On Thu, 21 Nov 2002, Bernard A Griffis wrote:
> I never wanted to again respond, but this is too much. Did any of you read > today's Courier. They caught a lot of bad guys. How would you have enjoyed > leaping from the 100th floor as some folks did? What privacy matters then? > How would you like to be on a plane and watch as some have their throats slit > and sit there and fly to your death? What would your precious privacy (as you > call it) be worth? What about the group who attacked the terrorists and the > plane flew into the ground/ How much privacy did they have? > Good grief folks. We live in the greatest country in the world. Its been said > the if we are ever defeated it will be from within. Does anyone have any idea > what this means? Good grief! > B Griffis This is where I get to happily sit and disagree :) "What's the difference between America and a tub of Yoghurt?" "If you leave yoghurt long enough it'll grow a culture." The statement of 'greatest country in the world' is jingoistic nonsense. Admittedly not every culture believe they have the greatest country in the world, but I would bet that most nations with any history and without a current dictatorship will claim that exact statement. I also got to view the attack on the World Trade Centre from a relatively unique perspective [for my immediate surroundings]. A few comments, filled with personal jingoism: 1) The World Trade Centre. Notice the name. World. Not US. World. When attacks were made on it in the 70s it was seen as the symbol of capitalist and western/world culture, not just US. When attacks succeeded in the 21st century, it's seen as a US thing. Very odd. 2) Now that we've gone past a lot of the general grief stage, I can happily point out some hypocrisies. i) I grew up in London, England. We had a lovely thing there known as IRA bombings. I was never _that_ close to them [never more than 24 hours anyway] but they definitely affected me. My sister was afraid to goto London due to them. A large amount of funding for the IRA came from mis-educated Americans [east coast admittedly] who had no clue what their money was being used for, and to be honest, didn't care. ii) The UK brought the terrorist laws into place. This meant that a persons rights could be waived if they were suspected of terrorism. There were certain behind the scenes legal issues that had to be dealt with, but generally not much. Check slashdot for the number of american opinions that this made the UK a dictatorship. The UK has in no way descended into the land of big brotherness and evil that people are worrying will happen in the US. We have security camera's in many metropolitan areas. We have laws which can be used to take away your freedom. Handguns are banned. We have less violent crimes/deaths, we have more petty crimes, but we also have intensely high population density. So my first question is... Do people really think the US is such a poor country and culture, that once these laws came into being, the society would happily roll over and accept George W Bush, President for Life? Much of the complaining about personal freedoms do seem to have a lack of faith in the American culture. Second question is, from the other perspective... Do you want to live in a dictatorship or big brother society to save a few lives? Are you someone who is against 1 american soldier dying in somalia to try and bring peace to the world? Hen The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will be November 26 For more information, see <http://www.aye.net/~lcs>. A calendar of activities is at <http://www.calsnet.net/macusers>.
