American hedonism closes its eyes to death, and has been
incapable of exorcising the destructive power of the moment
with a wisdom like that of the Epicureans of antiquity.

- Octavio Paz
Death is un-American, and an affront to every citizen's inalienable
right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

- Arnold Toynbee
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"As long as such self-serving hypocrisy
motivates America's response, Ukraine will
only sink further into needless bloodshed,
and that blood will be on America's head."
JOIN THE DISCUSSION
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In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors,
since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors,
for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal
applies only upwards, not downwards.

― Bertrand Russell
Global Coke
Global Coke
"What those 'racists' are reflexively and rightly reacting
to is the soulless chill as the fire goes out beneath the
melting pot. Those who think America can thrive as a
'cultural mosaic' are worse than fools; they're Canadians."

JOIN THE DISCUSSION
Global Coke
Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe.
It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster,
in which the taints, the sickness and the inhumanity of Europe
have grown to appalling dimensions.

― Frantz Fanon
What the United States does best is understand itself.
What it does worst is understand others.

- Carlos Fuentes
Poor Mexico, so far from God
and so close to the United States.

- Porfirio Diaz
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"Indeed, everything about the American southland was magical
and exotic to the young Canadian musicians, from the sights
and smells to the drawling manner of speech to, especially, the
central role that music played in people’s everyday lives."

JOIN THE DISCUSSION
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America is a mistake, a giant mistake.
- Sigmund Freud
America is an adorable woman chewing tobacco.
- Auguste Bartholdi
chimerica
chimerica
"This is the tone of the China Century, a subtle
mix of Nazi/Soviet bravado and 'oriental'
cunning -- easily misunderstood, and
never
heard before, in a real enemy, by the West."

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chimerica
Coke and 'America the Beautiful'
Coke and 'America the Beautiful'
"And for the others who argued for English-only
patriotism, I note that there are more than
57 million Americans (about 20% of the nation)
whose first-language is not English...."

JOIN THE DISCUSSION
Coke and 'America the Beautiful'
predator-firing-missile4
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"This is the behavior, and the fate, of paranoid
old-world tyrants like Hitler or Saddam, not liberal new-world democracies like America pretends to be."

JOIN THE DISCUSSION
predator-firing-missile4
America is the only nation in history which
miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to
degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.

- Georges Clemenceau
I found there a country with thirty-two religions and only one sauce.
- Charles–Maurice Talleyrand
A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle,
and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.

- Edmund Burke
America is the only country ever founded on the printed word.
- Marshall McLuhan
"The removal of racist sports nicknames (and mascots) seems outrageously belated
-- why, exactly, has this civil rights cause
taken so long to gain momentum?"

JOIN THE DISCUSSION
The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the
United States reactionaries use to scare people.
It looks terrible, but in fact it isn't.

- Mao Tse-tung
They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but
they kept only one; they promised to take our land, and they did.

- Red Cloud
In America sex is an obsession,
in other parts of the world it is a fact.

- Marlene Dietrich
I would rather have a nod from an American,
than a snuff-box from an emperor.

- Lord Byron
One day the United States discovered it was an empire.
But it didn’t know what an empire was.
It thought that an empire was merely the biggest of all corporations.

- Roberto Calasso
Americans are so enamored of equality, they would rather
be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.

- Alexis de Tocqueville
newtown
newtown
"No one, I thought, could watch those scenes, of young children slaughtered en masse, and so many parents grieving, without thinking that this, finally, would tip some kind of balance in the country."
JOIN THE DISCUSSION
newtown
If you are prepared to accept the consequences of your dreams
then you must still regard America today with the same naive
enthusiasm as the generations that discovered the New World.

- Jean Baudrillard
I am willing to love all mankind, except an American.
- Samuel Johnson
America, thou half brother of the world;
With something good and bad of every land.

- Philip Bailey
"What can be more powerful than disinformation in the Information Age?"
JOIN THE DISCUSSION
England and America are two countries separated by the same language.
- Sir Walter Besant
Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by
posterity because he was the last to discover America.

- James Joyce
Now, from America, empty indifferent things
are pouring across, sham things, dummy life.

- Rainer Maria Rilke
If the United States is to recover fortitude and lucidity,
it must recover itself, and to recover itself it must
recover the "others"- the outcasts of the Western world.
- Octavio Paz
The youth of America is their oldest tradition.
It has been going on now for three hundred years.

- Oscar Wilde
"America really is, for most Americans, all things considered, a good place to be, and all they really want is for everyone to enjoy the same privilege and pleasure."
JOIN THE DISCUSSION
When good Americans die they go to Paris;
when bad Americans die they go to America.

- Oscar Wilde
jobs drug dealer
jobs drug dealer
They're nothing more than traffickers; and as the smart traffickers'll tell you, you don't use the merchandise. They are just inoculating their kids with a tech-drug serum, to immunize them against the very merchandise that put the **** bowling alley in their basement.
jobs drug dealer
America is therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that
lie before us, the burden of the World's History shall reveal itself.

- Georg Friedrich Hegel
America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room.
Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair.

- Arnold Toynbee
Americans always try to do the right thing after they've tried everything else.
- Winston Churchill
The thing that impresses me most about Americans
is the way parents obey their children.

- Edward, Duke of Windsor
Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering
what average opinion believes average opinion to be.

- John Maynard Keynes
Europe was created by history.
America was created by philosophy.

- Margaret Thatcher
America is God's crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of
Europe are melting and reforming!... The real American has not yet arrived.
He is only in the crucible, I tell you - he will be the fusion of all races.

- Israel Zangwill
American dreams are strongest in the hearts of those
who have seen America only in their dreams.

- Pico Iyer
America: It's like Britain, only with buttons.
- Ringo Starr
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.
It has never yet melted.

― D.H. Lawrence
I have two conflicting visions of America.
One is a kind of dream landscape and the other is a kind of black comedy.

― Bono
The American mirror, said the voice, the sad American mirror
of wealth and poverty and constant useless metamorphosis,
the mirror that sails and whose sails are pain.

― Roberto Bolaño

May 6, 2024

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Author Topic: "U.S. should bear blame for European refugee, humanitarian crisis"


Geoff-
Hamilton
Administrator
Posts: 172
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"U.S. should bear blame for European refugee, humanitarian crisis"
on: September 7, 2015, 13:19

from Xinhuanet

U.S. should bear blame for European refugee, humanitarian crisis

by Hu Yao

BEIJING (Xinhua) -- When millions of people around the world were taken aghast by the pictures of drowned three-year-old Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi lying washed up on a Turkish beach and the massive refugee crisis engulfing Europe, they should see through the fact that the United States is mainly responsible for all the mess.

The main sources of today's refugees -- Syria, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan -- are targets of U.S. intervention, which led to devastation, chaos, deteriorating domestic security and extensive displacements. People in those countries could no longer enjoy even basic human rights. Many of them had no choice but to flee for life, not only to neighboring countries, but to Europe. [...]

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-09/05/c_134591925.htm



sarahmedei-
ros
Novice Their American
Posts: 8
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Re: "U.S. should bear blame for European refugee, humanitarian crisis"
on: October 21, 2015, 11:01

"...Many experts say the EU and global powers must also provide more aid to Middle Eastern countries like Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan, which have borne the primary responsibility for Syrian refugees. According to the UNHCR, 1.9 million Syrians have taken refuge in Turkey, 1.1 million in Lebanon, and 630,000 in Jordan since the start of the conflict in 2011.This influx has altered the demographics and economies of these host countries, which are now struggling to provide basic food and shelter due to funding shortages. (Since 2011, the United States has spent more than $4 billion on Syria humanitarian assistance, but has only given refuge to 1,500 Syrians. In September 2015, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the United States would accept an additional ten thousand Syrians in 2016, and an additional thirty thousand global refugees over the next two years.)"

(Taken from http://www.cfr.org/migration/europes-migration-crisis/p32874)

It is a little bit biased to claim that it is the United State's responsibility for all the mess created by the instability in war-afflicted countries such as Turkey or Iraq. War is a two-headed coin. Many of these migrants, as already seen on numerous news reports, articles and websites, are also not so much immigrants as they are trying to find an easier way to enter Europe. Although this author makes some sensible points, she fails to recognize that the US is doing what they can for immigrants, and as for those attempting to flee on their own circumstances, not much can be done. Also, do correct me if I am wrong, but the boy who drowned, his father had never completed an immigration application, and simply blamed the Canadian government for the tragedy of his son's death. There is always more to the story, just as there is more to the immigration in Europe than blaming the US for the entirety of the chaos.



Aminah-
Hayek
Experienced Their American
Posts: 17
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Re: "U.S. should bear blame for European refugee, humanitarian crisis"
on: October 21, 2015, 21:01

I completely agree, Sarah; in fact, to me at least, the piece reads like obvious state-directed propaganda, as is typical of the Xinhua mouthpiece. But I would add a particularly important 'more to the story' here: as in the days of Tass and Pravda, when a totalitarian government speaks in such a way through its media mouthpiece, the piece must be taken very seriously indeed, not on the level of truth, per se, but as an expression of that government's realpolitikal intent--here to smear America with both inhumanity in dealing with the refugee crisis, and principal authorship of that crisis.
Thus, though largely untrue in its claims, the article is chillingly true as an indicator of China's position in this messy game, and of the divisive role it seems poised to play, as it stretches its new-found muscles in the international theater. To those of us who grew up in the later, media-driven years of the Cold War, this kind of thing is both wearyingly and disturbingly familiar.



rose
Novice Their American
Posts: 9
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Re: "U.S. should bear blame for European refugee, humanitarian crisis"
on: November 30, 2015, 01:16

I agree the U.S. should bear some blame, but I do not agree that it is largely responsible to compensate or accept these huge amounts of refugees. There are many factors to consider and it is only a band aid solution. Much thought needs to be given to the long-term consequences and financial state of affairs for these refugees, such as: employment, housing needs, medical coverage, etc. What about the already so called cash-strapped issue of the veterans, homelessness, housing shortage, etc.? I mean should not the government care for its own first? China lays blame or points a finger saying U.S. has a moral obligation to clean up for the hopeless mess it left, and so too, should the Syrian government be doing all it can. The helpers (other countries) that have also contributed to this civil war need to help 'solve this crisis'.

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