Dear fellow tipsters:
Usually I do not e-mail the list, maybe due to my limited English skills,
but I always read the messages and I have followed your debate of
yesterday's tragedy. I hope you can understand what I want to say.
My first motivation to send an e-mail was of course to express all my
sympathy for all American citizens and specially for some of you who have
had relatives or friends taken in the tragedy.
But the second one, is because I come from a third world country, which in
the recent days is coming through a very difficult economical situation.
Many people in my country may consider that active economic policies coming
from US as a state or from financial North American trusts and companies
have some responsibility for our poor and regretable present condition. And
many peopole in my country think that globalization is the same as
imperialism, with a single and powerful nation (US, or a group of nations)
ruling the whole world. Maybe those persons think that yesterday's tragedy
-although they condemend it- was a part of a war between poor and developing
countries against the empire.
In my opinion, those who think that way are wrong. The point, I think, is to
be or not to be a modern citizen. Terrorism is always terrorism and must be
condemned without any other consideration. Nor claims for justice neither
claims based on the dependent conditions of globalization may justify
terrorist acts. Argentina, like many others, has suffered different ways of
terrorism during the '70s; terrorism coming from political groups at the
left and right. Then, terrorism coming from the State itself. In all the
cases, specially in the latter, basic human rights were violated and people
lived in worst conditions.
I think that freedom, justice, peace and welfare for all the countries in
the world, may not be reached without globalization. In fact, globalization
was born with modernity and it is not only a mere product of communication
media's development. When the French Revolution approved the Declaration of
Men and Citizen's Rights, a new notion of citizen was created. From the
point of view of a modern thought, citizens are all the persons in the
world; poor and rich, weak and powerful, beyond all differences. And one of
the main debates in our days, is how to guarantee similar rights for all the
citizens in the world. In such direction, yesterday's tragedy was not only
an attack to US people, but was an attack to the idea of the citizen, and in
that sense, to the whole humanity.
So, the only reason to justify terrorist acts, is no-reason. And as Kant has
concluded two centuries ago in "What is Enlightment?", the free public use
of reason gives the possibility to build a modern world. In that way, I
believe that the only way to build a more reasonable, free and fair world is
to improve International Rights (that is, to improve globalization), where
the crime against any people of the world is a crime to the whole humanity.
Thus, responsibles of any crimes (like yesterday's) must be condemned,
mindless of the conditions or the countries they belong to. Therefore, if
the US goverment (specially Nixon's or Kissinger's) had any relation with
the crimes commited in Chile during the last military government (as some
mass media has recently published) I think that it would be fair that those
American citizens were judged by an International Court, as those
responsables for the Holocaust; with the possibility to defend themselves
and have a fair trial.
In Argentina, two terrorist acts in the last years destroyed both Israel
Ambassy and the Mutual Israelit Association. I believe that nearly all
argentinians understood that those were not only terrorist acts against
jewish people, but against the notion of citizen itself, and against
mankind. I hope that similar consensus can come up at this moment, helping
to create a better world, like the one Martin Luther King dreamt of.
Sincerelly yours,
Dr. Hugo Klappenbach
- Researcher at National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET)
- Full Professor at National University of San Luis
- Chairman of the Undergraduate Programme on Psychology. National University
of San Luis
- Editor of Cuadernos Argentinos de Historia de la Psicología
- Liaison in Argentina of Division 52 -International Division-, American
Psychological Association
- Chairman of Task Force on History of Psychology, Interamerican Society of
Psychology (SIP)
