F**K you america

Pentacle Queen raises a very good point here. America is a bit self-absorbed, and careless of the sensitivities of others. It is usually hard for the world to love whomever happens to occupy the top position or the center of attention in any age.

However it is noteworthy that several of the specifics she cites don't stand up to scrutiny. ]

While Europe embraced the Kyoto treaty and America rejected it, the actual performance of the two regions in limiting carbon emissions are hardly different, and both are dwarfed by China and India, both of which were exempted in the absurd Kyoto treaty. There is more than a little hypocrisy in the European view of this matter.

While American willingness to forcefully intervene in places like Vietnam and Iraq is justly criticized by Europeans and others, it is also true that America bore a greatly disproportionate portion of the economic and political burden of the Cold War against a truly evil Soviet Empire. Europe serenely benefitted from the fact that we could not protect ourselves without also protecting them, and consistently failed to meet its agreed obligatiionss to NATO. Moreover the Soviet Empire was itself a product of European folly in WWI and its WWII aftermath. It is plausable that America has learned too well the lessons of the awful 20th century and the largely European malignancies that made it what it was. It is sadly no surprise to note the hypocrisy of Europeans who note our errors in this area while basking in the result of the protection we provided.

Well said!

As to the Kyoto Treaty, somebody's gotta be kidding.

I believe what Rush said when he notes that the sum total pollution man has ever caused is less than one medium sized volcano, and that man has nothing to do with long term weather cycles. Basic reality: if WW-II did not cause the great man-made ecological catastrophe, it isn't going to happen.

In fact, somewhere around 4000 - 7000 years ago there was an age variously called "hypsothermal" or the late holocene climate optimum which was much warmer than our present age and which corresponds roughly to the classical "golden age" which you read about in ancient literature, and the reason they called this a "golden age" instead of "the age when everybody drowned" was that this was before the flood and there simply was not as much water on the planet then as there is now. If such an age were to recur now, the east coast could be somewhere back in West Virginia, and we'll need all the technology we can get to try to deal with it. The very last position we'd want to be in would be to have listened to Algor and the eco-losers and have gone back to riding horses.

Ok goergob. I believe you are right.
I admitt i don't know the inns and outs of it because i wasn't born then.

However, my- in regard to the Vietnam thing. I was more pointing out the fact that in that episode, America was the agressor. Again. This is how your country gets its bad name.
Half the people in Vietnam lived in little huts for god sake.

The protection that America gave to us was surely only a by-product. It was nevr the purpose of the exercise. And again, the cold war is just another example of America's 'attitude problem' if you like, 'We are communist!' 'No F*** you, Capatalims better.' 'But we can build better rockets, with the power of the people.' 'Oh no you can't.... *come on guys lets quickly build one* etc.'

Fair point about pollution though. But at least we agreed to TRY and do something rather than nothing. Did you know that we have little green boxes outside our houses that we put paper and glass in and it gets taken off to be recycled???
And although we are the worst, on the whole europe is very good. Sweeden is very green.
However, your country is a very big one. If you tried to cut carbon ommissions it would make a hell of a lot of difference.

And please don't ignore my opinion just because i wasn't born then.

If anything, my opinion is made clearer by this, because i can see the kind of 'aftermath' of opinion and resentment better.

Neither one of us was alive to see the vast majority of the history of human civilizations from which we should learn how to interpret contemporary events. I don't believe this "issue" is a factor at all.

What do you mean by "aggression"??? Prior to the U.S. intervention in Vietnam, the Northern government in that country was already directing, financing and supplying an insurgency bent on destroying the government in the South and installing a totalitarian Soviet-style regime there - in clear violation of the earlier Geneva Accords. They, in turn, were being supplied and partly directed by the Soviet Union in a self-declared program of support to "Wars of National Liberation" throughout the so-called 'Third World', all intended to propagate their awful and inhuman system. The united States was resisting this advance there, and, although we were not successful in Vietnam, we decisively won the Struggle with the Soviet Empire.

What did North Vietnam do with its victory? Thirty years after its victory Vietnam is, apart from Myanmar/Burma, the poorest, most backward and least free country in Asia. It is finally beginning to abandon its absurd socialist system in an attempt to follow the Chinese model. However the lives of two generations of its people were consumed in its authoritarian folly. Both countries still face the disruptions associated with the increased appetite for political freedom what inevitably come with economic development.

The U.S. was the aggressor only in the view of those who do not or choose not to learn the lessons of history, or recognize the underlying struggles of the contemporary world they inhabit.

I do agree with you that our purpose during the Cold War was to protect ourselves by ultimately defeating the Soviet Union. What we did for Europe was indeed incidental to that purpose. However most of the nations of Western Europe, the UK prominently included, avowed that that was their purpose as well and freely agreed to do their part. The U.S. had no option, but Europe could, and did, take advantage of the U.S. unwitting umbrella and consistently fail to live up to its commitments or do its full share. The same is happening today. Instead of shame for this evasion, people and politicians dress it up with supposed concerns about "American Aggression" and the like. While there is no doubt we have made errors in our actions, the principal issue here is European hypocrisy in attempting to dress up weakness and venality as political virtue.

Supposed good intentions and "trying" don't count for much in the world. Virtually all failed systems and even would-be oppressors credit themselves with good intentions and "trying". The fact is the Kyoto treaty was ill-conceived and poorly designed. We were right to reject it. The principal new sources of greenhouse gasses, the former Soviet Empire and all the rapidly developing nations (including China and India) were utterly exempted from obligation, and Europe conveniently set the reference year against whioh improvements were to be measured, just before it largely abandoned the use of low quality coal for electrical power production in favor of the newly available natural gas from North Africa, the North Sea and Russia.

With respect to the segregation of household waste materials to encourage recycling, it may surprise you to learn that this has been a ubiquitous part of American life for well over a decade. longer in some areas.

after close observation for the last 6 years, under the present leadership, America will apparently f*ck itself if you give it enough oil to get lubed up.

Ok then. Just because a country runs itself a different way to your country does that make it wrong?
Many people would argune that your country is unethical in the way that its run.
Does this mean that they should invade you?

And as for the cold war... my history teacher told us that when he was young he remembers watching the news when the USSR had misiles on cuba and thinking he was going to die.

And to be honest its pathetic. All our countries are pathetic. Its pure masculinity- always fighting. Who has got bigger weapons, bigger army.
They might as well win the war on penis size.
If women ruled the world it would be a lot easier.

America's reputation in the world isn't really a good one. No matter how you argue against me. I am telling you that America is taken as being agresive. I mean ur a superpower for god's sake. Like i said, it used to be england.

And as for pollution. Pah! Your country has just gone to war to get more oil, so its god damn obvious that George Bush has no intention on changing America's wastefull ways.

I think you should do some more reading about the history of women in politics.Boudica & Elizabeth I of England, Catherine the Great & Empress Elizabeth of Russia, more recently Golda Meir of Israel, and of course margaret Thatcher of the UK -- all were rather aggressive and warlike.

Under the very proper and well-mannered Queen Victoria the British took (or completed the conquest of) what are today India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Egypt. To my knowledge, none of these people volunteered to become a part of a foreign empire.

Maybe they weren't women.
Maybe they were men in wigs.

Now, have you ever thought of that possibility georgeob?

The Female of the Species -- Rudyard Kipling


When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
'Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man's timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
For the Woman that God gave him isn't his to give away;
But when hunter meets with husbands, each confirms the other's tale --
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man, a bear in most relations-worm and savage otherwise, --
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
Mirth obscene diverts his anger --- Doubt and Pity oft perplex
Him in dealing with an issue -- to the scandal of The Sex!

But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same,
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity -- must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions -- not in these her honour dwells.
She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.

She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unchained to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

She is wedded to convictions -- in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies! --
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

Unprovoked and awful charges -- even so the she-bear fights,
Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons -- even so the cobra bites,
Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
And the victim writhes in anguish -- like the Jesuit with the squaw!

So it cames that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare nat leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice -- which no woman understands.

And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern -- shall enthral but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lol!!!