<< I for one mourn his death. >>
Myself as well. You know, the attitude of older generations, for the
greater part, is one of a much lesser concern for ecological matters than
perhaps later generations. Niagara Falls is home to some of the worst
industrial pollution in the United States, home to the infamous Love Canal,
two other dioxin dumps, a landfill, and in which a full third of the city is
"brown fields" and closed or nearly so chemical factories. Old folks don't
think this is bad in the very least way, and are sad to see the factories
gone! They think nothing of the fact that these factories left because of
the pollution they caused, and that they're friends are four times as likely
to get cancer than the average American, or that somewhere in their
bloodstream are likely half a dozen cancer cells, one of which most likely
will decide to dig in one day and end their lives. All they remember is the
rows of little pink ranch houses with jobs and tourists and slinkies and
Spam and Eisenhower. Nostalgia for a reality that wasn't. And Dewar might
have been the same way. You know, Abraham Lincoln was for the abolition of
slavery, but he believed that blacks were inherently inferior in capability
to whites and would never be equal in society. Yet his mug is on the five
dollar bill and we revere him as a national hero. For the time in which he
lived, he was-- but placed in today's setting, he'd fail miserably. Dewar
was a hero for his generation. It's all relative.
--Ian
=========================================
IAN J. L. ADKINS - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----------------------------------------
Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a' that,
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,
May bear the gree and a' that:
For a' that and a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that
That man to man the warls o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.
---
Robert Burns, 1795.
=========================================
----- Original Message -----
From: Eric Falconer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, October 14, 2000 8:18 AM
Subject: [scots-l] Re: Donald Dewar
> "I spent three months in a tent in the late 1970s on an occupation of
> the Torness nuclear power station site. "Developing" Scotland into
> Britain's nuclear dustbin was to a large extent Dewar's idea, and he
> railroaded this one through.
>
> The resulting nuclear garbage will still be lethal for tens of thousands
> of years after the Scottish Parliament building has been flattened by the
> next Ice Age. That's Dewar's major gift to future generations."
>
> More than Dewar's gift I think. The political establishment generally has
> presented the nuclear with such a mixture of gullibility and self-interest
> that doors have been opened whererever and whenever they've been asked
for.
> The same political establishment were pushing the military nuclear option
> for all it was worth in the same period. All sorts of unpleasant
> arrangements were made across the globe with all sorts of unpleasant
people.
> Donald Dewar and his like undoubtedly have all sorts of gruesome acts
lying
> in their accounts.........etc etc etc
>
> And yet ... diatribe like this fails to capture the genuine sense of loss
> that exists right across Scotland at the moment. Dewar belonged to the
> "establishment" wing of a party I can no longer support. I deeply
disagree
> with much of what he stood for in his life - not least the circumscription
> of powers of the wee beast of a parliament he fashioned. But it strikes
me
> that he was a decent man who was more than capable of defending his
actions
> and who fought his position well at key moments. The parliament is there
> and will hopefully grow into something better.
>
> I for one mourn his death.
>
> Eric
>
>
>
>
> Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music & Culture List - To
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