From: "Frederick Pollack" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 01 December 2001 02:14

Frederick, I don't have cosmic sympathy. I said I *can't empathise with the
grieving relatives - and that would apply to the Afghan bereaved too. I can
make a little inroad towards it, but that's it. All but one of those close
to me who have died have died in bed. All of my family up to second cousin
declined to participate in any of the C20 wars

You suggest I benefit from global inequalities. Yes, of course, I do. I fail
to see how that relates to what I said as any kind of an answer to what I
said

I am opposing in such ways as I can the continuance of that exploitation.
You seem, in so far as I can understand you, to be saying that my freedom -
is that the word you would use? - that my freedom derives from Britain's
history of exploitation.

It isn't entirely false, but it's far from true. However, to be any kind of
a response to what I said, instead of just talking over me with insults, it
must be a claim that killing other people creates freedom for the killer.
Dirty Harry again.

If not, please explain.

It is self-evident that there is no need to kill to be free and I deeply
resent self-appointed police insisting there is no alternative

| Any death is important.  Any victimization - of Nicaraguans or Chileans
| or Ibos or Navajos or Palestinians or Israelis or aborigines etc. etc. -
| is wrong.

I didn't say any death is important. I said every death is of *equal
importance.

You do not and

  I am profoundly glad that no one has the power to punish the
| United States for the policies you mention.

confirms, I believe, my suspicion that some USAmericans, yourself now
included, treat USAmerican lives as more important than others

 Even if they did, I
| wouldn't accept being blown up as just payment for them.

Well, I didn't ask you to. But in supporting the bombing of Afghanistan,
that's *exactly what you are wishing upon Afghans

Again, the unstated formula is that USAmerican lives are more important than
other lives

  If you came
| down from your airless moral height,

tiptoe upon a little hill

 you would have to say the same
| about a thousand British crimes.

Have to say what? That I don't want UK punished for its crimes? Yes, I do. I
want just about every cabinet member for the last 20 years in the Hague.

That I don't want to be blown up? What a damn fool idea. Of course I don't.
Nor those I love. Nor, with less emotion - see above - any others. One of my
subsidiary objections to the current murders is that it make sit more likely
that I shall be

| the nature of the forces we are combating,

not "we", but as *you acknowledge it, I'll say _you_

you didn't combat them, you bombed everything, killing many who were nothing
to do with it and left the fuzzywuzzies to do the combating

bloodsport

now everyone who might hurt them is dead, your heroes are going in

  Further: the Japan of today is a better place than
| the one our nations defeated.

& I return to my original question - who the hell gives the us the right to
make these decisions?

you were silent on that (contained within that is "end justifies means" -
one of the principles vehemently officially opposed during the cold war)

I assume there is no answer beyond the racist assumption of superiority

L