Are the American People Insane?

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Turandil,

I do hope you're joking.

Yes, we've got the BOMB. Hey, we've even used it.

Care to take up the rallying cry that our using an atomic weapon on Japan did NOT save lives?

Care to think that Saddam's willingness to use atomic or other weapons of mass destruction would be used to the betterment of mankind?

 

Why do you think Saddam got nuclear weapons? There is no proof at all, and why would he sell it to terrorists?

The usa practically controlls every nation except Irak, North Korea, Cuba, Belarus and Iran...soon there will all be under the controll of the Usa...I really fear a ww3, not a single country in the middle east (unsure about israel) suports an american invasion of Irak, not even the kurds...It might lead to a new calif, and a jihad...

Some info...

During the Gulf War, the United States suffered 148 soldiers killed in action, and 458 wounded. The U.S. estimated that more than 100,000 Iraqi soldiers died, 300,000 were wounded, 150,000 deserted, and 60,000 were taken prisoner.
U.S. House Committee on Armed Services, 1992 / penpress.org 020529

The U.S. Department of Defense provides professional military training to more than 100 countries, annually.
U.S. Department of Defense, Defense 96, 1996 / penpress.org 020529

1.2 million Iraqi people, including 750,000 children below the age of five, have died due to the scarcity of food and medicine, since the commencement of UN sanctions in 1990.
UNICEF 1997, www.unicef.org/newsline/99pr29.htm 020619

The U.S. maintains a military presence in more than 140 countries.
U.S. Department of Defense, Defense Almanac 2000 / penpress.org 020529

In developing nations, there are nearly 5 million acute pesticide poisonings per year due to lack of protection during application, with millions more exposed to lower but still dangerous levels.
World Resource Institute, Report on Global Health, 1998 / penpress.org 020619

Seven rich countries hold 48% of the voting power at the IMF, and 46% at the World Bank: The United States, Japan, France, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Germany and the Russian Federation.
UNDP: "Human Development Report 2002", undp.org/hdr2002/facts.html 020801

In Latin America, fewer than 10% of landowners own almost 90% of the land.
UNICEF: State of the World’s Children, 1995, p. 43. / penpress.org 020619

27 million workers in the world’s 845 export processing zones are not allowed to organize in unions for collective bargaining.
UNDP: "Human Development Report", 1999 / penpress.org 020529

In the last ten years, U.S. Navy deployments abroad have increased by half, U.S. Army deployments have tripled, and U.S. Air Force deployments have quadrupled.
U.S. Department of Defense: "Major Deployments/Operations", 1999 / penpress.org 020529

In 1999, more than 250,000 personnel from U.S. Armed Forces occupied foreign countries, more than one-fifth of all U.S. Armed Forces personnel.
U.S. Department of Defense, Defense Almanac 1999 / penpress.org 020529

The World Bank is governed by 24 executive directors, each with one vote. The United States, Japan, France, Germany and the UK are each represented by one voting director. The other 177 member nations share the remaining 19 votes.
The World Bank, 1999 / penpress.org 020619

Gallup International’s Millennium Survey asked more than 50,000 people in 60 countries, "Would you say that your country is governed by the will of the people?" Less than a third said yes. The survey also asked, "Does government respond to the will of the people?" Only 10% said that it did.
UNDP: "Human Development Report 2002", undp.org/hdr2002/facts.html 020801

The developing world spends $13 on debt repayment for every $1 it receives in grants.
World Bank: "Global Development Finance 1999" / globalissues.org 020705

Of the 738 NGOs accredited to the WTO’s 1999 ministerial conference in Seattle, Washington, 87% were from industrial countries.
UNDP: "Human Development Report 2002", p. 8

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has 182 member countries. Five countries, the United States, Germany, Japan, France and the UK, control 40% of the votes that determine IMF policy.
International Monetary Fund, Members' Quotas and Voting Power, October 2001 / penpress.org 020619

USA have agreed to 10 of 26 international conventions about human rights. Cuba has agreed on 17.

Latinamerica #4/2002

Presidential candidates in the 2000 U.S. election spent $343 million on their campaigns, up from $92 million in 1980. Including spending by political parties, more than $1 billion was probably spent on the 2000 campaigns. In the 2000 U.S. election cycle, corporations gave $1.2 billion in political contributions — about 14 times the already considerable amount contributed by labour unions and 16 times the contributions of other interest groups.
UNDP: "Human Development Report 2002", p. 4-5

In 1977, the richest 1% of Americans earned as much after taxes as the poorest 49 million Americans. In 1997, the richest 1% of Americans earned as much after taxes as the poorest 100 million Americans.
UNDP: "Human Development Report", 1997 / penpress.org 020529

95% of the fifty wealthiest executives and financiers in America at the turn of the century came from upper-class or upper-middle-class backgrounds. Fewer than 3% started as poor immigrants or farm children. Throughout the nineteenth century, just 2% of the wealthiest fifty American industrialists came from working-class origins.
Journal of Economic History, vol. 9 no. 2 (1949), p. 184, Gregory & Neu, "Industrial Elite in the 1870s," in Men in Business (1952), p. 202. 326-28 / penpress.org 020619

From 1940 through 1996, expenditures for nuclear weapons ($5.5 trillion), exceeded the combined total federal spending on education, training, employment, and social services; agriculture; natural resources and the environment; general sciences and space research; community and regional development; law enforcement; and energy production and regulation.
Brookings Institution, Atomic Audit: 1940-1996 / penpress.org 020529

In Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, at least half the single-parent households with children have incomes below the poverty line.

Every day, 40,000 infants die of malnutrition.
World Bank: World Development Indicators, 1998 / penpress.org 020619

200 million children under the age of five suffer from malnutrition.
World Bank: World Development Indicators 1998 / penpress.org 020618

Worldwide, nearly 50% of deaths among children under 5 are due to malnutrition.
WHO: World Health Report 1998 / penpress.org 020619

1.1 billion people do not have access to clean water.
UNFPA: The State of World Population, 2001 / penpress.org 020619

Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.
UNICEF: "The State of the World's Children 1999" / globalissues.org 020705

Of the 4.4 billion people in developing countries, nearly three-fifths lack basic sanitation. About a third have no access to clean water. A quarter do not have adequate housing. A fifth have no access to modern health services. A fifth of children do not attend school to grade 5. And more than a fifth are chronically malnourished.
UNDP: Human Development Report 1998 / penpress.org 020618

UNDP har konstaterat att Porto Alegre, som 1989 införde en process för folkligt deltagande i utformandet av den lokala budgeten, har gjort "anmärkningsvärda framsteg": På sju år ökade andelen hushåll som har tillgång till vatten från 80 till 98 procent. Andelen som har tillgång till avlopp ökade från 46 till 85 procent, och antalet barn som gick i skolan fördubblades.
UNDP: "Human Development Report 2002",

In 1998, the global starvation rate among children reached its 600 year peak.
UNICEF: State of the World's Children 1998 / penpress.org 020619

At the current rate it would take more than 130 years to rid the world of hunger.
UNDP: "Human Development Report 2002", p. 11

In Central and Eastern Europe and the CIS per capita income shrank 2.4% a year in the 1990s; in Sub-Saharan Africa, 0.3%.
UNDP: "Human Development Report 2002", p. 10

Malaria kills at least 1 million people a year, nearly all of them in the poorest countries.
UNDP: "Human Development Report 2002", p. 7

1.2 billion people live on less than $1 per day. 2.8 billion people live on less than $2 a day.
World Bank: "Global Poverty Measures 1987-1998 and Projections for the Future", 1999 / penpress.org 020618

Almost half the world's population lives on less than two dollars a day.
Kofi Annan: "Message of the United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan on the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty", 001017, un.org 020705

113 million school-age children are not in school—97% of them in developing countries.
UNDP: "Human Development Report 2002", p. 11

To achieve universal provision of basic services in developing countries would cost 80 billion a year, less than 10 percent of global military expenditures.
United Nations Development Program: "Human Development Report", 2000 / penpress.org 020529

American and European annual expenditure on pet food: $17 billion per year.
Estimated annual cost of providing universal healthcare and nutrition for everyone in the world: $13 billion per year.
UNDP: Human Development Report 1998 / penpress.org 020619

In the Sovjetunion and eastern-europ one of three citzens, 140 miljoner humans lived, on less then 3,5 $ a day 1999. Its ten times more people then 1989. The Economist / Metro 990507

The BNP of russia halved between 1989 and 1999.
Joseph E. Stiglitz: "Whither reform

The three richest families in the world have a combined wealth equaling that of the 600 million poorest people living in the world.
UNDP: Human Development Report 1999 / penpress.org 020619

From 1989 to 1996 the U.S. sold more than $117 billion of arms, about 45% of the global total.
U.S. State Department and U.S. Department of Defense, Foreign Military Assistance Act, Report to Congress, Financial Year 1996: Authorized U.S. Commercial Exports, Military Assistance, Foreign Military Sales and Military Imports, September 1997 / penpress

In 1997, the U.S. exported $15.6 billion in military arms to developing countries, 54% of these to non-democratic regimes.
U.S. Department of Defense Security Assistance Agency: "Foreign Military Sales, Construction and Assistance Facts", 1997; "Non-democratic regimes" is defined by U.S. Code of Conduct on Arms Transfers, and the U.S. Department of State's "Country R

Since 1990, the U.S. government has given away, free of charge, more than $8 billion worth of "surplus" equipment from U.S. military stocks, including 4,000 heavy tanks, 500 bombers and 200,000 light arms.
U.S. State Department and U.S. Department of Defense, Foreign Military Assistance Act, Report to Congress, Financial Year 1996: Authorized U.S. Commercial Exports, Military Assistance, Foreign Military Sales and Military Imports, September 1997 / penpress

In 1996, the U.S. Department of Defense dedicated 6,000 employees and $450 million to promote U.S. arms sales overseas.
World Policy Institute: "Arms Trade Report", 1996 / penpress.org 020529

From 1945 to 1997, the U.S. "lost" 11 nuclear weapons, still unaccounted for.
U.S. Department of Defense, "Lost Weapons," 1997 / penpress.org 020529

Global expenditures on education: $80 billion annually
Global defense expenditures: $781 billion annually
$781 billion is more than the total income of the poorest 45% of the global population.
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Report, "The State of the World's Children", 1999, World Bank: "World Development Indicators", 1998 / penpress.org 020529

Global Annual Military Spending
United States $271 billion
All U.S. allies combined $205 billion
Russia $70 billion
China $38 billion
All potential U.S. adversaries combined $15 billion
US Arms Control & Disarmament Agency, 1998; Center for Defense Information, 1998; 'Potential adversaries' defined by US Department of Defense "Bottom Up Review", 1993 / penpress.org 020529

Two-thirds of all U.S. scientists and engineers work for defense contractors or on defense contracts in industry or in universities. Nowhere else in the world is this true.
Center for Defense Information, 1998 / penpress.org 020529

47% of all U.S. federal tax revenues go towards current or past military costs.
Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2002 / penpress.org 020619

About half of all US federal research and development (R&D) funds go into the aircraft and missiles industry, the leading recipient of US federal R&D funds, exceeding all expenditures on health, environment and agriculture research combined.
National Science Board, Science

More than 80 percent of the goods and services produced in the world today are consumed in their countries of origin.
Mark Weisbrot: "One Year After Seattle: Globalization Revisited", CEPR 001127, cepr.net 020705

Countries belonging to the OECD provide about $1 billion a day in domestic agriculture subsidies – more than six times what they spend on official development assistance for developing countries.
UNDP: "Human Development Report 2002", undp.org/hdr2002/facts.html 020801

The world's richest countries, with 20 per cent of global population, account for 86 per cent of total private consumption, whereas the poorest 20 per cent of the world's people account for just 1.3 per cent.
UNFPA: "The State of World Population", 2001 / penpress.org 020529

The income gap between the richest fifth of the world's people and the poorest fifth, measured by average national income per head, increased from 30 to one in 1960, to 74 to one in 1997.
UNDP: Human Development Report 1999 / penpress.org 020618

The fifth of the world's people living in the highest income countries has 86% of world gross domestic product (GDP), 82% of world export markets, 68% of foreign direct investments and 74% of world telephone lines: the bottom fifth, in the poorest countries, has about 1% in each sector.
UNDP: Human Development Report 1999 / penpress.org 020618

From 1960-1980, output per person grew by an average, among countries, of 83%. For 1980-2000, the average growth of output per person was 33%.
CEPR: "The emperor has no growth", 001127, cepr.net 020705

The richest 10% of the U.S. population has an income equal to that of the poorest 43% of the world. Put differently, the income of the richest 25 million Americans is equal to that of almost 2 billion people.
Milanovic 2001 / UNDP: "Human Development Report 2002", p. 19

Industrialized countries hold 97% of all patents worldwide.
UNDP: Human Development Report 1999 / penpress.org 020618

Want more?

 

Honestly, Turandil. Those two posts REEK of cut-and-pasting. And this thread reeks of ignorance. People, please. Enough of the war-monger bull**** and whining.

 

Well, suppose I'd better put in my say as well...
I have a question about the UN itself: what does it plan to do if they still are not permitted to send its weapons inspectors in to Iraq? stand there and ring their hands and talk some more?
OK, so people are angery because we here in the US are doing the UN's job if they're weapons inspectors are refused entry in to Iraq? what kind of logic is this?
I personally don't want war, and I do not wish to go to war unless Iraq doesn't cooperate with the UN.

 

Turandil,
What was your point? You obviously feel that those statistics are relavent, but to what?

 

Hell yeah!!

 

You know...

It's hilarious arguments like this, that have been going on for centuries, that make me want to just completely pull out of all this crap.

If it were my call to make, I'd pull all the troops back home to the US. Then I'd wait. It might take 10 years. It might even take 20.

Sooner or later, it's going to blow up again. Just like has with every other war that has ever raged across the planet. The Serbs and Croats. Down in the Congo, where some faction has killed like, 5 million of the other faction since 1990. Japan and China/Korea. Iran and Iraq. Israel and Egypt.

But this time through, it's going to run a bit different.

You're not going to measure the death toll in the thousands. It's going to be in the hundreds of millions. Because of all these "entangling alliances". Patton (actually, George C. Scott, but same difference, historically) called it. "Give me 10 days, and I'll have us at War with them, and I'll make it look like their fault."

Just set some troops over there with your allies, and wait for the shelling to commence. Then you report to your people that your troops were killed, and everyone votes for War. But I'd wait until it climbs up into the billions before I'd lift a finger.

People are mostly just stupid like this. I say that in general, because it also applies to the Europeans that live away from where the fighting was going on. If there is not a constant reminder, every day, in all your senses, that people you knew and loved were just erradicated, it's never real. It never becomes real, until it actually happens to you. Until you are finding your way down some pitch black staircase, using your friggin indiglo watch as a place marker for the other 200 people behind you. You literally have to go through this, rather than just imagine the people that did. That's the whole reason why the Jews are such a tight knit little organization.

The Muslims all say, "get out". God, the Vietnamese were saying "get out"; so were the Koreans, and the Croats. Their media is government controlled, so I can't really say I expect them to think/believe anything otherwise. Same deal with the Chinese. Cypress just opened their media, but all the other Muslim countries (read: leaders of those Muslim countries) hate Cypress specifically for that reason.

You know, I sometimes wonder exactly how the the Asian continent would look, on a "political" map, if America hadn't been over in Korea. Or Vietnam.

Isolationism rules. Bring back isolationism. I am like, totally for isolationism. It's time to solve all these stupid little social conflicts before something *really* bad happens...

 

I have thought the same thing. I'm not sure it would be effective, but it would be interesting.
Additionally, kick the UN out of the US. Some other country can host the spy nest.
While we're at it, let's pull ALL foreign aid. Take that money, pay everyone off that we somehow owe (despite the foreign aid), invest in our own fossil fuel resources (as well as alternative power sources), and let the chips fall where they may.
What do we have to worry about? Mexico or Canada invading? If the Middle East falls apart, it will be a bigger problem for Europe and Russia then anyone else.

 

I have read it through, and I did copy paste...

My point was to show that we are not living in a perfect world, to show you that this planet are full of misery and wrongdoings, and also to show the effects of imperialism and capitalism and to let you see that the USA are far from perfect and are very dubble moralic (?) yeah, something like that...

 

Dear Turandil,

We would like to thank you comrade for your continued defense of communism and your exposure of the evil capatalist pigs for the vermin that they are. Rest assured comrade, their murderous ways will end in a glorious revolution.

Sincerely,
Stalin 43 million
Mao 38 million

 

Dear Laches, please dont' take me as an evil man, all I want is a nice world in peace an happiness, as you I supose. Though am I right when I say that you dont think thats possible? Well I do, maybe not a perfect world but it can change to the bether, if we do not believe so we wont have a future. We just have different ways to make that happen. You still believe in capitalism, I don't as iam sure you all know by now.

In my strife for socialism and communism I do think we need a big change, and I do not think we can change the world to get rid of capitalism with the current system that was made by and for capitalists. We need to start over, we need a revolution to bring happiness, justice and peace to the world. Unfortunatly everyone do not like ot believe in that idea, and many of the upper classes will gladly use police or military to defend them self against the people wishing to teke away their previleges from them and retake some of their money. Unfortunatly this means battle and blood. Is it worth to sacrifice lifes to save many others in the future? Thats a hard question, a realy hard one. Specially when all can go wrong. After a refvolution the power are scattered, the nation lies in current chaos, a perfect oppurtunity for a diktator to seize power. So did Josef Stalin and so did Mao Zedong.
To much power leads to coruption and fear to loosing it, it leads to paranoia. And millions died. And thats terrible indeed, that must not happen again, and we are working for a new safer way of revolution, were the power will lie at the people an advancement of the current democracy (plutocracy) thats wats communism is realy about, not murder and diktatorship.

I wouldn really call the sovjet union for a communistic state, communism is the end fase of socialism a near perfect world, and thats far from sovjet. After the revolution Sovjet begun developing its socialism towards communism, it went pretty good, the pruduction raised with hundreds of percents and it was far bether russia today or under the Tsar, that was almost a miracle because Tsar-russia lacked heavy industri and its people were not educcated at all, and in addition they constantly fought huge wars wich really took many precious recources.

But when Stalin seized power everything changed he started working toward his own agenda developing some kind of facism, he wanted more and more power and controll, the strive for communism ended...

It don't have to be this way, if we all work together we can make it work.

 

The Americans are so cool, they are a great nation, very educated and brave, we should all strive to be like them... NOT.

 

hey... let the americans be their little Imperialistical pigs...

 

What would this thread be without Corr Raven's and Ass' brilliant and informative replies.

 

oh, a few months ago they wanted to invade Holland, my Country!!
Capitalistic pigs, prob because we got huge warehouses full of marihuana

And then they start asking me "Why do you hate America, we always wanted to protect the world, yatattattatatatablablablabla, can we borrow some crack??"

 

Cor Raven is so cool, he is a great poster, very educated and brave, we should not make him Idiot of the Week... NOT.

 

I think some of you people are insane!

 

OK Morgoth when did the Us ever have any plan of invading Holland?

 

As soon as some American soldiers would be brought to justice at the International Tribunal in Den Haag.

Saw interviewes with Bush threathening to do it, eventually he was called back by the UN.