Photos: What U.S. Embassy Designs Say About America

fionamaria and Argos: I challenge you and the people in the countries you represent to provide a better alternative to global leadership. Maybe China? There are 100 million people in China who live on less than a dollar a day, and is governed by a bureaucracy that rules on nepotism and is founded on the principle of leadership by those whose pasts dictate their future. Maybe the EU? Many of your member states hold credit that vastly outpaces their Domestic Product, and continues to grow at a pace that is economically and socially unsustainable in order to support welfare state policies that entrench failure in the workplace and ethnic strife on the streets.. What's more, the people of the EU resent the notion of global leadership (look at the numerous failed attempts at passing an EU treaty). The EU's supposed bastion of stability and peace is pockmarked by rampant, institutional racism against Arabs and Africans. Your population is declining. You have no work.

And please, before you go into a fit about "fat, oversexed, ugly, and illiterate" Americans, I challenge you to take a look at the counterfactual; In the America that you (fionamania) seem to decry as bereft of moral values, there remains the strongest religious identity in the Industrialized world. Furthermore, we have maintained this without integrating church and state (unlike the EU, which subsidizes churches in the face of declining membership).

We have our problems, most of which can be directly attributed to the last eight years of governance, but that will soon be history. Our next president may likely be a black man who was born to an Kenyan father and who was raised, poor, by a single mother. Name one European, Chinese, or (insert here) civil society anywhere in the world that is both ready to allow that and capable of maintaining global leadership.

Your ire is vastly misdirected, as the US condemns genocide in Sudan, The EU sits idly by. As the US sends warships filled with food aid to Myanmar and Peru, the EU increases food subsidies to support Swiss Cheese and Winemakers (which, by the way, has been growing on California vines exported to France for the last 100 years). While the China executes demonstrators, and the unemployment ques lengthen across the EU, American leadership has isssued articles of impeachment against its president, and its economy continues to grow at a clip that outpaces population growth.

We have our faults. Just look for a better alternative. Today, and every day for the next century, I assure you that you will find none.

fionamaria and Argos: I challenge you and the people in the countries you represent to provide a better alternative to global leadership. Maybe China? There are 100 million people in China who live on less than a dollar a day, and is governed by a bureaucracy that rules on nepotism and is founded on the principle of leadership by those whose pasts dictate their future. Maybe the EU? Many of your member states hold credit that vastly outpaces their Domestic Product, and continues to grow at a pace that is economically and socially unsustainable in order to support welfare state policies that entrench failure in the workplace and ethnic strife on the streets.. What's more, the people of the EU resent the notion of global leadership (look at the numerous failed attempts at passing an EU treaty). The EU's supposed bastion of stability and peace is pockmarked by rampant, institutional racism against Arabs and Africans. Your population is declining. You have no work.

And please, before you go into a fit about "fat, oversexed, ugly, and illiterate" Americans, I challenge you to take a look at the counterfactual; In the America that you (fionamania) seem to decry as bereft of moral values, there remains the strongest religious identity in the Industrialized world. Furthermore, we have maintained this without integrating church and state (unlike the EU, which subsidizes churches in the face of declining membership).

We have our problems, most of which can be directly attributed to the last eight years of governance, but that will soon be history. Our next president may likely be a black man who was born to an Kenyan father and who was raised, poor, by a single mother. Name one European, Chinese, or (insert here) civil society anywhere in the world that is both ready to allow that and capable of maintaining global leadership.

Your ire is vastly misdirected, as the US condemns genocide in Sudan, The EU sits idly by. As the US sends warships filled with food aid to Myanmar and Peru, the EU increases food subsidies to support Swiss Cheese and Winemakers (which, by the way, has been growing on California vines exported to France for the last 100 years). While the China executes demonstrators, and the unemployment ques lengthen across the EU, American leadership has isssued articles of impeachment against its president, and its economy continues to grow at a clip that outpaces population growth.

We have our faults. Just look for a better alternative. You will find nothing.

I think they should rotate the placing of the buildings. Like the one in China or Hague should go to Germany, the one in UK to Moscow or to some Eastern European country. Maybe they are meant to not be too pompous.

It???s great that the US embassies abroad are huge and impressive, but I don't know what their purpose is because from my experience they do not even let their own citizens in! I recently tried to renew my passport at the U.S. Embassy in Helsinki. I was handed an application to renew the passport right there outside. I asked if I could enter and get out of the rain to fill it out. The guard looked at me and said no, that it was out of the question and that instructions are that I had to mail it in. He handed me an application which says I have to pay in dollars (in Finland we use euros) and with a money order or check, which in Finland costs about twice the price of the actual fee since checks here are never used (it is a different culture). ..
Was this normal behavior? Looking at the website there is no possible way I can complain to anyone at the Embassy because there are no phone numbers that anyone answers. What is the Embassy for if it can???t serve its citizens? What kind of image of customer service which the U.S. is famous for is the Embassy giving to the world?

Who gives a sh## of what others think about our embassies anyway. We pay for them as well as most of the costs associated with the UN.

Another example of Newsweak attempting to blame America for itself.