Sad, just to think, we have put a man on the moon, sent robots to mars, able to calculate the mass and vector of solar system millions of light years away. Yet us humans still brutally kill each other like neanderthals.
Hey, I think some folks are being a bit unfair to America here. We're a motivated industrial nation. When industry slows (dot com bust) we need to vent a little... that doesn't make us bad people. Scott Editorial Note: this posting may not be w3c standards compliant and may not display properly to all viewers. It should be read with an understanding of cynicism and taken with a grain of salt.
Natural Disasters? Blame America! Jack Kinsella - Omega Letter Editor Thursday, January 06, 2005 There are over six billion people living on our planet. Of that six billion, almost two billion are Muslims. That's roughly a third of the total population of the earth. The earthquake that triggered the killer tsunami was centered just off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country. It was also the most severely devastated by the wave. Nearly 100,000 of the victims of the December 26 catastrophe were Indonesian Muslims. The vast majority of the victims were either Muslims, Buddhists or Hindu. Now, to the United Nations. The United Nations consists of 186 countries. The most powerful voting bloc is the fifty-seven Islamic countries that generally vote with one voice, especially when the United States or Israel are voting the other way. The United Nations' head of humanitarian relief, Jan Egeland, criticized the West for being stingy. He didn't specifically mention America, but he cited the exact percentage of the US GDP that is budgeted for foreign aid, so there is little doubt of who the 'stingy West' was, at least in Egeland's mind. Egeland slammed the United States for not raising taxes so that America could give a greater percentage of its GDP to the UN to distribute as part of the UN's foreign aid package. Editorials in the Washington Post, the New York Times and other liberal newspapers echoed Egeland's charge, with the New York Times calling America's $350 million in direct government aid 'miserly'. The United States makes up some six percent of the world's total population, but we pay a quarter of the United Nation's total budget. The United States pays forty percent of the world's total disaster relief aid, and sixty percent of the world's total food donations. The $2.4 billion (that's BILLION) dollars Washington spent in emergency aid in 2003 represented 40 percent of the total amount of emergency assistance from all bilateral donors provided that year. Evidently, that isn't enough. It didn't take long for these same liberal elitists to turn Mother Nature into an American right-wing hater of Islam. Not only had America's imperialistic self-enrichment policies created the natural disaster, but also cold-hearted Muslim hating President Bush wouldn't leave his ranch in Texas... which by the way, is his home -- not a vacation destination -- and only offered a 'stingy' initial monetary donation. While these elitist journalist were assailing President Bush and expounding the mantra that America should be giving more money to the devastated region in a token gesture that would 'show Islam that America didn't hate Muslims', UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was still on his vacation skiing in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He returned to New York four days later. The wave struck on Sunday, and it took only until Tuesday before the US announced its $350 million in initial aid, sent the USS Abraham Lincoln into the region, including helicopters, and C-130 transport planes, sent hundreds of tons of pre-packaged emergency aid supplies, and deployed some 14,000 American troops to help with the recovery and cleanup. In Indonesia, U.S. helicopters flew at least 30 sorties, delivering 60,000 pounds of water and supplies, from the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln along a 120-mile stretch of Sumatra island's ravaged coastline. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, the richest nations in the Islamic world, donated a paltry $10 million each. The United Arab Emirates donated some $20 million to relieve the suffering of their Islamic 'brothers'. Egypt's contribution at the time of this writing is $104,000.00. (Note: Egypt gets $2 BILLION in US foreign aid annually. And did anybody notice that the majority of the private donations came from those evil corporate types the left so loves to loathe? Pfizer donated $10 million in cash and $25 million in drugs. (That is more than oil-rich Saudi Arabia and Kuwait combined). General Motors pledged $2 million in cash, agreed to match employee donations dollar for dollar, and is sending vehicles to transport food and medical supplies to the region. Other corporate donors include Nike Inc., American Express, General Electric, First Data Corp., Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Exxon-Mobil, Citigroup, Marriott International and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. On the other hand, where are all the Hollywood liberals? Activist actors such as Ben Affleck, Susan Sarandon, Al Franken, Tim Robbins, Martin Sheen, and Barbra Streisand have not been heard from. And where is George Soros, the world richest left wing liberal? Actress Sandra Bullock donated one million dollars, but Bullock is neither an activist nor a liberal. (She also donated one million following September 11.) Super-rich liberals like Bono and Bruce Springsteen are promising to hold another 'aid concert' to collect money (not theirs) for the victims. America, as noted at the outset, represents six percent of the global population. But in any catastrophe, it gets one hundred percent of the blame. The UN's nose is out of joint because the Bush administration refuses to funnel its aid through the UN's various aid agencies. Kofi Annan wants to use the catastrophe to shore up the UN's sagging image in the wake of the Oil-For-Food thefts from Iraq. The United States wants to ensure the aid doesn't end up lining the pockets of UN officials. So the US is 'too stingy' and gets another black eye. Where is the rest of the Islamic world? There are fifty-seven Islamic nations, and the world's biggest Islamic nation is the one that took the hardest hit. But it is the United States -- the world's largest donor nation -- that is grabbing all the headlines for being 'stingy'. To put things in perspective, I saw a news photo yesterday of one of the Indonesian victims being assisted. He was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the face of Osama bin Laden.
Reputable source for that statistic? I've seen it thrown around frequently, but I haven't yet found the source. Pop quiz: Who pays for the resources we consume?
Nice one! Here are some headlines from their website: In Defense of Pat Robertson Clinton Conflicts, Arrogance and Duplicity Shifting Moral High Ground ''America Has Become Two Countries'' The Third Pillar of Antichrist The Threat Of Oil Jihad And my favorite... The Jimmy Carter Follies Scary stuff, Will!
"WHat an arrogant and idiotic thing to say!" Are you talking about that guy or is that your posts conclusion?
I love how extremist Liberals label anyone who isn't an extremist Liberal "an extremist." I'm sure that Josef Stalin would label Ronald Reagan an extremist.
JFK would be labeled a conservative by todays standard. And Bush would have been labeled a liberal in the 50s and 60s.
Seriously, you know what I am sick of? Constant Complaining from both sides of the spectrum. Honestly, by complaining and whining about what the other side, you're wasting your breath. Nothing gets done when everyone complains. Face reality, regardless of your political views, do something productive instead of sitting back and bickering about other people and/or nations. I am an American and I will be proud to be an American, regardless who are president is.
As a mixed-breed mutt, fiscally conservative and socially liberal, I always become suspect when others point to past politicians as examples of what they would be (liberal or conservative) called today. The world has moved on and most people's priorities and opinions have changed with the times. As have the core beliefs of the major parties themselves. These historic figures may well have had different views in today's climate. As for how the world sees us, this thread reminds me of something I heard Lewis Black say once. America is the only country in the world that constantly reminds (tells) every other country that we're the greatest. It's like if you work in an office and one guy comes in every morning shouting out "I'm the greatest person here, and all you other schmucks would be nothing without me." Within one week you, or another co-worker would kill him. I'm not saying that the U.S. isn't the best, I'm just saying that Black's joke (which I apologize for butchering in print) highlights our very real obnoxious behavior in the global community and it only makes sense to understand how our behavior helps to shape the negative view others have of us. Scott Editorial Note: this posting may not be w3c standards compliant and may not display properly to all viewers. It should be read with an understanding of cynicism and taken with a grain of salt.
Jah, I've been to over half the worlds continents and to over a dozen countries. Most of this planet is a shithole.
I dunno about anyone else, but this kind of stuff really scares the shit out of me. Really, is no one else scared about the standing of things (y'know like Iran and all that crap) at the moment? Knowing that people exist who have these extreme right, pro-Bush views is one of the most scary things I can think of. What a fucking liability.