US foreign politics are the meanest and greedeast of its kind (which does not reffer to the citizens). But even worst things happen if countries start su**ing up.
If you wanna see one country that fu**ed up BIG time in ´99 by listening to the yanks type in "NATO.Angrifskrieg" or "Es.begann.mit.einer." in emule.
Ah, so there you have it. They already have you by the "attachments". They control "your" money. You are now a slave to your government. You now work for them. You see, the power of the people is lessened by the fact that the people have figured out they can vote themselves money from the government. None of those types want their gravy tray taken away, so they will always vote for the guy who gives them "free" money and won't vote for the guy who would set them free because being free means that you are on your own... "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose". OK, I'm done now. illepall
Group Hug
Moore's work may be all you say it is. But it's also largely, on film, how non-US world sees you. How the US goes about correcting it is the issue, not whether or not the perception is fair or accurate. It can't be fair, or accurate, and I know for a fact that it isn't representative of the majority of Americans. But that, as I say, isn't actually the issue. "You're wrong, we're not like that" is insufficient.
An interesting parallel. I wouldn't have drawn this comparison, but there ya go.
McCartheism is alive and well, then? The US ain't as free as it thinks it is. I don't say this in an unkind way, but I do say it sincerely. The US needs a free press. But before that, it has to realise that it doesn't actually have one now. It doesn't.
The world needs more than "don't listen to Moore, he's a jerk". They already HAD a negative view of the US before Moore's documentaries were made. Moore just put some of it on celluloid. US foreign policy is a big problem. It always has been, but today it's acute. Moreover, post-9/11, it's dangerous. Dangerous for us all. Bush Snr was an isolationist, and Jnr is even more so. The current crises couldn't have happened to a worse president, IMO.
well michael moore could not be as "fair and balanced" as fox news, eh? .
there are lots of documentaries about the US, the military industrial complex, the iraq war and the plans made for it a decade ago that are far more trustworthy than 9/11 by michael moore.
michael moore is in the first place an entertainer, but that doesn't mean he isn't right in many things. maybe a little "unfair and unbalanced" in some topics :P.
This is a really interesting discussion for two reasons.
As a german I really know how it feels to get attacked just because of your nationality. “Heil Hitler” and “Nazi **** of” are the nicer comments from this people. All you can do, is to leave the server and wonder how some guys can be so stupid. Idiots live everywhere. The sad part of this story is, that this nazi-comments mostly come from two countrys in the northwest. Funny, that I especially like these countrys most of all european countrys. Fate...
Anyways:
On the other hand it´s also very intersting to have the possility to discuss directly with you americans about the political things, witch are the origin of their problems on the servers.
I really can not understand comments like Infinitis. How can you have such an one dimensional viewpoint to your countrys political actions? Why can a US citizen like Hallen be so confident of the democratic system, while living in a country where it works so bad, worse then in nearly any other country in the world?
Please stop talking about the USA as a free country. It is all theoretical nonsense! All this babble about the land of the free and the power of the masses is imo absolutly bullshit. It just sounds like a mantra the citizens have to repeat all the time to make themselves believe it. I would be quite happy to say that it´s better in "old europe", but I think it´s a lie on each side of the ocean. We are all media controlled voting livestock. But there is still an important difference: When I look to your country, I see a media industry that was afraid to raise some critical voices against the irak war. That´s a point to get seriously worried about, not just because of your massive military power.
There is a (at least at the second election) regulary voted president who is not ashamed to lie as hell to accomplish his (or his financiers) inhuman politics. A Condoleezza Rice who is lying about the fact, that the us military is torturing innocent people with the knowledge of the government. A Dick Cheney who would perfectly fit to our goddamn NPD party... how can such a man be acceptalbe to your nation? A barefaced Donald Rumsfeld lying to the UN by pretending facts about Saddams weapons of mass destuction. His presentation just made me want to puke. It´s like losing the little rest of faith in the world politics in just a few minutes. And in the end there is a nation legalizing all this by still supporting this government. WTF?
How can a nation be so brainless? Or is it just ignorant?
I saw the movie “Hotel Rwanda” some weeks ago. I can only recommend this film to everyone who doesn´t understand how perverted our “democracy” is. This film establishes the question, how it was possible that the whole western world was looking a bit bored at the genozide where 75% - 90% of the Tutsi were murdered and doing just nothing. The answer the movie gives is as simple as it gets close to the truth: A living african isn´t worth one stupid vote on the next election.
The world is never like the propaganda, the media wants to make you believe. It´s so important to understand this. It doesn´t mean that the press ist always wrong, but it´s always just a small window you are looking through and in the worst case the window grate warps the picture to a lie.
I can highly recommend you to read the speech of Harold Pinter he held after winning the literature Nobel Prize. The interesting part of this speech begins with the following sentence: “Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power.” If you are interested in it you might search for this cut. It´s definatly worth the time the reading takes
Ps.: I hope nobody feels harmed because of the written, the main reason for it might be my bad english knowledge. I hope it´s not to bad, so you understand what I want to say And if some things sound a bit rude, they aren´t ment to
I do sometimes wonder, based on events since the Iraq invasion, how Bush got voted back in?
Then I look at Tony Blair still in power, and how i've only ever come across 1 person who voted for him and dozens who didn't.
And I wonder about the noises made in other countries during our elections that there was extreme corruption in our electoral system during the last elections.
And I think of Florida and Callifornia in America where they've had their voting scandals in recent elections.
And I look at all the votes registered by dead people.
And I wonder what the hell democracy actually is.
I like living in a nation where I can say this, the downside is ... after a while nobody takes you seriously anymore.
Hehe, yes but imo it´s very unlikely, that a government has the power to manipulate an election in this way. The only thing they can do is to control our opinions. When you would manipulate the election process itself, there would be to many people knowing about it. On the other hand it´s silly why so many elections are using more and more computers for the voting process itself, for example. There is no need to do it, and it gives the option to tweak the results much easier then with a pen and paper election.
But there is also an intersting thing when you vote in my electoral district. We do not have ballpens for our election or something else that is good for documents, no we use pencils... Oo I mean... WTF? What are they doing, when they are counting the votes? Is the number of sold rubbers significantly increasing in the voting periode?
But seriously: I don´t think that manipulation is a big point in that. It works more subtle and most of the things are legal in democracy. And manipulating opinions is the main part about it. It´s just a question of useful open discussion or spreading lies/opinions with the power of the mass media. Besides the US, Italy with Berlusconi is a good example for this, although it works quite different there.
I wondered for a moment if that was a throw-away line, but it's such an important one.
We don't have a democracy in the UK, or in the US. We just pretend we do. I'd go as far as to suggest that most of us don't know what democracy actually means. In politics, there are "hoorah" words and there are "boo" words. Democracy is, in our politics and cultures, a "hoorah" word. What that word means, though, is mostly lost on us. And in fact, given the opportunity for a MORE democratic process, we reject it or are too apathetic to fight for it.
That said, the fact that WE don't have a democracy (and aren't determined to get one) doesn't stop us being determined to impose one on another country. One that, culturally, doesn't even WANT it, and also culturally will be incapable of maintaining it. It's a combination of ignorance, which leads us to assert the democracy, and arrogance that leads us to believe it's right.
For freedom, you need to do more than resist the power of the weapons. (That's one of the advantages of living in a democracy: you're not forced to obey at gunpoint.) You also need to resist another, more subtle power: money.
Do you accept commercial television? Be prepared to mistrust anything that is said on those channels.
Do you accept newspapers being owned by a few big corporations? Be sure you have other news sources.
Do you accept political parties being sponsored? Be extra careful who you vote for.
Do you accept search engines being run by companies? Take the search results with a grain of salt.
Really? I think there are about 10-15 Million Illegal Immigrants in the U.S. that will readily disagree. They've all been protesting in many major cities across this country, in the past weeks. Now our government wants to "give them a break".
Watch this one closely and see how the "masses" that one political party needs the vote of so much to stay in power affect the LAWS in this country.
It's funny, we all hate "illegal immigrants" because "they come to our contry and steal our jobs, our healthcare and our women without contributing a penny!"
Yet actually for the most part the "illegals" are individuals we would not have an issue with.
Just a small percentage are undesireable, a percentage that I would hazard is not too dismilar to the number of undesireables living perfectly legally and without having immigrated.
There are no established nations which do not have an 'immigrant' population, we all arrived wher-ever we are at some point - is it a question of whether it's in the last couple of years or 200 years ago?
My family moved to Ireland in a failed invasion in the Spanish Armada, should I go back now? We moved to England more recently - something about the price of potatoes - maybe it's Ireland we should go back too? In actual fact we where never Spanish, we just lent a hand to the Catholics to crush the infidels - maybe we should go back to Italy?
At what point does an immigrant get to call themselves the nationality that they identify as being? 1 generation, 2 generations?
Sometimes we need to remember that we are 1 species and not 145.
@Marsh2a
maybe the government has seen that getting rid of the immigrants would be impossible + not very clever.
they are working very hard. they don't commit crimes ( if they are caught their american dream is over). they are very important for the economy.
but i really like how you ignored the rest of roadrunners post. it's actually the typical way of responding to posts like roadrunner's. i have already experienced that in several forums (especially deviantart, try to say something "bad" about the u.s. there! (zomg)).
we are talking about the picture other countries have of the U.S.. it's more about what the u.s. is doing to the rest of the world, pls don't try to distract.
Yes, the people normally control in what political direction a country goes. Maybe with a demonstartion, at least when they vote,... But that doesn´t prove that they are free in their decision of what´s right or wrong, or in whitch direction the country should go at best. Your judgement can just be as good as the information you get. And when you are surroundet by wrong facts it´s impossible to get to the right answers.
Edit: Major correction of the first sentence for a better understanding
Please don't mistake what I said. I dont hate illegal immigrants. In fact I don't hate much of anything.
I only wanted to respond to the power of the masses comment.
I remember a time when numbers of folks in this country protested war, four college students were shot to death by our National Guard, right here in Ohio.
My point is that masses of demonstrators do affect the outcome of political positions on a given issue.
Not "do", but occasionally "may". Public demonstration is not by default an effective way to affect change. Public opinion is more effective in some cases. You could gather every Brit or Yank in a field (if it were physically possible) in their respective nations, have a public vote on any matter, win 100% of the vote and still not have legally made a policy decision or change. We don't live in democracies
Lets not race or talk politics, let's get into the semantics of latin
cracy, or more correctly "cratia" is literally and meaningfully translated just as government, to work out whether it's context is "control of the people" or "controlled by the people" we need to do away with literal translation and look at the options.
For a "peoples government" we would use "publica" which means "of the people", so democracy in the spirit we take it today would be, "publicacratia" in latin, then probably Englishified into "publicracy".
So why do we use the word democracy instead of publicracy? Because democracy was never meant to be "power to the people", to understand this we must look at the origins of democracy.
When the Greek's conceived the idea it wasn't even "1 person, 1 vote". It was 1 vote for everyone all right, but only people who owned land and tithes got the vote. Oh and you had to be a man of course.
In it's original conception democracy was a way of keeping the mob happy by giving them access to government, the "mob" (should one form) may well have consisted of peasanty - but only because their lords told them to be there.
It's because of this that publicacratia never would have been appropriate as a word, we have democracy instead. Literally people government, but contextually - it's not the "people's government", so in translating to English we need to give it a meaning which is opposed to this whilst not distorting what the word actually meant. We do this by taking it in the context of controlling the people - which is why democracy was chosen as a form of government anyway, simply put - it was the lesser of all the evils they could think of because at least the people (the mob) would be more content.
Democracy, or whatever label you want to put on it, has it's problem in the US, but it certainly works.
Secondly, nobody is truly free. However, Americans are free to choose a whole lot about how they want to live their lives. I think that is true in a lot of nations now.
The thing you don't understand is this: It is ALL an illusion. It is just that we, the people of this world, CHOOSE to believe in it and make it work. We have to because the alternative is total chaos. There is no "Them", only individuals working together trying to maintain order and stability.
Our press is more free than you know. They are the cause of many of our greatest woes and greatest achievements. They definitely have a political agenda, both left(mostly) and a few on the right. They choose on what to report, and they often choose to report only what they want us to hear. It is their freedom to do so. Free press does do damage, but it is damage that we willingly absorb. The image that you may have of American politics is greatly influenced by that same media. It is a very negative picture of the US. Most of it is overstated and made to be more damaging than it really is. Life here is not perfect, but it is good. My point is, do not let what you hear and see in the popular media override your common sense and view of the world. They paint a bleak picture that does not represent the truth very well.
And what you say about our media being afraid to take a stance is simply misinformed. Our media has railed against the war and against any military action against terrorists or anybody else for years. There have been protests here, and continue to be protests over America's involvement or lack thereof in international affairs.
I also don't understand how we get blamed for genocide in Africa and for sticking our nose in where it doesn't belong at the same time. Either we are a world player and we try to do what is right, or we ignore the rest of the world and let whatever happens happen. The latter is the definition of isolationist, BTW. And nobody, from any other nation, can stand back and say that their countries' international policy is not affected by politics, money, and power because it is. However, I do believe that for the most part everybody wants to try and do what is right. America is a great nation of people who are for the most part benign and want to help.
Oh, saying "How can a nation be so brainless"... would be considered rude in most places.
OK, I'm done now. 
illepall 
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