Just curiousity...why are you here? Non-US voters?

[cally]

I like learning how others in the world think about the US and I value your input. I love learning about other countries' politics. I'm asking this question just out of curiousity. I want you here and value your presence. I wouldn't like DU without all of you.

So, why do you post on basically an American politics site? What made you look up this site and what makes you stay? Were you surprised by the posts here initially? Were we more worldly or less worldly than you expected?

[skylarmae]

1. how many are you???

[justinsb]

2. I don't think I count

I'm an ex-pat, I can still vote in the US but I don't live there anymore.

[SammyWinstonJack]

3. Lucky you.

Right about now, I'm wishing I didn't live here.

[SittingBull]

4. It's good to see

that there were critical, intelligent, couragous people in the U.S.

Without this, my hope for a change would complete disappear.

I'm with you, I'll try my best to support you with infos from abroad, and even If I was just a little time "on board", I've read for a longer time.

Next week a meet a press-agent from german media-agency dpa, and I#ll tell him all about voting fraud in the US- and ask him why no media covered it.

Change is possible. All we have to do is connecting us, and show them our power. Think of Cultur-creatives. Our number is growing steady.
We have the chance to change, because this is maybe the first time, we can speak to all who want to listen in the same language- even if not the best!


;-)

Greetings from Hamburg, Germany!

[Joe Chi Minh]

5. Despite

what looks like a nightmare scenario, because there are so many wised-up people over there, your political contex always seems ull of hope.

In the UK, on the other hand, I can't even bear to read about our pathetic politics anymore. The fact is that we threw away a welfare state, full employment (on the initial initiative of La Thatcher, there have been countless changes to the way in which the unemployment rate in this country is tallied - well over a score, possibly as many as forty plus by now); remuneration was relatively great, and if you left one job, you could get another one straight away. Most people could afford a car and rented accommodation. Now flats at reasonable rents are, I believe, in short supply. Instead of privatized one-man buses, you had a driver and a conductor, who went around collecting the fares. The railways had not been privatized and functioned relatively brilliantly, and with far fewer major accidents. Needless to say, the media helped spread the notion that British Railways was a joke. Well if it was, you could laugh - which nobody would today in relation either to the transport infrastructure or to the National Health Service. Education, too is a disgrace.

Many, many people's lives have been cruelly curtailed by homelessness, poor health, suicides, overstretched ambulance service, the spread of the MRSA superbug, courtesy of privatised cleaning services. It goes on and on. "Rip-off" Britain is the term generally used, as most prices are exhorbitant compared to mainland European prices. We no longer have any plausible idealists in the body politic.

Since our brightest and best have no copunction about outsourcing our jobs, I would really like to see the Government, itslef, of this country, outsourced to the evidently much more competent and less cynical Scandinavian, German and French politicos. No remuneration would be too high, because we would surely get value, while now, they can't think of enough ways to squirrel away dosh, pay rises well above the rate of inflation, freebies with all the rogues and vagabonds of big business you could imagine; all in exchange for comprehensive misgovernment and maladminstration and various forms of legalised malfeasance. Corporatism is king and Blair, Jumping Jack Flash, the jester.

Also, of course, another reason why we are interested is surely because when America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold, so your elections are very important.

In Scotland "wheels within wheels" is endemic, and is part of the reason for the soaring cost of the new Scottish parliamnet. Personally, I would like to remove the politicasn to an old building that used to be a public school, and leave the new parliament open to the public as a folly! I'm sure tourists would come from all over the world to see it, recognising the syndrome behind its problems. A kind of Caledonian Ozymandias, I suppose.

[McKenzie]

6. hmmm...could be that we share common roots

over here in the UK. Our value systems are comparable in many ways and we share a common language.

Quite apart from shared roots etc the DU is home to some bloody good debate. I am constantly amazed at the intelligence of the people who post here.