From: Jeremy Bradley (jeremyb@nor.com.au)
Date: Wed 11 Dec 2002 - 06:24:31 GMT
Joe wrote:
>> >> >before this can happen, people vote to change things; thus, a
>> >> >democracy maintains itself between the intolerable and the
>> >> >perfect, in a perpetually evolving yet always tolerable spectrum.
>> >>
Jeremy:
>> >> Bingo, but where does that lead to, a decline in USAnia-bashing or
>> >> an improvement in its foreign policy? Jeremy
>> >>
Joe:
>> >It's been improving for quite a while; the US's most recent military
>> >interventions (in Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, Somalia, Afghanistan, and -
>> >possibly - Iraq) have been on the side of the angels.
>> >>
Jeremy:
>> Only if you are an 'angel' Joe. That is the memetic problem - memes
>> only acceptance of the acceptable. Jeremy
>>
Joe:
>Well, Baby Doc, Aidid, Milosevic, Karadzic, Mladic, Bin Laden and
>Omar didn't appreciate it any more than Saddam seems to relish the
>prospect - but you are known by your enemies as well as by your
>friends.
Jeremy:
'Memes only accept the acceptable' is what I meant to say above. For
example there in an Australian incarcerated in Camp X-ray who fought
against Milosevic, Karadzic, Mladic and the Russians with the Mujahadin
(sp?). If any of them had captured him and held him in inhumane conditions
with no charge, no contact and no hope we would have tried like hell to get
him back and, if we did, many would have acclaimed him as a hero. Yet, as
he was captured by the 'angels' our Government is not interested in his
welfare in the least. As it is we don't know whether he was or wasn't
involved with terror as he has no human-rights, no representation, NO
CHARGE, no family contact and no hope of a finite detention but we don't
care cos we are pandering to the US cos we want trade liberalisation, (did
you hear how fast our PM wound back his rhetoric when Iraq threatened to
cancel wheat purchases?)
You can see that the same man fighting the same cause, at least in his
memetic construct it probably was, is treated entirely differently.
IMO, angels and devils are memeticly and culturally specific constructs
which lead to inescapably subjective opinion-making.
Lawry wants to talk about the formation and foundations of a new dialogue
between USAnia and the rest of the world, but we can't do that without
addressing the hypocrisy, deceit and bullying by the US. For you they may
be angels but IMO, for much of the rest of the world they are the devils
You may well ask why I am so cynical about USAnian Foreign Policy Joe;
Vietnam, in a word. I had my innocence stripped away by the realisation
that my mates died, were wounded or were mentally scared for the benefit of
Bell, Boeing, GE, Westinghouse, etc. As one USAnian General said, "it's a
shity little war, but it's the only one we have got".
IMO the USAnian military/industrial complex needs a war at all times in
order to justify its existence and to keep the stock-market up. War is kind
of like viagra for a flaccid market, but I've got no shares so I don't need
it to be hard all the time.
BTW don't think that this is "America (sic) bashing", it is just my attempt
at explaining the memetics of difference.
Jeremy
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