
You MUST read Arundhati Roy's address at World Social Forum. Here's an excerpt:
"New Imperialism is already upon us. It's a remodeled, streamlined version of what we once knew. For the first time in history, a single Empire with an arsenal of weapons that could obliterate the world in an afternoon has complete, unipolar, economic and military hegemony. It uses different weapons to break open different markets. There isn't a country on God's earth that is not caught in the cross hairs of the American cruise missile and the IMF chequebook. Argentina's the model if you want to be the poster-boy of neoliberal capitalism, Iraq if you're the black sheep."
Posted by Pedram at January 25, 2004 11:32 PMTwisted Anti-American bigortry. Oh yes and it is bigotry make no mistake about that. Is the entire world descending into a 'victim' mentality where the United States is blamed for everything? Now we are to blame for the mess in the Kashmir and the rape of 'Moslem' women.
By the time she got done spinning Enron and Kashmiry gang rapes into the same paragraph I wrote it off as the racist anti-American propoganda that it is. Bigotry.
By the way, if anyone is wondering where I got the idea that the whole world is descending into an anti-American fervor that can only be compared to racism, I got it from your own Salmon Rushdie.
In fact the person who runs this page has racist leanings, with his 'The Only Good American is a Brown American' attitude.
Posted by: A.H. at January 26, 2004 06:40 AMI used to deny that I was completely powerless over everyone and everything. I continually tried to change them, to suite me, and when they did not think like me, I would get outraged. I was angry and my life was a mess. I tried to direct my own play and almost always one of the players would not be to my liking. I tried being nice, harsh, direct, indirect,...but it never worked. If only they would dance to my song, I would be at peace. Do you relate?
Posted by: A.F. at January 26, 2004 04:03 PMSame crap, different day. America this, America that...oooh poor me.
Posted by: at January 26, 2004 06:00 PMWe red, white, and brown will have to get used to being questioned. Lets not hide behined some stupid pride driven, unconditional patriotic ferver, and sheer denial vail. No one can't be totally right when it comes to a grand statements like "we are now facing a single American imperial supper power". What we have here "boys" is lack of communiactions. What is clear however that wealth has for the past thirty years been congergating at top of the parimid. We need to address that as American or wherever else you are coming from. This is not in line with MARKET driven capitalisim. You simply can't sell or buy products at gun point!!!
Posted by: Ali at January 26, 2004 08:10 PMI am by no means the defender of all American foreign policy or organizations like the IMF. The agricultural policies of much of the first world (not just the US, Europe and Japan as well) are not only immoral but unjust and to the detriment of not only thirld world farmers but the citizens of the culprit nations. But this kind of blanket "lets hate everything they do because they did it" mentality is childish at best and sinister at worst. Let us analyze a paragraph of this speech that was a must read:
"So if we are against Imperialism, shall we agree that we are against the U.S. occupation and that we believe that the U.S. must withdraw from Iraq and pay reparations to the Iraqi people for the damage that the war has inflicted?"
Ok, and while withdrawing, should we cover up the mass graves with some 300,000 people, and add the ones that Saddam surely would have in the last year? Should we redrain the southern marshlands that Saddam drained to starve the southern nomads that Army engineers have been working hard to refill? Should we return all women and minorities into the shadows, destroy the schools and hospitals that have been built, and reinstate the Baathist torture machine?
One of the saddest trajedies of the post-cold war Left is that for over 10 years it has found itself defending tyrants and murderes and protecting their right to be just to oppose anything and everything that America does. Remember that Milosevitch guy that Wesley Clark brought down without UN OR Congressional permission? They sure defended him, and his right to slaughter a few thousand more Kosovars.
The only alternative the Left has ever proposed is their beloved U.N. The same same U.N. that allowed the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans while Rwanda sat on its Security Council. The same U.N. that allowed 20,000 Bosnians to be slaughtered in its own safe-haven. The same U.N. that allowed the starvation of 300,000 Somalis while "unilateral" American troops were killed and dragged through the street while trying to bring down the man responsible for the mass starvation. The same U.N. that had Iraq scheduled to head the Disarmorment committee while it passed the 14th resolution on Iraq's WMD program. The same U.N. that gives veto power to one of the worst human rights abusers in the world (China) but has no representation in the SC for two entire continents.
Posted by: Omid at January 27, 2004 03:59 PM