# Today's News from Europe **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [July 11, 2005, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/todays-news-from-europe/311970 "2005-07-11T12:06:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Dead\_Badger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/848f3c/32.png) [@Dead\_Badger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dead_Badger)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/todays-news-from-europe/311970/41 "2005-07-12T12:54:21Z")
> [@Paul in Saudi](#): > > OK, so nasty people do nasty things everywhere. Could the Europeans please quit telling us Americans how superior their model for soicety is? Thank you very much. Since this thread has been quite spectacularly civil so far, I shall restrict myself to asking exactly _why_ you felt the London bombings made for a good opportunity to have a go at “the Europeans” (that famously homogenous and not-at-all pluralistic group). Hmm? Felt it was soon enough, did you? Thought, “ooh, fiery dismemberment; you know what _this_ proves…”? Or had the “learn to think with your arse” kit just arrived mailorder from Japan, and you just _had_ to try it out somewhere? Were you channelling the spirits of dead dickheads from the Darwin awards who felt they had one thing left to say? Why, man, why? Did Europeans piss on your cat this morning? Did you get a papercut trying to slice the world news section under the misapprehension that it was some new form of albino bacon, and demand revenge? Why, dammit? And who are you talking to? Where are the GD threads of nearly four years ago entitled “9/11 and why it proves a generous welfare state and rigid worker protections are good methods of skyscraper protection”? Nowhere, I hear you say? Good Lord! Oh, sod it; no I won’t restrict myself to that. I’ll suggest that I know exactly why you did it, and that it’s because you’re a cunt. Fuck you, buddy, and fuck your stupid fucking inferiority complex and your fictional fucking Europeans and your ludicrously fucking shite sense of timing. Shove it up your fucking arse. Didn’t see you with your searing indictments of American society immediately post-9/11, for some _strange_ fucking reason. Didn’t see me with them, either, actually, or indeed the vast majority of “the Europeans”. That’s because most of us, just like most of your countrymen but oh-so-clearly unlike you, have a sense of common fucking decency. Holy underwhelming revelations, Batman! Europe has _problems_? SHIT! I must have fucking missed them when I was phoning my friends the other day to see if they were still ALIVE! Thank heaven we have cunts like **Paul in Saudi** to point this out to us! Make more; arseholes of the world, procreate! But for the love of God keep putting them in Saudi; I think the welter of searing TRUTH would be just too much if they were allowed more than five items of news with which to form their blazingly insightful communiques… ---
**Author:** ![kidchameleon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/898d66/32.png) [@kidchameleon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kidchameleon)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/todays-news-from-europe/311970/42 "2005-07-12T13:20:20Z")
> [@Shirley Ujest](#): > > Let’s not forget the Belgians.[/size] I understand this is the pit, but is there no limit to your profanity? ---
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Tan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/charlie_tan/32/12582_2.png) [@Charlie\_Tan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Tan)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/todays-news-from-europe/311970/43 "2005-07-12T15:00:36Z")
Are you sure plasmas are out of your range? 42" are down to $1800 for brand names here (and that’s with a 25% sales tax). And some more advice you didn’t ask for. Don’t skimp on speakers, which are often the weak link in the sound systems. ---
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Tan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/charlie_tan/32/12582_2.png) [@Charlie\_Tan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Tan)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/todays-news-from-europe/311970/44 "2005-07-12T15:01:40Z")
Firefox is not my friend. Wrong thread. Move along folks, nothing to see here. ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/todays-news-from-europe/311970/45 "2005-07-12T15:41:00Z")
> [@rjung](#): > > Sure, but offhand I don’t see a lot of Europeans (leaders or otherwise) going around telling the rest of the world how their way is superior to all others and circumventing nations and international organizations that don’t agree with them. Nah, you see 'em stealing food from starving children in the oil-for-food scandal or standing around with their thumbs up their asses waiting for the United States to take care of the Serbs for them. That’s sooo much better … ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/todays-news-from-europe/311970/46 "2005-07-12T15:53:57Z")
I started a very poor Wikipedia page on the [Italian Unabomber](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Unabomber) in the hope that someone would fill in all the empty bits. No luck so far. Badger, bite me (This is the pit after all). What the heck have the Europeans done in the last (oh, say a century) to be proud of? I admit the British did manage to knock the grime off Westminster, but other than that? Two collective suicide attempts, retrenchment in the arts, colonialism curtained only by bankruptcy, gas chambers, gulags, ethnic cleansing. Has Europe produced any important music (aside from the Beatles) in our lifetime? (I am sure I am missing something in the music area, feel free to embarrass me.) Meanwhile of course America has the shame of (what?) George Wallace and the Tuskegee Experiment? Badgers? Badgers!! We don’t need no stinkin’ badgers! ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/todays-news-from-europe/311970/47 "2005-07-12T16:25:51Z")
> [@Paul in Saudi](#): > > Has Europe produced any important music (aside from the Beatles) in our lifetime? > > (I am sure I am missing something in the music area, feel free to embarrass me.) Where should we start? The Sex Pistols? Kraftwerk? Bartok (well, he’s within some people’s lifetime)? ---
**Author:** ![Dublin11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Dublin11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dublin11)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/todays-news-from-europe/311970/48 "2005-07-12T16:26:02Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > Too bad I don’t know your location so I can’t lampoon the foreign news coverage of your poorer quality papers. I live in Ireland, if you really want to know. Here’s a thought, any time I start a Pit thread moaning about an entire foreign continent, and all of the people who live therein, based any one of the crappy newspapers we have here, you carry on. You might be waiting a while, though. ---
**Author:** ![Dead\_Badger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/848f3c/32.png) [@Dead\_Badger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dead_Badger)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/todays-news-from-europe/311970/49 "2005-07-12T16:44:22Z")
> [@Paul in Saudi](#): > > What the heck have the Europeans done in the last (oh, say a century) to be proud of? So you’re essentially saying that yes, you _are_ using the London bombings and assorted other tragedies as an opportunity to be a twat? Just so’s we’re clear, like. Seriously; am I being whooshed here? Can this thread really be summed up as “oh ha ha, little bits of people; what a stunning opportunity for some trans-atlantic chain-yanking!”, or did you have some broader and as-yet-unclear Great Message, besides taking cheap shots? In short, are you the Moses of Twats, or are you just a twat? And when did you become one? Because I really don’t remember you being this much of one before. In case it wasn’t obvious by now, the point is this: if you want to argue with some snot-nosed Europeans, go and find some fucking examples of them, and argue with them. Or ignore them, I don’t care. I’d probably join in arguing against them, assuming they started it. But don’t come in here like some demented gibbon, a few days after a bunch of Londoners were blown up by terrorists and go off on one at _all_ Europeans, as if being the victims of a terrorist attack proved something. Because it isn’t big and it isn’t clever; it _makes you look like a cunt_. So take your cutesy catchphrases and stuff 'em, along with your asinine moral relativism and your equally stupid timing. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/todays-news-from-europe/311970/50 "2005-07-12T17:10:53Z")
> [@Paul in Saudi](#): > > What the heck have the Europeans done in the last (oh, say a century) to be proud of? The Rolling Stones. ---
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Tan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/charlie_tan/32/12582_2.png) [@Charlie\_Tan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Tan)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/todays-news-from-europe/311970/51 "2005-07-12T17:27:38Z")
> [@Paul in Saudi](#): > > What the heck have the Europeans done in the last (oh, say a century) to be proud of? I admit the British did manage to knock the grime off Westminster, but other than that? I’ll assume that you’re not trolling, just being terminally stupid. I hope you’ll accept Wikipedia as a source: [Albert Einstein](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein) [Marie Curie](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie) [Wernher von Braun](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_von_Braun) [Alexander Fleming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Fleming) [Rudyard Kipling](http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1907/index.html) [William Butler Yeats](http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1923/index.html) [George Bernard Shaw](http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1925/index.html) [Hermann Hesse](http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1946/index.html) [T. S. Eliot](http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1948/index.html) [Bertrand Russell](http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1950/index.html) [Albert Camus](http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1957/index.html) [Jean-Paul Sartre](http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1964/index.html) [Samuel Beckett](http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1969/index.html) [Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn](http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1970/index.html) [William Golding](http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1983/index.html) [Charlie Chaplin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Chaplin) [Igor Stravinsky](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Stravinskij) [Pablo Picasso](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picasso) [Ludwig Mies van der Rohe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mies_van_der_rohe) [Douglas Adams](Douglas Adams) [Paul Dirac](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dirac) [Stephen Hawking](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking) [C. S. Lewis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis) [A. A. Milne](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._A._Milne) [Salman Rushdie](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_Rushdie) [Ludwig Wittgenstein](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein) [Kingsley Amis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsley_Amis) [J. R. R. Tolkien](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien) [Alfred Hitchcock](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Hitchcock) [Cary Grant](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cary_Grant) [Alec Guinness](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alec_Guiness) [The Rolling Stones](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_Stones) The coding takes fucking forever and I’ve only skimmed some names. There are film makers, actors, writers, poets, artists, playwrights, scientists, business people, soldiers, inventors, musicians… ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/todays-news-from-europe/311970/52 "2005-07-12T17:36:31Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > So if you are part of a group that plans and executes a bombing killing a non combatant in another nation in order to achieve a political goal, you are a…? Duck. Sorry, but this thead was in dire need of a Monty Python reference. > [@Paul in Saudi](#): > > What the heck have the Europeans done in the last (oh, say a century) to be proud of? See the small print above. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/todays-news-from-europe/311970/53 "2005-07-12T17:55:11Z")
Madame Curie died of radiation poisoning. Might want to recinsider her. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Tan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/charlie_tan/32/12582_2.png) [@Charlie\_Tan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Tan)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/todays-news-from-europe/311970/54 "2005-07-12T18:08:07Z")
Sure. And some of them made their fortune in the US. Doesn’t take away neither their contributions nor origins. ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/todays-news-from-europe/311970/55 "2005-07-12T19:19:47Z")
Ireland gave us **Peter O’Toole** and Guiness Beer. Scotland gave us: [John Hannah](http://www.johnhannah.net/) so, that’s got him going for them! ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/todays-news-from-europe/311970/56 "2005-07-12T19:26:21Z")
> [@duffer](#): > > It’s an almost daily occurance to hear other countries say how wrong the U.S. is on a slew of policies and actions. How is that not a way of saying they have the better policy ideas? Read my post again. Europeans saying they’re “better than the US” is not the same as Europeans saying they’re “better than anyone else on the planet.” The former is a fairly low bar to clear, especially given the screwups we’ve performed in the last five years. The latter is akin to delivering commandments on stone tablets from Mt. Sinai, which too many Americans indulge in on a regular basis. > [@Lonesomepolecat](#): > > Nah, you see 'em stealing food from starving children in the oil-for-food scandal or standing around with their thumbs up their asses waiting for the United States to take care of the Serbs for them. That’s sooo much better … See? ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/todays-news-from-europe/311970/57 "2005-07-12T19:27:50Z")
> [@Shirley Ujest](#): > > Ireland gave us **Peter O’Toole**! They have always been redundant. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![DarkPrince](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ce73a5/32.png) [@DarkPrince](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DarkPrince)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/todays-news-from-europe/311970/58 "2005-07-12T20:44:36Z")
> [@Paul in Saudi](#): > > Has Europe produced any important music (aside from the Beatles) in our lifetime? The [numa-numa](http://newgrounds.com/portal/view/206373) song, duh. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/todays-news-from-europe/311970/59 "2005-07-13T02:16:59Z")
I apologize to Badger. I apologize to London. In this time of suffering in war, it is not appropriate to use the action of our enemies to score cheap points. I do not think I was doing so, but perhaps this is simply not the time to have this discussion. Talk amongst yourselves. I doubt I will reenter this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Tan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/charlie_tan/32/12582_2.png) [@Charlie\_Tan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Tan)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/todays-news-from-europe/311970/60 "2005-07-13T07:48:30Z")
Coward. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/todays-news-from-europe/311970.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/todays-news-from-europe/311970.md?page=4)