> There's music in Kabul now; and who knows, kids may someday have a
> chance to fuck and disco and eat wonderful junk food. A net gain. OK,
> I've walked right into it - now you have a chance to portray Al-Qaeda as
> victims and indulge in yet more transcendent moralism.
I don't who has ever portrayed Al-Quaida as victims here, Frederick, but I
love your statement of values: disco, a fuck, and junk food too. Somehow you
make the first two sound like the latter.
One of the things the comes across to me with the US is that all it really
believes is the dollar, that is in general terms of course. There is a
reductionism forever in your culture that wants to limit everything and
everyone to its own base level. If human behaviour really was purely based
on self-interest, on the greed and gain that the US adores, then if someone
collapsed on the street who was a stranger to me I would just walk past
them. But no 'decent' human being would do so.
I notice you haven't mentioned Bush's abrogation of the nuclear weapons
limitation treaty, on the hilarious grounds that it was necessary to defend
the States against terrorism. Presumably he plans to nuke the next post
office that passes an anthrax letter. In fact there's been such a silence
about that act, so complied with by the dollar-starved Putin.
But I can't get over the junk food: so really the bombing of civilians in
Afghanistan was justified on the grounds that one day there'll be a
MacDonalds in Kabul.
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
Home Page
A Chide's Alphabet
Painting Without Numbers
www.paintstuff.20m.com/index.htm
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "Frederick Pollack" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, December 17, 2001 5:15 PM
Subject: Re: (no subject)
> Lawrence Upton wrote:
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Frederick Pollack" <[log in to unmask]>
> > To: <[log in to unmask]>
> > Sent: 17 December 2001 16:06
> > Subject: (no subject)
> >
> > | There's a great deal of wisdom in Dominic Fox's latest posting.
> >
> > I was pleased when he said that he had forgotten what the point was he
was
> > trying to make. I thought it was me.
> >
> > I found it hard going with the relative vagueness rather like your - as
in
> > _some academic or academic-hanger-on feminist theorist_
> >
> > easy enough to condemn something unspecified as _whiny tyrannical
> > chip-on-shoulder lucubrations_
> >
> > Not much danger of being challenged on that if you don't name names
> >
> > not much interest in reading it
> >
> > & are those addressed as _ you sweeties_ among those who are those who
are
> > designated _some academic or academic-hanger-on feminist theorist_
> >
> > these are rhetorical questions
> >
> > | And by the way, have any of you noticed that the Taliban's gone? And
> > | that nobody seems too heartbroken?
> >
> > Of course not - individuals will be mourned especially as I doubt that
all
> > theTaliban are terrible people, just people bullied and / or tricked by
> > terrible people - but no one would *want them
> >
> > Such a pity the US helped put them there
> >
> > But many others have gone too, many of them as innocent as any on the
> > planet. And many more still are still here, but are blinded and / or
maimed.
> >
> > That is on top of the many who were killed in all the years when
Northern
> > Alliance were the enemy
> >
> > Few who get the microphones in USUK seem to remembering the blue skies
the
> > day *those innocents were killed, because of course their lives aren't
as
> > important as ours
> >
> > If pushed, those who feel smug about recent events will say that because
the
> > perpetrators didn't want to cause those injuries and deaths then they
are
> > not responsible for them
> >
> > So, who's to be saved next? The Chechens? The Tibetans. I think not.
> >
> > L
>
> I'm glad to hear from you again, for there's something I've wanted to
> ask you. It's about this business about everybody's life being equally
> important - not just in the eyes of God, or Universal Values, but yours
> or mine. If a friend or family member or even a neighbor of yours were
> brutally killed, don't you think you might be slightly more perturbed by
> this than by the death of a statistic somewhere?
>
> I agree, by the way, that the US - largely by inattention after '89 -
> helped to "put the Taliban there." But now they're gone, and with very
> little - here it comes - collateral damage. All that weepy rhetoric on
> this list about bombs bombs bombs dropped by us "nutters" - but the
> truth is that most of them fell precisely where they should have.
> There's music in Kabul now; and who knows, kids may someday have a
> chance to fuck and disco and eat wonderful junk food. A net gain. OK,
> I've walked right into it - now you have a chance to portray Al-Qaeda as
> victims and indulge in yet more transcendent moralism.
>
|