35 million in aid and 40 million for Inauguration parties

no what the world should do is take it out of your cold dead hands

god i hate self interested little fucks like you

 

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I would like to compliment Muhlenberg, who has hit the nail on the head.

Restoring their Economy is our best interest, if it takes 350million, oh well, in the end, trade and commerce with them will pay that back.

As far as lives go, no nation has ever made a decision based upon lives. That is a concern better left to individuals, a nation simply does not have the liberty to care, because it is far more exposed than an individual person of that nation.

Charity is a good thing, but people should re-evaluate nations, they treat them too much like people. And then they judge people on their actions. (I speak above as a nation, as a person I am far more compassionate and charitable).

 

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Asgaurd, don't be such a dumb little prick.

The world is driven by self-interests, welcome to the grown-up world...time to put your toys away and realize how things work. Unless you want to be left behind and led around by the nose from your superiors.

 

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Asguard- A reply to your question about why Americans tend to consider military service so important. We enjoy our freedom to a phenomenal extent. We also remember that we didn't barter for it, we didn't argue for it, we didn't negotiate for it. Nobody gave it to us. We took it. After we gained our independence from England, France had her revolution and then had no way to pay for it. She started raiding shipping, ours included. Little hit-and-run tactics hiding behind an undeclared war never respond well to peace talks while we're losing our livelihoods, so we had to beat them down. Then England conned the Barbary States into locking up the tradeways in the Mediterranean, so we had to beat the Barbary States down just to keep our economy alive. Then 1812 rolls around, the Second American War for Independence. With a navy built in large part of captured enemy ships and a generation that never knew the yoke of submission, we taught "Mother" that we were here to stay.

From day one it was a fight just to survive. We had our diplomats and our ambassadors, but for the most part they seemed to have been regarded as amusing, rarely taken seriously. Ulitmately, we learned to negotiate with cannon barrels. As I've heard is said in Germany, "If you won't listen, then you've gotta feel." (Usually followed by a roundhouse when some jerk won't just settle down and chill out.) We're not as militaristic as some would propose, but I believe it only makes sense, even when negotiating peace, to keep one hand on that gun. As long as both parties stay legit, nobody has to draw.

 

*aside to the current discussion, but relevant to topic post*

Even Canada, whose population is a mere fraction of the States has pledged $40 million, and will match every dollar donated by the public between now and Jan 11, 2005.

 

oxygen maybe thats some of the problem your having with the rest of the world. Australia's policy used to be "help if we can (like timor and the solamans) but stay low so we arnt a threat to anyone" and it worked, untill howard changed that policy. Now we are just waiting for someone to take a swing at us. The US has always been seen to do only whatever was in its own interests (rightly or wrongy) and that is an image you need to work to break, but you cant if you focus on "everyone is out to get me" Maybe what you need to change is stop voting for former milatry and start voting for former diplomats, but i dont know. Your stuck in a vicious cycle of "the world hates us so fuck em and we will do what WE want", and the world "the US only ever looks after itself and does whatever is in its own interests, fuck em". Thats why people like osama become popular, if you could change your image he would just be a lone criminal with 1 or 2 followers

 

Typical, only you can say that.

Ah.. twin towers, Iraqi 'WMD' etc concern with what?

 

Tsunamis were rare in indian ocean unlike the pacific rim where tsunami warning system is in place. An early warning system would have reduced the deaths but none knows how to stop the destruction it would cause. enitre islands are missing in indian ocean. $35m 'handout' by bush would be of great help, ofcourse.

 

Asguard- One of the biggest mistakes I believe this country ever made wasn't so much in valuing leaders with military experience. Military experience doesn't always equal a predisposition for violence as a first resort. [Myself, I'd rather work with military veterans, especially those who held higher ranks, because my experience shows that these people tend to think in more practical, result-oriented ways, as opposed to what I see as a general trend of sloppiness and inattention to detail in people I've worked for and with who didn't even have a stint in the Scouts under their belts. That's my personal experience, and admittedly a very broad generalization.] Rather the mistake I see being made is that we're trying to fit in globally while still holding on to our isolationist ways from the early part of the 20th century. We're the heaviest hitters on the block, and whether others look to us for protection or for a scapegoat (justified or not), the fact is that they're going to look to us. To try to stay neutral in the current global environment is like being asked to "watch the kids", and then literally watching them, doing nothing else, while they smack away at each other.

But it seems to me that if we try to step in to settle things, everybody screams that we're imposing our imperialist ways on them. So what are we supposed to do when, for example, petty little warlords in Africa are starving their own people? Just keep throwing money at the problem until it goes away? We can't impose sanctions. The people are already wasting away to nothing. Sanctions and embargoes only hurt them more, and the warlords obviously don't care about them. So how do you resolve it when the people who are supposed to be in charge aren't interested in talking, in acting like responsible adults, and don't see any benefit in peace, only in the death of the other guy? How do we get involved globally AND effectively and without killing our own economy by trying to buy these guys off?

 

i dont belive this. i wrote this HUGE post and my computer lost its conection and i lost it

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take 2

i dont think that the problem is the leaders HAVING served as such, nor am i saying that it makes them more likly to go to war. What i am saying is that you seem to ONLY focus on someones millatry record at the exsclusion of there policys. example "what is your policy on education and how will you reduce the national debt", "i served in vetnarm and that man didnt, i won a purple heart". It doesnt say that he has a better policy it just says he served. That shouldnt be the issue in the first place it should be what his policy vs my policy is and who can manage the country better and i think this focus has been lacking from the media and the voters. There is to much focus on things like who they sleep with, who served longer and whats my religion than what can they do to improve the country no matter where they got that experiance. I mean why not have a former head of the PM's department as PM. He\she would probably know a HELL of a lot about what was needed to run the country as they have been runing the day to day for there time there anyway. What about an experianced diplomat as minister for forignen affairs? he will know what it is really like to negotiate with other countrys and what sort of things can REALLY be done in that. I think you guys need to come back to whos the best person for the job and not worry about the extra stuff.

As for how to how to help without bankrupting yourself i dont know. I know why your image is so bad tho. The US goverment is seen over seas as only acting on beharf of itself and never for the good of the people its "helping" think about the cold war, hell just think about the wars you are in now and tell me honestly are you ONLY there to help those people and not to help yourselves? i dont think you can say that is the only reason. Not with the oil contracts, hell not even with the redevelopment contracts. The other thing other countrys see is your govermments actions in relation to international bodys and tretises. Pulling out of whatever isnt going to benifit you, exstorting other countrys to get surport for what you want to do and not joining a body specifically designed to fight the sorts of human rights abuses you claim your trying to stop because they wouldnt exsempt your citisans from prosicution. Then there is the way you us the right of veto so that nothing that isnt for america can ever get through. now you arnt the only ones to do that, your just the most visable.

What i belive you need to do is stop exsorting the UN with things like "if you dont surport us we will do it anyway" and start to change it to better fit the world. Push for the abolishment of the securitys council because no country is better than any other. Push for it to be able to take care of things by itself like a world goverment. Push for its reolutions to be legally inforcable. Push for the ICC to cover EVERYONE including you. Push for the UN to have its own millatry\police so its not you that has to have the burden. That way you can just say its there problem not yours, that you have paid your world tax's and the UN is there to fix it

The US has always been seen not to act unless its in its best interests. That is why your damed if you do and damed if you dont, some of this opionion is just racisum and some is genuine cinisium baised on you current policy and your past track record. You need to change is image that when the US invadeds to remove an opressive goverment they arnt doing it to get more oil\money for themselves or just doing it to put a Mcdonalds there. This will take ALOT of time to change that image, but it has to start with you guys and relecting bush wasnt the best start to changing it. Most inteligent people focus this opinion on the goverment not its citizens but when you relected him you showed the world that that is the sort of person you WANT for a leader, that it wasnt him moving without your aproval that this really is what you want to do and that refocuses some of it on the people not just the goverment

GRRRR the first one i wrote was so much better

 

I think the increased pledge shows a certain something about Americans:

• There is a cultural issue of prioritization, but this is also offset somewhat by the nature of the death toll, leaping insidiously every time we blink. It takes Americans a few seconds to figure certain things out; the aid/inaugural issue is certainly a point on reflection, but so is Alex Rodriguez's baseball contract.

• However, Americans really do believe themselves worthy and noble and all that good stuff. And this is why they end up doing the right thing. Yes, the hesitation is embarrassing, but that's a weird thing in our culture, too: we leap before thinking, and one way or another we end up embarrassing ourselves. We have a preexisting unnatural focus on action and hesitation; sometimes people would get the feeling that "a moment to think about it" is one of the most reviled concepts in the culture. And besides, some guest on one of the MSNBC talkers last night pointed out that even the UN official who made the "stingy" remark has gone so far as to say he has never seen such a humanitarian outpouring as the increased public ante and the wave of private support.​

The thing is that even I, who devour my news online as it hits the wires, had a severely underestimating impression of the disaster when the death toll was first reported at fourteen- and then twenty-thousand. The Washington Post's Michael Dobbs--whom some may have already forgotten for his obviously insufficient role in debunking the Swift Vets' story--reported from Sri Lanka immediately after the disaster. He was actually in the water when the wave hit, but his location off a small island pretty much saved his life. Even though his headline, "It Seemed Like a Scene From the Bible", made it clear, it did not occur to me at the time--for such a thing seemed unimaginable--that the death toll would leap to 138,000 and reaching to freaking Africa; the idea that the disease tolls could bring the number of people affected in some way to five million is absurd. I'm guessing up to a million of those will be deaths.

The first couple leaps of the death toll caught me off-guard. I had expected it to rise, but not to double and triple in the course of hours. And somewhere in there, as it charged past 100,000, the American government figured it out, too. I was certainly surprised to hear of the tenfold increase in American aid to $350m, but it seems to me that if anyone wants to argue "too-little-too-late", they can simply f@ck off, regardless of how much Japan is giving.

I don't see "hesitation", really. I simply see the situation taking a few minutes to click with certain people, and, frankly, that's the way it goes in this country sometimes.
____________________

Notes:

Dobbs, Michael. "It Seemed Like a Scene From the Bible". Washington Post, December 27, 2004; page A01. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26784-2004Dec26.html

United Press International. "Tsunami death toll approaches 150,000". WashingtonTimes.com, January 1, 2005. See http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20050101-062145-6887r.htm

Kennedy, Helen. "Criticized, U.S. ups aid offer to 350M". New York Daily News. January 1, 2005. See http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/267216p-228857c.html

Agence France Presse. "Japan pledges 500 million dollars for tsunami victims". TurkishPress.com, January 1, 2005. See http://www.turkishpress.com/business/news.asp?id=050101144558.7fkafxyp.xml ​

 

Wow. All that money and no bank to deposit it in.

I like what this has turned into, though. “My country has donated more than your country, so we’re better.” Hypocrisy to the highest degree. Do a good deed and go out and tell everyone what you did. Y’all disgust me.

 

500>350

Japan is better

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Bells by east coast do you mean queensland or victorian end? because down south we are shelter by NZ and tassi from that sort of event. whats missing is knowlage about blue ringed octpus and what to do about those

 

And Japan $500m

 

bell it is almost impossable for one to come here. Thats what i mean about the possitioning of tassi, its between us and the edge of the tectonic plate, and the plate line goes THROUGH NZ so anything there would be on land not in the ocean

its basically the same all around, there are other land masses between australia and the edge or the edge goes through them.

And what i ment about the blue ring (and for that matter the cone shell) is do you know what to do if they sting you? I know cause i chose to do other first aid training but anyone can go to the beach and not many people know that if either of those sting you, you MUST find another person or you WILL die. There isnt anything you can do by yourself that will save your life. You need someone to give you mouth to mouth when your lungs become paralised

 

Yes I have noticed that trend, its pathetic. America is not being so brash about the $40m its wasting on a useless "inauguration" for its presidency though. Complete waste, especially as he is already in the damn house!! Thats consumerism on global scales!!