Posted on 12/27/2004 2:04:39 PM PST by ejdrapes
Considering that the UN has no income except what it take in from member countries, it is a begger. The begger is trying to be a choser, and ungrateful choser.
Thank you again
This time I saved it on my hard drive.
I like the people I've met in Canada.
I have only traveled in the mid and west of Canada, never the east.
That is what I was talking about.I just felt that your response to him/her would have been better expressed if you had said: "Oh... you are so self righteous!"
Well said, FRiend!
another reason to get out of the u.n.
the UN can screw itself. sideways...
Right now (according to FOX) the US Aid effort is some 50 million.
And the UN calls us cheap---guess we ought not send any more humanitarian aid anywhere, anytime.
Then let them complain ;-)
Dems will claim Bush should have anticipated this tsunami and built protective barriers all along the shores of the Indian Ocean.
The United States dollar took another pounding on German, French and British exchanges this morning, hitting the lowest point ever known in West Germany. It has declined there by 41% since 1971 and this Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least-appreciated people in all the earth. As long as sixty years ago, when I first started to read newspapers, I read of floods on the Yellow River and the Yangtze. Who rushed in with men and money to help? The Americans did. They have helped control floods on the Nile, the Amazon, the Ganges and the Niger. Today, the rich bottom land of the Misssissippi is under water and no foreign land has sent a dollar to help. Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy, were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of those countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States. When the franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it. When distant cities are hit by earthquakes, it is the United States that hurries into help... Managua Nicaragua is one of the most recent examples. So far this spring, 59 American communities have been flattened by tornadoes. Nobody has helped. The Marshall Plan .. the Truman Policy .. all pumped billions upon billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now, newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent war-mongering Americans. I'd like to see one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplanes. Come on... let's hear it! Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tristar or the Douglas 107? If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all international lines except Russia fly American planes? Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or women on the moon? You talk about Japanese technocracy and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy and you find men on the moon, not once, but several times ... and safely home again. You talk about scandals and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everyone to look at. Even the draft dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, most of them ... unless they are breaking Canadian laws .. are getting American dollars from Ma and Pa at home to spend here. When the Americans get out of this bind ... as they will... who could blame them if they said 'the hell with the rest of the world'. Let someone else buy the Israel bonds, Let someone else build or repair foreign dams or design foreign buildings that won't shake apart in earthquakes. When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke. I can name to you 5,000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake. Our neighbours have faced it alone and I am one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of these. But there are many smug, self-righteous Canadians. And finally, the American Red Cross was told at its 48th Annual meeting in New Orleans this morning that it was broke. This year's disasters .. with the year less than half-over… has taken it all and nobody...but nobody... has helped.
Thanks and check out my post 105
How much longer do they think they'll be able to feed like a parasite on our freedom and prosperity?
I want all of them gone and sent back to whatever dark corners of hell they've come from.
Well has the U.N. donated a % of the Oil for food scam money to the victims. Or are they planning on running ANOTHER scam. Food for Tsunami Victims, ran by the U.N. I don't think so....
LOL- I'm so slow! I had to delete some files to make room, and I guess it took longer than I realized.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) WALLACE: And welcome back to INSIDE POLITICS. Now three of the best reporters in Washington with me to talk about the tsunami disaster overseas, the U.S. reaction to that disaster and also developments inside Iraq. Joining us, Ron Brownstein of The Los Angeles Times, Karen Tumulty of TIME magazine, and Mike Allen of The Washington Post.
Thanks to you all for being here. We appreciate it. Mike, let me begin with you. You heard a U.N. official earlier today who described the initial response from the United States to the disaster in Southeast Asia as quote, "stingy." Were officials behind the scenes angry about that?
MIKE ALLEN, THE WASHINGTON POST: Kelly, you talked a little bit about -- at the top of the show about what the administration did today, 36 hours after the disaster, the Navy sent search and rescue, surveillance planes for search and rescue. Apparently we had provisions stockpiled in the Philippines that we've sent. You mentioned $15 million, $4 million in cash to the Red Cross. Secretary Powell out on the television yesterday in the initial hours after it happened. The administration was able -- also today, we saw condolence letters from the president to the seven nations.
But yesterday I was trying to do a story about the administration's response, and the White House -- I called the State Department and the State Department is like, call the White House. And the Pentagon was like, nobody asked us for anything.
WALLACE: Stylistically, Ron, you've covered this White House, you've covered other White Houses. Is the style of this president is not to get in front of the television cameras right after a disaster like this?
RON BROWNSTEIN, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES: That's absolutely right. I think Mike's right, that there will be a sense that they may have (UNINTELLIGIBLE) the mark. My guess is this being a part of the world, countries like Indonesia and India that we are very concerned about that over time, like the -- as the truck starts rolling, that we will be involved in a big way. But it probably will be a little bit of a misstep in terms of the first reaction.
WALLACE: What's the sense, Karen, were they watching first to see what the situation was?
KAREN TUMULTY, TIME: It's sort of -- it's hard to understand, because if there has ever been an opportunity, the administration has said that, you know, a big part of their second term foreign agenda, it's going to be to sort of rebuild relationships with the international community, with the allies overseas.
Quick action, heartfelt action and adequate action at a moment like this, it seems, would do a lot more than, you know, setting up broadcast stations in the Arab world.
WALLACE: Are you picking up any concern behind the scenes, Mike, about the handling of this initially? ALLEN: Well, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) is the president's radio address on Saturday was about our duty to our fellow man. And here you have a disaster that's now more than seven times the toll from 9/11. But it's a reminder, and Bill Schneider mentioned this at the beginning, things that happen in the Bay of Bengal just don't strike us the way that things happen in Bethesda do. And we -- and the administration just -- they were in holiday mode, there was a time difference. They weren't communicating and it really showed.
WALLACE: All right. Let's turn gears to another crisis situation, of course, in Iraq. News coming out today that one Sunni party is saying it will not participate in these elections because of security concerns. This, Ron, after you saw the story over the weekend in The New York Times, administration official quoted as saying that there might be some negotiations under way to try and get Sunnis inside the government if they don't do well in the election. Secretary Powell tried to dismiss that story, saying it's not true. But what are you picking up behind the scenes about the concern?
BROWNSTEIN: There are some Iraq officials who are quoted today as being critical of it as well. Well, look, the hope is that the election was going to lead to more reconciliation in Iraq by creating a government that Iraqis from all segments of society would feel invested in.
The risk now is that you have a deepening of the divide, on the same day that the largest Sunni party announces that it is pulling out of the election, the largest Shiite party is the target of a suicide bombing with terrorists obviously hoping to inflame the religious divisions in the country. Bringing in some kind of guarantee of seats may be a way to go but it's something that's going to be resisted I think by many segments of Iraqi society as well.
WALLACE: What kind of concern are you picking up, Karen, behind the scenes from your sources about the security issue and the impact it could have on these upcoming elections?
TUMULTY: Well, these events follow other stories over the weekend about how the administration was essentially going full force to try to encourage Sunni voter turnout. This makes it very clear that the only thing that is going to really make Sunni Muslims feel like that they can turn out is feeling like they're safe, if they're doing it.
WALLACE: And you know, Mike, you heard Secretary Powell, it's a message we've been hearing about trying to encourage Sunni neighbors, neighboring countries dominated by Sunnis surrounding Iraq to step out and say Sunnis must get to the polls. Are we going to see a more -- you know, a bigger effort on the part of the president and his advisers in that regard?
ALLEN: Yes, Kelly, in a nod to the accuracy of that news story we were talking about, Secretary Powell did say that the government has to be representative in order to be effective. And so he suggested that some of those measures might take place. But this administration needs the election to be seen as legitimate at all costs, it's like the June 30th handover date. They need the election to happen now. It's so important to them that the president has asked Congress to have State of the Union on February 2nd, after it, so that he can talk about this as a sign of progress, and that date even allows them -- gives them the time to, if it turns out to be something that they would do that is -- wanted to, they could have someone from the new government in the box with Mrs. Bush.
BROWNSTEIN: Larger yet, milestones get ground up by events. The real issue isn't how we perceive it, it's how Iraqis perceive it, and whether in fact a new government is seen as a legitimate force that will reduce some of the internal violence and division in the country. If it isn't, even if the election is perceived well here in the first 48 or 72 hours, ultimately like the June 30 date, it will be overrun by events in terms of American attitudes.
WALLACE: Final word, Karen.
TUMULTY: And by the way, once again today we're hearing more calls to postpone these elections, which of course is the last thing the Bush administration wants to see happen.
WALLACE: All right. We have to leave it there, Karen Tumulty of Time magazine, Ron Brownstein, Los Angeles Times and CNN political analyst, Mike Allen of The Washington Post, thanks for being here today. We appreciate it.
ALLEN: Happy '05.
WALLACE: Happy '05 to all of you, yes.
We have a little bit of breaking news to tell you about. In Houston, Texas, word coming in of a fire, I believe it is a Ramada Inn in Houston, Texas, these pictures coming to us from KPRC TV. Don't have a lot more information right now. But you can see there is a lot of smoke there. Flames coming from what we are told is the Ramada Inn inside Houston, Texas. As soon as we get any more information we will bring that to you. This happening now. We're not sure, again, of the extent of -- if anyone is trapped inside that hotel, any injuries. Again, a Ramada Inn Hotel in Houston, Texas, clearly on fire, those pictures coming in from KPRC. Stay with CNN. We'll get you the latest information as soon as we have it.
We need to just disregard this small event & take a look at the entire picture, which is to elect the people that will get us out of this corrupt organization. With continued barage of the mentioning by us we can have an effect. So why don't we have journalists that will ask these pols why we are out of it? But watch. We will be out of the UN (if ever)before GW puts true conservatives on the Supreme Court.
Yes, they want a cut of US disaster aid. But, I believe we're doing an end run around the un and doing this through our own agencies. That's why they're so mad.
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