, we might “label and divide” but we still all consider ourselves Americans.
oh, except for the Texans, that is.
Doghouse, “I think it may be tragic if that really is the rationale behind such freedom of speech restrictions, because to me they only seem to be fostering what they try to prevent.”
You are correct, it is true that the Germans are more authoritarian than many other, so perhaps a different way of dealing with their past with a view to preventing it from happening again was called for? To date it has worked and extreme-right sentiment has remained in its kennel where it belongs, this particular restricition of free speech has certainly not fostered what it was designed to prevent, though if you have sources that say something else I’d be more than happy to have a look.
This is not to say that there are no incidences of neo-facism in Germany, however that is also true of England and France, both of whom have had members of more or less openly right-wing parties elected to their parliaments in the past. The incidence of such behaviour just seems higher in Germany because right-wingers in Germany make for better headlines than right-wingers anywhere else.
Germans believe in free speech as much as the next man, and nobody likes having the state tell them what to do. However the wholesale slaughter of several milion innocent people seems like a pretty good reason to try anything at all that might help prevent it reoccuring and the Germans themselves seem fine with giving up one tiny littel freedom to hold an opinion that most people find repugnant anyway, so where is the problem?
It is very easy to judge something that is so far away, historicaly as well as geographically, and to make fine claims for intellectual freedoms. However in the Holocaust we see that, under some circumstances, the consequences may be much much larger than anyone could imagine. Implying that the Germans’ “cult of obediance” was somehow the root of the problem is condecending and very simplistic. Whenever I have seen war criminals held to account for their actions in court, whether they be German camp guards or French collaborateurs or whatever, it always strikes me just how much these men look like anybody else.
Ruadh, of course it was a simplistic answer. I think people are slowly withdrawing from a British identity to a more local identity, for me English/Lancastrian but, and this is the big difference, the goverment would * never * make this choice for me and start calling me British-Indian or whatever *they [i/] thought was appropriate.
Ruadh, good question. I live in Catalonia, which for simplicity’s sake we’ll divide into three parts: the city of Barcelona, the Barcelona industrial suburbs, and the countryside. Barcelona city is about half Catalan-speaking and half Spanish-speaking. The industrial suburbs are 90% Spanish-speaking (most people who live there moved up from southern Spain in the 50s and 60s), and the countryside is 90% Catalan-speaking. We just had elections yesterday, of all convenient things. About 10% of the people in all of Catalonia voted for ERC, which is the Catalan independence party and whose voters consider themselves only Catalan, not Spanish at all. About 40% of the votes went to Convergence and Union, the Catalan nationalist but not pro-independence party. I’d guess that about one-fourth of the Convergence voters would also like to see an independent Catalonia and that most of the rest consider themselves more Catalan than Spanish. The other 50% of the votes went to parties that are not Catalan nationalist. So yeah, it’s true that some Catalans consider themselves non-Spanish, and that there is a strong nationalist identity, but that many Catalans consider themselves to be Spanish as well as Catalan…and in the industrial suburbs, a lot of people consider themselves to be Spanish, not Catalan at all.
Where’s the “big difference”? Our government doesn’t either.
On the other hand apparently ticket sellers at Wembley get to decide who is English and who is Scottish
ps Thanks Lawrence.
The Nazi related activities and expressions illegal in Germany are relatively well defined. I.e. you can hold and express views only marginally different, and be in compliance. The reason for making the Nazi related activities and expressions is a good one: after the war, part of the process of punishing at least some of the evil that was done was declaring various Nazi organizations illegal (done by allied war tribunals) A lot of current German laws find their roots in that. Also, I imagine when the allieds decided to let (west) Germany become an independent country again, they wanted some reassurance that they would not have to fight that same war again, making some of these laws a necessary part of the new country’s constitution. Germany has enforced these pretty strictly probably for two reasons: First, to be able to normalize and tighten relationships with the rest of Europe, which eyed Germany with understandable wariness. (And still does, we liked Germany a whole lot better when there were two of them) Second, out of a sense of shame. Imagine if it was not just your countrymen 7 generations ago that held slaves, but your actual parents and neighbours. Political correctness would go a whole lot further than the currently much debated quotas and reverse discrimination.
Iso makes a good point. I understand why the situation exists, considering the way the Allied conquerors would have felt about letting the warmongers they just defeated to remain around. I don’t really blame countries like France being nervous about a unified Germany, especially if it ever had a uptick in Nazi activity. Maybe this isn’t the same as the BBC kind of stuff I was mentioning earlier.
I think it still remains true, though, that European countries place more restrictions on the populations. There are still remnants of the monarchy/feudal system there, if I see things correctly.
Someone else pointed out that for a bit it was for practical purposes illegal to be a Communist in America. If not arrested, one certainly could be a social outcast, fired, and placed under intense scrutiny from org.s like the FBI.
Ruadh, the big difference is that i have heard Clinton use, on many occasions, the phrases African/Mexican/Italian etc Americans…
Android: so what? Clinton isn’t giving these groups a label that they don’t already use to describe themselves.
I’ve heard Tony Blair refer specifically to Scots and Welsh, too.
Ruadh…it seems different to me…maybe though, i just accept so easily the age old divisions we have but find it harder to accept such reinforcements when they seem to further divide along ethnic grounds. To me, the division of the British into the Scots/English/Welsh is of no consequence (we know we are very different) whereas here in the US, it seems at the very least unhelpful. It’s not very convinving i know, but that’s the way it appears to me.