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  • From: "Christian Stalberg" <cstalberg AT develop.net>
  • To: "InterNetWorkers" <internetworkers AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: collapse
  • Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 06:40:12 -0400


This is just too juicy I have to jump in here.

Touche Thomas! Well said!

You are echoing what a former CIA operative in Pakistan working to aid the
Mujadeen in Afghanistan said, namely "we have to try and understand them
first, what motivates them, why they believe what they do". If you do this
and let your actions be driven by empathy and understanding rather than
selfishness and exploitation, you've got half a chance at lessening tensions
between people and nation states.

It can all be brought back to the fundamentals of the human condition.

So much of the world humankind has constructed, starting with walled cities,
nation states and institutions, are built on the premise that we are
separate. This because we do not take the trouble to understand our
neighbor, their culture, their world view.

Our transportation and telecommunication systems are creating the command
and control systems the earth needs to operate as a single organism. These
forces are driving globalization and exposing the inadequacies of our
institutions and geopolitical ideas. We are fighting universal forces of
evolution, something akin to the inviolable laws of thermodynamics. We can
either adapt or perish as a species.

"The best way to destroy your enemy is to make him your friend."
Lincoln_Abraham



----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Beckett" <thomas AT tbeckett.com>
To: "InterNetWorkers" <internetworkers AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2001 12:55 AM
Subject: [internetworkers] Re: collapse


> Robert Weeks wrote:
> > Historically no. Japan certainly stopped sending kamikazes over to
attack
> > us.
>
> When they ran out of airplanes. (At least they had the decency to use
> their own aircraft, eh?)
>
> > What would you have done about Hitler? Look for a non-violent solution?
>
> Hitler was created by the situation the Allied Powers left behind after
> World War I. Hitler could have been prevented. The Marshall Plan
> prevented another Hitler, Mussolini, and/or Tojo, no doubt. (Godwin
> unsuccessful, sorry. I've been thinking about the economics of this all
> day.)
>
> > If countries are afraid to harbor known terrorists and their training
camps
> > I think we will see a great reduction in terrorist aggressions. I think
a
> > lot of other people agree with me on this.
>
> Yeah, Saddam Hussein is shaking in his boots.
>
> > Of course we could just go on doing what we've been doing for the last
25
> > years, maybe one day it will be your friends and family that are
affected,
> > bombed, or gassed or the economy of this country ruined to the point
where
> > we become a third world country and then maybe you'll see things a
little
> > differently.
>
> Or maybe we could change our policy towards the Middle East and foster
> economic development rather than more conflict there. We have it in our
> power. Cheaper than a war, too, I'm sure.
>
> > Freedom fighters, pluheeze spare me. Did these cowards even take credit
for
> > their actions or tell us what the hell they killed thousands of
innocent
> > Americans for?
>
> The people they were fighting for knew. That is all that mattered.
>
> B wrote:
> > As with anything, this type of atrocity requires motivation and means.
> > There's not much we can do about the motivation, as we do *not*
> > understand these people, their culture, their belief system, or their
> > situation.
>
> Listen, to understand any situation like this, you have to look at it
> from the other guy's point of view. They are not so alien as you might
> think. There are a lot of gun-toting fundamentalists living right here
> among us (only they call themselves Christian) who differ mainly in that
> their standard of living is higher.
>
> In looking at these terrorists and the people they believe they
> represent, we have group that is united by an ethnic and religious
> identity rather than any national affiliation. And united by the fact
> that they've been shit upon by the Western world for the better part of
> a century.
>
> They primarily identify with other downtrodden Arabs, who can be found
> in abundance lately.
>
> This mainly means the Palestinian Arabs, who have been forced into an
> increasingly restrictive apartheid system in Israel for decades now.
> And frankly, many Arabs don't see any difference between the U.S. and
> Israel. Either Israel is our direct proxy, or we are propping up and
> protecting the Israeli state for our own purposes. And they're pretty
> much right: any time the U.S. has really wanted Israel to do something,
> they have done it. If we wanted Israel to stop further land grabs on
> the small amount of territory left to the Palestinians (the
> "settlements") they would. There are more Palestinians living outside of
> occupied Palestine and Israel now than inside those borders. And they
> want their homeland back.
>
> Add to this the human toll of continued sanctions against Iraq, cruise
> missile attacks against "not-worthwhile" targets in Afghanistan and an
> admittedly non-terrorist pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, and you've got
>
> a sizeable group of people who are really pissed off at us.
>
> Also: they are for frequently very poor. Sure, there are wealthy
> regimes in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, but a lot of Arabs in that part of
> the world have very hard lives. There's economic and cultural
> resentment at work, too. There's something in common with the
> anti-globalization protestors in Seattle, D.C., and Genoa.
> American-style capitalism is invading their homeland and attacking their
> traditional culture. Where do you look to strike back at that?
>
> In a number of these countries, Palestine and Afghanistan in
> particular, life is very violent. Young men die every day. Kind of
> like the situation of young black men in desperately poor urban
> communities in this country: why not sell join the gangs? at least
> there is some sense of affiliation. There just isn't a lot of prospect
> for a better life, so its not hard to find folks willing to die to make
> life better for their fellow Arabs.
>
> Throw some religious fundamentalism into the mix, which has a very
> potent message to such people, and you've got a lot of foment looking
> for an outlet.
>
> Leaders like Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein play to this situation quite
> well, setting themselves up as heroes for opposing the West and the U.S.
> in particular. And succeeding!
>
> And look at us here in the U.S., with our high standards of living, our
> low standards of morality, and our unrelenting drive to recreate their
> world in our image. The U.S., the world's only superpower, that uses its
> might to starve and kill innocent civilians and to prop up Israeli
> apartheid. We defeated the Soviet Union, we defeated Saddam's
> 1,000,000-strong army. They can't fight against us in a conventional
> war, they'd have no chance. But they can fight against us.
>
> So when I look at Tuesday's disasters from the other guy's point of
> view, I can't help but see a lot of "now you know how it feels" in those
> horrific acts. "Now you can't ignore us."
>
> > Along with cash, the "means" column primarily consists of
> > infrastructure. Take out their warehouses, their practice parks, their
> > manufacturing centers, and you've given them some major obstacles to
> > fomenting terror. Make sure that raw materials stay out of their hands.
>
> So shall we start with the flight schools in Florida? Order airstrikes
> against box-cutting knife manufacturers in Peoria? Their "means" has
> mostly come from the U.S. The only state definitely known to have been
> "harboring" these terrorists has been Florida. The 1993 WTC bomb was
> primarily agricultural fertilizer, just like McVeigh used. Let's
> carpet-bomb Monsanto, shall we?
>
> You take it back to the Middle East, you have the same problem. There
> are substantial numbers of god-fearing, honest people living throughout
> the Arab world who want simply to make a living and better their lives
> just like the rest of us. They may be critical of the U.S., but they
> want no part of terrorists. And they own the warehouses, the fertilizer
> factories, the box-cutter factories, the pharmaceutical plants and the
> corner stores which may also be patronized by terrorists. In a war, it
> is really hard to pick and choose your victims.
>
> > If our government does indeed decide to attack the apparent perps, I
> > feel sure that it will do everything in its power to shield the
> > innocent. We're like that.
>
> We are, but we're not very good at it. And frankly, when you kill a
> civilian, you create a terrorist. We've lost a lot of civilians. It is
> indescribably painful. Let us choose not become terrorists.
>
> > However, if bombing the bastards back beyond
> > the stone age just before building a 1,000-foot wall without gates
> > around the entire country is what it takes to stop this crap, I'm for
> > it.
>
> The point is, there's not an "entire country" to bomb. It is a
> minority of people spread across a bunch of countries. You bomb them,
> you create more of them out of otherwise decent people.
>
> The point is, you have to understand the "enemy" in order to succeed in
> the struggle.
>
> So I say: bring these terrorists to justice, but don't make war.
> Spend your war money on economic development in that part of the world,
> deal with the decent people there to make their lives better, and the
> evil people will lose their potency.
>
>
> There's a saying among lawyers: If you go to court, you've already
> lost. It is even more true of war. Making war will not solve this
> problem.
>
> TaB
>
> ---
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