Re: The death of Daniel Pearl

[Ray Evans Harrell]

Sorry folks

 

But I'm looking at this from another angle.   Professional musicians and actors who since September 11th have been eating breakfast at AA meetings since they offer free coffee and donuts.    The type of thing that killed Charlie Parker and has driven so many of these free lance Individuals into drug deals.   I work with them, both as people having to pay to keep up their skills and also counseling them to fight the legions of money around if they are willing to be that other type high pay and very dangerous type of Entrepreneur.    

 

The roads are lined with immigrants competing for the type of low pay work that musicians and actors take when there is no professional work.   So they don't even get that.    If you think I'm "off the wall,"  then see what happens when a poor, but exceptional, musician and a member of the upper class falls in love and enjoys each other's company.    Unless he becomes a cut-throat capitalist he doesn't have a chance.

 

I'm getting very impatient with the discussion here because of the reality that I know and experience daily.     It seems that no one is interested in hearing what is going on out here and how dire it is.   

 

I heard Keith's complaint about the medical service.   And I have some of the same about mine but thus far I haven't had to pay for their idiocy.   That is reality and how to solve it is a worthy discussion.    Frankly, with his age and long history of service he should be treated with more respect, but given the cutthroat attitude of these societies I suspect they are thinking about "one less mouth to feed or service to give."   I've noted that Doctors are no better than Artists at accepting a degraded financial position.    Both can become bitter and hostile given the requirements for professionalism in their work.   Just like any degraded minority, even "civil servants" can become very surly.    The one exception being the military where they expect you to be expendible and to either leave or be killed and replaced by the young.  

 

 

The same is true here when the world looks to America to solve their problems.  American government has become surly.   They do have point when we have to go halfway around the world while the local neighbors do nothing but play to the "Great Satan" machine to stimulate local energy and deflect local constituencies.     Those AA breakfasts are filled these day.   Americans can get very short about taking care of everyone elses children.    Even allies suffer in times like that.   If you don't believe me read Rumsfield's excuses for botched missions in Afganistan.   But what is worse, the mistake make have been stimulated by two competitive allies.   America is lousy at solving certain types of problems and yet has taken in citizens from Moslem countries until they outnumber Native Americans seventeen to one while we are still the most abused population in the country both in crime and in public derision even though our sovereinty has more international and historical standing than New Jersey.    New Yorkers complain about American Indian business practices, no taxes,  while they let New Jersey do the same thing.    Meanwhile our children are constantly bombarded with lying negative images, in the media, of who we are.   It goes on and on.  

 

The problem with War is that it is addictive and we are all once more wrapped in the simplicities of life and death.   The Fundamentalist Religions are happier with a "Great Devil" to fight but so are the Fundamentalist Economists.    The cold war was a piece of duplicitous waste.   It came from a war between two Western economic philosophies that have both destroyed indigeneous peoples.   

 

Today we have Bush lecturing the Chinese about religious freedom while South Carolinians still venerate that time when they got to shoot a few peaceful marching Doctors who were Communist.   Today it doesn't seem odd to say "Is a Bear Catholic or does the Pope dump in the woods?"   ("Is the Pope Catholic and does a Bear dump in the woods?")   It is enough!   As John Fire Lame Deer noted years ago, Artists are the "Indians" of the White World.    Until modern economics can come up with something better than a winner and loser scenario IT is the Axis of Evil that has destroyed the only thing that I see as its justification for a place amongst the great cultures of the world.    It may be the lesser of the Evils in a very fanatical and miserable world that is getting more so but that is a miserable excuse for a society and a philosophy.

 

I feel sorrow for Danny Pearl's widow and unborn child because he was doing a job that is important but his employer is in my opinion the modern equivalent of the provincial garbage of Julius Streicher.    It doesn't matter whether it is racist or monetarist if the results are the same.    The Nazis and their Western Racist ancestors chose people by Race, today we have the same separations by class and profession.   

 

I'm in the trenches here and I don't have a gun meanwhile with my daughter going to college, which is the Gateway out of poverty in the US, today's NYTimes notes that Endowments are down and tuitions are making up the difference.   Inflow and Outgo, Supply and Demand, and the following nonsense from the Speaker of Today's House.    This world is nuts!    My daughter is a beautiful young woman and is at the top of her Drama class in starring roles in the school where they made the movie "Fame" several years ago.   A school that is already more advanced than most University drama departments.   At this point, however, I wish I had never encouraged her.    It can only bring her misery.   However the other thing that she wants to do is be a Journalist.

 

REH

 

 

February 22, 2002
Economic Stimulus: A Republican View
o the Editor:

 

Re "Workers Held Hostage" (column, Feb. 19):

 

Paul Krugman trots out familiar class-war arguments about the bipartisan legislation that passed the House last week. This is hardly a giveaway to the rich, as he would have us believe.

 

This legislation included refund checks for those low-income families that did not qualify for a refund last year; a tax-rate cut aimed at middle-class families in the 27 percent bracket; and extended health care and unemployment benefits for those who cannot find a job.

 

This stimulus package has been held hostage by the Senate's partisan politics. Tom Daschle, the majority leader, seems content to move on to other legislative items. But there is no higher priority for Congress than to get people back to work.
J. DENNIS HASTERT
Speaker of the House
Washington, Feb. 20, 2002

 

 

 

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Sent: Friday, February 22, 2002 9:15 AM

Subject: RE: The death of Daniel Pearl

>
> KH
> Even now, is it too much to
> hope that the US State Department could start to think about peaceful
> incursions into those countries by making offers, such as funding for
> schools and medical centres, that even the most reactionary politicians
> could not refuse?
>
>
> AC
>
> What's "in it" for the reactionary politicians?  They most fear losing
> control.  Any change might be a change for the worst.  So they are
> presumably satisfied with the way things are going. 
>
> arthur
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Keith Hudson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Friday, February 22, 2002 3:13 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: The death of Daniel Pearl
>
>
> The death of the Wall Street Journalist, Daniel Pearl, in its own
> premeditated way and with the video tape of the murder itself, is, to me,
> just as brutal and shocking as 11 September.
>
> This will reinforce American anger and we can expect all sorts of further
> repercussions, particularly when we reflect on the fact that Osama bin
> Laden and the leading members of Al Queda have escaped from Afghanistan and
> are probably plotting further outrages from wherever they are.
>
> But there's a much more difficult problem than finding these extremists.
> All round the world there are now millions of desperate young men,
> particularly in the Islamic countries, who have nothing to do and no chance
> of entering interesting and gainful employment. Among these there are bound
> to be significant numbers of disturbed individuals able to be persuaded
> into acts of extreme violence. This situation will exist for many years,
> probably decades, yet.
>
> They want what we want, and usually are able to get. But they are held back
> by cultures which prevent the opportunity for even a half-way all-round
> education and opportunities for enterprise and employment. A huge effort is
> needed to implant the seeds of change in those countries.
>
> I think the chances of sizeable wars between America and Islamic countries
> is pretty high now. Quite besides increasing provocations from extremists,
> several countries -- for example, Saudi Arabia, Israel-Palestine, Pakistan,
> Afghanistan, Indonesia -- are highly unstable. Even now, is it too much to
> hope that the US State Department could start to think about peaceful
> incursions into those countries by making offers, such as funding for
> schools and medical centres, that even the most reactionary politicians
> could not refuse?
>
> Keith Hudson
>    
>
>    
> __________________________________________________________
> "Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in
> order to discover if they have something to say." John D. Barrow
> _________________________________________________
> Keith Hudson, Bath, England;  e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> _________________________________________________