h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I hope that Bill Bryson is as widely read (and loved) in the US as in the UK. If not, he should be. Just wanted to pop this in to lighten the thread. It may not be as long as the "Thing" thread or the British English thread, but it certainly contains a lot of meat and more people should read it.

Anyway, as for Bill Bryson - any of his books are good.

>>Where is this coming from? The rights of individuals are paramount in the United States<<

No. Absolutely not.

The rights of individuals are paramount in a socialist state, in a capitalist state (or a corporatist state) the rights (ie civil liberties) of individuals are secondary to the maintenance and promotion of profit or business.

A constitutional argument:

In the civil war amendments to the constitution (13-15) guarantees were given to ensure racial equality. A socialist doctrine.
In 1883 the Civil Rights Act (1875) was overruled by the supreme court and opened the way to segregation, maintaining the cheap, uneducated, body of labour required for business and capital, at the expense of the rights, liberties and freedom of the oppressed workers, because congress was not allowed to pass ruling which affected the economic mechanics of the individual States.

What was paramount here? People or profit? The companies and corporations that pull the strings of government in the US have buried the constitution, US law and the American Dream along with it. And if you like you can have fries with that.

And what of the outlandish example i gave myself, shooting peaceful workers (and not even blacks!) surely not in the land of the free?

The Anti-Trust Acts were introduced in order to restrain Monopoly Capitalism in the US - what were they used for? To excuse the use of both federal troops (egg The Pullman Strike) and private armies (egg Pinkerton Guards vs. the Molly Maguires) in peaceful, and constitutional, labour disputes. Where workers were massacred en masse, forced back to work at gun point, union leaders were rounded up, shot or hung. Land of the free.

Now the US corporations have moved to the third world to exploit the cheaper labour, leaving it's traditional workers and their communities redundant and desolate. Not unlike the stories we've heard here of the US army as it pulls out of bases abroad. And the tactics are the same, with the Pinkertons replaced by the OPS, DEA and CIA. At Coca Cola's ESGA bottling plant in Guatemala (1979-80), the DEA's ACA Lieutenant Rodas "when interviewing workers in his officehe did so with a revolver on the desk in front of him, and a bodyguard on either side". Between 1966-1976 20,000 civilians were killed by the OPS and DEA in Guatemala alone. In 1981 100 union members, community leaders, priests and members of their families were guillotined using meat cutting equipment at the Quality Meats meat packing factory in El Salvador. In 1980 alone 20,000 civilians were killed by the CIA / ACA death squads, including Archbishop Romero, killed for "Preaching economic subversion" (Christianity), the first priest to be killed at the alter since Thomas a'Beckett. The elected Allende government of Chile was overthrown in 1973 in a military coup funded, trained and planned jointly by the US government and the corporation ITT, the chosen dictator they installed was called Pinochet, you may have heard of him...

But that's not your country and not your problem is it trigger happy? But it is your government, American agents, American weapons, American companies and especially - American profits.


>>Our economic system seems to be sustainable. We're doing pretty well.<<

You produce 6% of the worlds goods and consume 48% - how can that be sustainable? That's why your government has to sustain itself through terrorism.

These ar not the only examples, there are loads of others, but i can't find any books on them at the moment.

Some of the points in that previous mail might seem a bit unrelated, and some of the figures seem random and untenable; let me try and have another go:

>>When have we forced anyone to give us oil? We have fought to defend countries that provide us with oil.<<

America has not defended countries, but rather has defended American corporations right to be the ones who make the profit on the oil provided. Which countries have nationalised their oil industries, therefore denying US corporations from being the ones who profit from? Iraq, Cuba and Libya, all countries that have faced US aggression in the last three decades (it was only after the nationalisation of US oil interests in Cuba that the US imposed it's blockade and formulated the Bay of Pigs strategy).

And it's not just oil, the US defend corporate interests around the globe, through military and economic terrorism, at the expense of the native interest. And all too often the UK is the running-dog in these operations.

Guatemala. A case history.

In 1953 the popular, democratic, legal Guatemalan government confiscated 400,000 acres of uncultivated land owned by US corporation United Fruit, not in a nationalisation effort, but in a land reform package to redistribute the land to 100,000 landless native Guatemalan peasants.
1954 the elected government of Guatemala was overthrown in a military coup backed, trained and funded by the US in conjunction with United Fruit. The land reform measures are reversed, popular organisations are banned and thousands killed.
1970 Colonel Arana is made president, his police force is trained by USAID's Office of Public Safety (OPS) and headed by CIA / OPS personnel. Arana states "If it is necessary to turn this country into a cemetery in order to pacify it, i will not hesitate to do so."
Between 1966 sand 1976 20,000 civilians are killed.
1977 Policy of spraying indigenous peoples crops with Dioxin begins.
1979 The ACA (Anti Communist Army) a US funded death squad comprised of DEA / CIA & ex-OPS regulars kill 3352 civilians on the grounds that they are "subversives" in this year alone.
1981 - 1983 Traditional lands are taken from native Guatemalans, agents are ordered to destroy traditional clothing and handlooms, their language and festivals are outlawed and their fields containing subsistence crops were burned so foodstuffs would have to be bought. 440 villages were destroyed. At lease 100,00 Indians fled to Mexico, half a million became internal refugees creating a new captive workforce.
1983 UN report states: "Whole communities have been burned down. Women have been raped until they die. Especially targeted are pregnant women. There are reports of cases where soldiers have eaten the livers of victims in front of the village."
Between 1953 and 1987 100,000 people had been killed by US backed forces (According to the British Parliament's Human Rights Commission).

All of this data is pre-Christic institute and so there is a wealth of newer information to be added that i don't have available to me at the moment.

And you worry about your tax dollars being spent on welfare?

I'm back from the weekend, slightly refreshed and ready to go back at this.....

So Della,

Whoever said anything about them doing it legally? There are just too many of them out there to be regulating every instance of abusing the system. It is my own opinion that even ONE instance is too many.


I've never read Ms. magazine, but I don't like the allusions to men not having a clear picture of what's going on. Sticky beak I may be, but I'll tell you this, I don't have to drive far from my house to see this abuse of wellfare in action. And as an aside to this I once worked for a foodstamp distribution center while I was in college. The people I talked to in that building were on foodstamps and wellfare. Had been for well over your 5 yr limit. In addition to that, NOT ALL OF THEM WERE FEMALE. Like gender even matters.....Particularly when your abusing the system. Talk about the facts you read in a magazine all you want...I talked to the recipients, and did not like the answers.

Jimmy Nuget,


I do hope you aren't talking to me. Loud moron is hardly appropriate for a discussion that I thought was being carried on by adults with some modicum of respect (if not agreement..lol).

If I were you, I'd refrain from comments like that.

Just a friendly warning.

Autist,

Yes I worry about my welfare money. Matter of fact I worrry about all of it no matter where it goes. Becauase I earned it.

Now as to this condendrum of facts...I cannot comment on them until I research them for myself. Spout the facts all you want they mean nothing until I find them myself....so a bibliography perhaps would be a good start.

As far as the defending the countries part, again I don't know all the facts but it would seem to me that if our country is making profit in a country that we have recognized as our ally what difference does it make that we defend them as a nation and simultaneously enjoy the rewards of making profit in their country? What difference does it make why, so long as we are there when our allies need us? Is any country really ever an ally just because gosh darn'it we like each other? Of course it is about protecting our interests. That's what an alliance is all about, gain. They may not be the same goals or gains, but they are complimentary. Else, why be an ally? So that comment about us defending our right to make a profit, hey, you're absolutely right.

The problem with discussions like this one is that they are almost always tainted by a pretty strong sense of anti-Americanism.
I have made the experience, again and again, that people abroad tend to look down on Americans as if they were all complete 'morons'. To be sure, a lot of things are going on in America that are pretty f****d up (the media-driven obsession with Condit being only the latest example), and America's foreign policy has deteriorated even further to the point of absurdity, but it still throws me how much people try to brand America as the evil empire.

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!! About the Conservatives, I mean. No, there's no hate on my part, certainly not! Just annoyance

I hasten to apologise on Jimmy's behalf! He is 14 and should have known better - he is my son, and I am really embarassed - he didn't tell me he was going to put that.. actually, he was annoyed with another kid in the same room. On his behalf, sorry!!!!!!

Excellent points! I'd like to add two, one is about Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic worker movement in the USA. I read her biography, and was horrified by the anti-union violence I read of there. Another is fictional - in the TV series, Star Trek DS9, Ira Steven Behr wrote an episode 'Bar Association', about unions. He has a character Chief Miles O'Brien, talking to othjer characters about the anti-union violence suffered by his 19th century ancestor, Seamus O'Brien. Behr defended the episode in the book 'Captains Log', about the making of Star Trek. Seems ISB, who is a great writer and well established in Star Trek still had to defend including unions or religion in Star Trek, as if either or both were bad and evil!

Perium, Jimmy *is* a child, mine, and I apologise on his behalf. He was totally out of line, and should be (and will be, when he comes home from school) very embarassed.

Oh come on now.
Unions weren't welcome no matter where you went. And there was anti-union violence all over the western world in the 19th cen.
You don't seriously believe that Europe is, or ever has been, less capitalist than America?
I don't want to step on anybody's feet here, but sometimes I get the feeling that Europeans are only mad because they lost their colonies (and the word is 'lost', not 'given up voluntarily').
Anyway, you know what happens when you publicly proclaim that workers should be exploited and that anti-union violence is justified? A lot of people will love you, esp. the GOP, as anywhere else, but socially you're done for.

I don't know about anyone else but I seriously believe that Europe is or has been less capitalist than America. Despite the views of McCarthy & co, even under the Democrats America managed to stay comfortably more right-wing than the likes of Albania or the DDR.

My point with Guatemala was that the US did not defend an ally, but rather invaded, overthrew the legal and popular government in the name of protecting these corporations.

The books i took facts from were:
"Chambers World History" (Chambers, London)
"Soft Drink, Hard Labour" (Latin American Bureau, London)
"How the Other Half Dies" by Susan George (Pelican, London)
"Crisis" by Pat Mills, (Maxwell, London)

There is loads of good C.I. stuff available in the states on this, v. reliable, and the Ollie. North transcripts have a lot of stuff in them.

This is repeatedly the case though Guatemala is not an isolated incident.

When America installed George Popadopoulos as dictator of Greece, who formed island camps to hold his political opponents, strikes were forbidden, strict censorship of media and arts imposed, where torture was commonplace (as taught by the OPS). And upon his installation your president Johnson said to the Greek Ambassador "F*ck your parliament and your constitution...if your prime minister gives me talk about democracy, his constitution may not last very long."

When the reformist government was voted in in Chile in 1970, US aid was immediately cut to zero Edward Kelly the US ambassador said "Not a nut or a bolt will reach Chile under Allende. Once Allende comes to power we shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and the Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty." After three years of economic blockade a US backed coup was launched along with ITT.

In 1979/80 the US along with American Aluminium firms destabilised the government of Jamaica, withdrawing aid, performing assassinations, poisoning food supplies, bombings and strikes, before hijacking the elections and installing another puppet regime.

When congress disbanded the OPS, after details of their torture camps and training programs became public, they transferred all personnel, programmes and responsibility to the DEA whose remit was extended to training and employing overseas military police. The head of the DEA said "Our agents are instructed to leave the room when the torture begins."

This is dirty, dirty money we're talking about here, and politics of a genuinely "evil empire" scale.

And it's funded by your tax dollars.

In 1987 the nato defence spending (so that's my dollars too) was 60 million dollars an hour. Live Aid, Sport Aid, USA for Africa and all those allied projects, raised a total of 200 million. That's 2 hours 40 minutes worth of western military spending.

In order to maintain every American family to the level of two times the poverty line would for a year would cost 1/9th of the US defence budget.

How can you find room in your wages for women to be raped to death and not to allow someone the right to come home to a warm house?

Well now, this thread started out as "What's wrong with Americans".
We have some really interesting discussions here, but over the last couple of days OZ has been the recipient of a right royal pasting in the American press over the "Tampa" refugee situation.

The lecture on how Oz should conduct itself in this situation was oveshadowed by the US press being totally unable to get the Prime Minister's name correct. "John Hunt" and "Paul Howard".

I'll bet all the protocolic people have their knickers in a twist.
Me? I can't stop laughing.

When my warped ironical sense of humour straightens itself out, I'll be good again. I promise.

In the meantime, brownie points to whoever is the first to get our PM's name right.

(Relatives and friends are not allowed to participate in the competition - Della, sorry but that's you - right?)

I have nothing against Americans, however their geography skills leave much to be desired. New Zealand is not the capital of Australia nor is New Zealand even in Australia. ok? clear?

What is an American?

Technically it's anyone from America, but colloquially - and to the occasional chagrin of neighbours - it's anyone from the USA .

Personally, I prefer 'earthling' or 'earther', but that's just my opinion - I could be wrong.

Don't be silly - we in the US are well aware that New Zealand - home of mutton - is the capital of Auckland. "And the Band Played 'Waltzing Matilda'" is prime minister of Australia. Gaw - everybody knows that.

LOL!!!!!!!!! NZ, where men are men and sheep are worried. (Of course, I've heard that said about Australia...) What are Irish jokes here, are Polish jokes in the USA, I've heard - and I got in trouble telling one of my father's Birkenhead jokes (Liverpool) in Auckland NZ. I offended a woman because I didn't know that there is a Birkenhead in Auckland! (I do now, of course....)
BTW, with world events, hi-jackings in the USA, and (retaliation, tho' they say it isn't) bombings in Afghanistan, where does this thread stand? It is tacky, bad taste and awful, or is it okay? Well, this is *not* what's wrong with America, but what's wrong with Americans.. in their social intercourse with the rest of the world, I've always assumed.