h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Zagreb....quick aside....only Coca Cola has the "real thing".....surprised the BBC didn't moderate for copyright infringement on that comment!

anhaga ...don't be concerned about the US, or Europe, for that matter.

Its' my general observation that both would much prefer to mind their own business...if the world would only allow it.

Everytime there is a dispute in the world, where do the people look?

Yep...US and Europe. And if we remain silent, we are uncaring slobs...if we get involved we are trying to run the world.

"Catch 22".

There is a downside to being here....but I don't mind living with it.

NM

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

taken from 'The Peace Race': Martin Luther King on the Middle East What would Martin do? by Martin Luther King, Jr. (http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0223-03.htm)

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=2938

just stirring the pot

It's cultural imperialism.

It's star-spangled golden-arched finger-lickin' bad

I have beside me a desk encyclopaedia which acknowledges that imperialism may be political, military, economic, financial or cultural, and that it is usually practised by the 'developed' on the 'under-developed', usually exploitatively.

Notably, the powers that seek imperialism both coined and promote the euphemistic 'globalisation', which is, in fact, cultural imperialism.

So, military aggression does not have a monopoly on imperialism, much, one suspects, to the chagrin of those who seek to use it willy-nilly like boys in the playground.

Interestingly, in closing, there is no 'intellectual imperialism'*, which, I venture, is the only kind of imperialism where Researcher Fairy Strange would have a case.

(*although the English language, for example, could be argued to be a kind of pervasive cultural/intellectual imperialism, and (US designed) word-processors' insidious attempts to pervert the spelling thereof (by sewing seeds of doubt in even the most sure-footed) would be another.)

I'd argue that globalization as the word is commonly used covers economic or financial imperialism in addition to cultural imperialism, but I don't really know enough about globalisation to comment.

And spelling ... 'isation'

It's a pun, Doc. And if you were sitting in Michigan, your English teacher would mark you incorrect if you used the letter S instead of Z in "globalization."

Didn't you get the joke? I wrote how I felt about "globalization" (US style spelling), but said I was not qualified to comment on "globalisation" (UK spelling).

Subcom - a quick question... If someone is teaching English (wherever in the world the lesson may be held) surely English is what should be taught.

If you start using z instead of s, you are speaking American.

You know, the one American I've ever been aquainted with to whom I took an immediate dislike was a queue jumper in Paris (I've alluded to him somewhere before, I think in this thread). He wandered passed a long line of travelers at the currency exchange booth in I forget which train station, stormed up to the window that had a large sign reading "closed" in forty-seven languages, put his head down on the counter to talk through the little hole the money's supposed to go through, and shouted "does anybody in there speak American." He needed change for the phone.

Please, let's keep calling it English, no matter what its local abberations.

Anhaga

P. S. I hope you all can understand my Canadian English.

You know, the one American I've ever been aquainted with to whom I took an immediate dislike was a queue jumper in Paris (I've alluded to him somewhere before, I think in this thread). He wandered passed a long line of travelers at the currency exchange booth in I forget which train station, stormed up to the window that had a large sign reading "closed" in forty-seven languages, put his head down on the counter to talk through the little hole the money's supposed to go through, and shouted "does anybody in there speak American." He needed change for the phone.

Please, let's keep calling it English, no matter what its local abberations.

Anhaga

P. S. I hope you all can understand my Canadian English.

sorry about my double post. Something's wonky with my browser. I think I might have to boycott it.

If the written English language were consistent, then I would quibble with you, but please excuse me while the tough coughs as he ploughs the dough.

It's a popularity contest, and whichever teacher beat her students severely enough won the contest.

Oh well. In a few centuries, someone will be running this site through an English to Mandarin translation program so the majority of the world will be able to read it. They'll look at our arguments over BritEnglish vs. American English and laugh.

-ization may well be the correct anglo-english spelling in this case ... perhaps a case of US imperialist culture taking an even firmer grip on backwards Britain.

Special relationship indeed.

Today your language, tomorrow "Mikki-D's", Coca Cola.....


Who knows...we might take your government next!

NM

The Nike Labour Party - just doing it
McDonald's Queen Elizabeth II (would she need to where the wig and clown-boots?)
Wallmart House of Commons

The Enron Conservatives ....

too big, too bent, too bankrupt.

Read some William Blum and Noam Chomsky books for a start. And maybe you could also look at www.counterpunch.com