America's Contributions To Society

 

and please tell me pinguin who contributed more,if you say it wasn't the eropeans than it should be someone else?(science,religion,society,politics,laws,literature,arts = civilization).

 

P.S You will always defend the native americans simply because you are from south america.

 

After all, people migrate to better places. Millions and millions of Europeans leave Europe for good and now live in the Americas. They told everyone how infamous was war, hate and hunger in Europe. They were glad they have left that place at last.

 

And we believe them...

 

Yes, Europeans have the idea they are the center of everything.

 

From the Americas we see Europe like a living museum that is growing old, while more dynamic societies are leading now.

 

 

Pinguin

 

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A Battle for Global Values
Tony Blair
From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2007




THE ROOTS OF EXTREMISM

Our response to the September 11 attacks has proved even more momentous than it seemed at the time. That is because we could have chosen security as the battleground. But we did not. We chose values. We said that we did not want another Taliban or a different Saddam Hussein. We knew that you cannot defeat a fanatical ideology just by imprisoning or killing its leaders; you have to defeat its ideas.

In my view, the situation we face is indeed war, but of a completely unconventional kind, one that cannot be won in a conventional way. We will not win the battle against global extremism unless we win it at the level of values as much as that of force. We can win only by showing that our values are stronger, better, and more just than the alternative. That also means showing the world that we are evenhanded and fair in our application of those values. We will never get real support for the tough actions that may well be essential to safeguarding our way of life unless we also attack global poverty, environmental degradation, and injustice with equal vigor.

The roots of the current wave of global terrorism and extremism are deep. They reach down through decades of alienation, victimhood, and political oppression in the Arab and Muslim world. Yet such terrorism is not and never has been inevitable.

To me, the most remarkable thing about the Koran is how progressive it is. I write with great humility as a member of another faith. As an outsider, the Koran strikes me as a reforming book, trying to return Judaism and Christianity to their origins, much as reformers attempted to do with the Christian church centuries later. The Koran is inclusive. It extols science and knowledge and abhors superstition. It is practical and far ahead of its time in attitudes toward marriage, women, and governance.

Under its guidance, the spread of Islam and its dominance over previously Christian or pagan lands were breathtaking. Over centuries, Islam founded an empire and led the world in discovery, art, and culture. The standard-bearers of tolerance in the early Middle Ages were far more likely to be found in Muslim lands than in Christian ones.

continues@ http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070101faes...bal-values.html

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The United States, Iraq, and the War on Terror
Lee Kuan Yew
From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2007


Summary: In spite of its diffculties in Iraq, the United States was not wrong to have removed Saddam Hussein. The outcome of the Iraqi enterprise will be crucial to the course of the "war on terror." And success is still possible -- if Washington takes a page out of its Cold War playbook.

Lee Kuan Yew is Minister Mentor of Singapore. He was Prime Minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990. This piece was adapted from a speech he delivered when accepting the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service in October 2006.


A Singaporean Perspective
The basic feature of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War was inclusiveness -- a willingness to embrace any country that opposed communism, whatever its type of government. The United States contested the Soviet system and held the line militarily, and its consistent and comprehensive approach eventually led to the Soviet Union's implosion.

After the Cold War came the "war on terror." Islamist terrorists tried to bring down the World Trade Center in 1993 and bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Then came the attacks of September 11, 2001. In response, the United States attacked Afghanistan and routed the Taliban. Then, in 2003, the United States invaded Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein and establish democracy there.

During the war on terror, however, the United States has not been as inclusive as it was in its war against communism. Aside from those in the "coalition of the willing," even most European countries have distanced themselves from Washington.

The United States did not realize, moreover, the depth of the fault lines in Iraqi society -- between Kurds and Arabs, Sunnis and Shiites, and the members of different tribes and local religious groups. These tensions were contained during four centuries of Ottoman rule, and the British, who took over from the Ottomans in 1920, put Iraq under strong Sunni control, centered on Baghdad. Now, because of the destruction of the old Iraqi society, for the first time in centuries, power is in the hands of the Iraqi Shiites.

continues@ http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070101faco...-on-terror.html

 

Chocolate=Amerindian

Lasagne=Chinese

Pumkin=Amerindian

 

Discount that please .

 

 

chimera 

 

quite true as does any industrialized state the kyoto agreement aside...that happens to be convient cover for the rest of the world and in particular, now the PRC, who continues to be the worlds latest greatest offender, with it's massive restructure and expansion of their industrial base.. and expansive use of fossil fuels.  As i said that makes it good cover. But it is also often forgotten or ignored by those who lay the entire world's ill fortune on the United States. Typical really.