tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30897652.post2216904446345081322..comments2024-03-27T15:44:43.564-08:00Comments on What Do I Know?: Who is Steve Smith?Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10498066938213558757noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30897652.post-7184125134117463232009-08-14T23:29:55.278-08:002009-08-14T23:29:55.278-08:00I watched a fight break out on the Metro in Paris ...I watched a fight break out on the Metro in Paris a few weeks ago (where I was a passenger). Train agents showed up pretty quickly.<br /><br />They talked the five antagonists down, separated them and then signaled for the train to move on. All without arrests or batons. If your former student understands this use of implicit power, good. <br /><br />I've run into too many in the protective forces who resort too quickly to 'iron and blood' -- where policing becomes reaction to an action. It takes a remarkable human to see the person while doing such work. I hope your former student is one of these remarkable human beings. All the rest can sort itself.Jacob Dugan-Brausehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06287631724339961459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30897652.post-35352444815558405852009-08-14T10:39:24.793-08:002009-08-14T10:39:24.793-08:00In Hungary expectations towards people has increas...In Hungary expectations towards people has increased. By now it is compulsory to teach at least 1 foreign language and take final exam of it at high school. However in case of my peers flawless Hungarian and an average knowledge of German (or English) to be able to hold a normal conversation in German (or in English). I put English in brackets because according to the last measures Hungary is the only European country (except Germany and Lichteinstein where German is the official language) where there are more German speakers than English. The article was a bit ironic because it is not the Western European pattern and nowadays it is fashionable to copy the west. I hope it ends soon.<br /><br />However I am not sure whether a police chief nneds to be multilingual but I think in Hungary every police officer needs at least one intermediate language exam of a foreign language because like 5% of the total population is not Hungarian speaking. Most of them are from the 13 accepted minorities listed by the Hungarian constitution (Germans, Slovaks, Ukranians, Romanians, Serbians, Slovenes, Gypsies, Vends - Croatians, Poles, Armenians, Bulgarians, Albanians, after the - there are the minorities I am not sure about).<br /><br />Probably Native American tribes may have some collective rights as well as Russians.<br /><br />Finally, I just need to wish him good luck to keep law and order. I think Otto von Bismark (chancellor of Germany bezween 1871-1888 as far as I remember) gave a nice lesson to the future with his "blood and iron speech".<br /><br /> The position of Prussia in Germany will not be determined by its liberalism but by its power ... Prussia must concentrate its strength and hold it for the favourable moment, which has already come and gone several times. Since the treaties of Vienna, our frontiers have been ill-designed for a healthy body politic. Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided - that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849 - but by iron and blood. <br /><br />For me this speech tells that sometimes you have to act instead of talking.<br /><br />In his time and in his case it meant that he must have been fighting with other nations.Ropihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17214991557644729165noreply@blogger.com