And that's maddening. If I want to search some english terms, the easiest way to get meaningfull results it by tunneling my query through some computer at the US.

Google just assumes that everybody can only speach one language, and is only intersted in one country, even when explicitly told otherwise.

...and I want it to work the other way. I want to be able to enter English terms, and have pages from other languages returned.

I have no idea how that would work, but it's frustrating finding my www experience stuck in a UK/US bubble.

As for Google, does /ncr (no country redirect) still work?

Well, you can also install the Google SSL search plugin in Firefox to get rid of this madness.