Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Open Letter to the Americas
So President Bush went to South America to discuss trade and relations among the Americas. While on the trip there were a number of Anti-Bush and Anti-USA demonstrations. While I do not expect everyone to agree with the United States, I assumed that Central and South America would see that the USA (and even Canada) is their biggest ally.
As more and more European nations come together under the European Union, Europe gains an economic and diplomatic force which can begin to compete with the USA in size and influence. As China continues to develop, China and Japan continue to improve their trade relations. The stronger Asian nations get the more Asia can pull the global sphere of influence in their direction. So, it is no big secret that if the Americas can pull themselves together we would create our own hemisphere of influence.
Now, obviously the United States swings a big stick (whether we speak softly or not) in global politics. I would think that Central and South American countries would want to be a part of that. There is a lot of trade potential, educational opportunities, job growth and even profits to be made with the Americas working together. It is not just a one-way street. It is not only the USA that can benefit from such a relationship; moreover, strong trade relations seem to stabilize local governments and national security – something everyone in the Americas can appreciate. But, rather than accept a meeting of the Americas with optimism, a few rouge governments ruined the entire experience.
So, President Bush will now travel to Asia this week and strengthen trade and diplomatic ties with China, Japan and South Korea while making a good-will visit to Mongolia (the first for a sitting US President). Then, he will return home where the US already has a strong history of trade and diplomacy with Europe. I feel like Central and South America are missing an opportunity to grow. They are missing an opportunity, for lack of a better word, to exploit the United States’ desire to grow to help themselves. As democracy is slowly spreading into the Middle East, and as global trade grows exponentially many of these Central and South American nations are going to find themselves on the sidelines if they do not make an effort to participate. The Soviet Union is dead, Castro won’t live forever, and even socialist-leaning states like France are having a hard time dealing with the poor while 20+% of their population is out of work. So learn a lesson from history, socialism (at least while the USA is the big-dog of the western hemisphere) will get you nowhere. Dictatorships, narcotics-led economies and perpetual civil war will not endear you to the rest of the world (did you hear that Venezuela).
While the rest of the world is preoccupied with bird-flu, Iraq, Israeli-Palestinian relations, or the future of Turkey in the EU, take this opportunity to find a unified voice and make a statement that the Western Hemisphere matters. There is too much growth and too much money at stake to sit idly by and not act. If you chose not to act, then the US will continue its business with the rest of the world (like they already do) without you.
As more and more European nations come together under the European Union, Europe gains an economic and diplomatic force which can begin to compete with the USA in size and influence. As China continues to develop, China and Japan continue to improve their trade relations. The stronger Asian nations get the more Asia can pull the global sphere of influence in their direction. So, it is no big secret that if the Americas can pull themselves together we would create our own hemisphere of influence.
Now, obviously the United States swings a big stick (whether we speak softly or not) in global politics. I would think that Central and South American countries would want to be a part of that. There is a lot of trade potential, educational opportunities, job growth and even profits to be made with the Americas working together. It is not just a one-way street. It is not only the USA that can benefit from such a relationship; moreover, strong trade relations seem to stabilize local governments and national security – something everyone in the Americas can appreciate. But, rather than accept a meeting of the Americas with optimism, a few rouge governments ruined the entire experience.
So, President Bush will now travel to Asia this week and strengthen trade and diplomatic ties with China, Japan and South Korea while making a good-will visit to Mongolia (the first for a sitting US President). Then, he will return home where the US already has a strong history of trade and diplomacy with Europe. I feel like Central and South America are missing an opportunity to grow. They are missing an opportunity, for lack of a better word, to exploit the United States’ desire to grow to help themselves. As democracy is slowly spreading into the Middle East, and as global trade grows exponentially many of these Central and South American nations are going to find themselves on the sidelines if they do not make an effort to participate. The Soviet Union is dead, Castro won’t live forever, and even socialist-leaning states like France are having a hard time dealing with the poor while 20+% of their population is out of work. So learn a lesson from history, socialism (at least while the USA is the big-dog of the western hemisphere) will get you nowhere. Dictatorships, narcotics-led economies and perpetual civil war will not endear you to the rest of the world (did you hear that Venezuela).
While the rest of the world is preoccupied with bird-flu, Iraq, Israeli-Palestinian relations, or the future of Turkey in the EU, take this opportunity to find a unified voice and make a statement that the Western Hemisphere matters. There is too much growth and too much money at stake to sit idly by and not act. If you chose not to act, then the US will continue its business with the rest of the world (like they already do) without you.
Monday, November 14, 2005
Common Sense and Self Defense
Last night I watched a late night news show which ran two stories; one of which disgusted me and the other disappointed me.
The first story was about an officer at a correctional facility who was making obscene phone call from a pay phone. Over the course of 10 years he made over 70 phone calls to various fast food restaurants around the country and asked senior staff or managers to conduct “searches” of staff or guests and to detain these “dangerous people” until police would arrive. Now, at first, the fact that a man gets pleasure from making disgusting phone calls is very weird; but what is even weirder is that the managers actually listened to the man making the phone calls. The story on TV was about an assistant manager at a McDonalds who conducted a strip search of an underage, female employee at the request of the man on the phone. And since it was the dinner rush and the assistant manager had to get on the counter and work, she followed the man on the phone’s request and had her middle-aged fiancée watch the underage girl – by now the girl was naked and barely covered with an apron. Continuing to listen to the man on the phone, the assistant mangers fiancée had the teenage-girl perform calisthenics, he spanked her, and even performed sexual acts with the girl. Do you need to re-read this paragraph? It sounds ridiculous; I could barely believe what I was seeing on TV. Do you know what the manger’s excuse was? She said, “I though he was a police officer.” Hold on, the story is about to get worse. This is not an isolated event. Over the 10 years and 70 phone calls this man got people to conduct a number of sexual acts, cavity searches, beating and countless acts of physical, mental and sexual abuse. [look up ABC’s Fast Food Nightmare on Google] These actions even included the “searches” of customers at one Taco Bell. This sounds so ridiculous that I can’t even believe it as I write this. So the question I pose to people is:
Where is your common sense?
Where is your sense of decency?
When did people stop thinking before acting?
I do not study psychology, of physiology, sociology or any other “ology,” so I do not feel like I have the authority to try and dissect these people’s actions. Maybe people have always been this stupid and I just don’t know enough about people in the past. But I find it hard to believe that something like this would have happened 100 years ago.
The other story was about school shootings and how children need to know how to react. Yes, very true. In a nutshell, safety experts went to a school and conduct a couple fake shootings (experiments); they looked at how the kinds reacted and then corrected their behavior. They even allowed some of the parents to view the footage. They basically told the kinds how to run out of the building and keep running, don’t run toward the armed student, don’t run into dead-ends like restrooms, etc. Now, while this advice is all well and good, what surprised me the most were the parents. The number one comment parents made were something to the effect of: “I should have told my child to fight back, I should have told my child to defend themselves at all costs.” Now this was a paraphrase, but the point I’m trying to make is that many American schools no longer play dodge ball because it is too dangerous, they don’t keep score in gym so ‘everybody wins,’ some schools don’t give grades – so we spend all our time coddling our children and protecting them from the real world and then we wonder why they crack under pressure. We have raised a generation of children with no “back bone;” kids are getting softer and weaker and no one seems to care. But this is a topic for another page when I have more time to explain why average American children are getting their butts kicked in everything from academics to athletics by foreigners, immigrants and poorer kids who are just plain hungrier.
The first story was about an officer at a correctional facility who was making obscene phone call from a pay phone. Over the course of 10 years he made over 70 phone calls to various fast food restaurants around the country and asked senior staff or managers to conduct “searches” of staff or guests and to detain these “dangerous people” until police would arrive. Now, at first, the fact that a man gets pleasure from making disgusting phone calls is very weird; but what is even weirder is that the managers actually listened to the man making the phone calls. The story on TV was about an assistant manager at a McDonalds who conducted a strip search of an underage, female employee at the request of the man on the phone. And since it was the dinner rush and the assistant manager had to get on the counter and work, she followed the man on the phone’s request and had her middle-aged fiancée watch the underage girl – by now the girl was naked and barely covered with an apron. Continuing to listen to the man on the phone, the assistant mangers fiancée had the teenage-girl perform calisthenics, he spanked her, and even performed sexual acts with the girl. Do you need to re-read this paragraph? It sounds ridiculous; I could barely believe what I was seeing on TV. Do you know what the manger’s excuse was? She said, “I though he was a police officer.” Hold on, the story is about to get worse. This is not an isolated event. Over the 10 years and 70 phone calls this man got people to conduct a number of sexual acts, cavity searches, beating and countless acts of physical, mental and sexual abuse. [look up ABC’s Fast Food Nightmare on Google] These actions even included the “searches” of customers at one Taco Bell. This sounds so ridiculous that I can’t even believe it as I write this. So the question I pose to people is:
Where is your common sense?
Where is your sense of decency?
When did people stop thinking before acting?
I do not study psychology, of physiology, sociology or any other “ology,” so I do not feel like I have the authority to try and dissect these people’s actions. Maybe people have always been this stupid and I just don’t know enough about people in the past. But I find it hard to believe that something like this would have happened 100 years ago.
The other story was about school shootings and how children need to know how to react. Yes, very true. In a nutshell, safety experts went to a school and conduct a couple fake shootings (experiments); they looked at how the kinds reacted and then corrected their behavior. They even allowed some of the parents to view the footage. They basically told the kinds how to run out of the building and keep running, don’t run toward the armed student, don’t run into dead-ends like restrooms, etc. Now, while this advice is all well and good, what surprised me the most were the parents. The number one comment parents made were something to the effect of: “I should have told my child to fight back, I should have told my child to defend themselves at all costs.” Now this was a paraphrase, but the point I’m trying to make is that many American schools no longer play dodge ball because it is too dangerous, they don’t keep score in gym so ‘everybody wins,’ some schools don’t give grades – so we spend all our time coddling our children and protecting them from the real world and then we wonder why they crack under pressure. We have raised a generation of children with no “back bone;” kids are getting softer and weaker and no one seems to care. But this is a topic for another page when I have more time to explain why average American children are getting their butts kicked in everything from academics to athletics by foreigners, immigrants and poorer kids who are just plain hungrier.
