Kakki wrote: > I have no idea what those other news outlets reported but it sounds like > market share and keeping up with the fearmongers (fear sells) might be more > important to them than responsible journalism. And the Guardian is the > newspaper I called anti-American because on any given day of the week or > year I can read something there that is nasty, sneering and often untrue > about U.S. policy. Such consistency tells me they are also selling to a > particular niche market. >
I understand your objection to anti American sentiment. I don;t undertsand your obnjection to the reporting of Bush's statement that he is prepared to use nukes. He said ti. It is not a lie. To reprot it is not fearmongering. it is something we all need to know. On BBC's question time tonight, this subject came up. I leanred some stuff I didn't know. Like how the USA(and I assume the UK) were friends with Saddam and helped him invade Iran and supplied him with the technology and weapons. The fell out over his invading of Kuwait. It was also asked that if it is alright to attack Iraqfor failing to abide by UN resolutions, why is nothing done about Israels failure to do the same? It was said that Iraq has an undemocratic dictator and that weapons of mass destruction is his hands are dangerous. Someone else pointed out that Pakistan has the nuclear capability and also has an undemocratic dictator leading them yet America is friends. America and the UK and France and others have weapons of Mass Destruction as wella s India and Israel and anyone else I have forgotten. Out of these, America has used them. In Japan, in Vietnam and in Afghanistan. Cluster bombs were used in Afghanistan despite the fact hat they are just air dropped landmines. Landmines have been banned. The anti American sentiment is widespread and it is real and it is there for good reasons. Stating this fact is not an attack on you personally or anyone else, except those people that have the power in your country. The UK too has equally stained hands. I find it difficult to undertsand people getting offended when negative comments are made about governents. It is done here all the time about the UK govt and it doesn't bother me at all. They are not attacking me.I don't see the conenction with patriotism. i think it is quite possible to love your country and not feel peronally attacked when the govt is criticised. It is a way neagating or shutting up dissenting voices i suppose but not that effective. Although one could name a number of countries where it is. I think for me the whole idea of my country and my nationality being part of my definition of myself,part of my meaning structure, is quite foreign to me. I just don't define myself that way and never have. I think because I lived in so many differtn countries. Ironically, growing up an Army child left me with no feeling for anywhere, no nationalistic or patriotic feelings. i do not regret that at all. I am pleased. It allows me to define myself in other ways, ways that are to do with me and my insides and not to do with the outside stuff. I also view the world and it's people as MY world and the people in it as being the same as me. They may look different, they may act different, they may eat different, they may think different, and interpret different but we all FEEL the same. We all laugh, we all cry, we all feel fear, anger, jealousy,envy, greed, passion, we all die. The barriers we have built, the 'borderlines' are all just fantasy, a desperate attempt to allay fear, not real but constructions we have made that separate us all and cause us all so much pain. Till we recognize that we are all the same, human, but diverse in the way we express that and interpret our world. The trouble is difference makes us frightened so those that are different we label as bad and therefore dangerous and of course inferior. Thus we have enemies when we could have friends. The solution really does lie with you and me. If we want to change the world, we have to start with ourselves. By that i mean I must change if I want the world to change and the same goes for everyone else. The world is how we each have created it. It is not something we can only sit back and say'it isn't to do with me-I have no power'. That is not true. We each have tremendous power. We have used and are using that power to destroy our world and our friends. We could use that power to build our world and our friends, to bring about peace.
