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----- Original Message ----- From: "Frederick Pollack" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: 18 December 2001 06:10 Subject: Re: (no subject) Frederick If you do want to discuss, please don't use meaningless words like _leftist_ Actually it's worse than meaningless because people think it has meaning Say what you mean. Please | with freedom of choice. is often a bogus idea I tried to buy cereal the other day. A wall 6 feet high and maybe 18 wide.I excluded all with added salt and all with added sugar.I had a choice of one I have no choice in my money being spent bombing Afghanistan. Nor do you. I have no choice in the expansion of the EU... in the development of places that need no development and so on I have freedom of choice between _golden munches_ and _sugary globs_ I suspect anything you say good about the Romans goes back to someone else's idea. The Romans spread the ideas; but good ideas tend to spread anyway. I'd hate to lose Ovid, but then he wasn't ethnically Roman. Sod the Romans I say. They absorbed or destroyed - I recall being told about Romans building roads and fighting Celts in chariots... and then one day you wake up and realise the Celts must have had roads and good ones... USAmerica may or may not be the new Romans, but they sure aren't generating wealth. The aid they give is the wealth they have taken.... but in your accusation of sentimentality, I think you have hit the nail on the head. That's a good idea; but it isn't where yousayitis... The flag, the presidency, the overblown rhetoric... I remember watching a kids' cartoon in which an evil giant hurt people because its rattle had been damaged and the *official (I stress) response to _911_ is sentimental in the extreme Get a sense of perspective You keep offering us the doubtful proposition that USUK forces tried not to kill the innocent, despite its being irrelevant; and concepts like _net gain_ which are preposterous and at least amoral... but let's turn *that back on you Look at 911 in terms of figures. Look at the avoidable deaths from AIDs and hunger - not your responsibility personally but very much the responsibility of the policy makers you support Then look at the deaths in the countries with whom US is now in alliance and see that very few died in 911 Now whoever did 911 might see that as a net loss, and you might like to ponder *that; I just want you to see how sentimental it is to bang on about one event when more are dying every day and when that sentimentality is adding to the toll Morally 911 was 2 big air fuel bombs The deaths in Afghanistan were avoidable deaths The situation was caused by US and others & the idea that it's all fixed now is almost certainly wrong-headed L