Goodwin>
You can't just cut my sentences in half and blow them out of proportion.
That's not fair.
But to answer your question, we in Sweden aren't incredibly smart or holding some key to the truth, but in general I would say that we know alot more about what goes on in our country and around the world compare to the average American.
Americans usuallt score very low on tests regarding international questions, while Swedes tend to be amongst the top.
That of course depends a lot on Sweden being so small and that the living standard here is high, but the reasons are not point in this...
But that is what it sounds like to me when you keep claiming that Swedes are smarter than Americans and are better educated. I have never seen or heard of these so called tests on International questions. David have you? Anyways, I have never taken one myself and I am personally against standardrized testing. There is more to education than knowing simple facts to simple questions.
I mean that you are so proud of your country that you would rather turn a blind eye than admitting to yourself that the American way isn't always the best.
(and the you part is of course a generalization)
Define this American Way for me? I would like to see what your answer is.
To let them have a fair trial instead of breaking them down.
The main reason for the invented term "illegal combatant" was that in a civil court you would have to release many of them in lack of evidence, and they would have the right to legal council.
But you seem to think that they must all be guilty of terrorism just because they fought for the other side...
Lack of eveidence. They were found among terrorists and most of them are the higher ups in these terrorists organizations. We have not denied them legal council. Right now, the prisoners at Gitmo have legal council by some civil liberaterian group of lawyers (and before you ask they have nothing to do with the government; probably from the ACLU) who have gotten the Supreme Court to accept to hear out the prisoner cases in Gitmo. I wonder if your news media reported that? The reason why we don't want them to stand trial is because we want to get intelligence out of them and further if we released them out on bail what will they do? Most likely go home, strap some bombs around their waste, and go kill some innocent people that got nothing to do with nothing but that they are easy target. Fucking cowards.
Well, that's easy to say...to just blurt things out.
The European media took a real lesson from the Gulf War, where they bought everything the CNN gave them, but later had to go out and apologize for...I find it strange that American media hasn't.
Don't know how the Gulf War got into this part. What did CNN do or say that was a lie? Did not Iraq invade Kuwait? Was it not right to fight Iraq out of Kuwait? Oh, there is probably some sort of conspiracy that we Americans don't know or something.
I even have an example.
In the Afghanistan war the American government asked CNN and other news agencies to stop publish so many pictures of refugees in camps, since it made them look bad.
After that the amount of footage from refugee camps and so on dropped rapidly. There was a whole documentary of that, with the esteemed British journalist Robert Fiske who talked about it.
I don't see where it's wrong to ask someone not to publish something. And just because someone asks someone not to publish something doesn't mean that another person has to listen. Refugees always occur no matter what kind of war it is. You'd be crazy to stay where you could be shot by soldiers unless you happened to be defending your home from them. This wasn't the Balkans where enthic cleansing was occurring so there wasn't any real story in the refugee camps other than that refugees left their homes to get away from the war. How much more can you say? I don't think the footage stopped because the American government asked them to but because there was no story there or the story already has be told and that was it.
The University in Gothenburg.
I get a feeling that you think Swedish education is some kind of Stalinesque propagande machine or something, or why do you question my education? (Please correct me, I hope I'm wrong here)
I think it would be rather natural if I as a Swedish citizen has acces to more objective information then American citizens, since you are involved in the conflict while Sweden is neutral.
Still, I'm not saying that Swedish media can be trusted fully either, my whole point is that you have to be critical towards ALL media.
I was questioning where your education came from. Propaganda machines come out of schools just as much as media.
I think you are wrong about objectiveness. Nothing is truly objective in the end and even the most common fact has an alternate fact. Once more, in America there is something called the First Admendment and unless you threaten to kill people and a few other things, you can pretty much say what you want (unless it is private property and government property is public property) and the government can't touch you. I have heard a lot of war protesters, who have said a lot of things you have said, but I don't buy this right wing corporate theory and I have not seen any evidence to prove otherwise. And propaganda is only such if you don't believe it as the truth so I see a lot of what you are saying that actually happened is just Swedish propaganda from the Swedish state run media.
No, not controlled.
It's being funded by the state (the people) instead of commercial companies.
The government has no control over what they send or what programs will be shown.
And just to clearify, I'm not saying that CNN never tells the truth, I'm just have to say that you shouldn't rely on it.
(I leave FOX news out of the discussion, because they are really just a propagande machine.)
Anything funded by a state is controlled by the state. And considering that I assume the employees of the state run media outlet are paid by the government then the government can fire them and hire them thus controlling who is an employee at the state run media.
And because what FOX News says contradicts your views, you simply shove them off as a propaganda machine. Personally, I think FOX is a lot more objective than CNN is considering FOX reported the War on Iraq far more better than CNN and still does a better job of reporting by reporting both the good and bad things happening. I have as of yet to see a report on CNN about the good things happening.
No, but I can easily compare it to Swedish media and see that there is a big difference in how the stories are presented.
Just goes to prove my point that you are seeing an opininated Swedish view of the world. The same thing you are accusing me of seeing.
Seriously?
How did you get to that conclusion?
As far as I know no European country refuse legal council to prisoners, or hold them for years without a trial...
As for European prisons I can't say as a whole, but in the western european countries it is higher than American standards, and then I'm not talking about where the "illegal combatants" have been placed.
But I have also heard that French prisons are bad.
(Although the American prisons are seen as worse here)
Then I don't understand what you consider bad is. If living behind bars with free cable tv, free internet access, free education, many more free facilities that most Americans have to pay money for then I don't know what you suspect. Most people in jail over drugs are in jail because they were caught selling them or distributing them into the population not doing drugs. Most people who are caught doing drugs are usually sent to rehabilitation centers and only go to jail if they are repeat offenders and that is usually if they have been caught doing it three or four times and have already gone through the process. I would love to see the luxury suites in the prisons in Sweden. Have you actually ever seen a US prison except what you heard from word of mouth from other people? And a second question; what do you expect in a prison? If you are found guilty of a crime shouldn't one have to pay the price of that? I think if you didn't make them then crime would be rampant because people would see it as nothing will happen if I do this.
First of all.
A socialistic country is a communistic country. I presume that the word socialism has the same meaning in Sweden as it has in America.
Secondly, if I would guess that you live in a family with a stable economy, where most of your friends are white or at least Americans since a couple of generations back, would I be hitting anywhere near the truth?
It is easy to call uneducated, unemployed immigrants lazy, but before you do that perhaps you should think about why they are in that position.
If they could trade places with you I bet they would have lept at the oppurtunity...
First of all, communism is socialism but socialism is not communism. Communism is an ideal that was created by Lenin who took a lot of the ideas from Marxism, created by Karl Marx, which is also socialism. Then you have Fascism, Utopian Socialism, and Darwin Socialism.
Second of all, I don't come from a economically stable family. My parent ran a small trucking company (Gray Van Express) for 20 years before they had to close it down and in those 20 years we lived off of what we could. Sometimes, my parents had money, sometimes they didn't. After they closed the business, they went on unemployment for 2 years before my father was able to get a low level job with the state and my mother with the local school district. At this point, they won't be able to retire until they are like 70 considering my father is 52 now and my mother 48 and they still have a 6 year old daughter, a 15 year old son, and a 17 year old son to raise not including myself. I have to pay for my college education through my own expenses as will my siblings because my parents don't have the money. I do give them credit though that they were able to raise a family of four children through all that they have been through. But my parents took the risk of owning and running their own business and that risk didn't pay off.
And first of all don't call me White American. My ancestors were mostly Irish who had it worse off than the Africans. When the Africans were in slavery, they had at least food on their plate, a bed to sleep in, and a roof over their head. The Irish immigrants didn't have any of that and were only paid a nickel a day to work on building the canals, railroads, or any other work that no one else wanted to do. They didn't have food on their plate most of the time, or a bed to sleep in, or even a roof over their head. My people weren't even considered could enought to be slave labor and when the African were freed they were still paid more to do the same work as what the Irish were doing. The Irish worked their asses off and gained respect for their work. The Irish in America worked for what they have today and continue to work for it instead of bitching about how the whole world is against them and trying to get reparations from Britian for 700 years of enthic cleansing, slavery, starvation, home seizures, their homeland taken away from them, from being cast out of the Pale, from being packed onto Coffin Ships alive, when they got America only to find the same thing waiting for them on the shore from which they were trying to escape from, restricting of their liberty, being called the most inferior race of people on Earth, having no freedom or representation of their people in their own homeland, and acts of genocide that pales what the Holocaust was. But I'm sure you want us all to give it to the poor Latinos who haven't worked for it. They must work for what we have just as my ancestors and my people continueto work to keep it and possibly gain more.
I have no idea how you could have reached that conclusion.
Perhaps compared to USA, but that feels like calling someone a communist just because they aren't a nazi.
In European terms both France and Germany are on the right wing politically. Yes, Germany is run by the social democrats, but that's really just a name...they have no resemblence to the social democratic peoples movement anymore.
Well, I'm sure compared to communists and other socialists groups in places like Russia or some of the Slavik states they aren't true socialism but they are definitely socialistic as a lot of their government programs are socialistic and those in power are of socialistic ideal. I should probably call them a socialistic democracy. A democractic government with a lot of socialistic ideal in it. Better?
First of all, it isn't a choice for everyone.
Some people are forced to have two jobs just to make the rent on their appartment, since you have so low (if any) minimum wages.
For them insurance isn't an alternative.
Secondly, yes, the rich pays most of the taxes.
That is natural, sound and humane.
I come from a well situated family with a good economy and I see it as natural that we who allready have a good life help out people who would otherwise suffer.
But perhaps it doesn't come as natural to you...perhaps that third TV is more important to you then saving the lives of poor people?
I really hope not.
I believe in equality of opportunity. In America it isn't yet perfect nor will it ever be but it has probably been realized far greater in here than anywhere else. First of all, every citizen has the equal opportunity for education and then according to law people should have the equal opportunity of employment not to be descriminated for race or any of that stuff. Most of those people who have to two jobs to pay their rent probably dropped out of school (I know quite a few of them) and never furthered their education. for those people, I have no sympathies for them. They brought it upon themselves, not the government. And mininium wage is $5.15 an hour and it is right now being considered in Congress for a raise.
Your second part is Darwinistic Socialism where the rich uphold the poor. First of all that is wrong. Giving them money or other things is not going to solve their problem. It is only going to take away their ambition to find something better because they will see they will be catered to. That in the end won't help them or anyone else. They have to learn that they have to work for a better life and that it won't just be given to them. Give unemployment to those that are looking for jobs and welfare for those that can't get jobs for one reason or another and for the others giving them an nothing will be an incentive to get off their asses and do something about it. For poor people in other countries, it is usually problems with the governments that are there and throwing in a few cents in a jar ain't going to help them at all. Better thing to do is to get their governments to do something or try something else if what they are currenlty doing is not working.
And once again, giving away to poor people won't solve their problems or help them in any way but will only make things worse.
Why shouldn't we hold it against the current government?
Many of the poeple in your current government was involved back then.
For example, Donald Rumsfeldt met Saddam Hussein personally in Iraq.
They were not policy makers back then and are they not allow to change their opinion and view?
I also don't understand why you refer to Europe as "Old Europe".
We have had our arrogant, imperialistic era and learned much from the mistakes that were made then. (not enough though)
Americas current foreign politic is in no way new...it has been tried by pretty much every nation with imperialistic dreams since the ancient times...
As I said, I think they were referring to Old Europe from the 1930's during their policy of appeasement that led to the rise of Hitler and Mussolini and to World War II though I'm too sure either.
And your statement about America is wrong. It isn't an Imperialistic Dream. None of this wouldn't be happening today if it wasn't for the 9/11 attacks. Bush was an extreme isolationist before 9/11 but that changed after 9/11. So I think these terrorists pretty much screwed themselves for attacking because if they hadn't, America probably would have gone toward a policy of isolation.
And saying that you don't use cluster bombs is a huge lie.
I don't have time to find an appropriate link now, but look around the web.
There has been huge critique both from the Afghanistan and Iraq war about cluster bombs, and that the yellow fragments are very similar to the the orange-yellow food packs, causing civilians and especially children casualties when they thought they were gathering food.
Cluster bombs were phased out of the US military because they were unreliable. And they don't work all too well against terrorists that hide in holes in the ground. They work against huge grouped together armies but we have changed that way of fighting as now we use smart bombs to home in on certain targets leading to less waste of munitions. Cluster bombs haven't been used since the Gulf War by the US. Thats not to say that other countries haven't used them since. Plus, you might be thinking of references from the Gulf War or references to other bombs that didn't go off when they were shot and for some reason foreign children always need to play on them no matter what. Plus, most of the weapons that did harm to the Iraqis were discarded or abandoned weapons by the Iraqi Army.[/quote]
