THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND words and music by Woody Guthrie Chorus: This land is your land, this land is my land From California, to the New York Island From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters This land was made for you and me As I was walking a ribbon of highway I saw above me an endless skyway I saw below me a golden valley This land was made for you and me Chorus I've roamed and rambled and I've followed my footsteps To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts And all around me a voice was sounding This land was made for you and me Chorus The sun comes shining as I was strolling The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling The fog was lifting a voice come chanting This land was made for you and me Chorus As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there And that sign said - no tress passin' But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin! Now that side was made for you and me! Chorus In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple Near the relief office - I see my people And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin' If this land's still made for you and me.
"Why does America always bomb other countries?", my son asked tonight.
by digderidoo 230 Replies latest jw friends
-
Free
-
Who are you?
US government foreign aid efforts have historically been seen as inefficient. Since 1990 private organizations have given 4 times as much aid privately as the US government. Mr Roodman leaves out the private organizations such as the Gates Foundation which make up 4/5th's of total US forign aid and brings the actual total US foreign Aid to over 100 billion per year. Yes Americans are generous...if you include all of them. http://hudson.org/files/pdf_upload/IndexintheNews4_29.pdf
-
IP_SEC
Yall still talking about this. Comere everyone... Give IP a big ol' hug
this land is your land this land is my land....
Coombya and all that.
-
hillary_step
Free,
OK all you Bush haters, Being that there are some U.S. bashers that happen to have such great advice on this issue.
Ironic that you should quote the words of Woody Guthrie in support of your views. He was one of the most anti-Republican and deeply Socialist personalities that America has ever produced and good for him.
I have no qualms in suggesting that he would have inserted the head of his Washburn palor guitars so deeply up President Bush that you would have been able to tune the strings when he opened his mouth.
HS
-
IP_SEC
OMG!! I swear to god I didnt know you had posted that song Free!! Weird!
-
sammielee24
Maybe this writer lends more credibility to figures for you - for the record, I think Americans as a people are very generous but not more so than any other nation. Nobody has to be top dog.
U.S. not 'most generous' by many calculations
Uwe Reinhardt, James Madison Professor of Political Economy, Princeton University - Princeton, N.J.
USA TODAY presents data on foreign aid and asserts that "the United States is the most generous country in the world when it comes to foreign aid." It is a slogan repeated often by our presidents ("2 lessons on foreign aid," Editorial, Friday).
By that logic, however, the United States is also the most athletic nation in the world because it regularly wins more medals in the Olympics than do tiny nations such as Israel or Denmark.
If you adjust the dollar figures on foreign aid that USA TODAY presents for population size or gross domestic product, then Denmark, for example, is found to devote 1.12% of its GDP and $385 per capita to foreign aid, both in purchasing power parity dollars. The comparable figures for the United States are only 0.22% of GDP and $92 per capita.
Any college freshman would judge the Danes to be the more generous people when it comes to foreign aid, and so should USA TODAY. I invite you to make similar calculations for other nations, and you'll discover that the United States is way down in the rankings on foreign aid.
Comparing USA aid to that of European countries is not in itself a simple task. The American people are actually no less generous than those of other developed countries. By comparing aid as a percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) you measure the amount of aid that is given by individuals. On this scale, Americans look angelic, giving twice as much as Britons or Canadians. By comparing aid as a fraction of Gross National Income (GNI) as the studies on this page has done, you combine the generosity of the government and individuals. Europeans pay higher taxes to their governments, who in turn operate as welfare states, doing much charitable work 2 . For this reason, European governments always appear more generous in league tables compared to American governments, which is decidedly not a welfare state. American citizens give no less than others, according to The Economist, "the extra percentage point of its GDP that individuals deposit in rattling tins hardly reflects the much lighter taxes they pay" 2 . American citizens give more, but the government does so much less that the country as a whole looks miserly. It would not be right to blame the citizens for this, but the lack of a socially-minded government.
The rest of the world
It is likely true that all countries are biased towards giving to countries where they have economic or political interest. This is inevitable, and will probably never change. The difference with the USA appears to be that it is the single loudest self-congratulator. When it comes to war and aggression and other USA foreign policy issues, the USA is always heard to be boasting of how it is a beneficiary to much of the world. Yet, proportionally, all 21 of the other developed nations give more, and none of them used the "we are good because we are generous" argument that their policy was correct. Such emotional blackmail would produce a lot of internal criticism in any European country where the government claimed such a thing. In Europe where worldly communications are highly developed, every country can see the internal workings of the rest of the world and governmental criticism is heard of all governments.However, despite the USAs dominance of mass media, it is frequently only the pro-USA, self-congratulatory messages that seem to arrive in Europe, the USA citizens criticism and disbelief of their own government is not apparent, which gives the overall impression that Americans are either gullible, ignorant or honestly uncaring. It appears to many Europeans that the USA government and its citizens believe two things:
That USA is a generous nation of people
That this also give the USA a right to enforce aggressive foreign policies and aggressively pursue economic interests in all other countries
This can be explained if we dismiss it purely as a symptom of USA style overpowering commercialism, but it leaves many people in the modern world to seriously doubt the honesty or sincerity of any USA aid that does go to non-American companies in foreign countries. (Also, we need to look at what percent of foreign aid of other countries goes to own-companies abroad). The result is a cycle of mistrust of USA aid, distrust of the motives for giving (where the blackmail tactic is used so often, the motives are often not seen as charitable, but manipulative) and hatred of the USA's approach as a whole
The last part was from a book titled Why do People Hate America? It examines the issue from the outside in - I believe the writer was only trying himself to understand the viewpoint of others toward Americans....sammieswife.
-
beksbks
Somebody please remind me not to waste time on these threads!!! It's positively frightening to experience the lack of IQ first hand.
-
IP_SEC
Beks please dont waste time on these threads. The lack of IQ is positively frightening.
-
beksbks
Huh?
-
Who are you?
When you add the private donations of foreign aid that Americans give to the US foreign Aid that the government gives the numbers swell to well over 100 billion. Most is given by private organizations, the studies you are pulling don't include the 4/5th's of American donations by private organizations like the Gates Foundation. The private donations that Americans give eclipse what most European governments combined give in total dollars. http://hudson.org/files/pdf_upload/IndexintheNews4_29.pdf