Helen Thomas is a legend. Speaking her mind didn't change that for me. I'm looking forward to being a bat-shit crazy senile old broad.

I'm not looking forward to saying anything that hurtful to anybody.

I just wanted to address another issue here which seems to be necklaced by short public memory: Europe and the Americas for themselves weren't that stable, national and geographical speaking, until recently. Go back 20 years, 60 years, 100 years, 120 years, 300 years, 600 years and 1000 years, with the Norman conquest - the map and the thought of what the "right" nationality is and the states which everyone think have always existed (FTR, there were hundreds of years on which Poland was deleted off the map) simply weren't there. I'm not saying we should go back to it, but trying to make history "more simple" isn't the smart thing to do here. People killed, kill and will continue to kill each other over land, religion, gender, ethnicity and color. Submitting every tiny fact , including the situation as it was 60, 120 or 600 years ago to the current national-political-global thought is just going to lead mostly to a dead end, IMHO.

ION, I know it's still early, but I still haven't heard back from my non-virtual friends about help with the site, or any word of support at all (even though it's on my Gmail status, my twitter, an email was sent, etc..). And this really sucks.

And your grandparents are totally racist. Against Aimee's what aren't their kin. I get no Hannukah presents, do I? NO I DO NOT.

I think I need to step away from this conversation for a while.

FTR, there were hundreds of years on which Poland was deleted off the map

I've found in my genealogy research, that quite a few of my ancestors had at least three different countries of birth listed on various documents, since on each one, they'd list whatever country that city happened to be in at the time they were filling out that form.

I've also seen that "country of origin" and "nationality" were not at all synonyms in the early twentieth century. I remember finding one passenger manifest for a ship that a relative was on (where he was listed as Austria for country of origin and Hebrew for nationality), where almost nobody on the page had a matching country and nationality. There were Germans from Russia, Magyars from Poland, Slovakians from Hungary, and so on. I once saw a map of Eastern Europe from before WWI, showing which languages were spoken where, and it totally did not correspond to current borders -- German was spoken much further east than it is now, and there were pockets of the minority languages like Czech and Serbian all over the place, before those people got resettled when the ethnic groups that spoke those all languages got their own countries.

I've found in my genealogy research, that quite a few of my ancestors had at least three different countries of birth listed on various documents, since on each one, they'd list whatever country that city happened to be in at the time they were filling out that form.

I've also seen that "country of origin" and "nationality" were not at all synonyms in the early twentieth century. I remember finding one passenger manifest for a ship that a relative was on (where he was listed as Austria for country of origin and Hebrew for nationality), where almost nobody on the page had a matching country and nationality. There were Germans from Russia, Magyars from Poland, Slovakians from Hungary, and so on. I once saw a map of Eastern Europe from before WWI, showing which languages were spoken where, and it totally did not correspond to current borders -- German was spoken much further east than it is now, and there were pockets of the minority languages like Czech and Serbian all over the place, before those people got resettled when the ethnic groups that spoke those all languages got their own countries.

Indeed. My parents grew up with at least 6 languages around them.

In much happier news: a friend just called me and said she's willing to admin Hollaback Israel with me! Whoo-hoo!

Hil, that's interesting to me. In immigration stuff, I often start out whatever I'm writing with "X is a citizen and national of [country]" and I can only think of one or two cases where they are different. I'm not 100% sure this is still the same but I *think* Samoans (from American Samoa) were/are US nationals but not citizens. Whereas Puerto Ricans are US citizens but they can't vote in the general election.

Wow, sorry, I didn't mean to spark this kind of a discussion. My embogglement was really more of a "d'oh!" thing than a "who's a racist and/or why" thing.

I mean, you know me...I'm the jester. I don't talk about social injustices...not here. When I get het up about social injustices and whatnot I draw bunny rabbits.

So, uh, yeah. Sorry, guys. I'll stop playing with matches now.

In immigration stuff, I often start out whatever I'm writing with "X is a citizen and national of [country]" and I can only think of one or two cases where they are different.

How does this work with dual citizenship? Would that normally imply dual nationality too?

On a different topic: my poor little man has been suffering from diarrhoea for the last few days, which has led to a nasty case of nappy rash. He's in good spirits, more or less, and not showing signs of dehydration, so we're not too worried; but I was wondering if any of the other parents had any ideas to help him recover faster and be more comfortable until he does.

I believe if you are a citizen, you are also a national.

For dual citizenship, if neither of the two is the US, then I usually go with the one that helps us most or matches the passport they entered on. As an example, an Italian/Venezuelan citizen can enter without a visa (Italians can), so we might go with that as the primary citizenship.

I've also seen that "country of origin" and "nationality" were not at all synonyms in the early twentieth century.

That doesn't surprise me. My grandfather never called himself Russian, even though he immigrated from there in 1912. He insisted he was Ukranian, because that's the language he spoke. And according to him his mother, despite being born in Ukraine, considered herself German. Shocked the hell out of my cousins when they found that out, they'd been saying they were one quarter Ukrainian forever and were very disappointed to have to add the German in there.