2017 Trump Presidency Thread

[drug_mentor]

It's terrible on the surface, but there are advantages, take the Amazon rain forest for example, had we not sabotaged and continued to sabotage their people and economies.....it have been obliterated decades ago

I could be wrong, but I thought that a significant contributor to deforestation of the Amazon rain forest was the US demand for red meat. I was under the impression that said rain forest is being cleared in order to make space for commercial enterprises which aim to meet this demand. Assuming that I am not mistaken, it reeks of first-world privilege to suggest that there is actual good in imposing harsh economic measures on Latin America, which degrade the quality of life of millions of people, when the same 'good' could be achieved if fat Westerner's stopped insisting on eating red meat at virtually every meal.

We can certainly agree that Structural Adjustment Policies are "terrible". Though, I wouldn't qualify that claim with the predicate 'on the surface'.

Were it not for the Bretton Woods agreement which has evolved into the World Bank, Europe and Asia would never been rebuilt, I suppose it's easy to over look that, as many kids growing up today have no idea how close many euro/asian nations (now thriving) were to extinction, and were saved by American tax dollars.

However the World Bank and more importantly the creation of the IMF created a foreign exchange system that was essentially backed by the US dollar.

If you suppose that the IMF is more important than the World Bank for maintaining American hegemony (a point on which we agree), it is mystifying why you chose to cite the World Bank as the means of US financial control in your previous post.

Through extension of the world bank and IMF we control the entire global monetary system.

I'm very interested to here what solutions you think would have any bearing on the world if the USA's wealth disappeared overnight.

(My emphasis.)

Another example of extreme hyperbole. You don't control "the entire global monetary system", though, you certainly do exert more control over it than any other nation.

There is no question that, without US funding, many beneficial institutions and policies across the globe would fall to the wayside overnight. I don't see that this fact serves as a justification for the US to behave however it wants. I do believe that in the long-term the world would have been better off without the widespread privatisation that has resulted from SAP's imposed by the Bretton Woods organisations.

 

[David Wooderson]

this is just a list of subjects. it doesn't make a case for anything. let alone american dominance.

alasdair

We dominate every category listed, every subject listed imo are the essential essence that makes up modern civilization.

 

[zephyr]

Gernany are keaders in technoligy as is Japan.

Culture?

Theres civilisations that have been around for 199s years. America is a noob compared to ...Mesopotamia!!


Health care: yes you are leaders in new treatments

If anybody could afford them it would be most useful..


Space: well that was a friendly rivalry thing wasnt it.

You got beat into space but 1st on the moon.



Mind you no one else has gone do someone had to find out nothing was there.


Innovation : thats thinking outside the square for the future.

Things like electric cars and renewable energy. Windmills.

The world is heading in that direction slowly.

When youve finished repolluting the water feel free to follow.

We prolly wont as we are backwards.


Military: yeah youve got a lot of weapons etc.

What do you need it for when you have allies?

 

[Erikmen]

You don't dominate culture and innovation just to name a couple. There are huge developments of innovation in Sweden, Japan and even China. And some of these countries creates innovation centers in other countries so that they can strength the multicultural aspect and do projects that can also help developing nations.

And culture is so rich and so diverse, spread all over the world in different forms and like the example above, some countries share the culture with an attempt to promote their values and history. We see these things through the embassies' actions abroad, their festivals, projects, etc. I wouldn't say that the US is a leader on that subject either.

I was looking into a documentary from vice and noticed how interesting to see that Trump groups stay in their groups only and don't go out of their narrative for information. Maybe that's what's happening here. These MIT experts created a way where we can see that lack of interaction or isolation from the data taken from social media.

 

[David Wooderson]

You don't dominate culture and innovation just to name a couple.

Yes we do, we run media, ask canada they used to have their own media culture, now they're stuck with ours.

Are you not apart of this online community, typing on either a windows computer, apple iphone or andriod smartphone????

^^^^
All American innovation that is now essential to your daily life, try arguing in any form not innovated and invented by Americans.

 

[JahSEEuS]

culturally speaking

jazz and rock & roll are pretty sweet.

 

[Erikmen]

Yes we do, we run media, ask canada they used to have their own media culture, now they're stuck with ours.

Are you not apart of this online community, typing on either a windows computer, apple iphone or andriod smartphone????

^^^^
All American innovation that is now essential to your daily life, try arguing in any form not innovated and invented by Americans.

I'm not specifically speaking about modern things. Don't take it so literally. There are things we don't even imagine who created it and it belongs to our daily use, like boxes to put milk, liquids. Yes, simple but it wasn't invented by US. like zippers, matches, or even simpler things I'm not going to list here, just use your imagination.

I lived in the US and one thing that amazed me was how unusual it can be for the average Joe to visit other cultures, travel to other countries. Most people I know have done that during college and they are not rich. My point is that it can be quite enriching to learn about other countries and their inventions. People talk about blues or rock and roll (great music for sure) but have you ever thought of who created the instruments of music or studied about the effects of the sound?

Before South or North America were colonized there were a lot of great things that were the bed rock for some of the greatest inventions today. I remember watching the series of Cosmos and becoming in odd with what the 'old' world has left us so that we could go on and invent other things. We couldn't have done that in the dark.

It does not have to be an Apple device that is a great invention btw like iPods, iPads, etc, however, there is a world of things that are being created now and were created in the past so important that it would have been difficult to imagine the world without these other routine but basic things.

 

[zephyr]

culturally speaking

jazz and rock & roll are pretty sweet.

Well yeah African American hip hop and rap are deffo the good shit...

Soul music


And media culture is an u fortunate thing these days.


Back in the 40s to 90s we could tell that America had great imagination and motivation to make original tv and film.


But now .....

Its like you've lost the distinction between real life and tv with the reality shows and now youre being lorded over by a person who is just living like a reality tv show.


I prefer UK shows now that CSI is over.

 

[David Wooderson]

Gernany are keaders in technoligy as is Japan.

We allowed them to refine our existing technology and more importantly gave them access to a market to sell the refined tech...back to us, so they could payback some of the money we spent rebuilding their entire countries after humiliating military defeats.

Theres civilisations that have been around for 199s years. America is a noob compared to ...Mesopotamia!!

Seeing as we aren't typing in Sumerian or Aramaic I would conclude that we have dominated and surpassed Mesopotamian culture for quite some time

Health care: yes you are leaders in new treatments

If anybody could afford them it would be most useful..

That is why the entire world comes here for life and death treatment when in many cases their own countries would given them the same treatment for free, thank Obama for the rising cost of heathcare and generally bombing the system, we're getting back on track though...

Space: well that was a friendly rivalry thing wasnt it.

You got beat into space but 1st on the moon.



Mind you no one else has gone do someone had to find out nothing was there.

I said space exploration, the only reason you have any scope of visual references of anything outside our planet is due to American tax dollars and ingenuity.

Innovation : thats thinking outside the square for the future.

Maybe like being home to the first all electric car company?

Military: yeah youve got a lot of weapons etc.

What do you need it for when you have allies?

With $700 billion to spend on next year alone who needs allies?

lulz

 

[alasdairm]

Seeing as we aren't typing in Sumerian or Aramaic I would conclude that we have dominated and surpassed Mesopotamian culture for quite some time

sure. we're communicating in english.

alasdair

 

[zephyr]

There are clinical trials done in the states for many end stage diseases and in particular melanoma which is so hard as its unpredictable.

Very expensive clinical trials that we just dont have the resources or patent for.

But if ppl qualify they can go and be helped by our govt and if it works you have done the hard work and research bit, less Aussie need to go on the placebo and end up living.


You can have space. It really has no atmosphere.

 

[Erikmen]

We allowed them to refine our existing technology and more importantly gave them access to a market to sell the refined tech...back to us, so they could payback some of the money we spent rebuilding their entire countries after humiliating military defeats.

I'm not trying to debate who is the best innovative country but you say that the US allowed them to refine you existing technology. They were up and running before America was even discovered so I guess there are a lot of things you have taken for granted I would imagine.

 

[David Wooderson]

I'm not trying to debate who is the best innovative country

You don't dominate culture and innovation just to name a couple.

Some people enjoy playing games, I personally enjoy keeping score and the USA has and is winning bigly.

Germany was up and running before our founding no doubt, they tried to go to war with the entire world and nearly won, twice, that is until we stepped in to dominate and cuckhold the country into the overpriced and overengineered doormats they are today

 

[Erikmen]

We were talking about innovative countries. And Germany was just an example. If you want neutrality look for Sweden, there will be a lot of cool inventions we all use everyday, how you measure temperature for example. People did not know how.

I'm not keeping score of anything, this isn't a game for me. I was just trying to make a point so that you can see things with a wider perspective.

 

[CFC]

Are you not apart of this online community, typing on either a windows computer, apple iphone or andriod smartphone????

^^^^
All American innovation that is now essential to your daily life, try arguing in any form not innovated and invented by Americans.

Yeah, like the British ARM microprocessors that run virtually all of them lol

 

[Erikmen]

^ Exactly.

By the way I have nothing against the USA. There is my second home, like I said this is not personal - just something to think about, not as Trumpist, so to speak.

 

[Fresco]

Yes we do, we run media, ask canada they used to have their own media culture, now they're stuck with ours.

Are you not apart of this online community, typing on either a windows computer, apple iphone or andriod smartphone????

^^^^
All American innovation that is now essential to your daily life, try arguing in any form not innovated and invented by Americans.

Thats wrong. If you're using a phoneline to communicate over the internet, then that invention was done by a Scottish-Canadian:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Graham_Bell

 

[alasdairm]

Yeah, like the British ARM microprocessors that run virtually all of them lol

not just that but the concept of a smartphone was demonstrably pioneered by british company symbian who created the underlying technology for these kinds of mobile information devices as early as 1999-ish. the first 'device family reference designs' which portended the modern smartphone were shipped in around 2001/2002.

i recall visiting arm ltd. in los gatos california around 1999 - their stuff was truly incredible at the time and it's great to see how well they've done.

to put this in context, the first apple iphone shipped in 2007.

alasdair

 

[Burnt Offerings]

God the dickwaving over "muh country's better!", "nuh uh, what about these other countries?" gets so tiresome. Someone online (usually an American, like myself) overstates the their country's role or importance in the world, leading to howls of anguish from posters in other countries...

Common message board phenomena

I wouldn't necessarily classify the USA as a "superpower", though...that would seem to imply that other countries have no choice but to deal with us and fall in line with the USA's interests, that it's our way or the highway, when in reality other countries can align themselves with other global or even regional powers...and to a greater degree than they could during the 1990's, IMO

 

[zephyr]

Im sorry.

I was high.

We used to have Aussie vs America shitfights elsewhere on bl but Aus Social is no more and Americans always lose anyway .