posted on January 8, 2002 02:48:58 AM
Hello.
----I've been reading your site for some time, and I like it. I like it a lot...(to quote
Jim Carrey).
----Here are four points regarding the American war on terror from a European
point of view. (Pardon my not-so-perfect English, hope you can manage to
read through it, though.)
----1. The Taliban government actually upheld a better rule for the Afghan
population than the previous regime. The former regime, of which many now
are part of the regime Bush and his administration want to appoint, ruled the
country like bandits. They pillaged, they raped, they were something out of an
old Peckinpah movie. The Taliban actually governed by laws -- some of them
are highly dubious but nonetheless they governed by laws.
----They fought the drugs trade in an internationally commended way. They
burned lots of their opium (15% of their opium fields, to be exact, which
occurred about the same time as news broke in our world that they destroyed
several Buddhist statues, which caused an uproar in the Western media).
They refused the oil companies plans to exploit their oil-rich land for many
years.
----2. The current war is, as usual, a war concerning oil, territories and
geo-political positions. Or in more concise words: To rule the assets of oil in
the Middle East and Central Asia.
----We've heard the words being uttered before: Woodrow Wilson claimed in
1917 that "The world must be made safe for democracy." Mussolini said that
Italy must intervene to save the slaves in Abessinia. The words of the mighty
Tsar that Russia must protect the voices of the smaller nations. The nice
packaged words are, as always, a nice way for them to lure the media into
tricking us into going to war. For it is war that keeps our global economy rolling.
Just think -- whenever there is a recession going on ...during times which there
are no world-wide battles being fought.
----3. Osama bin Ladin's "network" and a whole bunch of other terrorist
organizations were financed and given the get-go by the CIA, during the height
of the Cold War -- through middle men -- between the U.S. and the USSR. But
it is incorrect to point out the CIA agents as the main culprits, as Chomsky
among others do, in making this "network" to what it is today.
----4. To say that the war in Afghanistan is a war for womens right to a decent
life, is one of the biggest lies in modern history. By agreeing to these terms,
they must also be ready to bomb Berlin, because the city's government has
legalized prostitution. Bomb the entire country of Belgium, because of the sex
crimes and murders of little children, that seems to have involved high
government officials as well as members of the royal family. Bomb the
Netherlands, because the country is the center of white slave trade and
trafficking.
----Now, these points might have a European flavor to them, but the great thing
about opinions, especially in your lovely country, is that we're all allowed to
have them, and we are all allowed to say what we want. If you want to publish
them, that's all right. If you don't, that's all right. If you decide not to publish
them, might I be so bold to ask if I could have a reason? The start of a great
discussion perhaps? If you want to edit for grammatical errors, please do so.
----Keep up the great work.
Frank, 1/06/02
Nothing much to edit, and your English reads as good as most natives.
----And we'll cheerfully publish just about anyone's comments, if they add
something worthwhile to the conversation. --HH
Cheryl's Daily Diatribe for Monday:
----In Saturday's diatribe, I was lamenting the sad fact that humankind --
technologically "advanced" Americans, in particular -- cannot seem to
progress past a barbaric eagerness to beat the #*!@ out their fellow man.
"Justified violence" appears to be our blanket answer to everything, whether it's
dropping bombs over Afghanistan in the name of fighting terrorism, fouling the
air and water of poor communities with toxic pollution in the name of progress,
or gassing, injecting, frying, or police-shooting criminals we find too scary to
cope with, even behind bars.
----Though we are surrounded by an incredible array of electronic gadgets,
shopping malls and big cars, what non-material progress have we really made
in the past 30 years? Most civil rights gains were won in the 1960s by people
willing to take risks -- big, serious, scary risks. Since then, any new gains have
been minor addendums, and have been overshadowed by a downhill slide that
has been gaining momentum for the past several years. Just look at the
evidence:
----Although blacks are now guaranteed equal rights on paper, reality begs to
differ. A black male baby in some urban areas is more likely to die before age
35 than a male baby born in Bangladesh, a country considered a yardstick of
depravation. Even in 2001, a black man is many times more likely to be caught
and arrested for just about any crime than a white man (thanks to racial
profiling), and when tried, much more likely to be convicted and to receive a
harsher sentence -- including being 2-8 times more likely to receive the death
sentence for the same type of crime committed by a white man. Black
communities are still the most likely to be underfunded and overtaxed, the
schools and health services in these communities, the poorest in all respects.
----Now, with the old white boy fraternity in charge of America, the one edge
still offered -- affirmative action -- is without doubt in danger. School vouchers
are a joke because just how far do you think a poor black family will get on the
$1,600 or so per year offered when private schools start at about $4,000 (and
that's rock bottom)? But this is an administration that encourages its
"acceptable" privileged blacks, such as Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell, to
leave their still-struggling brothers and sisters behind without a backward
glance.
----As for women, violence against females has climbed steadily over the past
few decades and is now epidemic in some areas. There is still a gender gap in
salaries between men and women in most regions and professions, even
though women, in the overwhelming majority of cases, are the heads of single
parent households and thus bear society's real financial brunt. Welfare, the
only answer for some single women with children, has become so stigmatized
in the past few decades -- especially in the past 10 -- that being a poor single
mother is to be branded a pariah.
----Gays have won many rights, too -- on paper -- but crimes against gays,
especially at the high school and college level. are on the rise, and growing
more violent. If Bush had his way, he'd probably adopt the approach used by
his buddies in Saudi Arabia -- make homosexuality a crime punishable by
death. Real progress, eh?
----We are now the richest nation on Earth (not counting Brunei!) but we have
one of the highest rates of poverty among children. Homelessness in the past
decade of affluence has been growing, not decreasing. We have the best
medical technology on earth, yet one in three Americans has no insurance, so
has no access to that technology. We have more lawyers per mile than any
other nation on Earth, but there are fewer pro bono lawyers available to help
the poor (for whom good legal aid can be a matter of life and death) than in the
1970s. Although it has been boasted that Americans are giving to charity more
than ever before, that is merely a trick of statistics. In percentage of income,
Americans spending on charity has actually decreased through the '90s, as
their incomes increased. The number of volunteer hours donated has been
decreasing in the under-49 crowd, while the hours now donated are much
more likely to be in a self-interested pursuit, such as coaching ones' own kid's
soccer team.
----It's hard for me to feel really sorry for the crashed tech fortunes now,
because this group gave back less of its gains to society in good works than
any previous group of newly wealthy yet. Even the much-touted Bill Gates'
donations to charity were a joke -- they were, for one thing, a pitiful percentage
of his income and for another, largely designed to pull in more money for Bill
Gates (such as the donation of computers to schools -- gotta buy the software
that goes with em, eh?).
----On paper, many tech companies show strong charitable giving, but look
more closely. Damn few donations have been made directly to charities, no
strings attached. Instead, the new "designer" form of giving is to set up a
"foundation" which benefits the donor almost as much as the recipient. Nothing
is done without the bottom line first and foremost in the sights.
----The bottom line is, we have become a nation of very selfish, morally
isolated consumers. We are no longer the most socially advanced society on
Earth. Many countries have pulled ahead of us, leaving us far down the list in
areas that range from infant mortality to literacy.
----For the first time ever, we have been formally cited by the U.N. for our
human rights offenses -- a reprimand that was long overdue. Some of our
worst global offenses against humanity have happened in the past 30 years --
the invasion of East Timor (planned by Ford and Kissinger to protect U.S. oil
interests) that left 500,000 dead, the bombing of water treatment plants in Iraq
that has led to the deaths of an estimated 725,000 children to dysentery and
related diseases in the past decade, and now the slaughter of thousands of
innocent civilians in Afghanistan in a "war" designed not so much to "find
Osama Bin Laden" but to keep Bush propped illegally in office.
----Somewhere along the line, we traded real progress for "toys," real liberty for
safety, real compassion for cold hard cash. The very fact that G.W. Bush is
sitting in the White House is screaming evidence of something gone terribly,
terribly wrong with America. Not only did this man steal his office and thumb
his nose at the voters -- especially black voters -- as he seized power, he is
perpetuating the worst model of violence and arrogance in the name of
America that the world has had foisted off on it since Joe McCarthy was turned
loose.
----The most glaring truth of the present moment -- one that no-one seems to
want to look at -- is that Bush's own policies and attitude are probably
responsible in very large part for the September 11 disaster. Do you really
think that, if we had a president in office who honored all of his nation's
commitments to the rest of the world (like Kyoto, ABM, etc.), who energetically
sought peace, especially in the Middle East, who had built on the progress
made by others just before he took office, who gave some indication -- any
indication! -- that he gave a damn about the world beyond the end of his own
nose, that Osama bin Laden would have been able to recruit so many young
men willing to die just to strike out at America? I for one seriously doubt it.
----Even the worst nut-case usually has some tangible reason for cracking.
For Timothy McVeigh the reason was Waco. For Palestinian suicide bombers,
there is usually a precipitating confrontation with Israel. For the 9/11 suicide
terrorists and their ultra-fanatic leader bin Laden, it may have been Bush's
continuing display of animosity toward the rest of the world, the Muslim world
in particular, or, even more direct, his threats against the Taliban last spring
after they refused to be bought by his $43 million installment (a payment made
without the knowledge or consent of Congress) toward a "let's talk oil" deal
(Bush's great "concern" for human rights infringements by the Taliban only
emerged after they refused to cooperate in his oil schemes).
----As Thomas Jefferson once observed, a nation gets the government it
deserves. And, sad to say, it appears we currently deserve G. W. Bush -- a
greedy, selfish, arrogant man who believes violence and consumerism will
answer all of our problems. Look at our record: we now consume far more of
the planet's resources than any other nation and have created, directly or
indirectly, most of its pollution problems. Over the decades, our gains have
been someone else's losses. Yet our expenditures on foreign aid to those less
fortunate are, percentage-wise, among the lowest of any developed nation
(barely 1% of our budget). In the bigger scheme of things, we have a lot to
answer for.
----Democracy and aggression are not compatible. By perpetuating
aggression, we will erode democracy and with it, any real progress. A
catalogue of global conflicts occurring between 1400-2000, created by Peter
Brecke of the Georgia Institute of Technology, shows that wars in the 20th
century -- the era of "progress" -- are responsible for over 3/5 of all the deaths
from conflicts occurring over the past 600 years!.
----The only century where global conflicts hit a marked lull was the 1700s. It is
no coincidence, I think, that it was during this century, also known as the "Age
of Enlightenment" that most of the real social progress of western humankind
was made. It was during the 1700s that the concept of democracy on a large
scale was developed, leading to the American Revolution and French
Revolutions. It was an era when the power of a free press was discovered
(Tom Paine was just the most famous of an army of pamphleteers and editors
throughout America and Europe), when workers began to demand to be
treated as human beings instead of trained beasts of burden, when the first
real steps toward sweeping social reform were made. These stirrings of the
human spirit occurred in the absence of global conflict, not in response to it.
----In closing, I will leave you with an old fable that points up the difference
between aggression and compassion:
----The sun and the wind were arguing over which of them was the most
powerful. The wind said that he had to be the most powerful, because he could
shake things violently and make a frightening, loud noise. The sun said she
was more powerful because of her warmth and brightness, even though she
couldn't shake things or make any noise. They decided to have a contest to
see who could make a man walking along the road take his cloak off first.
----First the wind tried. He blew, and roared, and shook the trees over the
man's head and made the cloak whip around his body like wings. But the man
drew his cloak more tightly about him, the harder the wind blew. Finally, the
wind gave up. "Your turn, " he told the sun. "But I bet you won't have any better
luck!"
----The sun merely smiled and turned her brightest, warmest beams on the
traveler. Not even five minutes had passed when the man took off his cloak
and stuffed it into his knapsack.
Cheryl , 1/06/02
