Its the Canadian/USA border and the aliens are herded off the train. A free world nazi barks "Get your $6 ready".
"What $6?". "To enter the US of A". "We haven't got $6". "Find it".
"Do you take Credit cards or Canadian Dollars?"
"NO! Find it".
The train from Toronto to the border is fine but then you enter the USA. We are shunted into a siding for 2 hours while everyone is aggressively interrogated. When we eventually were allowed to get going it is at walking speed because the track is owned by a freight company and we have to follow their trains. And the air conditioning was so cold that everyone was wearing blankets and extra clothes. We ended up with all all trekking gear on including woolly hats. Apparently they only had two settings freezing and off
350 miles took 15 hours, the average speed in the USA was actually less than 20 miles an hour. Think about it! This is one of the supposedly most developed counties in the world and this is an international line between two of the world's major cities.
Visiting America is very depressing for anyone who cares about global warming or America's impact on the world. The news media is even worse than when we were last here, its obsessed with local and celebrity trivia. CNN had a 10 minute report on peak time morning news about a man who dropped his wedding ring down the toilet and then got it back. There is hardly any reportage on Iraq and absolutley nothing on Afghanistan. Fox news is even worse. It is not surprising that 55% of Ameicans believe that the bible is literally true i.e God made the world in 6 days and that the world is around 6000 years old, 33% believe this so strongly that they don't want their children taught evolution. The majority can't even find their own country on a map. This lack of knowledge of the outside world means that they have no understanding or interest in global warming. Consequenlty they waste energy at a frightening rate. The whole society is throw away, there is virtually no recycling. Its very difficult and expensive to travel at all if you don't fly and use a car. Our flight to Las Vegas cost $250. To travel by train would have taken nearly 3 days and cost $3500. Buildings are cooled to freezing and then doors are left open to cool the streets. Even in New York everyone drives enormous SUVs. They are obsessed by weather and have noticed it is acting strangly butthere is no connection between this and climate change
All this lets their leaders get away with crap. Dick Cheyney has stated that "energy conservation may be a private virtue but its not an energy policy" and an airline spokeman dismissed concerns about CO2 emmissions by comparing the polution from aircarft to the farts from moosse in Norway! The USA has two Saudi Arabias worth of energy in its coal reserves - Bush has just removed all restrictions, including environmental impact, on strip mining for coal. The USA has no plans to burn coal in any environmentally friendly way
Europe has entered an era of energy farming though technologies such as wind and solar power, the USA is just a primitive energy hunter, scavenger.
If you become American and ignore the world you can have a great time here. We have met some amazing individuals and everyone has been friendly. We went to wonderful free concerts in the Lincoln Centre, including seeing one of my favourite singers, Tom Paxton. We even found some good micro brews.
Overheard in New York between two very wealthy looking ladies one black one white "you know blacks built this town, free labour you see"
3 comments:
Wow, what a pile of biased crap. Congratulations on basing your opinions on complete and total hatred for American society. I agree that the news spends too much time on stuff that doesn't matter, but so will anybody in the country. That religious stuff is utter BS though, get your facts straight and talk to some people. Most American's want nothing to do with organized religion, but they aren't the outspoken ones, the zealots are.
I stumbled across this P.O.S. blog post by googling "visit to America" because I enjoy reading foreign peoples opinions on the country, but your opinion is not only... well.. WRONG, but angering. NO SHIT the transportation between the two largest cities in our respective countries is congested, THERES A LOT OF PEOPLE AND GOODS FLOWING. And then theres the fact that you know, transportation via trains is not exactly common in the U.S., Americans prefer flying and driving.
On our leaders getting away with anything: well for one, yeah of course, they're the leaders of the most powerful economic and military power in the world, but I know what you meant, and it's most certainly true to an extent, but most people will tell you in the U.S.; Bush is a moron and Cheney is one of the most greedy, corrupt, and evil human beings on earth.
"Europe has entered an era of energy farming though technologies such as wind and solar power, the USA is just a primitive energy hunter, scavenger."
Oh really? How much time have you spent in Europe? Obviously not a lot, thats only true on a very, very small scale. What right exactly does a Canadian have to critique energy production? The United states is the third most populus nation in the world, and by far the most modernized of the top 3, it sucks up a lot of energy. The prospect of modernizing and cleaning up the largest and most complexed energy grid in the world is somewhat scary to anybody who has to pay taxes. Canadians may not understand this because Canada is the 230th most densely populated country/territory in the world, and the 36th most populous.
Just because the world knows more about America(the omni-present, society-projecting, trade-dominating, government-replacing hyper-power that it is) than Americans know about the world(many of us excluded of course) does not mean that they're all idiots and bigots. It means the media of each and every nation of the world spends more time whining about the U.S. than the U.S. media spends whining about each of the other individual 194 nations of the world.
So you're English? Wow, even less of a right to critique the wastefulness of American society. Do you really think that your Energy systems are so much cleaner? How very naive. HEY! the U.S. has some sparsely located wind-energy power plants too! Look we get a small portion of our energy from a clean and renewable resource! Obviously this means we are much more advanced than other countries and should critique how they farm their electricity! Get over yourself.
Yes, we have vehicles that eat up a lot of gas. That's what happens in a capitalist system where oil companies have a grip on the national economy, a product of poor efficiency in mid-20th century automobiles and the ability to price gas however they wish, they even prevent our automobile companies from mass-producing electric and hydrogen vehicles(GM had hydrogen vehicles way before the Japanese did). Watch the movie "who killed the electric car", there WAS a reason GM pulled their product from satisfied customers. Our vice president is an oil executive for crying out loud.
America may seem like an ugly place to some, but thats capitalism for you, plain and simple.
Always good to get feedback but `The lady doth protest too much, methinks.`
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