Iran Issues

[Acriku]

Funny gunwounds, the grade D student in the back doesn't look like a teacher. Perhaps he should sit back down.

[Dunenewt]

And he should let his old mentor teach him a thing or two...

[GUNWOUNDS]

Funny gunwounds, the grade D student in the back doesn't look like a teacher. Perhaps he should sit back down.

If by "Grade D Student" you mean "world hyperpower" and if by "doesnt look like a teacher" you mean "has the globe wrapped around its finger" ... then i totally agree with you. 

[VigilVirus]

Just because the kid has rich parents, doesn't mean he can't still be a dumbass.

[GUNWOUNDS]

Just because the kid has rich parents, doesn't mean he can't still be a dumbass.

If you mean the US is the "Rich Parent" having to babysit/police the unruly children of the world... then i agree with your analogy.  Iraq is sitting in the corner for a timeout while Iran is on deck for a spanking.  UK is the good little wife that does what she is told.

[Khan]

If by 'babysit the world' you mean 'Gunwounds is unable to have a reasoned debate about American domestic and foreign policy', you hit the nail on the head.

[nemafakei]

Khan, The US government does learn: it does have the world wrapped round it's little finger.

Question is: do you see that as a problem?

[Andrew]

Better to have world wrapped in Americas fingers than Iran (or middle east or asia) having that power. :)

[Khan]

Better to have world wrapped in Americas fingers than Iran (or middle east or asia) having that power. :)

Personally I don't see much difference.

Khan, The US government does learn: it does have the world wrapped round it's little finger.

Question is: do you see that as a problem?

Not quite the whole world, it clearly wants to interfere more with Asia but can't for fear of retaliation. Countries to poor to defend themselves properly on the otherhand are wrapped right round it. I take your point though.

[GUNWOUNDS]

Asia is wrapped too... if we didnt buy China's little "Made in China" trinkets their 1 billion impoverished rice farmers would starve and they wouldnt be able to maintain their outdated tanks from the 1980's.  Japan had its constitution written by the US, and does what the US asks in terms of being compliant towards the US dollar.  South Korea licks our boots everyday that we keep our soldiers in their country to protect them from being vaporized from N. Korea.... and  the US use to give N. Korea tons of food since they are starving a-holes that only spend cash on bombs.  Plus N. Korea is begging us for more food and to terminate the sanctions against them.

Asia is no different from any other part of the world... America has the entire globe wrapped around its fingers.  I know its hard to swallow... if i were in another country i would get mad at the US pulling the puppet strings on my country too.  So i feel your pain. But not really.

Guns

[Khan]

If you didn't buy things from China where would you turn to? China is the only country that you can get your crap from without having to spend money on having a major industrial sector of your own. You need the chinese just as much as they need you. Remind me again exactly what South and North Korea do for you? Seems to have slipped my mind.

[GUNWOUNDS]

If you didn't buy things from China where would you turn to? China is the only country that you can get your crap from without having to spend money on having a major industrial sector of your own. You need the chinese just as much as they need you. Remind me again exactly what South and North Korea do for you? Seems to have slipped my mind.

We would turn to US labor and pay more for stuff or we would outsource to another 3rd world country like Brazil or something.  They make lots of worthless crap too that americans buy that they dont need.  I'm sure they'd love the extra business.  The US is the one with the cash to spend, and China thanks its lucky stars that americans buy their cheaply manufactured goods.  China isnt the only source of 3rd world labor and we could hurt China more than we would hurt ourselves if we took our business elsewhere.  The reason we dont do it is because there is no reason to do it.  China is like that Used Car Salesman that is happy to see you when you walk into the Car Lot.  He's hoping you'll buy something so he can feed his kids tonight.  So obviously the US has the leverage.  Hence Asia gets wrapped tightly round.

Guns.

[Khan]

http://www.alternativeinsight.com/A_Modern_China_Rises.html

http://www.brookings.edu/views/op-ed/ohanlon/20050726.htm

It doesn't take much searching to see that the major economists of the world see that China is rising up to become a superpower that could realisticly rival the US. The majority of your arguments rest on the assumption that the US is the only investor in china, when this is just not true, the whole world buys Chinese products.

We would turn to US labor and pay more for stuff or we would outsource to another 3rd world country like Brazil or something.

Wow you've really thought your arguments through. There's no way a country like brazil could take the strain if America wanted to buy what it buys from china from it. The infrastructure would take years to develop and it simply doesn't have the work force available to run such an industry, and the thought of Americans accepting paying more for their goods is laughable. Americas economy couldn't maintain its strength of all its prices were suddenly raised.

If you need more info The Economist is what I turn to mostly, but you need a subscription for the website.

[Acriku]

Actually, with the current administration, we're not learning much. Unless you mean learning how to fool the American public over and over again, evade legal action, and how to ignore past mistakes, sure.

[Andrew]

We would turn to US labor

I think you meant Mexican ;) (of course "import" them to America like already doing)

Cheap labour.

[Dunenewt]

Americans go south of the border to a backwards country to get cheap goods.  Canadians do the same.

[GUNWOUNDS]

Canadians go to Mexico too?

[GUNWOUNDS]

Actually, with the current administration, we're not learning much. Unless you mean learning how to fool the American public over and over again, evade legal action, and how to ignore past mistakes, sure.

i think Nema is referring to the US'  bringing countries to their knees at will.  Bush is accomplishing what his father did not... that being re-election, bringing two countries to their knees (possibly 3 with Iran and maybe 4 with Syria), And captured the Iraqi Oil Prize that his father failed to do. And got tons of battlefield experience for troops and tons of in-the-field testing data for vehicles and equipment. We bypassed the UN.... formed our own coalition ......and convinced the UK to back us despite massive opposition.  As well as coercing China into rebuking N. Korea.  Talk about skill in pulling the strings.  The last decade has been one hell of a performance in the US foreign policy department.  Never before has the US gotten what it wanted so easily and so outright.

I'd say the US learned alot, and other countries got twisted around the fingers all that much tighter.

[nemafakei]

Actually, you're both correct. The US political machines have been learning for decades how to use their little fingers on the world and their thumbs on the electorate.

They're learning that they don't need to install dictators to do their dirty work, when they have the economic clout to make capitalist democracies do the same.

And they've learnt that so long as they can appear to be protecting the US' interests, they can get away with murder thousands of times over in front of a cheering electorate.

And unless the rest of the world starts learning very quickly indeed, then we will be no more than colonies in all but name.

[Lance_Leader]

Typical American smart-ass...

jeez what crawled up your shorts...

[exatreide]

Maybe they mean the fact that the US has a higher highschool drop out rate then the industrilaized world, lower test scores in Math and reading then the rest of the western world, and less published scientists in the western world. Ya know, we can blow something up, but we can't cure cancer..

Now THATS something to be proud of  ::)

[Kiyouta]

jeez what crawled up your shorts...

Ya mamma, ho ho ho ho.

Maybe they mean the fact that the US has a higher highschool drop out rate then the industrilaized world, lower test scores in Math and reading then the rest of the western world, and less published scientists in the western world.

Well maybe if the drinking age in America was something a bit more realistic, instead of 21, kids wouldn't smoke weed all day long. Hence the drop-outs. Thats 5% of the problem right there ;p

[Khan]

Maybe they mean the fact that the US has a higher highschool drop out rate then the industrilaized world, lower test scores in Math and reading then the rest of the western world, and less published scientists in the western world. Ya know, we can blow something up, but we can't cure cancer..

Now THATS something to be proud of  ::)

Smart bombs, stupid kids... It's like a balancing act ;).

[GUNWOUNDS]

its mainly the poor who drop out of school.. the wealthy go to nice schools and get their degrees and go on to make money in order to send their kids to school and ... see a pattern?

Dumb kids and dropout rates are not an American thing... its a poverty thing or a genetic thing.  Either you are poor and your parents make you drop out due to needed a working kid or the kid has a broken home and runs away from home thus dropping out of school, or the kid is just a plain stupid to begin with and wouldnt have amounted to much anyway even if he had stayed in school.

To be honest scholarly aptitude is not a proper measuring stick... as most foreigners want to go to AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES.... therefore our education system is fine ... its just the kids who are stupid will do poorly and the intelligent gifted children will succeed.  Its definately a kid by kid basis and not a "Country thing"

Also you cannot use statistics with america vs other countries.  America has 400 million people ....France has 60 million.  American has 8 times as many people.  So i wouldnt be surprised if we had 8 times the dropouts.  Or 8 times the amount of dumbasses.

Also Japan has less dropouts because they commit suicide before they even graduate if they dont make the grades to get into college.  Not getting into college in Japan means you'll most likely be mopping floors at the nearest 7-11 and most of them cannot deal with that.  Americans have failures just like Japanese except our culture isnt so F'd up that kids feel they must kill themselves after dropping out.

Which is worse... being stupid or being emotionally unstable to the point of suicide?  Seems like every country has its own social problem. But one thing is for sure....every country has stupid people...but atleast the US has the globe wrapped around its finger where it counts.

[Dunenewt]

He's on about a dropout rate not total number of dropouts