Quote:
Originally posted by punkworld
However, to say america is a great country seems a bit unjust. It's the richest country in the world, yet 13% of the people in the US are living in poverty. It has 5% of the world's population, yet produces 25% of the world's pollution. It is one of the few countries in the world that can sentence people to death for crimes committed when they were minors. It has a murder rate approx. 5 times as high as that of countries like the Netherlands and Japan. It threatened third world countries with severe economical sanctions if these countries were to ignore American farmaceutical companies' patents on AIDS-medicines because those companies were asking prices for those medicines that made it impossible for the people in those countries to buy them. And the list goes on...
I myself am very critical of my country's actions, however, the same can not be said about many americans.
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fucked up foreign policy that many average americans aren't aware of and bad statistics in some areas don't stop it from being a great country.. Australia was complicit in the indonesian genocide in East Timor - we looked the other way for a share of the oil in the Timor Sea while a third of their country was killed.. how many average australians at the time knew what was going on? none.. Aboriginals still have 3 times the death rate from preventable diseases as white australians.. the liberal party introduced a regressive tax that hurt poor people and benefitted the rich, we allow mining and despoiling on world heritage sites...
does that stop me from thinking Australia is a great country? hell fucking no. these are things that big business and elected officials do in our name.. not things we have great control over.
England is has done things every bit as horrible in foreign places as America.. selling arms to banned countries and whatnot but no-one mentions them at all.. if anything they're seen as a moderate influence!