Dear Reader,
Welcome to our monthly column in which we try to be faithful to our objective - decoding cultures.
We plan to bring news with intercultural overtones to you, adding our personal interpretation in the hope that this contributes to better mutual understanding.
Sincerely, Karin & Richard
We read in the news…
The British press has, once again, been full of ill-informed and often abusive comments about Belgium and the Belgians. This time, the pretext was the nomination of Herman Van Rompuy as President of the European Council.
Of course, you have to expect this kind of thing from papers like The Sun. It doesn't even need instructions from boss Rupert Murdoch, who is viscerally anti-Europe, the paper's journalists are perfectly capable of being prejudiced without help from him.
Britain's Daily Telegraph revealed on November 23 that cultural differences led to major tensions between the American and British commands in the early stages of the Iraq War.
The paper reported verbatim the comments of Colonel Tanner, chief of staff with the British divisional HQ in Basra: "We experienced real difficulty in dealing with the American military and civil organizations who, partly through arrogance and partly through bureaucracy, dictate that there is only one way: the American way. Despite our so-called 'special relationship', I reckon that we were treated no differently to the Portuguese." [The Colonel should have remembered that Britain also has a historic relationship with the Portuguese…]
