('binary' encoding is not supported, stored as-is)
> "Hubert Mania" <mania@welfen-netz.com> <extropians@extropy.org> Re: Raisin Bombers over AfghanistanDate: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 12:21:40 +0200
>Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org
>
>Jeff Davis wrote:
>
>> >Call me a cynic, but I just don't see it happening.
>> >Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Bush--they're all
>> >intelligent enough to see the possibilities in a
>> >"meta-Ghandian" approach. And despite my left-wing
>> >political bias, I don't really believe that they are
>> >so coldly reptilian that they don't care about the
>> >welfare of the Afghan innocents. Just reptilian
>> >enough so that it can't happen.
>
>At first glance a Ghandian approach may have the taste of "deep 20 th
>century". It may remind you of a remote peaceful hippy resistance and sound
>awkward to our future loving ears but it could be successfull in a
>country that is far away from 21th century way of life. Choosing the
>humanitarian raisin bomber option may cause laughter, but even if the
>Taliban fascists steal some of the food and clothes away from the poor, they
>cannot take it all, there should be enough hidden raisin bomb craters left.
>
>and Joe Dees answered:
>
>>This analysis seems to proceed as if THE LUCIFER PRINCIPLE was never
>>written; such largesse, reminding the recipients about who is currently on
>>top in the pecking order, engenders jealousy, resentment and envy, not
>>gratitude. It is likely that such a move could be counterproductive, and
>>cause even more children (even if the same percentage indulged in the
>>practice but more survived) to be programmed, by their parents, mullahs and
>>teachers, to become faith-based missiles of sui/homicidal martyrdom,
>>directed against those who, by means of such largesse, had incindiarily
>>humiliated the programmers.
>
>Even if it seems counterproductive right now and even if more children
>might develop the way you describe it, there should be a force
>who shows mercy first. You cannot expect anything from a people that is so
>badly suppressed like the Afghan poor. A couple of days ago I saw a BBC
>report by an Afghan born British journalist. She secretly filmed daily
>live in Afghanistan in June 2001. It`s breaking your heart. Besides children
>dying of starvation, men, women and children being slaughtered in villages
>where bases of the Northern alliance fighters are suspected, it is the
>permanent suppression that makes you sick. No woman is allowed to work and
>every girl at the age of 12 must definitely quit classes in school. Friday
>afternoon a blood thirsty crowd gathers in a football stadium, built from
>international funds, and watches thiefs being hanged on the goal posts and a
>woman accused of adultery being shot kneeling down at the penalty line of
>the footbal field, men whose throats are cut, kneeling down there, too. And
>the people are watching - it`s Friday afternoon - and yelling with
>approval. And all these scenes were secretely filmed. This is real. What a
>brutalization. They must see some signs that man can feel and act different.
>
I saw the same documentary (BEHIND THE VEIL), and my answer is that the horrors shown there are PRECISELY why we must depose the Taliban. If Osama had never existed and the WTC atrocity had never transpired, such religiously motivated bigotrous brutality demands eradication of any human being possesssed of anything resembling an existential ethical sense. We can't just feed the machine that thusly grinds its own citizens into amorphous acolytic sausage; we must begin by throwing monkey wrenches into its gears, and end by disassembling it, smelting all its parts into liquid metallic pools, and recasting the resultant slag into a finer and more user-friendly framework.
>
>humania
------------------------------------------------------------
Looking for a book? Want a deal? No problem AddALL!
http://www.addall.com compares book price at 41 online stores.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:40:58 MDT