In a message dated 12/31/00 7:32:56 AM Eastern Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

>
>  Let's boycott America
>
>  David Nicholson-Lord
>  Monday 25th December 2000
>
>
>  US democracy is flawed; its human rights record poor; its greed
>  threatens the planet. Is it time for the rest of us to act?

     Always good to hear a bit of criticism from one of the Queen's Subjects
concerning democracy elsewhere.

<snip standard "Bush is stupid" rant>

>  What is to be done about the United States of America? Put another
>  way, how much of a jackass does a man have to be before he's stopped
>  from being president?

   Well, that's a rather harsh indictment against Gore!

>  For a little over a month, from the inconclusive ending on election
>  night to the Supreme Court's narrow decision in favour of Bush, the
>  rest of us watched in disbelief as the nuts and bolts of American
>  democracy came apart before our eyes.

     Actually, nothing came apart.  The Republic held together quite well.

<snip standard "gridlock is bad" rant>

>  But what the daily news from Tallahassee revealed was that the
>  world's most technologically advanced nation can't even get its
>  voting machines to count accurately.

     Voting machines worked okay, we just could not get a small fraction of
the voters to properly fill out a ballot.  Carelessness or incompetence in
properly executing a ballot is not against the law nor is such stupidity
deserving of special handling.  To properly execute a ballot is as much of a
responsibility as it is a right.

>   And that counting by hand might
>  be unconstitutional - which is rather like outlawing running as a
>  sport because nowadays everyone drives.

   Extraordinarily stupid remark.  The constitutionality of hand counting was
never in dispute.

>  And that the entire chad
>  fiasco was just one of several ways in which the votes of many
>  Florida citizens (in particular, those likely to be at odds with the
>  state's Republican rulers) seemed to have been fixed and fiddled out
>  of existence.

   Why would this 'Republican conspiracy' have happened in voting districts
controlled by the Democratic Party?  How would the West Palm Beach
"butterfly" ballot designed by the voting administrator, a Democrat, and
handed out at the polling site by party Democrats be a Republican plot?  Why
is it that the vast majority of those voting Democrat were able to correctly
fill out their ballots?

>  In a country that regards itself as the exemplar of the free world,
>  this is strange stuff indeed. Whatever voting system you use, there
>  are certain basics that a modern democracy cannot do without. First,
>  universal suffrage must mean what it says;

    Which is the case in America.  There are exemptions such as children and
felons in some states.

>   second, everyone with a
>  vote should be entitled to cast it and have it accurately counted;

   They are, but they are not entitled to have a carelessly or incompetently
prepared ballot counted as a vote.

>  and third, the person with the most votes should win.

    He did.  It is the popular vote in each state that counts.  There is no
national popular vote other than by unofficial tracking.

> On all these
>  tests, American democracy failed.

    This is a lie.  But then most of the article is meant to be.

<snip standard "American people are social scum" rant.>

<snip standard "America is diseased" rant>

<snip standard "Ronald Reagan is evil personified, and responsible for all
things wrong in the world" rant>

<snip standard "American defense concerns will lead to a return to the cold
war" mantra.>


<snip standard "America is responsible for the coming Ice Age -- oops! It's
global warming now isn't it" mantra.>

<snip standard "the revolution is right around the corner" prayer>

>  In the case of global warming, a developing world long fearful of the
>  effects of climate change made common cause with a Europe newly
>  sensitised to it by the worst floods in memory.

     I suspect that most Europeans are not so stupid as to think that a bad
flood year is somehow evidence of anything (Surely, our course, ignorant
immigrants didn't bring all the brains with them when they left?:-))

>  The conjunction
>  occurred at the climate talks in The Hague last month, where American
>  culpability was widely proclaimed (4 per cent of the world's
>  population, but 26 per cent of its oil consumption), yet American
>  corruption proved inescapable.

     Of course.  What a really stupid and trite mantra. The standard
international whine of those looking for a monetary handout from the US
taxpayer -- it's all your fault, America!  Now give us money!!  The oil is
put on the international market for anyone to buy.  Help yourself.

<snip standard "Americans are greedy, watch it or the rest of the world will
not like you, you're colonizers and exploiters anyway blah, blah, blah" self
congratulatory pantings.  By the way, why does this guy keep speaking for the
"developing world?>

<snip more standard "American people are course scum" rantings>
>
>  The United States, in reality, is an immigrant culture with two of
>  the defining characteristics of such cultures: an overwhelming desire
>  to make good, economically; and a coarseness of public debate that
>  makes it easy prey to the marketing men, and to calculating
>  politicians masquerading as regular guys.

    Boy!  Those stupid, uncouth immigrants! :-))))

<snip yet more standard "Americans are scum" ranting>

>  but whereas
>  the Greeks gave us culture, the Romans law and the British, arguably,
>  a sense of fair play, history may well come to view the American
>  empire's defining triumph as the export of junk to the rest of the
>  world - from genetically modified food to burgers, bad films and
>  worse television. Not for nothing is American imperialism known as
>  Coca-Colonisation.

    Actually we consider it recycling.  We let you buy our "junk" and we buy
those quality things you people are still able to make but apparently your
people no longer value.;-)

     Now, what I want to know is why are you people so eager to buy all this
"junk"?  What you call "American Imperialism" is really nothing more than you
people demanding that we provide you with all this stuff.  When I am
traveling in the lesser countries, jolly ol' England, quirky France, etc., I
expect to see some quaint local cultures, not McDonalds hamburger stands,
Rambo movies, and Jerry Springer shows.  Don't you people have any better
taste than that?  Do you know that most American movies are targeted toward
the US youth audience because that is where the money is?  Shsssh! Take an
aesthetic step up, won't you?  And in the meantime stop blaming us for what
you people buy.:-)

>  There are many good points to American culture. The issue is whether
>  the good outweighs the bad - and what answer the overwhelmingly
>  non-American majority of the world's population now gives when they
>  ask themselves this question.

>  It doesn't, for example, take much of a shift in perspective to see
>  US foreign policy, since the war, not as a defence of the "free"
>  world, but as oppressive and brutal and governed by economic
>  self-interest. Or to see the US today as an enemy of the planet - an
>  "evil empire", to borrow Ronald Reagan's phrase for the Soviet Union.
>
>  And in that sense, the past two months of the year 2000 may prove a
>  turning point - the moment when the scales fell from our eyes.
>
>  The question is - what can we do? We don't have votes in US
>  elections, even if they weren't rigged. We cannot, in Britain, expect
>  governments to act - British politicians, in the manner of client
>  states, have a doglike attachment to the special relationship. We do,
>  however, have a powerful economic weapon - our wallets, credit cards,
>  chequebooks, patronage, custom and compliance.

    Excellent idea.  Real democracy.  Vote with your wallets.  But how are
you going to know what is a product from the evil empire?   Most American
products have parts that come from many different workers in the world.  Many
are from developing nations as well as modern industrial nations, so when you
boycott America are you not also boycotting the workers in those countries?
If your boycott really takes off won't you be putting non American workers
all over the world out of a job?  Put another way, you cannot boycott the
United States without boycotting the entire world, thus hurting the most
vulnerable along with the targeted American worker.

>  A consumer boycott of the US wouldn't be easy - its goods and
>  services and cultural effluvia have wormed their way into our lives.

    national chauvinist codswaddle.  Our goods and services are there because
you people wanted them there.

>  But as the recent campaign against GM foods and Monsanto
>  demonstrated, it could be enormously effective; it would also be
>  peculiarly appropriate. If George W Bush is indeed a corporation
>  disguised as a human being, as the green campaigner and presidential
>  candidate Ralph Nader put it during the election campaign, then the
>  US is a corporation disguised as a nation state.
>
>  While governments, in between elections, can be hard nuts for
>  citizens to crack, corporations are easy - they hurt very quickly, in
>  that area Americans call the bottom line. For those who might jib at
>  such a display of overt anti-Americanism, there's a further powerful
>  argument in its favour. By boycotting America and its products, we
>  might start making Americans think - which at present they are not
>  showing much sign of doing. We might act as a catalyst to unjam their
>  own domestic gridlock.
>
>  We might, in other words, be doing the US a bigger favour than it
>  could ever imagine.

    I'm touched by the author's desire to be so helpful.  I admit I have been
friviolous in my response to this article, but I viewed it more with humor
than with any sense of insult.  It's just so, well, standard, isn't it?:-)
  Yours,
Issodhos