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

OK so our town has a lot of immigrants. And the largest group is the Turkish community. This morning, as part of a weekend programme run by the intercultural society, we attended a Prayer for Peace. The Protestant, Catholic and Muslin churches were represented and the square was crowded with German and Turkish people.

The ceremony was very moving even though most of it was in Turkish. The prayers, readings and speeches were translated into German. It was very solemn and everyone followed it intently. At the end we all joined hands for a blessing. I was standing near a (Turkish) colleague at the time and we really did all join hands, Muslims and Christians.

The readings emphasised the themes of brotherhood and a saying from the Koran "If you kill one man, you kill mankind" summed it all up. The Protestant deacon read from one of Paul's letters to the Corinthians, saying that he had planted a tree, but the tree only grows by the grace of God. A simple message that is also surely shared by the Islamic theology.

After more than 30 years, the Turkish community is accepted in our little rural area.

I look forward to the day when it is no longer necessary to demonstrate that we are making an effort to understand and tolerate each other. We just do.

What a boob! Now I'm at work with a decent sized screen, I have noticed my typo in the title.

with embarrassment. I wonder if I can get it corrected.

What a lovely idea. After all we are all just humans.

We wouldn't usually do this, but as this is a) a small thread so far, and b) a matter of racial concern, I've edited the posting titles.

Thank you - you're an angel.

I received a sinister e-mail from someone I'd never heard of which was entirely in German. It turned out to be a racist rant, giving out about Turkish and Byelo-Russian immigrants taking over Germany and spreading crime. This seems to have been distributed all over the world by virus.

It shows that not everybody has accepted the Turkish community.

Oh no, they certainly haven't. Which is why there was the need for this service. To show that the majority of people don't think like that. When you're all working (or playing football or making music) together, there's no time or space for prejudices. The people who rant like that don't seem to have time to work, play football or make music to a great extent.

I refuse to generalise, but I think you know what I am trying to say. It is true that the enormous influx of Russian immigrants with German passports and German ancestry were given large amounts of money to settle back here - many of them took advantage of the handouts. Their German passports meant that they had unlimited access to work or unemployment benefits ("taking work from Germans"), and nearly everyone knows, in contrast, of cases of little old ladies who have lived in Germany all their lives and paid their contributions all that time but are living on a minimal pension, not daring to ask for what they are entitled to.

The Russian immigrants were supplied with publications informing them of benefits they can apply for from the state on arrival.

But a lot of the fault for this unfairness is with the system, with the government. Because a German government of a few generations ago turfed thousands of people out of the country, the present day Government is struggling to make amends with them and welcome them back in.

But there are also many people who have not taken advantage of this, and have come here, rolled up their sleeves and earned themselves and existence and made an effort to learn German.

There are other aspects such as the not inconsiderable problem of criminality (for which a high proportion Turkish and "Russian" groups are responsible. But also the Neonazis are not innocent here either)

Funnily enough, I don't think I got the e-mail you mention. How did you find out where it had come from? Are there any groups in Ireland causing this kind of problem?

I appreciate there there may now be someone who will read this post superficially and yikes it. However, taken in the context of the whole thread, I am confident that it can in no way be considered to be offensive to anyone. All facts are, to the best of my knowledge and experience, verifiable.

How did I know where it came from? A friend of a guy I work with works for and Internet Service Provider analysing spam. His company was hit by a massive spam attack just after I received the e-mail. They traced it back to a single university in Germany, but it could have been sent from somewhere else and faked to look like it came from there.