bucknola said:
It is a sad day for London specifically and the world generally...
Can anyone really tell me what they want? For the infidels to leave the holy land?
The terrible, cowardly attack in London will make every American a bit more appreciative of the efforts of our armed forces and security forces.
This tragedy highlights that this isn't just an anti-American thing. It also isn't just about countries in which Islam is the predominate religion. The resentment stretches into Asia, Africa, and South America.
Why are nations outside the industrialised West to become increasingly resentful and bitter about the West? Personally, living outside the USA, I find myself often defending America and Americans. And I can tell you that it has a lot to do about Western perceptions of so-called developing countries.
Here's a good link (
http://www.un.org/ffd/statements/wtoE.htm) to a speech by the director of the World Trade Organization. He refers to a Tinbergen Institute study that showed that if Western nations opened their borders to trade to the same extent as they require developing countries to open their borders as a condition of aid agreements, then the value of the trade in favor of developing countries would be six times the amount of aid given to the developing world. Six times.
I avoid conversations about politics religiously. But as a business school professor, I hear lots of comments in the classroom. People complain that it is ironic that the West is so eager to talk about free trade and globalized brands, but then hampers or restricts the poorest continent to quotas that top out at less than 10% of the clothing market in the USA or refuses to accept its grain into France.
As a case in point about perceived unfairness, the French blocked South Africa's EU trade agreement because South African wines used terms like champagne that the French claim refer only to products produced in certain regions of their country. They even made motions to block South African wines saying things like, "Brand X Bubbly, compare to champagne". On the other hand, an American firm has patented the name "rooibos", which refers to a plant that grows only on Table Mountain and which is used to make tea (i.e., rooibos tea) and as an ingredient of cosmetics. The American firm insists on royalties for imports into America! This would be like me patenting the name buckeye and then charging Buckeye Planet to use the name!
So, you can perhaps understand a bit better why people resent the constant harping about opening markets to free trade when Western countries do anything but open theirs or cast aspersions about intellectual property. They think that its ironic that Americans can ignore allegations of election fraud at home while pointing out problems in every other country. They resent the way their countries are presented in American movies as corrupt and devoid of values, when worldwide surveys outside the USA point to American business people as the most corrupt on the planet.
They also resent what they feel is a perceived superiority that Westerners display toward their country. Ever heard of organ transplants, plastic surgery, or had a CAT scan? Did you think of these as symbols of innovative American health care or more correctly as South African innovations. When Banc One and First Chicago merged, they got their databases merged in surprisingly rapid time. Would you have thought that a three man company from Johannesburg did the job? Ever see a TV advert on a bank ATM? Another Johannesburg company developed that technology and biometrics for ATMs also were developed here. Many of the hollywood movies you think are shot in the USA are now shot here. Oh yeah, and if you have heard about RFID, the next big innovation in retailing, then realize that about 70% of the patents for RFID were developed here. I saw the first RFID checkout demonstration in Pretoria in 1988.
In many cases, the perceptions that I hear about Western countries are every bit as distorted and inaccurate as the perceptions of developing countries that I hear about in America.
Americans and other people in the world feel righteously indignant about the attack on the World Trade Center that killed some 3000 people. You guys know that my Dad went into a coma just fifteen minutes before the tragedy and died the next morning. I was a sargeant in This Man's Army and my son is serving there today. Having fought my way into America to bury my Dad, I have every reason to harbor extreme resentment. But, without conceding one inch of my desire to see these cowardly criminals brought to justice, my resentment is balanced by a more balanced understanding of the world.
People in the developing world wonder why people in the West don't feel the same sense of righteous indignation when infant and maternal mortality, malaria, and HIV/AIDS kill millons every year. They don't understand how developing nations problems can be so easily blamed on banana republic dictators, when they feel that the problems can be traced to unfair trade and other problems for which the West shares responsibility.
They can't understand how people can feel so disconnected from the world's poor as to resent giving less than $0.75 of every $100.00 to the world's poor while at the same time spending more money on designer dog food, bobble head dolls, other nonessentials while allegedly contributing more to greenhouse gas emissions and pollution than any other country in the world.
I am NOT subscribing to or endorsing these views but simply answering Bucknola's question.
In my opinion, many of the views I hear are as simplistic as the competing generalities the speakers openly reject. It's like when person after person in the UK told me how the Brits won WWII, when I had heard a very different story from my father who was stationed there. But there is truth, especially as regards freedom in world trade, in some of the statements I hear. And I fear that if perceptions of America don't change, our nation's economy will be greatly threatened. The West should not ignore the impact of the unstoppable rise of the big emerging markets and the effects this will have on world trade and intellectual property.
What I find ironic is that few people anywhere in the world will argue about the core principles of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. South Africa, as you probably know, drew substantially on these in shaping the new South African Constitution. I take comfort in that and in hoping that one day perceptions will change substantially.
God bless the United States of America!
