What has happened to U.S.?

Me | 10/2/2002 | Me

[UnBlinkingEye]

What has happened to our image as a beacon of freedom, opportunity and the right way to live?

Much of the world fears or hates us. We have a proclaimed policy of attacking any country whose policies or regimes don't follow our dictates.

Why have we become the biggest bully in the world?

[ArneFufkin]

We are the only civilization in human history where, statistically, the poorer you are, the fatter you are.

That's prosperity and well being.

[Skooz]

I suppose you think you made a good point. You did not. The pictures you posted are extreme examples. The fact that you think they are the norm, or the result of capitalism, simply reveals your breathtaking ignorance of the subject.

I could post pictures of abject poverty in "London or Paris or Rome" as well. But that is missing the point. Every person in every picture you posted can go as far as their work ethic will take them. NO ONE is keeping these people in poverty. NO ONE is preventing them from getting a job and working their way out of their situation. Such is not the case in many other countries.

In Ukraine, the poverty is pervasive and, unlike the USA, the people have no way out--except the omnipresent Russian Mafia.

Nice try. Not.

[Between the Lines]

Hell yes, Saudi Arabia is the true enemy of everyone.

Most of the brainwashed posting on this thread can't see the forest for the trees. The Politicians have told them who to hate and like good worker bees, they don't bother to question their better...just hate who they are told.

You are incorrect in assuming that just because people in this thread are for attacking Iraq that they are pro-Saudi or that they are good "worker bees" hating who they are told to hate.

Ivan, Ivan, Ivan, you have got to learn better people skills. If your point all along was that we should attack Saudi Arabia instead of Iraq then you should say, "The US should attack Saudi Arabia instead of Iraq" and give your reasons. You don't post long vague indecipherable posts. You have been all over the map on this one. You do not go around castigating America for every military incursion since the war for independence, nor do you call people names and belittle their military careers. You just ain't winning any friends or arguments your way. Now Ivan "old man," chew on this... we got a saying around here, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Now I don't know how that translates into Russian of if it looses anything in the translation but it means that if you want someone on your side be nice to them. Get it? Otherwise you are just the disrupter that you have claimed everyone else to be.

[Skooz]

Really, so back water West Virginia is better then say Berlin or London? Boy, aren't you out of your mind.

I have been to "back water" West Virginia. It is beautiful, with abundant natural resources and hard-working, friendly people. The small towns are wonderful with Ma and Pa groceries beside large chain stores. I saw many things in West Virginia, but I did not see any abject poverty. None.

But, I know you use WV as an example because it is right out of the communist playbook.

The fact that you try to use that place as an example of how bad things are in the US shows that you have never been there.

Communism has been a tragic and abject failure everywhere it has been tried. Capitalism has been a roaring success everywhere it has been tried. Those are facts. Deal with them.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Looks like the rich areas of the rest of the world.

[Skooz]

Looks like the rich areas of the rest of the world.

I stayed at the Hotel Kiev (the nicest place in town) in Donetsk, Ukraine a few years ago. By US standards, the place was a very bad Motel 6. But it was clean and had a shower, of sorts, though the water was always cold.

One afternoon, I had to get something from my room and my interpretor and a friend of his came up to my hotel room. They had never been outside of the Ukraine. They were astonished as they look around my Motel 6-like room. They had never seen such opulance.

[beckett]

Go ahead, debate, if you know how.

I am not interested in debating you. Much too boring. Where's the fun in exchanging insults with an arrogant dunderhead? What you fail to realize, but what is abundantly clear in your postings, is that your understanding of geopolitics and history is completely formed by rank provincial cultural and geographic bias. You are nowhere near the great cosmopolitan thinker you fancy yourself to be.

[Between the Lines]

Intresting pics you have there Ivan.....

Tell me, why would a good conservative such as yourself go to the Universiy of Berkeley website to get that first pic? Surely you could find one as impactive on another site. Why Berkeley?

As for the rest of the pics.... they were all taken in the early 70's acording to the leftist website you got them from.... http://www.american-pictures.com/

For everyone elses' entertainment I thought I would share the captions that come with a couple of these pics....

Linda and mother at sunset.

So poor were they in Linda's family - right next to Disney World in Florida – that they rarely had light before I moved in with them. I had just stayed with some millionaires in Palm Beach and had a little "millionaire money" with me so I could buy kerosene for their old lamp. Linda ran out to meet her father when he walked home in the darkness, shouting: "Dad, dad, we got a present.... see, see, light.. ...we got light!"

Well, the joy didn't last forever! Today I have to visit Linda in prison whenever I want to see her. The scars from childhood poverty eventually defeated her.

Shotgun shacks in rain

When I lived with a dirt eating family on the muddy dirt roads on Meridians northeastern side I had to pass these shotgun shacks. The name comes from the fact that you can shoot through every room in one shot. For the poor they correspond to the trailers of today. The place where I took the photo is today a shopping mall.

Ivan is FR the only conservative website you vistit? I am begining to think you a little more than just a commie. I think you are a liberal commie disrupter.

[Polybius]

Hmmm, obviously you don't read carefully. I stated plainly that I did not support or uphold what was done in Manchuria or the rest of China...by Russia.

The issue was never what you supported or what I supported. I responded to a long list of wars and actions by the United States by making a long list of wars and actions by what was the de facto Russian Empire be it nicknamed Mother Russia or be it named the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

As for colonization...my point is not that it happened and there fore was bad, but the way it happened. Like it or not, the Tsars did not have the blood of the indigenous peoples on their hands like the US government did.

That any colonization spanning a continent is accomplished without warfare is a fairy tale to be believed by children on both sides of the Atlantic.

1717: Russian expedition to Khiva ends in a massacre of Tsarist troops.
1820s-40s: Kazakh revolts against Russian rule.
1837/38-46/47: Kazakh resistance to Russian rule under Kenesary Kasimov.
1865: The Russians capture Tashkent.
1868: The Russians capture Samarkand.
1873: Russians capture Khiva.
1881: The Russian slaughter of the Turkmens at the Battle of Gok-Tepe in which 150,000 Turkmen were killed
1890's: Uzbek revolts against Russian rule put down.
1916:Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Turkmen, and Uzbek rebel against Russian land confiscation, conscription

America's colonization was not bloodless. Neither was Russia's.

As for Finland 1939......go read up who was in charge, because there was no Russia at that time. And it was a Georgian who ruled an empire.

The analogous argument be:

"As for the invasion of Russia in 1940...go read up who was in charge, because there was no Germany at the time because we called it the Third Reich and it included other regions that Germany had conquered previously. And it was an Austrian who ruled the Third Reich."

As for race card....there are quite a few on FR who are Russophobic to the extreme and have stated over and over that we would be better of genocided. The characteristics they usually tag to us are no different then the ones the Nazies tag to Jews.

You have never heard that and you will never hear that from me. I am of Cuban birth and could begrudge Russia and all Russians for the support of the Communist oppression in Cuba. However, I am careful to differentiate between nationalities and individuals. My 12 year old daughter has a Russian schoolfriend who speaks Russian at home and my daughter has become intrigued by Russian to the point that she has taught herself the Cyrillic alphabet and can read Russian phonetically. In addition, we and other parents have hired a private schoolteacher that teaches 9 children in our house Monday thrugh Friday. That Russian child is therefore under my roof five days a week.

I don't hate Western culture, but I am not stupid enough to swallow it all up. I prefer a critical examination of the reality of the culture. Take the good, get rid of the bad...try that some time.

Your stated outlook is the same as what I believe. If you look back at my posts, you will not find a single reference to any action, right or wrong, taken by the United States. My references have been to Russia because I believe that you are attacking the United States for conduct done by every major power in the last 200 years, including the Russian Empire, pre and post Tsar.

As for Westerners...considering the Kaiser's gold financed the Revolution and the Soviets into power...yes it was the West's fault. Just like the fact that Ford and Armnhammer helped build up Stalin and American Intelligencia supported him with propaganda and funds.

The term "Westerners" is a very loose term. The Romans considered themselves "Westerners" and the Greeks "Easterners". The Chinese consider the Greeks "Westerners". Americans consider everybody on the other side of the Atlantic, including Russia, as "Europeans" and almost every white American is descendent from an ancestor that came to America to get away from the problems and strife of Europe and to escape the ideologies and social order of Europe.

While the German Kaiser was spending his gold in his incredibly foolish aid of Bolshevism, Britain, France and America were spending their gold and blood to try to defeat the Kaiser. What Germany did in 1917 was not "The West's" fault. It was Germany's fault.

In regard to the "American Intelligencia", there is no doubt that it is a Communist-loving group. The American Intelligencia is also dominated by individuals of a certain ethnic and religious persuasion who usually trace their ancestry to lands ruled by Tsarist Russia in the 1800's.

While living in these Russian lands, these people were routinely subjected to pogroms. As time went by, many of these individuals, with a deep haterd of the Tsar, adopted the Bolshevik ideology. If the Russian Tsar is bad, then any ideology that fights the Russian Tsar must be good, they reasoned. Some stayed in Russia and helped create the hell on earth that was the Soviet Union. Others immigrated to the U.S. and continued to believe that Bolshevism was the way to Paradise and strove to replace the American values they found in their new country with the values of Bolshevism.

During the 1930's, 1940's and 1950's, some betrayed the United States with espionage in order to aid the Worker's Paradise that they believed the Soviet Union to be.

Funny, isn't it.

You blame "The West" for Communism.

I blame Russia for Communism.

Maybe we can split the difference and agree to blame Central Europe in general and Germany in particular for Communism. ;-)

[hosepipe]

There are three words not found in the American Constitution; Democracy, Democrat, Democratic
By design, it's not an ommision. The founding fathers knew these words and deemed not to include them. If you don't know why, then you are politically naieve and subject to the lies of dumbocrats, as they try ever harder to make the U.S. a democracy.

So its all the democrats fault... Well no, because the Republicans are made up many ex-democrats in that sense its on the Republicans head too.

"It's not easy to take the democrat out of the party BUT it is damned near impossible to take the democrat out of the democrat. All you end up with is a RINO{Republican in NAME only}"- Himself

Well, you ASKED..

[Stavka2]

Why those pics??? Because they were the easiest to find and I was proving a point...if you bother to go further back up, you might notice that. The point is this: all the people who preach about how other nations need to do this and that, need to clean their own house first and lead by example. You might have noticed, I did not put any of the Clan and other such pics on it...why? Because I know that they are no longer a major issue and the US moved away from that for the most part. So there, stick that in your craw.

[Stavka2]

So in otherwords, you're afraid...no problem...make all the excuses and insults you want...you sound more like a disrupter in your case.. what ever.

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

???? Last time I checked Guilliani cleaned up the cesspool of NYC and made it respectable. He also tore up Saudi blood money, which is a lot more then anyone in power in America has done since Reagan. I have respect for him, not for people that kiss arse to the very people who sent their sons on a holy mission to kill mass amounts of civilians.

I'll give you a hint here. It's not your respect for Rudy that outs you. It's your pairing of Rudy and Keyes that outs you. You don't know what you're talking about in terms of American conservative politics - so do yourself a favor and stop trying to convince everyone that you do.

And by the way, Rudy accepted the Saudi Prince's money until the Prince mouthed off, suggesting it was our government's policies that led to 9/11.

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

Tex' son is among the best warriors ever. A Marine ninja. Ready, willing and able, today, tomorrow ... for us and to the great dismay and bad fortuity of our enemies.

He has a remarkable grace and patience with dipshits here. I don't.

I know Tex is very proud of his son, and I can see where the young man gets his character and guts. I've said before that I sleep a little better at night knowing that the offspring of a guy like Tex is standing in defense of this country.

As for your lack of patience with this influx of baby bottle peaceniks, I share it.

[Godfollow]

Why oh why oh why... wa,ha,ha,hhhyyyyy...

[Stavka2]

That outs me? Boy, that's just a PC term. Sorry, no homosexual history here to out. As for Guilliani and Keyes I respect them a hell of a lot more then the majority of what passes for Republicans, especially any that take Saudi money when it was Saudies that attacked Americans. Everyone loves to blame everything on the Klintoons....well, two years of the Bushes and what has changed at State or other agencies? In two years there is plenty of time to weed out the bad apples if you actually wanted to....but if you are in denial about your own government then I might as well be talking to a wall.

Here educate yourself some on the corruption inherent in the system.

REPORT #287 May 2000 US CONGRESS CAN'T CONTROL MONEY LAUNDERING AND CORRUPTION IN THE USA; BUT ARE PLANNING TO TRY AND DO SO IN SMALL CARIBBEAN TAX HAVENS!

It's Time to Reform Hill Ethics Process

Campaign Finance Corruption Erodes Citizens' Human Right to Freedom of Expression and Undermines the Public

Senate "graft for judges" provision threatens corruption of federal judiciary Enron corruption

Office of the Inspector General.

[Stavka2]

Ok, I'll acknowledge you those points on Western Intelligencia and the Germans. By the way, I never directly attacked US history as any worse then most of the major nations, my points, when taken in context were/are aimed at the holier then thou crowd screaming that the US has never done anything wrong. The US is like all other major nations...with a checkered history. Problem is, to many people are to brainwashed to look at it in a less then biased way.

Oh, and what you mentioned about the Russian time line is true but it is not colonization but conquest of the Central Asian areas...colonization was of Siberia and for the most part present day northern Kazikstan.

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

That outs me? Boy, that's just a PC term. Sorry, no homosexual history here to out.

Where did I say anything about a "homosexual history"? Got something on your mind?

I'm telling you, your dream ticket exposes your lack of understanding of conservative politics. That's all I said. Thanks for all the pretty links, but until you figure out the differences between Rudy and Keyes, you ARE talking to a wall, because I'm not listening. That's a 101 class. Take it.

[Stavka2]

Hay disruptor...here's a few links. Educate yourself...the best part is that they are all FREE REPUBLIC articles....who's the dumb flee eating monkey now...punk?

Here learn a little about Saudi Arabia..Garden of Evil

Book by Clinton Aides Says Saudi Diplomat Misled F.B.I. Chief Remember the Khobar Towers? Or was your head in the sand then too?

Saudi suckups...a little reality about the Saudies and the US government.

Aides of crown prince, Ashcroft huddle over WND Saudi scoop US gov bending under the Saudi will. By the way diruptor...if you suddenly feel clustrophobic...it's good to take your head out of the sand.

A Saudi government paper comparing Bush to Hitler Or maybe you are naive enough to believe they have a free press? Hmmm?

And the article to go with the picture link above.

Saudi Arabia Won't Allow U.S. Troops (for War with Iraq)

Oh wait, what's that I hear? Is that the sound of hot air rushing out your ears?

And one more to finish off this verbal slap down of your stupidity:

Saudi Arabia 'will not allow use of US bases'

[Stavka2]

By the way, I didn't include the commentary because I don't agree with it...but are you seriously denying that such poverty exists all over the US? Hell, just go off of the Ft. Bragg reservations and see some of the trailer parks and share croppers...or just north of Ft. Knox (south of Louiville along DieWay 30).