From: Van oost Kenneth (kennethvanoost@belgacom.net)
Date: Mon 18 Nov 2002 - 20:27:25 GMT
Douglas, interesting comment !
You, and others should read " Jihad vs. McWorld by Benjamin Barber !
Together with Fukuyama's The End of History and Huntingtons The Clash
of Civilizations, Barbers' book is a very good beginning in the ' Why ' of
9/ 11 !
One of Barbers ' quotes I like is the following,
" Free market has an indespensable effect on which brand of shoes people
wear worldwide. A Palestian suicide- bomber wears no doubtlely Adidas
and not sandals. "
Kenneth
----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas Brooker" <dbrooker@clara.co.uk>
> Grant Callaghan wrote:
> > As a man who is deploring sweeping generalizations, you seem to be
falling
> > into your own trap. Is that YOUR petard I see you dangling from?
> >
>
> it may very well be what you see, but whether or not this is actually
> what is happening is very different question.
>
> the folklore or history of the British empire is very different in
> England, than say in India or Canada. similarly, the record the
> American activities in other countries since the end of WWII is also
> seen, when it is seen, very differently within the US than in those
> countries who have been the object of US affection. a month or so ago
> there was a conference in Washington - Pentagon I think - that meant to
> examine why there is so much anti-American feeling around the world.
> That it was held at all is nothing less than an amazing case of
> blindness to the military activities of the US in many countries around
> the world, thousands dead or maimed and dozens of governments
> overthrown. (a good list was circulating a few months ago of countries
> bombed, invaded or de-stabilised by the US since 1945)
>
> now you can argue pro or con about these activities - this will depend
> on the culture you have been raised in and other factors - there are
> many Americans who are unhappy about US foreign policy and there are
> those in UK and elsewhere who support it. so there is debate about
> exactly what happened and whether or not it was justified. (Along the
> lines of: no "massacre", the Israelis say, in Jenin in April, but last
> Sunday's attack on Israeli troops in Hebron was, the Israelis say, a
> "massacre", and other nice debates about the number of other people
> killed are required to constitute a "massacre".) (or here re the IRA -
> Grant has not told us that the change in US policy with respect to
> fund-raising activities in the US by the IRA is relatively recent)
>
> what is the interesting issue for me, is how a rather dominant strain of
> US thinking about their overseas activities can be either so dumb,
> naive, or ingenuous, to fail to make a connection between the record of
> bombing, invasion and destabilisation and the fact that there is
> widespread hatred of the US government in these countries. Bin Laden
> and Saddam, or the Shah of Iran were all American proxies and there is
> no end of examples which should permit Americans to establish some cause
> and effect between their own actions and the antipathy felt toward their
> governments around the world. many Americans can make this
> connection.
>
> much the same can be said about the roles of the UK during and after
> their Empire period, or other, usually large countries. comparing
> dominant myths in Serbia and ISrael would be a good study. the issue
> that's relevant here is how a nation or people can be blind to their own
> contradictions, (my shit doesn't smell) and how they create historical
> myths which elevate or sanctify certain aspects of their activities and
> make invisible that which is unsavory. on a political level, it can only
> be healthy when nations collectively become aware of their own blindness
> and contradictions. from the academic perspective, it would seem to be
> a compelling task to identify instances of this kind of blindness and
> from these examples, start abstracting theories about the functioning of
> national and collective consciousness, and unconsciousness.
>
> it seems from here - Canadian in Europe - that the kind of political
> partisanship in America that increasingly is reflected in its
> scholarship and science - (the cultural civil war) - and which makes
> participation by others in alot of American academic discourse at worst,
> a waste of time, and at best, a social challenge - is being exported to
> the rest of the world. it's a natural human characteristic to so
> identify with the myths that are the basis on one's social identity. the
> challenge it would seem to people involved in memetics and similar
> disciplines is to get outside of themselves, because if one doesn't or
> can't, all one's going to have to say will be recycled ideology cast in
> a different set of words, basically saying the same thing. It may not be
> apparent to those who speak it, often it is apparent to those who hear
> it.
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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