George W. Bush

[Art]

Terechu, is religion taught in Spanish schools today? If so, is it taught from a Christian faith perspective, or more as like sociological reporting of beliefs and practices?

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Terechu, enseñan religión en las escuelas españoles hoy? ¿Sí lo hacen, lo enseñan con una perspectiva de la fe cristiana, o más como un reportaje sociológico de creencias y prácticas?

[Art]

Ken, in another thread, claimed that there is no movement to impeach Bush, Cheney and other members of the administration. Dream on.

A simple Google search on "impeach Bush" will prove otherwise.

Websites, such as www.AfterDowningStreet.org and www.ImpeachPac.org, are playing an important role.

The Nation has recently published a detailed argument for impeaching Bush by Elizabeth Holtzman, an attorney and four terms Congresswoman who played a key role in House impeachment proceedings against Nixon.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060130/holtzman

A Zogby poll shows that 52% (against 43%) of Americans think President Bush should be impeached if he wiretapped American citizens without obtaining judicial warrants.
http://www.moderateindependent.com/V401 ... chpoll.htm
Hasn't he already admitted to that?

The Democratic Party is actively pursuing Bush's impeachment. Individual members of Congress are investigating impeachment and some are already proposing it.

If it still seems unlikely, as things stand now, that the move toward impeachment will gain enough support, remember the Bush administration still has about three years and that the sand is continually shifting with the tides.

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Ken, en otro hilo, aseguró que no hay ningún movimiento para acusar [impeach] a Bush, Cheney y otros miembros de la administración. ¡Ni en sueños!

Una búsqueda de Google simple sobre "impeach Bush" demostrará de otra manera.

Sitios web, como www.AfterDowningStreet.org y www.ImpeachPac.org, juegan un papel importante.

La Nation recientemente ha publicado un argumento detallado para acusar [impeach] a Bush por Elizabeth Holtzman, un abogado y Congresista de cuatro mandatos quien jugó un papel clave en actas de acusación de Casa contra Nixon.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060130/holtzman

Una encuesta de Zogby muestra que el 52% (contra el 43%) de Americanos piensa que el Presidente Bush debería ser acusado si él interviniera a ciudadanos americanos sin obtener autorizaciones judiciales.
http://www.moderateindependent.com/V401 ... chpoll.htm
¿Ya no ha admitido Bush a esto?

El Partido Democratica está proseguiendo activamente con la acusación de Bush. Unos miembros individuales del Congreso investigan la acusación y unos ya lo proponen.

Si todavía parece improbable, dada todas cosas ahora, que el movimiento hacia la acusación ganará bastante apoyo, recorda que la administración de Bush todavía tiene aproximadamente tres años y que las arenas continuamente muevan con las mareas.

[Terechu]

Terechu, is religion taught in Spanish schools today? If so, is it taught from a Christian faith perspective, or more as like sociological reporting of beliefs and practices?

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Terechu, enseñan religión en las escuelas españoles hoy? ¿Sí lo hacen, lo enseñan con una perspectiva de la fe cristiana, o más como un reportaje sociológico de creencias y prácticas?

Yes Art, religion is taught as a voluntary subject in all schools, but those children whose parents don't wish them to have religion get ethics classes instead. Religion is usually taught from the perspective of Christian faith, as you say. Since the Constitution clearly separates Church and State, there is a planned reform now to let the Church take care of teaching religion in schools, but without allowing the teachers to give any grades. The Church fears, and rightly so, that if students no longer can use religion to up their grade average they will not choose it as a subject and thus nobody would attend religion class....and...since nobody goes to church in this country, either, the Catholic Church would lose a lot a power over a very short period of time.
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Sí Art, la religión se está impartiendo como asignatura voluntaria en todas las escuelas, aunque los chicos cuyos padren no deséen que sus hijos tengan religión reciben clases de ética. La religión normalmente se imparte desde la perspectiva de la fé cristiana, como tú dices. Dado que la Constitución separa la Iglesia y el Estado, hay un plan de reforma para que la Iglesia se haga cargo de las clases de religión, pero sin que los profesores puedan poner notas. La Iglesia teme, con razón, que si los alumnos no pueden mejorar su media con la nota de religión, no irán a esa clase...y...como en este país no va nadie a misa,la Iglesia católica perdería muchísimo poder a corto plazo.

[Barbara Alonso Novellino]

Found this very interesting...

Barbara

http://www.sunnytees.com/history.html

[Eli]

That page is laughable.

Everything it says is true, but it is all ONE sided. The United States was attacked, Unitedstadians were kidnaped, Unitedstadian embassy destroyed... blah blah blah. Lol just too darn funny. All true though.

The trouble with THAT page is that the world is not a one sided thing, everything we do has consequences and while most of the world most of the time puts up with the abuses of the leading power some eventually say enough already and they fight back. Do you honestly believe even for a second that the US got to be the most powerful nation in the world without stepping on a toe or two? Unreal how brainwashed most Unitedstadians are.

Think for a moment, why do you think they attack US buildings, embassies ships ect and not Canadian, Italian or Mongolian?

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Esa pagina es un chiste.

Todo lo que dice es cierto, pero todo es visto desde UN punto de vista. Los Estados Unidos fueron atacados, los Estadounidenses fueron hechos rehenes, la embajada Estadounidense destruida... bla bla bla. HA No me hagas reir, todo cierto sin embargo.

El problema con ESA pagina es que en el mundo hay mas de un punto de vista. Todo lo que hacemes trae consequencias, y aunque la mayor parte del mundo generalmente soporta los abusos de la potencia mas poderosa, eventualmente algunos dicen 'basta ya' y pelean por defender su punto de vista. Pudes decir honestamente que crees aunque sea por un solo minuto que los Estados Unidos llegaron a ser la mayor potencia del mundo sin atropellar a nadie? Increible que tan lavado tiene el cerebro algunos Estadounidenses.

Piensa por un momento, porque crees que atacan las embajadas, edificios y buques de los EE.UU. y no los de Canada, Italia o Mongolia?

[Manny]

Sorry Charlie but I think that the people of the United States of America are called "Americans" not Unitedstadians.

[Eli]

Hi Linus, you are correct; The people of the United States are called Americans... the trouble is that so are the people of Canada, Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Cuba, Greenland and all other American countries. And well, I was speaking of Unitedstadians not Americans.

Google Estadounidense, you'll get almost 5 million results, clearly the rest of America call Unitedstadians Estadounidenses. That is a Spanish word, so the English translation would be Unitedstadian. In short Estados Unidos= United States, citizen of Estados Unidos= Estadounidense English translation= Unitedstadian.

As to the validity of the word, you should keep in mind that there are almost 800 million people in America, and of those only 280 million are Unitedstadians.

Elí

[Xose]

"Support Our Troops and support President Bush for having the courage, political or militarily, to address what so many who preceded him didn't have the backbone to do, both Democrat and Republican. This is not a political thing to be hashed over in an election year this is an AMERICAN thing. This is about our Freedom and the Freedom of our children in years to come."

Jesus what a crock of crap.

The freedom to torture? The freedom to perform illegal wiretaps? The freedom to kidnap and send innocent people to foreign countries to be "interrogated"?

Sorry, Barbara, these are NOT American "things". They are fascist things that I, for one, am disgusted by.

[Manny]

To Charlie from linus,
Yes, you're also correct, but unfortunelty (for you, I believe), the people from the U.S. of A. are called Americans. We have North America, Central America and South America but the only ones called Americans are "as you say it" the Unitedestadiuns". Come on, please don't invent vocabulary. I've had people ask me if I was American and after I answered yes they say why do you call yourselves American. If you're from a different part of the American continent and call yourself American, I on my part have no problem accepting it. My problem is that if a pigeon craps on me in Spain (for example) I know that it's probalby an American, excuse me, (Unitestadium) pigeon.

[Xose]

In a shocking development, I agree with Manny on this.

You're an intelligent guy, Eli, and you know that when someone speaks of an American that they are talking about someone from the United States. That may run your European sensibilities the wrong way, but to pretend that other people refer to us (in English) as "UnitedStatians" is obviously untrue. The English, South Africans, Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians...hell, even the Japanese and Chinese, for whom English is not the native language, refer to us as Americans.

In the English language, the word for citizens of the United States is "American." You don't have to like it, obviously, but that's the way it is.

Xosé

[Xose]

Oh, and one more thing. North America and South America are two, count 'em TWO seperate continents.

If you disagree, then you'll have to agree that Europe and Asia are more properly named Eurasia, right?

[Bob]

I used to refer to us as "norteamericanos" in communications with people in Europe, well aware that Canadians and Mexicans may take exception. Ah, well. Language is a strange and living thing, and has no real logic to it.

Now that there is the European Union, can we really talk about Spaniards, Italians, etc.?

Bob

[Eli]

To Charlie from linus,
Yes, you're also correct, but unfortunelty (for you, I believe), the people from the U.S. of A. are called Americans. We have North America, Central America and South America but the only ones called Americans are "as you say it" the Unitedestadiuns". Come on, please don't invent vocabulary.

Hey again Linus,

I can’t say I follow this part “I've had people ask me if I was American and after I answered yes they say why do you call yourselves American. If you're from a different part of the American continent and call yourself American, I on my part have no problem accepting it. My problem is that if a pigeon craps on me in Spain (for example) I know that it's probalby an American, excuse me, (Unitestadium) pigeon. ” it appears to me that your thoughts were running faster than your fingers and there are parts missing there. I can’t try to figure it out as the possible ramifications of that thought process is immense.

I will address the first part though. Socially speaking there is one continent America, geologically speaking there are two; South America and North America. North America separated from Pangea millions of years before South America did, since it started drifting westwards long before South America did the same it was 1/3 of the way towards Asia by the time South America started is westwardly voyage. The North American continental plate ran into the Asian plate and that slowed it down considerably (it still does), the South American continental plate has and still does run amok in it’s westward route. Eventually South America caught up with North America and they collide, when that happened volcanic eruptions due to the pressure put on by the South American continental plate on the North American one created the chain of islands we know today as the Carribean, because the continents were still rather far apart a continental bridge was never formed. As South America kept rushing westwardly it eventually collided with North America again and the process repeated itself, being that they were much closer together Central America was formed. Central America thereby does not rest in either of the continental plates, it rests on the Pacific and Atlantic plates, in time because of the different speeds of travel South America moving at about one inch per year while North America at a very slow pace of only 1/4 as much South America will leave North America behind and move out into the Pacific by itself in another 100 million years or so. If by then if you still wish to call Unitedstadians Americans I’d have no problem with that, in the meantime however, as I stated before of the 800 million Americans in America most call the citizens of the United States Estadounidenses and have provided proof of it for you, just google the word you’ll get almost 5 million results, or you could do the same in Yahoo and you’ll get almost 10 million results. Clearly we call them Estadounidenses not Americans. Now, you should keep in mind that this is in Spanish and Spanish speaking people tend to speak in Spanish so the ‘issue’ didn’t arise before. Over the last couple hundred years Unitedstadians got away with calling themselves Americans because well it is a big world and people in Spanish speaking nations called Unitedstadians Estadounidenses, so, it never occurred to us that Unitedstadians may call themselves anything different. Let me give you an example; I went to the ‘American School of Lima’ and it was not until years after I had left school that I realized that in reality I had attended the ‘Unitedstadian School of Lima’ we (Spanish speaking people) do not associate American with Unitedstadian, if you want to learn how it’s pronounced go to http://spanish.allinfo-about.com/vocabu ... uages.html now if you want to try the Portuguese version (the one you are referring to) try estadunidense when you search in Google or Yahoo you’ll get another million results. I’ll point you to an easy to access online version of impossible to fake published material, material published decades even centuries ago. If you go to the “Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes” http://www.cervantesvirtual.com and search for Estadounidense you will get about 300 results if you search for Americano you will get over 2,500 results for authors ranging from Spain to the Philippines over hundreds of years, some dating to before the US existed (uhh ohh that can’t be good, there were Americans in the world before the US existed? How is that possible, if it means Unitedstadian?). As you can see anybody with two fingers of forehead can tell you that Americans don’t refer to Unitedstadians as Americans we never have and likely never will.

Now as for “Come on, please don't invent vocabulary.” inventing vocabulary is exactly what we are doing, it is bound to be a fruitless task asking people to stop referring to themselves as Americans when they mean citizens of a specific country (I know I’ve done it) without giving them an alternative, the usual ‘but what shall we call ourselves if not Americans?’ comes up and we stay the course. So, the only other way to address the issue is to add a new word into the vernacular, since the word Estadounidense has been in existence for hundreds of years in Spanish, converting it into English and using the term Unitedstadian when referring to citizens of the U. S. as such is the only alternative. So, yes, you are right, we are inventing vocabulary here, a way to distinguish Unitedstadians from Americans.



Hey Xose,

“In a shocking development, I agree with Manny on this.

You're an intelligent guy, Eli, and you know that when someone speaks of an American that they are talking about someone from the United States. That may run your European sensibilities the wrong way, but to pretend that other people refer to us (in English) as "UnitedStatians" is obviously untrue. The English, South Africans, Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians...hell, even the Japanese and Chinese, for whom English is not the native language, refer to us as Americans.

In the English language, the word for citizens of the United States is "American." You don't have to like it, obviously, but that's the way it is. “

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I guess you and Manny don’t see eye to eye on many things huh... well that’s what happens when you throw in another pebble in the mix. Ronald Reagan used to say “What would we do if Aliens attacked us? We'd find out how stupid our little war's are.” as soon as a third perspective is thrown into the mix you tend to find out what you have in common with those that you normally disagree with, as supposed to fixating on what you disagree.

You are correct Xose, I don’t disagree with you one bit. As you say in the ‘English language’ American is usually used to refer to citizens of the U. S. and as I’ve pointed out before that was OK for the last 200 years or so. However, this little medium ‘the net’ is creating a ‘flat’ world were people in one part of the world mingle with others that had it not been for the internet we would have never heard of i/e you and I, right here right now. This flat world has brought about the realization for millions that up until yesterday thought of themselves as Americans (much like myself) all of a sudden we have become nameless, soulless, non-descriptive individuals, we used to be Peruvians AND Americans, much like Spaniards think of themselves as Spaniards AND Europeans. What if tomorrow Spaniards were to find out that the term European is used to designate ONLY the French in English, sorry that is just the way it is done around here... clearly Spaniards would have a problem with that. We in America have a problem with Unitedstadians calling themselves Americans to denote nationality (no doubt about it, it pops up in Google Answers, in MSN communities, in Yahoo groups all over the place) but we are powerless to change that because there is no alternative. Now we have an alternative, clearly we can’t make YOU change the way in which you refer to yourself (been tried and failed miserably thousands of times) but we can change the way WE refer to citizens of the US by translating the Spanish word into English. Doing this also gets people used to the word and in time those that have a minimal amount of sensibility towards the other 600 million Americans will start using the words themselves and from there it will in time become politically incorrect to call Unitedstadians Americans to denote nationality because of the arrogance, the conceit, disdain and abuse the use of the word conveys on all of the other Americans.

“You don't have to like it, obviously, but that's the way it is. ” You are correct, for now.

By the way I’m not European, I was born in the American south west, in Lima, Peru.

And for “Oh, and one more thing. North America and South America are two, count 'em TWO seperate continents.”

Think this was covered in the first part of my post, you are right.

“If you disagree, then you'll have to agree that Europe and Asia are more properly named Eurasia, right?”

Once again you are correct, Europe and Asia ARE one continent. There is only one continental plate in the territories of Europe and Asia. They were given two names based on social constructs not on geological realities. The separation of the Urals as a separation is ‘geologically speaking’ nonsense. If anything the Urals were formed when the continent of Siberia collided with the supercontinent of Eurasia during the carboniferous, since then one rides on the other and because of that the Urals are now considered an extant mountain range.


Hey Bob,

“Now that there is the European Union, can we really talk about Spaniards, Italians, etc.? ” hmm the E.U. is still a faraway dream (for the most part), however when it happens (imo) nations will retain their uniqueness and so, the designations of Spaniard, French and so on will always exist much in the same way that we have Virginians and Texans... I think ...

Elí

[Art]

Bob's got it right.

Language is a strange and living thing, and has no real logic to it.

As to inventing words, that's how language works. We invent words, some stick and some don't.

Elí's use of Unitedstadian is almost charming. Besides the fact that it's long and hard to spell, what's the problem?

Do countries ever get named by foreigners? I'm not aware of this happening, but if so, over time more powerful countries may press some other label on the US. Who knows? Given the declining fortunes of the US, this could occur in the next 50-100 years.

I don't see the people of this country changing their name on their own. It'd be much too emotional an issue.

It's worth noting that our formal name is the "United States of America". And that if we follow Elí's logic, we might want to consider conquering the rest of the hemisphere to make our name fit better. You know, unite the whole shebang!

Is "United States of America" any more accurate than "American"? I don't think so.

I understand that some people might be offended by the words we use to describe ourselves. Language issues get pretty emotional. (Just look at us here!)

Still, we can't completely avoid giving offense and it'd be a miserable waste of energy to spend our lives trying to keep everyone else happy. So for me it's a matter of doing what little we can to make the world better and then for the rest... sinning bravely.

[edited to clarify]

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Bob tiene razón.

La lenguaje es una cosa extraña y viva, y no iene ninguna verdadera lógica.

En cuanto a invención de palabras, esto es como la lenguaje funciona. Inventamos palabras, algúnas se quedan y otras no.

El empleo por Elí de "Unitedstadian" es casi encantador. ¿Además del hecho que es largo y difícil de deletrear, cuál es el problema?

¿Alguna vez se ocurre que extranjeros se pongan nombre a un país? No soy consciente de este ocurriendo, pero si es así, quizás en el futuro países más poderosos puedan presionar alguna otra etiqueta sobre EU. ¿Quién sabe? Considerando como las fortunas de EU disminuyen, podría ocurrir en los próximos 50-100 años.

No creo que la gente de este país vayan a cambiar el nombre por sí mismos. Sería una cuestión desmasiado emocional.

Vale la pena notar que nuestro nombre formal es "The United States of America" ["los Estados Unidos de América"]. Y que si seguimos la lógica de Elí, podríamos considerar conquistar el resto del hemisferio para que nuestro nombre caber mejor. ¡Une todo el tinglado! ¿No?

¿Es "The United States of America" ["los Estados Unidos de América"] más exacto que "American" ["americano"]? No lo creo.

Entiendo que algunas personas podrían ser ofendidas por las palabras que usamos para describirnos. Las cuestiones de lengua se hacen bastante emocionales. (¡Sólo hay que mirarnos aquí!)

De todos modos no podemos evitar completamente dar la ofensa. Y sería un gasto miserable de energía de pasar nuestras vidas en tratar de mantener a todos los demás felices. Pues, para mí es un asunto de hacer lo poco que podemos para hacer el mundo mejor y luego para el resto ... pecar valientemente.

[corregido para clarificar]

[Xose]

There are 14 entries on Google for Unitedstadians. #2 is this forum.

I don't think it's as widespread as Eli is making it out to be.