Robert Merkel

Hi, I'm a programmer for the Linux Developers Group (http://www.linuxdevel.com) and I'm still getting familiar with Wiki editing so I'll have to apologise if this looks funny.

I've written large parts of articles about

• Victoria
• Melbourne
• Melbourne Cricket Ground
• The Albert Park Grand Prix Circuit
• Canberra
• Bust A Move
• Grand Prix Motorcycles
• The Simpsons/Barney Gumbel
• The Simpsons/Seymour Skinner
• The Simpsons/Edna Krabappel
• The Simpsons/Krusty The Clown
• The Simpsons/Troy McClure
• The Simpsons/Dr. Nick Riviera
• The Simpsons/Lionel Hutz
• The Simpsons/Otto Mann
• Sir Donald Bradman
• Kart racing
• Drag racing
• open-wheeler racing
• pocketbike racing
• Superbike racing
• Swimming
• Diving
• Table Tennis
• Computing
• The Central Intelligence Agency
• NASA
• Figure Skating
• Discus
• javelin
• Fox Hunt
• netball
• parachuting
• water skiing
• downhill skiing
• long jump
• high jump
• pole vault

and probably others I've forgotten, and made substantial edits to

• The Formula One page
• Australia

and a few others.

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Well I would agree with you if you could answer the question of Why are there some isles with only a garrison in the "Countries of the world" table? Besides, not only your opinion counts in this world, and following your reasoning Australia would have never been a country... Many thanks for your opinion...

Probably because they're in the CIA World Factbook and people have assumed that these places are countries (and, as such, they should be removed at some stage). As to Australia never being a country, I am not claiming that the Basque people have never had a state of their own in the past (I don't know the history), nor am I asserting that they will not or should not at some stage in the future have one, but the simple fact is that they don't have one now, despite political agitation and paramilitary efforts to get one. --Robert Merkel

Thanks for your opinion but I don´t think the CIA World Factbook to be a neutral start(and I´m not antiamerican). And by the way people asumed that Hitler was the best choice for their country in some moment of the past, so people are not always right. And we are doing not political agitation nor paramilitary things; we only ask for the right of pushing our vote inside a ballot to decide what we politicaly want to be. But they don´t let us only because they are many and we only 3 milions. I´ve nothing to do with ETA and do not like the force as a way of imposing my own ideas. And I tell you something, Mr. Aznar and the french president don´t use the force to ban the Euskera and forbid the political institutions because they can´t but if they could they would do it as they have done in the past. How would you fell if you were banned to speak your own mother tongue or the language taught in schools was another one?
Many thanks...

Perhaps I haven't made myself clear enough. You, and presumably a large number of other people, feel that the Basque people deserve a state of their own. You're entitled to feel that way. I don't know enough about the Basque situation to have an opinion myself. I think the suppression of cultures is generally a very bad thing. The only thing I'm trying to say is that the Basque people don't have an internationally-recognised state as their homeland at this point in time. This, in your opinion, is an injustice. That may well be the case, but it is a fact. --Robert Merkel

/Talk