----- 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