use Perl

• Well... (Score:1)

  by autarch (914)

  It's a great country to live in if you are a white person. It's a great country to live in if you are middle class (or better).
  
  It's not such a great country to live in if you're a person of color, though it could be worse (or better). It's not such a great country to live in if you're very poor. Though again, that could be worse and better, depending on where you look.
  
  And the really fucked up thing about the US has very little to do with how its own citizens are treated, but rather with how the US tre
  • Re:Well... (Score:0)

    by djberg96 (2603)

    I wouldn't want to be a poor peasant living Afghanistan right now, or Colombia, or Cuba, or anywhere in most of Africa, or Russia, or any of a dozen other places where US foreign policy is making an already difficult life nearly unbearable

    What are you talking about? Is it your opinion that the US is holding these countries down? Let's look at two of your examples:

    1) Africa. Not a single great nation has come out of Africa since Hannibal & Cleopatra. I'm sure Africa's "demise" had much more to do
    • Re:Well... (Score:1)

      by autarch (914)

      Well, the American slave trade didn't exactly do any good for Africa. Nor did US support of the South African apartheid regime.
      
      Russia, yes, had internal problems. The cold war, explicitly designed to destroy the Russian economy, also didn't help.
      
      But here are a few others:
      
      - Iran, where we installed a dictator that served our (oil) interests. That dictator's oppression was so severe that he was overthrown by a fundamentalist Islamic regime, which has been making Iran miserable ever since. Remember, at
      • Re:Well... (Score:1)

        by pdcawley (485)

        Well, the American slave trade didn't exactly do any good for Africa.

        I have the feeling that the people who benefited most from that particular trade were the merchants of Liverpool and Bristol. Which is why the UK government is not desperately keen on having slavery classified as a crime against humanity 'cos the reparations required would be enormous.
        • Re:Well... (Score:1)

          by autarch (914)

          Well, I'm not going to fight about who benefitted the most. White Europeans, particularly in England, benefitted a lot. White Americans benefitted a lot. White Americans probably benefitted a lot more than the English after the American Revolution, I would presume. And England abolished slavery in its colonies in the 1830s.
          • Re:Well... (Score:1)

            by pdcawley (485) on 2002.02.24 2:52 (#5019) Homepage Journal

            I believe that we were still selling slaves to America for quite some time after it was banned in our own colonies, after all there was money (vast amounts of it) to be made.

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            • Re:Well... (Score:1)

              by pudge (1)

              Although, in your favor, the abolitionist movement that spread to the colonies began in the UK, didn't it? And then it was picked up by the Republican party ... wait a minute, my world is turned upside down! :-)