At 9:55 AM -0500 1/24/03, Ray Evans Harrell wrote:
Hi Ray,We give no tests on education or wealth but instead decide if they are really poor enough to be allowed in. You have to be a member of the Walking Wounded or you don't get in. And you have to be poor because of a system that keeps you down instead of just "poor."
Might past U$ foreign policy have a little bit to do with these walking wounded (some might not even be able to walk due to land mines?) needing to leave their homelands - El Salvador, Guatemala, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, ...?
Take care,
Brian
This should be titled, "with friends like this, who needs enemies?" I am reminded of the Korean opera singer who ended her program with the "Lord's Prayer" sung absolutely wonderfully. Everything else on the program was European Art songs sung without insight or feeling but beautiful tone. I assumed she must have some wonderful feeling about Jesus and those who had brought her that message. I was wrong, as she let me know immediately. I have a couple of relatives who went back to Korea after the Korean war to serve as medical missionaries in a large Korean city. My cousin opened the first pediatric clinic in that city that had been devastated by the war. I also had friend's fathers who came back from the war in pieces to families who spent the rest of their lives driving 150 miles just to get to the VA doctor they could afford since the breadwinner in the house was now the mother. So, I go up to this opera singer as a friend of her teacher and mention my cousin to this Korean Christian. Remember, I'm not a Christian but I've always been proud that my family saw a need and addressed it by going half-around the world to serve in a country where the children were dying.The response from this woman was cold and similar to the type of response that I would expect from an Lakota Indian at Pine Ridge were the poverty has been kept at 90% and where 80% of the society has NO job. A place where a legal contract of money and supplies for land is now called welfare to the grandchildren of people who were murdered by the US Army. I'm a person that assumes that the atrocities that are talked about in Korea by the US Armed Forces are true. The Angry White Guys have always been that way. I've also experienced the rage when they see my light skin and realize that I am the "fly on the wall" when they act and verbalize their shame. I sometimes think that my Grandmother married that White Man just so we would never be fooled by them again. She did look at my sister and I and say that we would always have choices. So I am not fooled by the ideology that these Asians and others have accepted about America's goodness and streets of gold. At the same time, if we were as poor to our friends and relatives as they would like for us to be to Israel then there would be no South Korea and we would have supported Pakistan putting all of that TNC money into raising their economy rather than pulling the lower castes of India out of the cesspool they were born in. We don't look with disdain and anger at East Indian students when they take American student's positions in American Universities. We treat our own minority students poorly and make them eat BS just because a few of them can go to University. We make Asian Americans dance on the tip of a pin in order to go to school and then praise them for being more American. But we give scholarships to foreign students and flood the Universities with them. I remember the wealthy Arabs who studied at the University of Tulsa Petroleum Engineering program and how the churches treated them so well, and still do even though those same churches support Israel, even though those students were and are Moslem and didn't need the financial help these naive Americans gave them because they believed in sharing. Only they didn't realize that those students weren't the less fortunate and their sadness was from being away from home not from being poor. Meanwhile the rest of us could barely get into that private University. American White Folks have always been very poor at dealing with other Americans who didn't have access to the jobs or capital that they had because of the "Walking Wounded" myth. Every American was supposed to be blessed and so if you were poor you were bad. I had to dance on the head of pin and prove myself more capable than the wealthy folks, which I did. I worked. And my skin was light so they weren't bothered by the fact they were helping an Indian from the reservation. They didn't know and I didn't tell them until I was almost thirty years old. Those foreign students, like the American rich, studied and played in the fraternities. They also were not nice to women or gay students either. American workers are remarkable in their Internationalism choosing not do destroy the companies that are returning American families to poverty while India has the largest Middle Class in the world. So I happen to agree with Helen Thomas about George Bush. Coming from Oklahoma, I don't like the President talking to the UN about "his" America. I suspect he thinks of Rice and Powell as "His" also. But it is probably not the "His" of the owner of slaves but the "Owner" of a Sports Team who have "their players" as opposed to someone else's. But I am not on Bush's team. His team destroyed the finest educated President in America History. You all may think that Clinton had it easy but I know that town and state where he grew up. It is not easy to leave that cultural place and move into the International arena as he did so well. Bush has generations of power behind. He merely had to step out the door into the Presidency and into his Ivy League finest colleges in America education. Why shouldn't we expect more from those who have so little a distance to travel as a result of their family advantages? He is the worst President I have ever seen behind perhaps Dwight Eisenhower who was a smart General but an unimaginative President. When Ike was through even he was scared by the Military Industrial Complex that he had helped to put together. Sort of like Reagan and Nixon funding the NEA at the END of their administrations. I can agree with certain opinions that are expressed about the President and I have never held the American people in high esteem when it comes to handling their rage well. However, these comments are guaranteed to get America "Circling the Wagons" and not to change American policy. Like it or not, American policy is formed by those who vote and although that is barely a majority of the American public, pushing on the American Nation from a place of righteousness given the history of malice in those nations against minorities, women and other Nations is guaranteed to create a Monster. That was what I felt first in the bombings of 9/11. I was frightened not for us but for the world. Americans know the world. They left America's small towns and have served in the military in all of those places. I have to work very hard because Americans find it difficult to hear the best from elsewhere when they have seen the worst. That is why they let immigrants in so easily. Canada lets people in who they can use and who can bring something of importance to Canadian Society. Do not mistake this for America's choice in immigrants. We give no tests on education or wealth but instead decide if they are really poor enough to be allowed in. You have to be a member of the Walking Wounded or you don't get in. And you have to be poor because of a system that keeps you down instead of just "poor." Americans "share" America and that makes America different from Italy's letting in Slovenians or other countries opening the door to workers that they need. There are exceptions, as in Ca. farm workers, but the rule is that America wants people who want to be American and who are desperate enough to succeed once they become so. America doesn't seek professionals but the frightfully hungry. And those frightfully hungry are from those same nations that the Toronto Star faithfully quoted. In a very real sense, America has always been and continues to be "the World". It is their immigrants, the people they didn't care for and don't want that now look back at them and make the decisions that America is making. Except for the tiny minority that met them at the boat, less than 1/2 of 1%, America is all of their pissed off relatives looking back at them. REH ----- Original Message ----- From: "mcandreb" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, January 24, 2003 5:58 AM Subject: [Futurework] FWD:Asian Intellectuals Vilify 'Cowboyish' BushPublished on Thursday, January 23, 2003 by the Toronto Star 'Sept. 11 Just a Straw in the Wind' Asian Intellectuals Vilify 'Cowboyish' Bush by Haroon Siddiqui MYSORE-This historic city in India has been overshadowed by nearby Bangalore, hub of India's information technology. But this former capital of a regional Hindu empire (1394-1947 but for a 40-year Muslim interregnum) offers greater charms: The exquisite palace of the maharajah, featuring a gilded dome and stained glass ceiling, teak and rosewood doors with silver and ivory inlay, and a bejeweled throne of fig wood; ancient temples in and out of the city; a lush countryside; and past it, up on a hill, British India's famous summer resort of Ooty. To this city came 230 academics and others for a joint meeting of the Canada-Asia Pacific Conference and the Indian Association for Canadian Studies. I posed two questions to a random sample of delegates: What do you think of George W. Bush? And of a possible war on Iraq? Herewith some of their responses: Myung-Bae Yeom: director, American Canadian Institute, Chungnam National University, Daejon, South Korea. I don't believe a word of what Bush says. He's not as wise as a president of the United States should be. He thinks the cowboyish way. Under him, the world may end up with a one-state tyranny. In our Oriental way of thinking, people of age and power are respected. But they have the wisdom to concede to the young and the weak. The United States does not. That's the core of the world's current conflict with America. Dr. Harish Narang, professor, English, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. What caused 9/11? Anger at America. The blatant manner in which America is supporting Israel is leading to a counter-movement in the world. More than Israel, it will be America that will pay the price. Sept. 11 was just a straw in the wind. Just about everybody hates America now, not only Islamists or jihadis or Al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden. Germany's Gerhard Schroeder won an election opposing an American war on Iraq. Hundreds and thousands of people are protesting in London, Rome and elsewhere for the first time since the Vietnam War. But the lessons of Vietnam seem to have been lost on America. It has become brash and arrogant: supporting acts of Israeli terror on hapless Palestinians, in total defiance of world opinion; bombing Iraq into the stone age and then forcing millions of innocent Iraqi people to pay either with their lives or by surviving at a subhuman level for the sins of Saddam Hussein; and now it's threatening another war. This is America at its brazen worst, an icon of barbarity. It's a political pariah. Sunil Sondhi, professor, international relations, Delhi University. I support George Bush. The currency of international relations is power. The United States is the biggest economic and military power. If the president perceives that Iraq is an emerging threat to his country, he has every right to take a stand. As for his double standards, I believe that any country in that position would do the same. Amarjeet Singh Narang, professor, social sciences, Indira Gandhi University, New Delhi. Bush's plan to attack Iraq is not justified, from a humanitarian or international legal point of view. He cannot be the self-appointed> policeman of the world when he himself has the maximum number of nuclearweapons. Unfortunately, there is no deterrent to American power. Russia, China and others are looking to improve their economic relations with America. The only possibility of a counterweight is the European Union. Dr. Jameela Begum, professor, English, University of Kerala, Trivandrum. I think Bush is another Hitler. He thinks there is only one nation and it must rule the world. Dr. Vinnay Jain, professor political science, Ambedkar University, Agra. Originally, I thought that Bush was daft. But his foreign policy, whether it is his own or dictated by his associates, shows maturity even if his pronouncements don't. His rhetoric - "smoke them out of the caves," "fight to the last man," etc. - is very cowboyish. I don't believe a word he says about Saddam Hussein. My students feel the same way. They think Saddam is a hero because they want someone, anyone, to stand up to America. Dr. Chandra Mohan, president of Indian Association for Canadian Studies. Bush adopts a soft attitude towards his friends' terrorism but wages war against other forms of terrorism. He has a double standard when it comes to Palestine and when it comes to Iraq. The same allegation applies to his dealings with our country, India, because he is giving monetary assistance to Pakistan (accused of cross-border terrorism in Kashmir). B. Hariharan, lecturer, English, Mysore University. Bush is aggressive when he need not be. Power is completely corrupted in his hands. It's painful to watch. What crime have the people of Iraq committed? What have those women and children done? Bush talks about Saddam's violation of human rights but American economic sanctions are the worst form of human rights violation. America is supporting Israel, which is also violating basic human rights. Somewhere along the line, the American soul has been lost. Dr. Cooni Vevaina, professor, English, University of Mumbai. Bush is full of banalities. It's very obvious that other people do the thinking for him. On Iraq, it's right-wing and myopic cowboy politics. Copyright 1996-2003. Toronto Star Newspapers Limited ### FAIR USE NOTICE This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. 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