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Old 09-15-2001, 12:07 PM   #201
skywalker
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Ouch! I consider myself put back in my place!!!!

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Old 09-15-2001, 12:11 PM   #202
Kaz
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I think you need to start a new thread on this subject, its 9 pages now.

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Old 09-15-2001, 12:26 PM   #203
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It's ok, as long as we keep it to below 300.

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Old 09-15-2001, 01:01 PM   #204
Fljotsdale
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Quote:
Originally posted by skywalker:
I tend to think that even in the poorest of countries there are people in power, who have riches and they exploit their own people.

Mark
Yes indeed! But if the people were happy they could not succeed.

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Old 09-15-2001, 04:57 PM   #205
Silver Cheetah
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Quote:
Originally posted by skywalker:
I tend to think that even in the poorest of countries there are people in power, who have riches and they exploit their own people.

Mark
Very true. There are. However, it is worth noting that many such rulers, often as a result of colonisation, have been educated in the western model (often at elite schools) and have absorbed many of our western values (not least the materialism that is driving some to sell chunks of the World Trade Centre to make a profit.)

The West teaches that status is obtained though wealth, and what it can buy. Instead of looking to what their people and their countries need, many of these rulers are funding the most luxury of western lifestyles at the expense of their people.

They are also spending money they don't have and getting their countries into debt to fund arms spending, rather than feeding their people. (DISGUSTING OF THOSE LEADERS TO BUY THOSE WEAPONS, DISGUSTING OF COUNTRIES SUCH AS AMERICA AND BRITAIN TO SELL THEM. How arms dealers can sell to countries where people have no food to eat sickens me. I'd like to lock them in a hospital ward with wounded children, covered in flies, who have no food to eat. Children who've had their limbs blown away. Spend a week listening to their cries, and watch them dying, and then see how you feel like going back and selling f*cking arms. Stupid, blind arsehole bastards. And I'd put the country's leaders and arms buyers right in there with them.

In a professional capacity, I have actually met some of the 'flunkeys' that circle around such rulers, during visits to the West. I can assure you they deny themselves nothing. It is obscene when billions are going hungry.

But no more obscene, perhaps, that we in the West should live in the way we do, whilst those same billions are starving. Rather than considering ourselves exclusively British, or American, or Chinese or Polish, it would be great if we could see ourselves as global citizens, each having a responsibility of care towards the other.

The idea of the nation state is a wonderful one in many ways, and one that I would be reluctant to see disappear (although globalisation, will, almost inevitably, erode most cultural differences sooner or later, and the Western model will reign unchecked), however, the patriotism that results from nation states is, in some ways, a problem. (I'm not talking about American patriotism here, I'm talking patriotism full stop. Everybody's patriotism!)

Patriotism leads to talk of 'them' and 'us', in other words, as 'like us, part of us' and 'other than us, different than us'. Traditionally, it has always been allowed to hate those that are 'other'. (See the history of colonisation!)

To hate or despise another human being because he/she has a different religion, a different skin colour, thinks differently, - this is the perhaps the saddest and most useless thing that we human beings do to each other.

And yet these hatreds exist across the world, for reasons which are, generally speaking, totally arbitary. Such hatreds, almost without exception, (in the West also) are encouraged by country leaders as being a great vote puller. (Witness Milosovic, who built his whole political career on stirring racial hatreds between the citizens of his country. The Middle East does it, big time, America does it, Britian does it, Australia does it, China does it... need I go on? We all do it. Except for enlighted and aware individuals of whom, fortunately, there are many in the world of today. Not enough, though, not yet.)

The world is full of people, human beings, who if they only could realise it, have everything in common. Our families, including our children. The need to feed ourselves, clothe ourselves, keep warm, or cool. The need to love and be loved. And yet, the way our world currently works, both commerce (including the arms industry) and politics thrive on fostering the differences between people, and turning them into blazing hatred. Each weapon sold ends up as a GNP stat. Each human being killed, - no, that doesn't appear on any negative balance sheet. Economics doesn't measure human lives lost. (Or environmental resources lost, for that matter...)

We don't need to live like this, in fear and terror. But until we start to value human life over profit, until we learn to love rather than fear, until we begin to see ourselves as members of a planet wide community, rather than competitors and rivals for diminishing resources, then I rather think fear and terror are going to be somewhere on the agenda.

For many, they have been for generations. That's rather more than just sad, wouldn't you say?

(Sorry, I've made one or two points more than I started off intending to here, seem to have answered a couple of posts in one!)


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[This message has been edited by Silver Cheetah (edited 09-15-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Silver Cheetah (edited 09-15-2001).]
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Old 09-15-2001, 05:07 PM   #206
Fljotsdale
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Silver feline, I have just stood up and cheered!


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Old 09-15-2001, 05:15 PM   #207
Kaz
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It's too long to quote, but:
WOW! *applause* *cheers*
That was VERY VERY GOOD
*wipes tear from corner of eye*

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Old 09-15-2001, 05:18 PM   #208
DragonMage
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Quote:
Originally posted by Silver Cheetah:

Rather than considering ourselves exclusively British, or American, or Chinese or Polish, it would be great if we could see ourselves as global citizens, each having a responsibility of care towards the other.

Patriotism leads to talk of 'them' and 'us', in other words, as 'same' and 'other'. Traditionally, it has always been allowed to hate those that are 'other'. (See the history of colonisation!)
I said something VERY similar in another thread, but you put it so eloquently. Are you, perchance, a public speaker or speechwriter? You should be!!! You get up on that soapbox of yours any old time!!! I'm going to forward this to several people I know of and save it for when you get your chance to address the world! I'll be able to tell everyone I knew you when...

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Old 09-15-2001, 05:48 PM   #209
Silver Cheetah
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Quote:
Originally posted by Fljotsdale:
Silver feline, I have just stood up and cheered!


Hey, thanks Fljotsdale! I've been thinking - this resolution currently being put through to allow the US to use all necessary force against nations, organisations or individuals who planned, authorised, committed, or helped out with the attacks.

Maybe we should have one of them there resolution things ourselves here in the UK! Why for? Well, until the peace talks began, we had how many years of IRA terrorist activity in the UK? Until recently, it's been quiet for a few years, so I guess we'd forgotten... but I spent years and years in London under the shadow of terrorist attacks.

(In the space of 10 years, I've been within sound of two exploding bombs, known people who lost loved ones, and been taken off countless buses, tubes, and trains because of bomb scares. There was a bomb scare every five minutes, the commute home was always a nightmare. Do you remember, in Birmingham, the pub bombing? Arms and legs flying out of the windows....... People died there too, made a big impression on me at the time. I was very young.)

However, the point I want to make here is a lot of this terrorist activity was funded by a lot of very misguided IRA sympathisers in the USA. Does that mean we should go and bomb the hell out of Washington or New York? Well, I guess it does, if we go by the rationale that Dubya is currently using.

(Could that be the same Dubya who's so yellow that he flies around the US waiting for the dust to settle, and only finally gets to NY, what was it, yesterday? Or today? A touch less than enthusiasm there, methinks. A poor showing compared with NYs mayor, who seems to be much more of a human being that the absent Mr. Say it With Auto-Text.)

There are terrorists everywhere. We can't find most of them now, and I really don't see what measures they're going to put in place to root them all out in the near or distant future. The internet, mobile phones, people don't even need to be in the same place to plan an attack. You can't monitor every phone call, every piece of data that goes down a modem line. What is American intelligence's yearly budget - US$30 billion, isn't it? What are they planning to increase it to, to wipe out threats against America?

It can't be done, and it's ridiculous to assume it can. Instead, America could make a start on a safer world by withdrawing its support from Israel's 34 year long illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Ordinary people in Muslim states generally only support these arsehole bastard terrorists (those that do. Of course, many do not!) because they have grievences against America and the West, and see the terrorists as heroes. A few changes in policy could go a long way, no?

And for all out there who think I'm stupid and naive, right then, so you think a better option is to escalate the conflict until it gets completely out of control and we go smack into world war III, with the massive amount of casulties that that will entail.

The world is not controllable, and Fortress America is a figment of polical imagination. The more you threaten and attack, the more resentment and hatred will be bred, the more terrorists will appear, eager to take their places as heroes in the sight of much of the population (especially the young).

And although the Arab nations are paying lip service to a united world against terrorism, they won't carry on doing so when they realise they really are likely to be bombed to hell and gone unless they give up terrorists located in their lands. (It's not that easy. We have loads in Britian, do we know where they are? Do we hell! So do you. Do you know where they are? Obviously you don't, otherwise Tuesday's events would never have happened, and your intel service would have earned their 30 billion.)

Some governments may be in cahoots with the terrorists, others won't be. How can you be seen, in the eyes of the world, to be making the correct distinctions as to which country to bomb and which not? Once you've bombed a few Muslim nations, I doubt the others will carry on making the same supportive noises they've made so far.


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[This message has been edited by Silver Cheetah (edited 09-15-2001).]
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Old 09-15-2001, 06:02 PM   #210
Fljotsdale
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Silver Cheetah, what you say is valid. However, much as it needs to be said before Bush's advisors decide what he is going to decide, I don't think Americans can take such strong meat at the moment. They are wounded and are still on the weak chicken soup.
Don't be surprised if you get flamed, regardless of your previous great post.


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