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Take it one step down Lowry,
American Opera Singers speak more than passably
French, Italian, German and even Russian. They also have the
belief that they understand what is going on in those countries where they
work. They do more than Americans here but, one can only truly
understand in the depths of the words of their primary being.
Unless they learned those words from childhood, they will always be the gardener
in the house of the people whose language that is. I speak one
language and it took years for me to admit that and accept it because I have
sung and performed in 26 languages.
We have spoken many times about the "Walking
Wounded" and I would add the angry Moslems who were angry here before
9/11. Or the Mullah who was the head of the Mosque on the
upper East Side of Manhattan and who "had a good relationship with his Jewish
neighbors" only to go home to Egypt and be published trashing them in
print. I could send you to a couple of people living in shacks
on my reservation with a TV and an old car that would talk your arm off and who
you would think could read your mind. But one man does not a
culture make. It is up to all of us to be responsible and that
is what I was saying. Not to be busybodies or muck around in other
people's cultures or to demand that everyone worship my version of the "one"
God.
I'm keeping my wife up so I must say good
night. Thanks for the conversation.
REH
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2003 11:14
PM
Subject: RE: [Futurework] RE: Towards a
sustainable balance
The
Arabs are not as poor or as ignorant as you suggest, Ray. They listen to lots
of news programs, from all sources. Remember that these are countries that
readily receive the BBC, the French channels, USIA programs, Radio Moscow,
etc., to say nothing of their own channels. More newspapers are read per
capita in the Middle East than the US. Do you know who the single
most politically astute person was that I ever met outside Washington,
DC? It was an illiterate Moroccan Berber. He lived in a mud house with
his wife and three children, and had electricity. He had two appliances. One
was a naked light bulb hanging from his ceiling. The other was a short-wave
radio. He listened all day, when he wasn't roaming around southern Morocco, to
many radio news broadcasts. It was at the time that Dukakis was ruinning for
the Presidency. He knew far more about US primary politics than most Americans
did. Muhammad al-Ahd, was his name and we spent a week or so together.
He had learned, in addition to Berber and Arabic, French, English, German, and
a smattering of Spanish and Russian. I do not suggest he is typical, but
he does shatter the stereotype of the ignorant Arab. Arabs are just as
smart as Americans. And they are no dumber about Americans than Americans are
about Arabs. In fact, Arabs probably know more, because America has been
a preoccupation to Arabs for decades, whereas Americans generally have only
bestirred themselves to learn about Arabs and Islam since September 11.
Can you guess what percentage of Arabs know a passable English? And what
percentage of Americans have a passable Arabic? So rather than seek for
the cause of Arab anti-American sentiment in some shortcoming of the Arabs,
let us seek it in America, and our attitudes and our polices and our behavior:
let us make sure that we ourselves are clean before we go around trying to
clean up others.
Arabs dislike Israel not because Israel is rich, but
because the Israelis seized Palestine. Arabs (and many others) dislike the US
more and more because of US arrogance and bullying, not because they are
ignorant about the US.
I am
not saying that poverty can't ever be a source of political revolution -- it
has at various times and places, like the French Revolution. But I don't
believe that it is a significant factor in anti-US or anti-Israeli sentiment,
and it would be a massive mistake and distraction for us to think
otherwise.
Cheers,
Lawry
I question that Lawry,
This is what I heard about the ideology of the
Communists States for years. I think their backwardness
and poverty based upon the fact that they were a peasant society less than
80 years before they fell was only held at bay by virtue of their lack
of information. As the West outspent and flooded the East
with information about choices and market plenty, those ideologies were
hard pressed to proved their ultimate success. Once the question
was asked the hole was in the dike and the ocean was not far
behind.
How much television from the West in Arabic is
there in the poorer Arab countries? It doesn't really
matter whether the censorship is from the KGB or the local religious
organization, ignorance is ignorance and if that ignorance keeps them in
squalor it is not long before change reasserts
itself.
If you don't know that you are as poor
as American conservatives call "sinful" here, then you have little to
be angry about or at least to focus your anger on. I've been
there too. The expectation is what you have - where you
are. Once information flows into those countries in
Arabic with Western products, do you really believe it will not make a
difference? Especially if these are products that have to
do with illness, life and death and other ultimate
issues. Affluent Israel is an abomination to
them because the Palestinians don't realize that they are the poorest
of the poor and their elites have been flowing in and out of the West's
stores and businesses on the backs of their people's poverty. Am
I wrong? I can only tell you what I
see. I don't have good feelings about people who do such things
here either as is clear, I hope, by what I have said thus far on this
list. People who are my own relatives and who do it to me are
the most abhorrent of all.
If they are kept in ignorance by their
religion and their leaders then they don't know any
better. In fact there is a kind of childlike quality about
many of the people that I have been on panels with. They
are subtle, clever and as good - as any American minority ethnic
Neo-conservative - at Aristotilian argument tactics. But when
they are not allowed to set the parameters on the argument they are
not as sophisticated as America's laziest news junkies. I
would add that there are people of similar naivite's on the Israeli side as
well. People who would put their children and
families in a Wild West situation on the West Bank.
That Brooklynite that walked into the grave of Moses and started firing
cared little for his family IMHO. Such people
often are troublemakers and every group has them. Our
version is urban Indians who move back to a reservation and then try to
"fix" the locals. Our locals usually send them
packing no matter how much blood quantum they happen to
have. I think the Israelis believe that they can show the
way for these people and that is a kind of chauvinism as
well. I believe it will have to come from within and
Israel may be able to help if they can get over their anger and stop the
tendency towards looking for a King that is a part of their manual
and was posted a couple of days ago in an editorial from an
Israeli Newspaper on this list.
But all you need to do is watch your child die
for want of medical attention that is available elsewhere.
Fanatacism can carry you so far but reality is a great teacher especially if
you realize that those who claim to be your friends, relatives and fellow
citizens are playing you for the fool. The psychology of
the bombers could have been predicted when the great peacenik Rabin started
breaking peoples bones for playing David and throwing
rocks. There is something about situations like this that
makes people incompetant.
They have trouble with "Wannabee" issues
that are the same as trap Indian people here. What needs to
be remembered is that Jews will not forget that Israel is the
birthplace of their relgion and that the other two groups grew out of the
Jewish Genesis. It would be easy to do away with these
three group myths being propogated. Just have an
Internationla scientific body come in and dig up the countries and tell the
truth about what they find. But that won't happen
because all three groups have told lies about the past.
The Christians about their lineage and their selective choice of which rules
they follow, the Moslems about their lineage and who gave birth to whom, as
if the prophet didn't appear centuries after the death of Jesus
and the Jews about their treatment of women in their male oriented and
canonized texts.
Every religion does what it
must to survive but there comes an accounting and which myths would
each of these groups be willing to give up in order to achieve
peace? They should all remember the root of the word
"sacred" in English. Sacrifice and unless there is a
serious willingness on people of truth and good will are willing to accept
what is found then we will continue to have Christians praying for the end
of the world and helping the Israelis to do that.
Have Moslems who use their texts to create old governments that don't work
and are incapable of International cooperation and Jews who tramp
into shared sacred places as if they were the only people in the world
that mattered. That is the opposite of the meaning of the
English word "Sacred." There is no sacrifice, just
arrogance and insensitivity.
This is complicated but that is no
excuse. America is about to blow one of the world cultural
treasures off of the face of the earth. Children have been
murdered in the hoarding of medicine and for political purposes on both
sides and the sacrifices of our gallant soldiers covered with the same spent
uranium shit that still haunts the countries where it was used for economic
and expediant reasons. It is time that we grow up and tell
the truth. When did the concept of social justice become a
curse word and a person who wishes to see both sides of an argument in order
to make a wise judgment become a disloyal "liberal."
REH
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2003 4:34
PM
Subject: [Futurework] RE: Towards a
sustainable balance
Greetings, Ed,
I think you are essentially correct in your
assessment that a US attack on Iraq will aggravate the situation in he
Middle East, and create a greater impetus for action against the
US.
Westerners sometimes make the mistake of assuming
that poverty and its alleviation are the keys to reducing anti-US
sentiment. To the extent we are seen as imposing poverty on people, then,
yes, the US is held accountable. But the terrorism with which we have
become preoccupied is not motivated by poverty, it is motivated by our
political policies and actions in the Middle East. Friedman would have us
follow the red herring of poverty, when the cause of anti-US sentiment is
much more proximate to US behavior toward the Middle
East.
Cheers,
L
With all due respect to Thomas Friedman, the situation is a little
more complicated than that. Yes, indeed, the Middle East is
replete with young people who are willing to turn themselves into
missiles rather than tolerate life as it is. However, how many
regimes throughout the region will have to be taken out, and how many
countries democratized, before conditions are improved to the point
where young people see life on earth, not in paradise, as their best
hope? It is just possible, more likely probable, that Saddam
Hussein is something of a hero to the non-Iraqi young because, unlike
their regimes, he has stood up to the Americans. The Egyptian
government receives $2 billion a year in civil and military assistance
from the US as a good-behaviour reward for having signed a peace treaty
with Israel. How much of this money goes to alleviating the
staggering poverty of the country versus the pockets of the rich?
The House of Saud has grown enormously wealthy by pumping oil to the
west and, even though it has done little for Saudi Arabia's ordinary
citizens, it is well able to meet its historic obligations to the
Wahhabist movement, one of the world's most potent generators of
terrorism. Kuwait is seen as totally under the American thumb
while Jordan, which lies immediately east of Israel, is supposedly an
American ally, but with its large, impoverished Palestinian
population, it is a potential powder keg. How will any of this be
solved by taking out Saddam? It is far more likely that it will be
greatly aggravated.
Ed
Ed Weick
577 Melbourne Ave.
Ottawa, ON, K2A
1W7
Canada
Phone (613) 728 4630
Fax
(613) 728 9382
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2003
12:46 PM
Subject: Towards a sustainable
balance
Greetings from the Pacific
Northwest, where the East winds have abated
and we are socked in with gentle rain.
Everyone is trying to get their two
cents in print before the President’s speech writers are finished with
the final copy of the State of the Union speech, hoping to influence
the thinking and presentation of an important, time-sensitive public
policy moment that will be gleaned for the smallest details between
the lines. Friedman puts
a lot of things into perspective we can understand while raising some
contentious issues that need to be
aired.
We are discussing consequences
here, not just morality about preemptive force. Conservatives used to have a
strong voice on the intended and unintended consequences of
government. Today, with
this White House, they have lost that edge. Karen Watters
Cole
The earlier column is at
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/22/opinion/22FRIE.html I urge you to read it also if
this subject is important to you.
Excerpt
from that:
“What
liberals fail to recognize is that regime change in Iraq is not some
distraction from the war on Al Qaeda. That is a bogus argument. And
simply because oil is also at stake in Iraq doesn't make it
illegitimate either. Some things are right to do, even if Big Oil
benefits.
Although President Bush has cast
the war in Iraq as being about disarmament — and that is legitimate —
disarmament is not the most important prize there. Regime change is
the prize. Regime transformation in Iraq could make a valuable
contribution to the war on terrorism, whether Saddam is ousted or
enticed into exile.”
Thinking
About Iraq (II)
By Thomas L. Friedman, NYT,
01.26.03 @ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/opinion/26FRIE.html
In
my column on Wednesday I laid out why I believe that
liberals
underestimate
how ousting Saddam Hussein could help
spur positive political change
in the Arab world. Today's column explores why
conservative
advocates of ousting Saddam underestimate the risks,
and where we should strike the balance.
Let's
start with one simple fact: Iraq is a black box that has been sealed
shut since Saddam came to dominate Iraqi politics in the late 1960's.
Therefore, one needs to
have a great deal of humility when it comes to predicting what sorts
of bats and demons may fly out if the U.S. and its allies remove the
lid. Think of it this
way: If and when we take the lid off Iraq, we will find an envelope
inside. It will tell us
what we have won and it will say one of two
things.
It
could say, "Congratulations!
You've just won the Arab Germany
— a country with enormous human talent, enormous natural resources,
but with an evil dictator, whom you've just removed. Now, just add a little water, a
spoonful of democracy and stir, and this will be a normal nation very
soon."
Or
the envelope could say, "You've
just won the Arab Yugoslavia —
an artificial country congenitally divided among Kurds, Shiites,
Sunnis, Nasserites, leftists and a host of tribes and clans that can
only be held together with a Saddam-like iron fist. Congratulations,
you're the new Saddam."
In
the first scenario, Iraq is the way it is today because Saddam is the
way he is. In the second
scenario, Saddam is the way he is because Iraq is what it is. Those are two very different
problems. And we will
know which we've won only when we take off the lid. The conservatives and neo-cons,
who have been pounding the table for war, should be a lot more humble
about this question, because they don't know
either.
Does
that mean we should rule out war? No. But it does mean that we must
do it right. To begin
with, the president must level with the American people that we may
indeed be buying the Arab Yugoslavia, which will take a great deal of
time and effort to heal into a self-sustaining, progressive,
accountable Arab government. And, therefore, any
nation-building in Iraq will be a multiyear marathon, not a multiweek
sprint.
Because
it will be a marathon,
we must undertake this war with the maximum amount of international
legitimacy and U.N. backing we can possibly muster. Otherwise we will not have an
American
public willing
to run this marathon, and we will not have allies ready to help us
once we're inside (look at all the local police and administrators
Europeans now contribute in Bosnia and Kosovo). We'll
also become a huge target
if we're the sole occupiers of Iraq.
In
short, we can oust Saddam Hussein all by ourselves. But
we cannot successfully rebuild Iraq all by
ourselves.
And the real prize here
is a new Iraq that would be a progressive model for the whole region.
That, for me, is the only
morally and strategically justifiable reason to support this war.
The Bush team
dare
not invade Iraq simply to install a more friendly dictator to pump us
oil.
And it
dare
not simply disarm Iraq and then walk away from the nation-building
task.
Unfortunately,
when it comes to enlisting allies, the Bush team is its own worst
enemy.
It has sneered at many
issues the world cares about: the Kyoto accords, the World Court, arms
control treaties. The
Bush team had legitimate arguments on some of these issues, but the
gratuitous way it dismissed them has fueled anti-Americanism. No, I have no illusions that if
the Bush team had only embraced Kyoto the French wouldn't still be
trying to obstruct America in Iraq. The French are the French.
But unfortunately, now
the Germans are the French, the Koreans are the French, and many Brits
are becoming French.
Things
could be better, but here is where we are — so here is where I am: My
gut tells me we should continue the troop buildup, continue the
inspections and do everything we can for as long as we can to produce
either a coup or the sort of evidence that will give us the broadest
coalition possible, so we can do the best nation-building job
possible.
But
if war turns out to be the only option, then war it will have to be —
because I believe that our kids will have a better chance of growing
up in a safer world if we help put Iraq on a more progressive path and
stimulate some real change in an Arab world that is badly in need of
reform. Such a war would
indeed be a shock to this region, but, if we do it right, there is a
decent chance that it would be shock therapy.
Outgoing mail scanned by NAV
2002
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