Robert Fisk

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Nope. There is a difference between saying that one understands the
>sources of murderous, indiscriminate rage and saying that one would
>join in such murderous, indiscriminate rage. To say that if one were
>in their shoes one would join the lynch mob--one would chase innocent
>strangers with intent to beat and possibly kill them because of the
>color of their skin--is to say something extraordinary about one's
>own personality and moral identity.  Brad DeLong
>
>--------------
>
>Okay, I'll take stab at it. Fisk wasn't innocent, Afghanis were not
>racist, and these scenes are as old as history. US-EU can not declare
>war, bomb the shit of a place, killing thousands, and expect US-EU
>civilians (an arbitrary and murky designation) to drive around unarmed
>in the same place with impunity.
>
>I mean this is what those State Dept travel advisories are supposedly
>about.
>
>To have a certain reserved sympathy for this beating is not bizarre or
>twisted, it is the realization that you were the wrong person, in the
>wrong place at the wrong time, and knew it.
>
>So given all that, which seems completely self-evident to me---that is
>needs no explaination at all---I have to wonder at why Brad doesn't
>understand it.
>
>And make no mistake, if George Herbert Walker Bush ever walked around
>Havenscourt (66th Avenue village), or the avenues on International Way
>(formerly E 14th) unarmed, you can bet somebody would kick his ass.
>
>Chuck Grimes

*****   Choose

The single clenched fist lifted and ready,
Or the open asking hand held out and waiting.
Choose:
For we meet by one or the other.

Carl Sandburg   *****

According to the _Guardian_ article John Mage posted (Doug McKinlay, 
"Refugees Left in the Cold as Strained Aid Network Collapses under 
Flood of New Arrivals," _The Guardian_ 3 January 2002, at 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4328292,00.html>), "100 die 
each day of exposure and starvation" in the Maslakh camp....
-- 
Yoshie

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