Comments on CHRISTIANS? THEY'RE TAKING THE BREAD OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF THE POOR.

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Whatever.

Lumping me in with the rest of America is a mighty convenient doge, Limey, but yes, you are taking an enormous piss by remaining monumentally narrow-minded and focused on your seeming one and only "enemy".

Whatever. There are so many people like you in America it's sickening, and it's a pretty sad statement that you are such and claiming the relative high ground from another continent. You're as American as my neighbors here, judging from your own attitude and bias.

America's fucked up. I know. It's one of the reasons I'm leaving, because so few are willing to be honest about it. Just don't insult everyone's intelligence by trying to make out like The Crown & Co. and the British population is somehow exempt from the baser elements of Man's nature.

Folly. And I really have neither the time nor the inclination to continue a conversation wherein the other side spews little more than nationalistic pseudo-intellectual backwash. I expect that from the French. I didn't necessarily expect it from The Isles.

My bad.

Now I'll leave you to your own. Clicks are money, and I'll spend mine elsewhere from now on.

posted by zenresistance on July 3, 2005 at 12:22 AM | link to this | reply

Hemlocker

Thanks: yours is the voice of sanity. Would you like to write my posts for me?

posted by Limey on July 2, 2005 at 3:36 PM | link to this | reply

zoke

Yes, there is corruption. But that is not the biggest problem - see my note to Burly.

Non-western ideology? Why should they follow America's flawed, non-sustainable system? That's the last thing most African countries need.

posted by Limey on July 2, 2005 at 3:32 PM | link to this | reply

zen

If you mean I'm taking the piss, you couldn't be further from the truth.

Like so many of your countrymen and women, it's quite obvious you find it extremely difficult to face up to - let alone accept - America's country's shortcomings.

However, hopefully you will learn: and I trust, not the hard way.

On with the motley!

posted by Limey on July 2, 2005 at 3:27 PM | link to this | reply

Burly

I agree that some third-world suffering is self inflicted - but only some. Your statement that Africans live in the most verdant and fertile continent on earth is totally misleading.

The United Nations Environment Programme states:
'Nearly two-thirds of African land is arid or semi-arid. The continent is the most seriously affected by desertification which threatens more than one-third of Africa's land area, particularly in Mediterranean Africa, the Sudano-Sahelian region and Southern Africa (Darkoh 1993). In Northern Africa alone, more than 432 million hectares (57 per cent of total land) are threatened by desertification (CAMRE/UNEP/ ACSAD 1996). Although overgrazing has long been considered the primary cause of desertification in Africa, it is now thought that rainfall variability and long-term droughts are more important determinants (UNEP 1997).

The BBC states:
'Over 200 million (more than 40 percent) of the continent's population is chronically malnourished (FAO 1995b). Roughly 50 percent of Africa's poor inhabit semi-arid regions and therefore depend on low and variable rainfall for food production (Broca and Oram 1991). As a result, local diets are dominated by low-yielding coarse grains (traditional maize, millet and sorghum) and roots and tubers that have so far shown limited potential for productivity increases.'

It is pleasing that America has shown its intention to fund an African help and health campaign. At last the US appears willing to accept some responsibility for exploiting that great continent.

If America falls because it is unwilling to change - so be it.

posted by Limey on July 2, 2005 at 3:05 PM | link to this | reply

Limey

Much of what the third world is suffering has been self-inflicted. Africans live in the most verdant and fertile continent on earth and millions are starving.. the Israelis in 1967 conquered a desert and turned it into a garden. The U.S. has just declared its intention to fund an African help and health campaign, announced by the President just yesterday. Your arguments are specious for the most part and the world's currency is slowly but surely becoming the Euro. When this great nation finally falls, it will be to applause from our so-called friends like you!

posted by Burly on July 2, 2005 at 6:56 AM | link to this | reply

I hate to say anything negative, but

while several of your points are, in fact, either correct or close enough, they all coalesce into nothing even resembling your central tenet. To put it succinctly, you're taking a piss, Limey. A big, yellow, angry piss. I know that's the point of your blog, and so I'm neither surprised nor shocked. So many of your points on this and other issues aren't unique to Americans. Only sheer intellectual folly would allow anyone to believe it.

But, as you've stated and I've conceded previously, it's your blog, and you've got your market niche here.

Have at, and good fortune.

posted by zenresistance on July 1, 2005 at 11:17 PM | link to this | reply

Hello From Dr Bob

Just passing through on my reading rounds. Have a great weekend

posted by Dr-Bob on July 1, 2005 at 3:56 PM | link to this | reply

The one aspect of your discussion

that you didn't get into was what the leaders of those countries are doing? There is so much corruption in those countries, coupled with over-population and non-western ideologies that they keep spiraling downward. You can't be a butterfly if you don't change and still stay in your coccon.

posted by zoke on July 1, 2005 at 10:55 AM | link to this | reply

limey

I took an Economics course in college once.  I think I might have understood classical Greek better; so I don't comprehend all that currency in the world stuff very well.  What you say about the gulf between rich and poor is all too true in the United States itself.  The ratio between a worker's pay in a company, and that of the CEO has gone from something like 12 to 1, to more like 200 to 1.  The old Gilded Age was a piker compared to the current one. The rich are merely ordinary now, and the super rich are being eclipsed by what the media is calling the hyper rich, who measure their fortunes in multiple billions.  The US corporate culture magnates are continually trying to further manipulate a system already stacked in their favor.  When your primary and perhaps only goal is to increase your bottom line no matter how bloated it may be already, and no matter who gets hurt in the process, the powerless become moreso.  When you add to that an arrogance that comes out of a sincere belief that "we are the greatest country in the world" and the rest of the world's cultures, political systems and religions are qualitatively inferior to ours, you plant the seeds of fierce resentment in the rest of the world.  The United States government, for its part, has a shamefully cynical history of supporting vicious right-wing dictators who victimized their own people, as long as they maintained "order" and fought communists.  Americans who voice criticism of our government and the way we behave in the world are labeled "haters", negativists, and too often, traitors.  That dynamic has gone to even greater extremes in the current political climate, as the neo-conservatives in power work to marginalize their legitimate opposition, and re-define our constitutional system.

Behindamask has pointed out my ignorance on more than one occasion, so be aware that whatever I say is merely opinion.  That's why I am in the Opinion section and not the Professorial Didactics section.  Thanks for your continuing efforts to make us think.    Hemlocker

posted by Hemlocker on July 1, 2005 at 9:30 AM | link to this | reply

Cynthia

Point taken.

But the question is - what's to be done?

posted by Limey on July 1, 2005 at 5:54 AM | link to this | reply

Limey, every thing you say is

correct except for the last sentence. This is not an "existential condition", not only for third world people, but for poor, working and now "middle class" Americans - it is their and our REALITY!

What always strikes me as ironic is that these so called people of "moral values" live a very Darwinian philosophy - but heaven forbid they should teach evolution in the schools.

posted by Cynthia on July 1, 2005 at 5:32 AM | link to this | reply

Well that's shut you up

I thought you'd get the message eventually.

posted by Limey on July 1, 2005 at 5:12 AM | link to this | reply