ForumGarden

I don't know how current this info is. I expect I'll hear from the "experts" soon enough.



One question that comes to mind is : Why are we giving these people money???



*How they vote in the United Nations:*

*Below are the actual voting records of various Arabic/Islamic

States which are recorded in both the US State Department and

United Nations records:*

*Kuwait** votes** **against** the United States 67% of the time*

*Qatar** votes **against** the **United States** 67% of the time*

*Morocco **votes **against** the United States 70% of the time*

*United Arab Emirates** votes** against** the U. S. 70% of the

time.

**Jordan** votes **against** the United States 71% of the time.

**Tunisia** votes **against** the United States 71% of the time.

**Saudi Arabia** votes** against** the United States 73% of the

time.

**Yemen** votes **against** the United States 74% of the time.

**Algeria** votes **against** the United States 74% of the time.

**Oman** votes **against** the United States 74% of the time.*

*Sudan votes **against** the United States** 75% of the time.*

*Pakistan** votes** against** the United States 75% of the time.*

*Libya** votes **against** the United States 76% of the time.*

*Egypt** votes **against** **the United States 79% of the time.*

*Lebanon** votes **against** the United States 80% of the time.*

*India** votes **against** the United States 81% of the time.*

*Syria** votes **against** the * *United States** 84% of the time.

**Mauritania** votes** against** the * *United States** 87% of

the time.

**U S Foreign Aid to those that hate us:**

**Egypt,** for example, after voting 79% of the time against the

United States, still receives** $2 billion annually** in US

Foreign Aid.**

**Jordan** votes 71% against the United States

**And receives** $192,814,000 annually** in US Foreign Aid.**

**Pakistan** votes 75% against the United States

**Receives** $6,721,000** annually in US Foreign Aid.

**India** votes 81% against the United States

**Receives** $143,699,000** annually.

**Perhaps it is time to get out of the UN and give the tax

savings back to the American workers who are having to skimp and

sacrifice to pay the taxes** **(and gasoline)**.**

hmmmm. Thats well interesting. Someone has to vote against the daft ideas that pour out of the states! Otherwise they would be at war with everybody!

Mind you, they come up with good ideas occasionally. But after the Iraq fiasco, who would ever vote FOR them? The U.S. is getting uglier and uglier. Yes I am American, and yes I love my country, but I am not blind to its' faults.

hoppy;1285176 wrote: Perhaps it is time to get out of the UN and give the tax savings back to the American workers who are having to skimp and sacrifice to pay the taxes (and gasoline).Nothing but US self-interest is keeping the country from withdrawing from the United Nations. By all means leave. At the same time stop all the money sent from the US through aid agencies or destined for foreign governments, all it does is skews regional politics and destroys local economies. The rest of the world would be so much improved if the US were rigorously isolationist.

spot;1285208 wrote: [quote=hoppy;1285176]Perhaps it is time to get out of the UN and give the tax savings back to the American workers who are having to skimp and sacrifice to pay the taxes (and gasoline).Nothing but US self-interest is keeping the country from withdrawing from the United Nations. By all means leave. At the same time stop all the money sent from the US through aid agencies or destined for foreign governments, all it does is skews regional politics and destroys local economies. The rest of the world would be so much improved if the US were rigorously isolationist.


I agree. There's nothing I'd like better than for you guys to buy Chinese junk instead of us.

Cheap stuff, Chinese exports, and improving in reliability all the time. I'm all for it.

You'd prefer trade barriers as well as political isolationism?

spot;1285208 wrote: Cheap stuff, Chinese exports, and improving in reliability all the time. I'm all for it.

You'd prefer trade barriers as well as political isolationism?


History has shown, the world needs the USA much more than the USA needs the lot of you.

hoppy;1285217 wrote: History has shown, the world needs the USA much more than the USA needs the lot of you.


Name a decade, hoppy. Are you talking about the three months in 1918 when US forces were in action in Europe? The end result of that intervention was disastrous.

What are you saying Hoppy ?

Maybe you should up the Aid/bribe ?

hoppy;1285217 wrote: History has shown, the world needs the USA much more than the USA needs the lot of you.


:-5

Save your breath Hop, they hate America and everything it stands for.

We never help other nations when they are down and out.... either with aid or physical help. Just look how selfish we really are.



First to the point of your thread, the US divvies up 22% of the UN's budget:



US contributions to UN Regular Budget





The United States has the maximum assessed contribution to the UN regular budget -- 22%. In 2009 the assessed amount is $598,292,101. The minimum assessed contribution is 0.001%. The scale of assessments for each UN member for the required contributions to the regular budget is determined every 3 years on the basis of Gross National Product (GNP).



Only nine countries (starting with the largest contributor: United States, Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Canada, Spain, China) contribute 75% of the entire regular budget. Cuba contributes .043% of the regular budget. Oil-rich Saudi Arabia contributes .713%.



In addition to their contributions to the UN regular budget, member states contribute to the peacekeeping operations budget and the cost of international courts and tribunals. The level of these contributions is based on their assessed contributions to the regular budget plus variations which take account of permanent membership on the Security Council.



UN members also make voluntary contributions to UN specialized agencies and subsidiary organizations. The administrative costs of such bodies, though, are met from the regular budget.



The total we will dole out to the the UN is right at 1.08 BILLION



The U.S. share of the 2009-2010 peacekeeping package is just under 26 percent of the total, or $2.01 billion — up about $120 million from the previous year. The share can grow to 27 percent before it hits a ceiling mandated by the US congress.



The cost weigh most heavily on the United States, which in addition to paying nearly a quarter of the regular U.N. budget, pays up to 26 percent of its peacekeeping costs, and large amounts of the money for a bewildering variety of U.N. cost centers that make up the sprawling U.N. Secretariat budget. In 2007, the top 17 dues-paying countries in the U.N. paid 86.5 percent of the entire U.N. regular budget, while the 128 lowest-paying members paid only 1 percent.



Someone brought up America and her daft ideas...and how we would be at war with everyone.



Does anyone remember how many UN resolutions were brought against Iraq? If not I can show you everyone of them.

How about the "Oil for Food" scandal that the UN was in charge of?



Saddam Hussein evaded and exploited U.N. sanctions to reap more than $21 billion in illegal profits from 1990 to 2003.



And calling our effort in WW 1 "disastrous". WOW...

We are damned if we do and damned if we don't.... Hoppy.

I suppose 323,018 US total casualties is a disaster in some minds.

Scrat;1285271 wrote: It's just one of they ways the politicians whose butts you so enthusiastically kiss launder money Hoppy.



You haven't figured that out yet? :rolleyes:


Let me get this on record, The UN launders money?

Did I hear that right?

BTS;1285270 wrote: And calling our effort in WW 1 "disastrous". WOW...

We are damned if we do and damned if we don't.... Hoppy.

I suppose 323,018 US total casualties is a disaster in some minds.


World War Two happened as a direct result, remember? If Germany had won World War One they'd have been in a position to contain and suppress the one year old Soviet Union. Instead of that we had an impotent Germany sat in the middle of Europe for fifteen years and the Russian Revolution succeeded. Then a resurgent Germany rearmed and demanded a rematch. Nazism and the Holocaust were born in the European ruin the US engineered in 1918.

spot;1285283 wrote: World War Two happened as a direct result, remember?



No I don't remember. Some suppose that, but there is no proof that because Germany lost WW1 they went on to start WW2. The only thing that we could have done was put MORE pressure on Germany AFTER WW1. The US NEVER ratified the Treaty of Versailles . The United States negotiated a separate peace with Germany, finalized in August 1921.

Do you remember why? The Treaty of Versailles included a clause to create the League of Nations.

HMM how'd that one work out for Europe?

Weren't they created to stop wars?

(SEE BELOW)





If Germany had won World War One they'd have been in a position to contain and suppress the one year old Soviet Union. Instead of that we had an impotent Germany sat in the middle of Europe for fifteen years and the Russian Revolution succeeded. Then a resurgent Germany rearmed and demanded a rematch. Nazism and the Holocaust were born in the European ruin the US engineered in 1918.




From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



The League of Nations (LON) was an inter-governmental organization founded as a result of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919–1920, and the forerunner to the United Nations. At its greatest extent from 28 September 1934 to 23 February 1935, it had 58 members. The League's primary goals as stated in its Covenant included preventing war through collective security, disarmament, and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration. Other goals in this and related treaties included labor conditions, just treatment of native inhabitants, trafficking in persons and drugs, arms trade, global health, prisoners of war, and protection of minorities in Europe.

The diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a fundamental shift in thought from the preceding hundred years. The League lacked its own armed force and so depended on the Great Powers to enforce its resolutions, keep to economic sanctions which the League ordered, or provide an army, when needed, for the League to use. However, they were often reluctant to do so.

Sanctions could also hurt the League members, so they were reluctant to comply with them. When, during the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, the League accused Benito Mussolini's soldiers of targeting Red Cross medical tents, Mussolini responded that Ethiopians were not fully human, therefore the human rights laws did not apply. Benito Mussolini stated that "The League is very well when sparrows shout, but no good at all when eagles fall out."

After a number of notable successes and some early failures in the 1920s, the League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis powers in the 1930s. In May 1933, the League was powerless to convince Adolf Hitler that Franz Bernheim, a Jew, was protected under the minority clauses established by the League in 1919 (that all minorities were fully human and held equal rights among all men).

Hitler claimed these clauses violated Germany's sovereignty. Germany withdrew from the League, soon to be followed by many other totalitarian and militaristic nations. The onset of World War II showed that the League had failed its primary purpose, which was to avoid any future world war. The United Nations replaced it after the end of the war and inherited a number of agencies and organizations founded by the League.



So how is that the US's fault. A failed League of Nations is where you should be pointing your finger. And as far as that goes the UN is just as pathetic IMHO

Scrat;1285366 wrote: If you're trying to lay all of the blame for that at the feet of America you are wrong. France and her fellow European combatants were largely responsible for it. DuPont and other American industries played their parts but Americas involvement was just one of many.


You're suggesting the Allies would have won World War One in 1918 without the presence of US troops on the Western front? There's a general consensus that they'd have lost by the end of that year, surely. A victorious Germany would have stood against the newly declared Soviet Union - they'd already occupied the Ukraine, after all - and completely avoided Nazism since there would have been no pressure to elect a demagogue extremist.

Then why in hell didn't england become germany's allie after germany took europe? Hitler seemed to like you guys. I guess people like you were still a minority then, huh?

hoppy;1285385 wrote: Then why in hell didn't england become germany's allie after germany took europe? Hitler seemed to like you guys. I guess people like you were still a minority then, huh?I rather dislike the entire Nazi philosophy of Ãœbermensch, I'm entirely happy that their war failed. It's a tragedy that Germany was ever put in a position where Hitler even entered politics because of what he saw as the betrayal of his country in World War One. It's a tragedy that he ever gained mass support. None of it would have happened had the Americans stayed off the 1918 battlefields.

Who are today's Ãœbermensch? This is quoted from Tariq Ali's 2008 essay on Afghanistan:I learned a great deal from Jules, a 20-year old American soldier I met recently in Canada. He became so disenchanted with the war that he decided to go AWOL, proving -- at least to himself -- that the Afghan situation was not an inescapable predicament. Many of his fellow soldiers, he claims, felt similarly, hating a war that dehumanized both them and the Afghans. "We just couldn't bring ourselves to accept that bombing Afghans was no different from bombing the landscape" was the way he summed up the situation. "[...] Anyway, you take this empty vessel and you scare the living **** out of him, break him down to nothing, cultivate a brotherhood and camaraderie with those he suffers with, and fill his head with racist nonsense like all Arabs, Iraqis, Afghans are Hajj. Hajj hates you. Hajj wants to hurt your family. Hajj children are the worst because they beg all the time. Just some of the most hurtful and ridiculous propaganda, but you'd be amazed at how effective it's been in fostering my generation of soldiers."

http://ruby.zcommunications.org/operati ... iq-ali.pdf

This thread is kind of all over the place.

The argument who votes for and against is not relevant, look at the governments within your own countries and how well they all agree on stuff. How this the health care bill coming along in the US? Is everyone voting ‘yes’?

And you expect worldwide countries of different cultures and beliefs and economic situations to agree on everything? You have high expectations.

The point of the UN is not for all the countries to fall in line with what the US want, or anyone else for that matter, it is to have an open forum on world issues and to try to manage the world’s reactions to situations to prevent a repeat of horrors of the two world wars that happened within less than a century.

Given the cold war and other close calls since ww2, we are lucky that we have not already had a WW3, and it was most likely the UN that was able to stop that from happening time and time again.

To start looking backwards and pointing fingers on how things may have been, and would have won with or without the involvement of other countries is an insult to those who served and gave their lives fighting for the freedoms we enjoy today, so knock it off.

mikeinie;1285394 wrote: To start looking backwards and pointing fingers on how things may have been, and would have won with or without the involvement of other countries is an insult to those who served and gave their lives fighting for the freedoms we enjoy today, so knock it off.I dispute that any of the freedoms we enjoy today are the fruits of "those who served and gave their lives fighting", they're the consequence of society's subsequent reaction against this grotesque tendency to obey and to fight. Conformity and national patriotism are the enemies of freedom. Freedom in today's world is the result of the mass rejection of those so-called values by the victorious underclass, and long may it continue.

spot;1285397 wrote: I dispute that any of the freedoms we enjoy today are the fruits of "those who served and gave their lives fighting", they're the consequence of society's subsequent reaction against this grotesque tendency to obey and to fight. Conformity and national patriotism are the enemies of freedom. Freedom in today's world is the result of the mass rejection of those so-called values by the victorious underclass, and long may it continue.


That 'mass rejection' does not come easily and often involves having to stand up and fight. I for one am grateful that I live in a free and open society.

These days people take freedom for granted, they think it just there and always will be.

Freedom is hard won and easily lost.

mikeinie;1285400 wrote: That 'mass rejection' does not come easily and often involves having to stand up and fight. I for one am grateful that I live in a free and open society.

These days people take freedom for granted, they think it just there and always will be.

Freedom is hard won and easily lost.


Perhaps you're using the word "fight" there in the sense of struggle. Firing weapons isn't necessary for the maintenance of a free and open society. What it takes is sustained protest, refusal and rejection.

The Bush Administration demonstrated well enough how easily lost freedom is. Americans should feel shame at how little disagreement they showed as he stripped layers of freedom from them.

spot;1285403 wrote: Perhaps you're using the word "fight" there in the sense of struggle. Firing weapons isn't necessary for the maintenance of a free and open society. What it takes is sustained protest, refusal and rejection.

The Bush Administration demonstrated well enough how easily lost freedom is. Americans should feel shame at how little disagreement they showed as he stripped layers of freedom from them.Its all a part of our political and cultural evolution.

spot;1285283 wrote: World War Two happened as a direct result, remember? If Germany had won World War One they'd have been in a position to contain and suppress the one year old Soviet Union. Instead of that we had an impotent Germany sat in the middle of Europe for fifteen years and the Russian Revolution succeeded. Then a resurgent Germany rearmed and demanded a rematch. Nazism and the Holocaust were born in the European ruin the US engineered in 1918.


You know spot you do come out with a load of cobblers sometimes but that has got to be up there as one of the biggest. It was actually the European victors that wanted to punish germany and get bad some of what the war had cost not the americans-left to Wilson the Versailles treaty would have been very different and the lesson learned from that inter war period was put in to practice post ww2. What really brought the Americans in to the war was when they discovered the Germans were busy trying to persuade Mexico to invade the states-they didn't even have the sense to deny it.

The russian revolution succeeded because the white Russians couldn't persuade their people to fight for them and their generals were incompetent idiots. It succeeded despite american, french , british and japanese involvement trying to stop it.

gmc;1285642 wrote: You know spot you do come out with a load of cobblers sometimes but that has got to be up there as one of the biggest. It was actually the European victors that wanted to punish germany and get bad some of what the war had cost not the americans-left to Wilson the Versailles treaty would have been very different and the lesson learned from that inter war period was put in to practice post ww2. What really brought the Americans in to the war was when they discovered the Germans were busy trying to persuade Mexico to invade the states-they didn't even have the sense to deny it.

The russian revolution succeeded because the white Russians couldn't persuade their people to fight for them and their generals were incompetent idiots. It succeeded despite american, french , british and japanese involvement trying to stop it.


I don't disagree with a word of what you've put here but it doesn't relate to what you're commenting on:

1. "The three months in 1918 when US forces were in action in Europe" led to Germany's defeat. Nothing else was going to stop the Germans from an acceptable conclusion to the war, no outward reparations payments, no disarmament. I suggest they'd actually have won.

2. "If Germany had won World War One they'd have been in a position to contain and suppress the one year old Soviet Union. Instead of that we had an impotent Germany sat in the middle of Europe for fifteen years and the Russian Revolution succeeded. Then a resurgent Germany rearmed and demanded a rematch. Nazism and the Holocaust were born in the European ruin the US engineered in 1918."

With a victorious Germany still occupying the Ukraine and the southern oilfields I'd argue the Soviet Union would have collapsed.

spot;1285644 wrote: I don't disagree with a word of what you've put here but it doesn't relate to what you're commenting on:

1. "The three months in 1918 when US forces were in action in Europe" led to Germany's defeat. Nothing else was going to stop the Germans from an acceptable conclusion to the war, no outward reparations payments, no disarmament. I suggest they'd actually have won.

2. "If Germany had won World War One they'd have been in a position to contain and suppress the one year old Soviet Union. Instead of that we had an impotent Germany sat in the middle of Europe for fifteen years and the Russian Revolution succeeded. Then a resurgent Germany rearmed and demanded a rematch. Nazism and the Holocaust were born in the European ruin the US engineered in 1918."

With a victorious Germany still occupying the Ukraine and the southern oilfields I'd argue the Soviet Union would have collapsed.


1. Germany was completely exhausted and the people starving the british and french managing to blockade quite successfully without American help. It wasn't just russia where there was the danger of a revolt if the war had rumbled on-the german navy had mutinied in 1918 before the armistice was signed-just like the russian naval mutiny that sparked the russian revolution.it's possible there would have been full scale revolution-as it was arguably it was only the interminable internecine fighting the left like to indulge in that led to the failure of the spartacist risings- it was on a knife edge. maybe what followed instead was worse-who knows? A lot of the leader were jewish-as was karl marx come to that where do you think the idea about a world wide jewish conspiracy came from-add in centuries if christian anti-judaism and hitler was a man of his time-in another time he would have been a sad little inadequate.

There was no way germany would have won-there might have been a stalemate but eventually the war would have started up again. Your assertion that There's a general consensus that they'd have lost by the end of that year, surely.


is erroneous. where do you get that idea from?

Come to that the americans were worried about communism on their own shores

U.S. Politics and Unrest in 1919

Quite sensibly they wanted nothing to do with europe but the later support for hitler-whose idolisation was shared by many in the french and british establishment needs to be seen in the light of that fear of a popular uprising not to mention the general anti-british anti-inperial sentiment. (don't mention the american revolution-I made reference to it but I think I got away with it:sneaky:)

The introduction of universal suffrage to all males over 21 in the UK wasn't a thank you from the ruling elite- they were in fact shitting themselves with fear that they were going to get slaughtered by an irritated mob of the great unwashed just like in russia.

posted by hoppy

I don't know how current this info is. I expect I'll hear from the "experts" soon enough.



One question that comes to mind is : Why are we giving these people money???


We have gone off topic, my apologies.

It's a good question. Americans should really ask of their government what the F))LK have you been playing at? You're bankrupt, involved in a war without end and for what? follow the money, it's always got something to do with it somewhere.