America. And never says thanks."
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Replies - FAQUsername: InternetAdvocate
Date/Time: Fri, April 13, 2001 at
10:29 PM GMT
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5
Subject: Stop bemoaning the American influence on the Internet and on the world.
Message:
"America created the internet. At expense to America's hardworking overtaxed
taxpayers. (Of course, others expanded the internet at their own expense, but
the internet was started by America at the expense of American taxpayers.)
Will
the rest of the world pay back to America's taxpayers the cost of starting the internet,
the bailout of Europe three times (WWI, WWII, Marshall Plan), the rebuilding of Japan
after Japan's evil attack
on America at Pearl Harbor, the cost of defending freedom
from Communism, etcetera?
The world benefits at the expense of America. And
never says thanks.
ICANN is an American company, incorporated in California and
created by the United States government, which started the Internet in the first
place."
***
IA - you are expert at correcting the errors of others - so I know
you will appreciate my giving you a history lesson so you won't continue to go about
making a fool of yourself.
At the time of the outbreak of WW2,(the rest of the
world's WW2 started in 1939) the American economy was a basket case.
Roosevelt
could see the economic benefits to the US in agreeing to Churchill's repeated pleas
to join what had been until then a Commonwealth and Russian stand against Germany,
Italy and Japan.
However the US President felt that given America's domestic problems,
the American people would not accept a declaration of war, unless America was attacked,
so delayed its entry, as it had done in WW1.
Japanese Pacific expansion meant that
it would only be a matter of time before one of America's Pacific bases was attacked,
but the powers that be were surprised when it was Pearl Harbour that was struck.
Roosevelt
however had the justification he needed and America retooled and got the kick start
it needed to reduce the poverty that had started with the Great Depression.
You
may not like the idea, but America had its own May 1989, Tiananmen Square style uprising
in the 1930s when US troops under Generals MacArthur and Eisenhower cleared homeless
and starving, protesting squatters from the parks of Washington with tanks.
Harry
Truman hastened the end of the war with Japan with the help of the best physics brains
assembled from around the world.
It was in no one's best interest, least of all
the US, to have Germany (and the rest of Europe) and Japan a smouldering ruin.
Truman
got his can do General George Marshall to get the European Recovery Plan underway
with "aid" that both the allies and the former enemies repaid with interest.
As
a result of its WW2 involvement, the US enjoyed unprecedented economic growth and
wealth in the 1950s while the former enemies paid war reparations and the allies
paid war debts to the US while enduring food shortages into the late 50s.
America
had newly tolled industry, full employment, full order books, hightened research
capacity as a result of the need for innovation during the war, and the best brains
thanks to the intellectual refugee flood from Europe which had started in the 30s
as the war approached.
"The world benefits at the expense of America." Hmm.
I don't think so, based on the examples you have provided.
America's short version
of WW2 was the making of America, and those with brains and a little history knowledge
will never say any thing different. As you are prone to saying - this is a
fact!
As to whether the world owes the US gratitude for the way in which the Internet
is currently being administered by ICANN, a California incorporated company as you
point out - why don't you ask the posters here whether they think it is another American
triumph?
Your patriotism is laudable IA, but it is attitudes like yours and your
lack of understanding of the broader world that makes America and Americans the targets
of derision and sometimes dreadful hostility.
My first Christmas gift to you IA
is the advice - to choose your examples well and to be a little modest.
No need
to thank me IA, I will take it as given.
Merry Christmas - Happy Ramadan