Where would the world be without the US?, page 4

The importance of free trade is debatable, as obviously it can ameliorate and dilapidate individual groups of people respectively. However, do you really think capitalism and globalization are bringing more good to the world than harm when currently about 30% of the world's population, if not more, are still living in absolute poverty?

And why are you so certain that without free trade the world would not be as properous (minority parts of it) as it is today? As far as i concern, socialism and communism both accentuate on equality of individuals and a classless society. Isn't that much more fair of a civilization than US and the rest of the capitalist nations?

There is an existing sucessful example. Cuba has probably the best, if not one of the best health care provided to the people in the world. Its poverty and homeless percentage of the general population is also one of the lowest. Simply the Communist government is capable to accommodate shelters and financial assistence to the people in need, they are not forced to be outcasts of the society, living in the streets and eat McChicken for every meal.

Free trade and globalization do benefit to people, but dare i say mostly to the middle class, cooperations, multi-naitonals and conglomerates. It is commonplace for them to exploit and abuse labour and cheap natural resources in the third world countries and manufacture goods into much higher value for profit maximization.

Even if free trade is not entirely deleterious to the entire world, the signicance of its existence is still not as essential as posters such as zoro said it would be, as other economic systems would have easily substitute its place.

Despite the lend lease which France and UK were to repay America back through the 50s and early 60s, US already received an incredible sum of cash in the 40s. Further more, American Cooperations exploit this opportunity of desperate lack and need of weapons and war machines in Europe, to say that America benefit "well" financially in WWII selling arms to Europe would simply be an understatment.

It was true that through the New Deal, America was already recovering its economy in the 30s. But Nazi domination in Europe would undoubtedly set back the resurgence, and in the long run, as i have mentioend, the US would have lost its European market for its comodities, which was a large majority fot its exports revenue.

America only joined the war after Pearl Harbour. And the Nazis declared war on US, following suit on Japn, due to the fact they were in the Axis alliance. Would have US directly involve itself in WWII if Japan and Germany did not show any agression towards it? Historians today still find this to be a controversial topic.

You simply did not read carefully of what i have posted. I did not state that US created Israel, i wrote: "Israel is another matter created by US". Britain was the one that composed the formation of Israel, but US was greatly in favor of this idea due to the fact it was reluctant to accept all the Jewish refugees into its borders.

With US backing, the UN partitioned Zionists to set up Israel, and it created the foundation of the Middle East conflicts that still exist today.

During the Cold War, US simply intensified the tension between Israel and the Arab world. In order to gain a foothold in Middle East and gain sphere of influence in the region, ever since 1949 US has been giving financial aids and military supples woth of value to the thousands of millions annually. To this day, USA has already granted Israel $49,064.20 million dollars of military supplies.

Progressively, Israel used these weapons given to them "generously" by the US to invade rest of Palestine that was not given to them as part of the Israel borders by UN, including West Bank, Golen Heights and others. Conquest of these areas drove, an estimation conducted by UN, 726,000 Palestinians into refugees without a place to call home. It was these victim's desperation for TRUE feedom and indepence that drove them to become freedom fighters against the Israel rule, and to the west known as terrorists. Now go ahead and tell me that US did not contribute or in the least extent in some ways responsible, to a news boradcast about a Palestinian terrorist blowing himself up in an Israeli bus you and I watch on the TV today.

Yes, USSR formed the Warsaw Pact, and controlled satellite states in Eastern Europe. But if you have any knowledge in Cold War history at all, you should also know that NATO, was created in 1949 April 4th with support of Washington. And only after West Germany was drawn into NATO as well, did USSR tolerated no more and created the Warsaw Pact in May 14, 1955 as a defensive responce to this aggresssive move by the west.

It was clearly stated the reason for Warsaw Pact: "The situation created in Europe by the ratification of the Paris agreements, which envisage the formation of a new military alignment in the shape of "Western European Union", with the participation of a re-militarized Western Germany and the intergration of the latter in the North Atlantic bloc, which increases the danger of another war and constitutes a threat to the national security of peacable states."

Factually, most non-American historians agreed that during the Cold War, USSR was often casted in the role of defensive and passive, while the America the ambitious and paranoid aggressor.

The death of Stalin and the emergence of new Russian leadership, Malenkov, Molotov, Beria, Bulganin and of course Khrushchev brought about de-stalinization, and the policy of Peaceful Co Existence. Russia was reforming and undergoing a new mood of openess and tolerance to the West. Go read the book Thaw by Ehrenburg published in 1954 for evidence.

Although reasons for the Peaceful Co Existence was partly beecause Khrushchev firmly believed that the contest between Capitalism and Communism was unecessary, because according to the Marxist theory two revolutions in a capitalist society world would occur, in the end the workers were remained in control of the country and a communist governing body would be set up.

Despite this, it was still geniune that USSR wanted peace. As seen from Khrushchev's recongnition of Israel and West Germany in the late 50s, and in July 1955 USSR actively arranged a summit meeting in Geneva through encouragement from Churchill. And later a second more direct meeting with Eisenhower in Camp David. Krushchev further showed its sincerety for peace by publicly condemning Stalin's rule of Russia in a government meeting.

Nonetheless, it was USA that refused USSR's peace offer.

The third meeting that was about to beging in Paris, was melt down as in May 1960, U2 spy plane was spotted flying over USSR air space and the Russians shot it down for self defence. If the U2 plane was never sent to spy on Russia by US, the Cold War coming to an early end would possibly reliaty.

Originally, US was in fear of Communism taking over the world through Eisenhower's Domino Theory. However most historians nowadays find it to be ridiculous, as examples such as China proved that the establishment of Communist government there had no influence over its smaller neighbour such as India, Japan, Taiwan etc.

I also find it rather laughable that if the stupidity of believing in the Domino Theory was not enough, the Americans went to the extent of fighting proxy wars in Asia through always and continuously supporting the corrupted "democratic" governments:

Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam
Signman Rhee in South Korea
Jiang Jieshi in Formosa

As for War in Vietnam, even the Americans within did not believe in the cause of fighting against Ho Chi Minh, who was a fair and just ruler of the Vietnamese people comparing to the corrupted Ngo Dinh Diem, who the US supported.

Massive demonstratoins were held throughout US in the 60s, draftees burnt their draft cards openly, in May 1969 The New York Times broke the news of the secret bombing of Cambodia. President Nixon ordered the FBI to wiretap the telephones of four journalists and 13 government officials to determine the source of news leak.

The most infamous and bloody demonstration in the war was perhaps the Kent State Protest. 4 students were killed by the Natoinal Guard, Alison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder. In which two were bayonetted and two were shot.

In the war, there are unbelieveable inhumane acts conducted by the Americans. In 1968 Marh 16, more than 500 people, many of them women and children , were slaughtered by G.I. without valid rules of engagement.

Within the country, Black americans where denied right to vote, hundresds of paratroopers were needed in 1957 to allow black children to enter Little Rock High School in Arkansa, in 1958 a 9 years old black boy received a 14 year prison sentence for merely kissing a 7 years old white girl in North Carolina, in which the white girl admitted she was in love with him.

Now, with all these examples, US's emphasize and criticism on human rights on communist china, north korea and USSR seemed ironic, hollow, and idiotic even.

Who ever said there are no evidence of American industries abusing and exploiting labour in Latin America during the 50s to fund the Eisenhower Doctrine? US secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, who was also a commited and famous Anti Communist politician and took a main role for refusal on USSR's Peaceful Co Existence Policy, apparently owned a food company in Guyanna, underpaying the labour there to overwork for profit maximization with the lowest production costs possible. The Rockefeller family also did the same, and if you even request evidence for proving the Rockefeller to be exploiting South American labour, you are just proving and displaying your ignorance and absurdity.

What good is signing a protocol if it is not ratified and taken into action?? And don't attempt to misdirect the blame onto Aussies with this one, they are not the one adding 40% more pollution to the planet yearly.

The US isn't "colonizing" or building an empire. Of course not silly, Americans have a different name for it, such as :"Protecting freedom, liberating the people" and so forth. In countries such as Iraq US "liberated", it would set up a pro-western democratic puppet government through variety of means. Keep in mind that right now the US has over 200 active military bases all around the world for "protection of global peace and freedom'.

I still firmly stand my ground.

Without the US, the world today would be without the Middle East problems. Without the US, the world today would be 40% less polluted annually. Without the US, the world today would be without the forgotten deaths in Vietnam and Korea and other wars waged by USA against communism. Without the US, equality of every human being, just and fairness in the world may actually have a chance to be.

[edit on 13-12-2005 by EarthUnificationFrontier]

It is debateable, its a tough issue to debat. I know because I'm doin it right now haha. But the issue with free trade is we havent been able to see it done in the poorest of poor countries just yet. Take CAFTA for example. It openly admits that because of the nature of the treaty, that little benefits will reach the rural(ie poorer areas of the country), but that it will increase foreign investment into these countries markets and governents. They will have to liberalize their their rural industries such as agriculture and livestock, which wont be a bad thing for these countries at this point. The combined GDP's of these Central American Coutries is .5% of what the US's is. Implementation of CAFTA is defined here:
www.ustr.gov...
www.ustr.gov...

I do agree that it is common place for corporations to exploit people. It is wrong and its one thing that needs to be reformed here in the US should be the extermination of corporate welfare, as that is taking tax payer dollars from away from where they are really needed. I'm a true conservative in the sense that I want less government, more money should be coming down to the local level of governments because thats where prosperity starts, on the community level.(my opinion) Of course I dont know much about economics or even business and this treaty is simply too much to read let alone understand for me. But the initial clauses of CAFTA do look promising for these small economies and I believe that opening their markets will result in greater economic prosperity for not all, but most of the country. You can equate these countries GDP's to my home state of North Carolina's for god sakes, they need more openess in their markets.

I am assuming(and I try not to do this very often) that you belive in the Marxist system of economics. And your example of Cuba is a good one, but of all the places it has been tried before ie. Russia and its satellite states, China, Vietnam, North Korea(Questionable to me because of the despotic nature of their government, more of a military dictatorship than anything). None of these systems worked except for the one example you mentioned which I will get to in a moment. This is why China's economy has be indoctrinated with market economy principles and look whats happening, its almost blossoming. As I said, with what little I know about economics but with Cuba they seem to have taken the system that no one seemed to be able to get right and done it. I congradulate them on that, but I think this shows the limited ability of a marxist economy to work only an a smaller scale(not on the scale of a large country like Russia or China).

I do have to agree with you to a degree on the economic reasons for entering the war, and the fact that due to the isolationist policies the US had before WW2 we probably wouldnt have entered the war with Germany or Japan without their aggression, would you have? WW2 brought about the most drastic foreign policy change in history, it was a 180 for the US and completely new territory for the country. I think one of the problems for the time and a factor in Vietnam was the fact that our country had basically just began using this global foreign policy and the lack of experience in this area helped lead to that conflict. Korea on the other hand was the right thing to do in my opinon, these people wanted to govern themselves as is their right and we helped them maintain that sovereignty and continue to do so(corrupt as you say they were or not). Would it be better if they were all under current North Korean rule, looking at the conditions of that country today theres no way anyone could agree to that.

As for the Isreal issue, theres another thread I'm involved in right now that is very interesting, join in if you like. No need to start a new issue here, we have plenty to chew on.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

NATO was created out of desire for peace in Europe and yes to counter the new Soviet threat. Most of he hostility toward Russia came from its earlier Stalinist Policies. Such as when he threatened to take Czechoslovakia and blockade Berlin. Harry Truman too was an advocate for peace before the Russians were. And I dont fault anyone for that but Stalin, as I think you will agree.
history.sandiego.edu...
Here is an outline of major events/policies throughout the Cold War its very interesting, but it doesnt give any info on the arms race from the Russian side.

Here is a more modern view of the Cold War, stuff we know now, that we didnt know then. It gives a good description of the ideology of the times from both sides.
www.columbia.edu...

Kruschev and the other leaders you mention may push for peaceful coexistence but the continued build up of arms paints a different picture. I'm not sure if it was Kruschevs doing, my bet is it was the Politbureau, who had total control of the country anyhow, including the Military. I dont know much about the other guys you mentioned, but I'll do some research. If he wanted so much peace then why go as far as supporting a communist revolution 90 miles from the US coast, something that he knew would not help the peace process. The Soviets also had ICBM's before we did, we only had Intermediate range missiles in 1957.

This article suggests Kruschev was not as peaceful as you make him out to be.
www.ccaurora.edu...

Time to move one, Im gonna have a whole page if I keep going haha.
The Vietnam war was a terrible thing, but if the Soviets were supporting the North, were we to leave the South to be routed, no. The attrocities of Vietnam to me were the cause of kids being put into a place he didnt want to be, and the anger and emotinal distress that came from having to kill. It took a cold hearted person to go over there, kill a bunch of folks and come back emotionally unscarred. But it happened and no one can deny that.

The things you mention to were wrong, but those were inernal issues of which you speak. THey do not affect the rest of the world, and today things are different, if your black, you can vote, interracial date, go to integrated schools, and have all the same rights. Thats not to say racism is over with because it most definately is still around, but its no longer just a white thing. Its become cross racial, in that every race has their issues with another, certainly not where we need to be.

That is true, while Austrailia does have the percapita largest emmissions of any country, they would still meet the protocols if they did sign it. But things like the Kyoto protocol have or are being implemented on the state level. Our constitution gives the states the power to decided if they want to implement such things or not.

These bases are also a major economic advantage for the towns around the world that the US has bases in. Dont give me the unsubstantiated BS that the US is in control of all of these places because if you cant prove it, then it doesnt matter what you say. If thats your opinion at least say it is your opinion when you say it so there is no confusion between facts and what you believe. In these places where the US has military bases, how many of them have current conflict besides Iraq and Afghaninstan?

If you wanna talk about Israel and the US influence on the ME conflict start a new thread and Ill be happy to join you. And please feel free to join me in the one I linked you to, its very interesting as well. This debate has to end somewhere so you can have the last word, been fun looking forward to more.

[edit on 12/13/2005 by ludaChris]