Not sure whether this got thru or not. I took out the MS extras and am submitting it again. REH
----- Original Message ----- From: "Christoph Reuss" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, July 21, 2002 5:36 PM Subject: Re: FW: Meme 019 > Hi Ray, > > you contradicted yourself in that (understandably) emotional outburst: > First you lashed out against "the" Europeans who destroyed your people > (as if all Europeans would have colonized America), but then at least > you distinguished: > > > it is the ethic of those Europeans cast out by their cultures > > to come here with nothing ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > > [... who were the] "wretched refuse of thier teeming shores." > > Indeed, the perpetrators of the big American genocide were the _scum_ > of Europe -- more precisely of the Empires (mainly the Brutish Crown) > in whose name they acted --, _not_ to confuse or lump together with > "the Europeans" and certainly not Switzerland (which has no shores > to begin with). So your statements like "It seems somehow very > uncouth for a European to complain about America simply returning the > favor 138 years later." and "what goes around comes around" are quite > inappropriate as far as I'm concerned. I oppose all forms of > imperialism, including that of the EU. In the case of Switzerland, > which never had colonies nor slaves, nor excerted cultural imperialism > on any nation, there simply is no "favor to return" and no imperialism > to "come around". > Methinks you protest too much Chris. Everyone seems to think that by making the other guy wrong that in someway that makes us right and it isn't true. The point of my post was just that. There is plenty in the public libraries and on the internet about every group to show that right and wrong are not the provinces of any one group. If you don't like American culture then get to work and build up your own one at a time. That is what I have to do here and I see no reason why you should be exempt in this. I talk to the people in the companies, that are charging outrageous interest rates, about their Judeo-Christianity. When they say they are just doing a job I remind them that serious change is built from the bottom up and that they are as responsible as the CEO's. That their refusal to have an organization that represents them morally as well as in terms of money and working conditions does not excuse them from acting immorally because someone orders them to. I was seeing the cracks in World.com a whole year before its bust because their dealings with me around the telephone were shoddy and immoral. I would spend days on the phone on my own time, not letting them cheat me on my phone bill. At one point it was a $1,500 dollar "mistake" the next month it was a $300 one at which point I thought I changed companies but basically changed to a subsidiary that gave me the choice of fighting them and losing pay for my time or paying them incorrect bills. Anyone who is that overt in their theft and who counts on your inability to resist has to have even grander schemes than that in the hopper. So the way that we deal with barbarism is to resist it and I would suggest that you simply get to work to do it at home and show your people and the world, the best side of what you love and value. > Your reference to Calvin is also unjustified. From Paris, he came to > Geneva __3 centuries before__ Geneva became a part of Switzerland. > And as far as residues of Calvinism in Switzerland are concerned, > the Brutish Crown and its thugs who massacred your people certainly > didn't need that. Their naked greed (unbridled _unlike Calvinism_) > was fully sufficient as motivation. The Calvinist and other non-conformist groups who came were as much from France, Western and Eastern Europe as from the British Empire. In fact, the major complaint I have about the British is that they are so self-righteous about it all. Some of my greatest teachers were English and they were very wonderful people. Stubborn, tough and the finest artists I have known. But what we got from England was not their attitudes towards Art but the Utilitarians and the "scientific" attitude that you have praised as well. Calvinism and the other non-conformist groups supplied their sense of righteousness. "Righteousness" makes people insensitive and unable to empathize. I will admit that entering a city filled with rotting corpses and not understanding that your toilet habits had preceded you and had wiped out the city before you ever arrived can be very confusing. Not to mention the danger to the living being around such death. It is very de-sensitizing as is shown in the written record. They were trying to be moral and righteous and could only interpret such things in a positive fashion since the alternative was unthinkable. You can't "trade" much less kill or cheat people when you feel their misery. This was Europe wide and the Bankers that preceded the Swiss were Dutch and they had feelings much like today's Swiss talking to German Jewish families. The Swiss were no better to the Romany taking their children and refusing ever to return them. The Romany were also a part of the suit that tied your bankers to the German Bankers confiscation of Jewish and Gypsy property. I have heard and experienced tremendous prejudice from almost every kind of European towards the Romany (not to mention seeing them spit on synagogues) and I know for a fact that they could not know anything seriously about them to make such judgments. Gypsies are no more strange to the Europeans than European economic "truths" are to me as an artist. I've taught Gypsies and give a Gypsy scholarship in my company and they are no harder to comprehend in their culture and its rules than anyone else. e.g. I don't know any Gypsies who would put four Hotchkiss machine guns in the North, South, East and West of a group of helpless frozen people and then shoot into them and suffer wounds only from their own fire. The dopes were directly across from each other. Science? Military genius? Dummies! It was the European scientists who refused to understand Newton's balance of Physics with Metaphysics. Metaphysics was just superstition to them. When Secretary of the War and Presidential Candidate Lewis Cass pronounced the "scientific" truth that Indian languages could not understand Newtonian Science, he was only speaking of one side of Newton and when David Bohm learned enough Algonquin he realized that the language was suited to Quantum realities and Cass (who fancied himself an Indian expert and invented the term "Hunter/Gatherer") whose English was not able to imagine the realities of (100 years later) Quantum thought and therefore Cass was the limited one. I believe that "Metaphysics" was Newton's awareness of the implications of what would later be termed Quantum physics. But it didn't fit the realities of Indo-European languages. So they termed it "Supra-Natural." Couldn't we all have just a little humility in the midst of all of this failure, mistakes and mass murder? > In fact, if the other European countries would have behaved like > Switzerland, there would have been no American genocide in the first > place, and Ray would have grown up without lead-pollution and without > a desperate Reservation. Ray would be sitting in his cosy wigwam in the > wide prairie now, instead of an overpriced and noisy NYC apartment. > Please keep that in mind next time you lash out on Switzerland. ;-) Self-righteousness does not make any of us attractive. Each group has dealt in "unattractive" ways with the "other" in their populations, including the Swiss. We had the Delaware who were the "Swiss" to the Iroquois confederacy. They were supposed to be peaceful because they were called the "women" of the nations. But anyone knowing these people knows that they were as capable of being human as any other. Thank God the "Peaceful Maya" myths are now gone and one of these days we will understand the truth of the Aztec as well. The truth that made the Spanish Priests say that these "one murder a day" folks were the best people in raising their children that the Spanish Religious had known on the Planet. They had public education for all children from the age of six before anyone else in the world but they did kill one person a day. On the other hand how many people were killed at that battle with Prince Hal in France? > > You may think > > American business is destroying your culture but, in the Arts, Europeans > > have treated America like it was an open pit mine > > I can see Beethoven plagiarizing Native Americans' symphonies... Naah, > you must be referring to those thoroughly Americanized (and Americanizing) > post-WW2 "artists" who think it's cool to spread cultural imperialism. > But that's what I complained about... It would be good for you who complains about "Americanization" to understand what I'm speaking of here. It has nothing to do with plagerizing anything. Ideas can not be bought or sold. They travel and that is a part of that problem but as you complain, there are times when people proselytize the young and separate them from their parents creating a problem for the culture and life of the society where they are from. But I would point out that when Christian religion proselytizes it is called Evangelism. And when European artists ally themselves with the wealthy of a society and eliminate the high culture from all but the super wealthy they are being stupid about the future. That happened in 1880 when the first contracts were struck between the super wealthy to privatize the performing arts institutions. At the same time they were doing miserable things to my people destroying our cultures outlawing our religions and our communal land based cooperatives so that they could send the 80,000 immigrants arriving a year out on to the plains. That was not the British and you should check when the Swiss arrived in Wisconsin amongst the Santee Sioux and the Algonquians. The super wealthy wanted to validate their superiority as cultured and the European musicians wanted an aristocracy to treat them like children and rescue them from their freedom. Americans still depend upon your certification of their artists before they will admit an artist into their approval. If we were to do the same in Architecture we would only have the Internationalist school and Wright, Sullivan, Adler and most of the great American Architects would never have built a building. I would remind you to look up the Regional Opera houses in America of whom there are many that perform twice a year and where Switzerland has almost as many full time Opera houses as America. And that the repertoire of all of these little American Festivals as well as the big houses resembles what you do in Zurich, Basle, or any other house. And yet it is your culture not ours. You may not like the vulgar culture coming in but that is all the American public is allowed by the upper class that spends their Winter's in Palm Beach and their summers in the alps. > > Americans don't like to fight wars, they like to do business. > > Both at the same time... (largest exporter of armaments and wars!) It is one thing to sell and another to do. I meant it when I said that Americans are "Winner Take All types." If anyone decides to mess with America proper they are not understanding that America spent one million dollars for every Indian that it killed in the 1880s. How much was the dollar then? They would do the same again. These are not people to mess around with and if you believe Rumsfield or Bush cares about what you are saying, then you aren't listening. I know them firsthand. I cannot believe that the Arabs became stupid all of a sudden on 9/11. But it looks like they did. Americans don't care about the civilian casualties, if someone houses their enemy then they are also their enemy. You should have paid attention to Nicaragua or realized that Americans hung Japanese for doing what Americans did to the Japanese themselves. It happened to the South at Andersonville Prison after the American Civil War and it continues to the present. They hung people at Nuremburg for speaking racist garbage that we now hear covered under the "freedom of speech" here in the US and in direct violation of the American signed International Genocide Treaty. Maybe this was too far away for you to imagine as well. Cuba is no threat and Saddam is probably more a convenience for the building of a "Homeland Security Police Force" here that allows the Military to police the country for the first time in the history of the country. So I would suggest that neither the American Right or Left is available to Europe. The Right wants Europe to rebuild its own self-defense forces while the Left wants to retain American "strength" in Europe. You would probably have more in sympathy with the Right wing but you would not like their attitude towards you in the process. They are very aggressive and many are ex-Europeans themselves. So I would suggest that you take care of your culture yourself and provide a real alternative by building it up and starting from the ground up not the reverse. > Btw, Ray, why did you and your father serve in the US Army ? My natural Father did not serve in the Army because his brothers were. He was a teacher and they would not let him enlist, even though he did, because they wanted him here teaching in the schools. One brother flew 36 missions over Hitler's Germany while the other served in the Pacific. My Father became the one who took the families anyplace in the Nation to see their relatives no matter how much it cost. He was the family "driver." My adopted Father was "shanghaied" off of a Merchant Marine ship into the Navy. He was qualified to do anything on a ship. He had four ships blown out from under him and spent 17 days in lifeboats. At one point the U-boat torpedo hit so close to him that he was blown into the water, under the ship and came up on the deck on the other side. After he was discharged from the Navy citing battle fatigue, he was redrafted for the Army of North Africa against the Germans there because he was a refrigeration engineer but since their refrigeration units weren't working he was sent on scouting patrols and was wounded again. Later he was in the Far East and served in the Hagganah with an American Indian contingent in Israel. He carried the Purple Heart as well as the Ribbons for all of the things I have described. I am proud of both of my Fathers for doing what they were required to do. > To "return a favor" to the people of Vietnam ? (um, which favor?) America lost in Vietnam. I probably know more damaged people than you know Vietnamese from that undeclared "war." I was in Washington serving in the White House Army Chorus at the time. It was not a proud time here. I met and worked with wonderful people but we were all "coming of age" when it refers to lies told by diplomats of every country and stripe. I also was in Washington studying voice in the Black Community when Martin Luther King was murdered. My then wife was teaching in NE Washington in the heart of the Ghetto. She barely escaped with her life once the riots started. I watched Washington burn. I have no respect for those diplomats and despise the racists. I also know that I had to learn the truth the hard way and that it has changed my thinking. As for Vietnam? They seem fine now and are happy to welcome Americans to come and trade with them. Carrying very ancient scars I know that it will take time but we have to tell the truth and accept that the world is not filled with Righteousness and that those who claim it will always find the evil within themselves too late for their own lives. I believe now that the only enemy is chauvinism, provinciality and a lack of respect for what each group has been doing during the million years or so their genes have been on the planet. We have to learn to defend our cultures and be secure enough to share it with those who wish to come sit with us. But for me, I've never known a Righteous person and most of the people that I know that believe it is a good thing claim to be by virtue of a Messiah who rescues them from their "unrighteousness." I prefer to give up Righteousness and work for respect, morality and the growth of human consciousness through culture. That is my creed and my work. It is late and thanks for the challenge. I revisited some places that needed so. Regards, Ray Evans Harrell, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
