I know many of you like to bash America, point out every mistake we make, and harp on the way we treated the indians but just keep this in mind before you decide to point the finger. Germany: I don't really need to explain it do I? Russia: Responsible for more death on this planet than probably every nation combined. Belguim- King Leopold is thought to have been responsible for nearly 10 million deaths. Jolly old England: Most notably India- perhaps 1.5-2 million and god knows how many in their quest for colonies. France: Committed crimes against humanity, firing squads and torture were routine. China: Has been committing crimes against humanity for a hundred years. Brazil: A rich tradition in slavery and racism that still is pervasive today. Japan: Still denies their crimes against humanity to the day. Millions killed and murdered. Anywhere in the middle east: Torture, barbarism, etc. So next time you want to bash America and point out what bad people we are beyond the mistakes we have made please take a look at your own countires blood on it's hand and then stick it up your ass.
i started a thread bashing my country's commie pm after he and his party lost a crucial vote on the expansion of, infact, your country's military base in vicenza....i hoped he would be goner as he didn't and still doesn't hold a majority, yet a day after he offered his resignations he friggin' changed his demented mind, that trashcan of a man. i got no replies.
Ahh, the good old neo-con logic of two wrongs make a right. Does Canada make the list? We have not slaughtered many native americans for while now, I don't think.
When did I excuse the US's mistakes? Here are some of Canada's finest moments. Not to mention the rape of a MENTALLY RETARDED WOMEN in Bosnia by Canada's finest. WHAT STARTEDOUT for years ago as a story about the murders of two Somalis by Canadian troops during the 1992-1993 "peacekeeping" mission has turned into an ever-broadening indictment of a military drenched from the top down in jingoism, racism, sexism, and ties to organized Nazism. Despite massive official stonewalling and cover-up, the brutal, imperialist essence of Canada's armed might is being clearly exposed, like a photograph emerging slowly from a negative. The Ugly Canadians abroad. Billed as a humanitarian expedition to save a "failed state," the invasion of Somalia was really a play by the world's Big Guys to regain control of a geopolitically key former colony. Canadian soldiers were dispatched in mid-December 1992. It didn't take long for the horror to begin. On New Year's Eve, the commander of the elite Canadian Airborne Regiment, Carol Mathieu, wandered drunk through the streets of the city where he was stationed, shouting, "Don't you know who I am? I'm the king of Belet Huen!" His boss, Colonel Serge Labbe, offered a case of champagne as a prize for the first dead Somali. His troops, meanwhile, referred to Somalis by racial epithets and joked about hunting them as trophies. They hung Nazi and U.S. Confederate flags in their barracks, perhaps influenced by the time they spent training in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Fort Bragg is home to the 82nd Airborne Division, which included white supremacists charged in the murder of a Black couple in Fayetteville. On March 4, 1993, Mathieu's soldiers shot down two unarmed, fleeing Somalis. Wounded and struggling, both were shot again from behind; one, Ahmed Afraraho Aruush, died. Two weeks later, a hungry teenager named Shidane Arone entered the Belet Huen aid camp, hoping to be fed. Instead, he was grabbed, beaten all night, and tortured to death by drunken soldiers. After the regiment came back, nine of its members were tried in military court for crimes related to the murder of Arone. A private was convicted of torture and manslaughter, but Lieutenant-Colonel Mathieu was acquitted, and Major Anthony Seward, who ordered troops to abuse prisoners, got off with a reprimand. After the military trials ended, a public inquiry, which is just now concluding, was launched. Hamstrung by official noncooperation, destruction of documents, and restrictive judicial rulings, it has nevertheless brought about a high-level shakeup in the military and a review of Seward's sentencing, which landed him three months in jail and dismissal in disgrace from the army. The war within. In January 1995, as the military trials were wrapping up and the public inquiry about to start, the Airborne was preparing once again for so-called peacekeeping duty - this time in Croatia. But then Canadian TV aired footage from two amateur videos, one made in Somalia and one made earlier at the regiment's base in Ontario, showing shocking scenes of the regiment's racism and gruesome hazing rituals. Two examples: In the Somalia video, Master Corporal Matt McKay, a former member of the Aryan Nation, complained that he "ain't killed enough niggers yet." In the other, a Black recruit with the words "I love KKK" written on his back in excrement crawled through a gauntlet of blows and urination. Public outrage was intense, and the Airborne was disbanded in March. Mountains of monstrosities. The Canadian military is sick right to its bones, and for anybody needing more proof, evidence abounds: In 1992, Canada's first female infantry officer, Captain Sandra Perron, was tied to a tree, beaten, and left bare- foot for two hours in the snow during a training exercise. In 1993 in Bosnia, military personnel who took over the Bakovici mental hospital shot at, raped, and battered patients; others engaged in countrywide black marketeering and fraud. A few months ago, the press ran photos of military engineers in Kuwait posing with body parts of dead Iraqi soldiers. These cases are neither isolated nor accidental. The role of the Canadian armed services is to impose, by force, the will of the world's major governments on every other country - and on their own populations, when it comes to that. Therefore, xenophobia and an insanely exaggerated white machoism are essential to building their terrorist-capitalist fighting machine. There is nothing humane about the supposedly humanitarian missions of the U.N., U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, etc., and there is nothing "junior" about the war crimes of junior imperialist Canada. What is to be done? After years of pay freezes and scapegoating, underpaid soldiers who shoulder the blame for abuses rooted in leadership policy are now calling for a union. They should be supported: A soldiers' union that pushes to elect its own officers and have a say in its places and terms of engagement, as well as pay rates, hours of work, and so on, would be a step forward. But make no mistake: the current military can not be reformed. It can be redefined only when it is completely removed from the control of the capitalist class that now profits from its uses. The fight to change it, however, can be part of the fight that makes the overthrow of the predator class possible. In Leon Trotsky's Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution, he says the army must become "a weapon of the exploited instead of the exploiters." Let us work with all our strength to make that real.
The only thing that makes me cringe more than some nitwit using the word "facism: is the thought of Oprah Winfrey in the nude.
I believe those bashing America are usually just spiteful. Also Americans cop it on the chin every day, whereas try a debate with other people on their country and see how they cover up. It's bad because say England or France impose their values on others, then refuse to host a debate, it's one dimensional. I have to say America does have a few areas to improve on but they do get round to it which is a lot more than most countrys can do. I differ on the comment about Russia, they were ALLIES. They took Berlin where others wouldn't dare, it ended up as a thankless task, then Germany got most of the aid after the war.