From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sun Mar 09 2003 - 21:42:29 MST
Terry W. Colvin wrote:
> Pulitzer-winning Newsday reporter Laurie Garrett went to the World
> Economic Summit in Davos, Switzerland this year and hung out with heads of
> major world corporations and famous heads of state. Some blunt personal
> commentary was sent to friends in a 2,000-word e-mail that ended up online
> and is very worth reading.
> A few thoroughly eye-opening excerpts follow, but just so you know, the
> whole story of who she is and how the private e-mail became public is
> here:
>
> < http://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=938
>
Thanks for posting forwarding this. It is really very chilling.
This stuff really makes me sad. This did not have to be.
Our governments and our corporations have sucked us dry and call
for ever more. Yet, under the current mindset, the basic
assumptions most people operate by, this sort of development
really was to be expected. So many trillions of dollars just
went <poof>. With the means to make them real gone, so many
dreams are being stillborn.
Out of these same fundamental assumptions the US government
thinks it is supposed to go in for Imperialism. Actually, even
those assumptions don't justify what it is contemplating and in
the process of doing now. It is so unbelievably crass and evil
that even very far-out explanations like our policy being set by
those who have in mind to start Armageddon seem almost
reasonable. I look at what is happening and it seems certain
that our President and sibling goons are bound and determined to
tip the world into chaos and much greater fear. Why? What do
they hope to get out of it? An excuse for even worse against
both the American people and the rest of the world? It is
becoming difficult to believe there is any sane explantion.
A friend of mine at work who spent some years in Germany was
telling me that his European friends and contacts generally have
much more an anti-American sentiment, a very great anger toward
and fear of what the US is doing and might do, than he has ever
seen before. If even first-world allies feel this way then what
kind of witch's brew are we concocting for ourselves?
One reason for the current policies (or rather a possible excuse
for why these are the policies) is that Bush & company believe
they can escape the massive economic woes by somehow stimulating
the economy through war, or at least that they can get maximal
control handed to them that way. Of course that is tremendously
short-sighted. Much cheaper measures (and much more moral) at
the beginning of the financial downturn would have helped
tremendously, especially to keep the US tech sector where most
of the growth was (and potentially still is) more intact.
Instead nearly two thirds of the tech people I know, highly
trained and proficient tech people, are out of work and have
been for quite some time. This is a travesty and it is a
direct body blow to our >human dreams and aspirations.
What is being done is making America look like an international
bully, a great idiotic destructive lout. This is very, very
dangerous and greatly harms everyone.
Why on earth is computer and copyright theft such a central
issue? That is very small potatoes in a world threatened by
unending war, economic stagnation and reaction to fear rather
than any vision of a viable future and cooperatively making that
future real. Copyrights and patents as currently over-applied
by US laws that we attempt to force on everyone else are a big
problem in the way of a viable future and are a serious
impediment to current well-being and development. The
circumventing of copyrights and patents is not what I consider
most important about the property as applied to intellectual
creations. But again, this is a very small part, one among many
symptoms, of the current crisis.
The comment from American security and military folks about
preemptive strikes and taking out states and fighting wars all
over the globe to "cleanse the world" is pure nutcake. How can
anyone take such statements as other than a flagrant admission
of psychotic insanity? That they and our administration appear
to mean it is so incredibly unbelievable that I almost doubt my
own sanity when I am forced to see it as real.
We won't get rid of terrorism by acting as terrorist states. We
won't end terrorism with bullets alone or even primarily. It
ends when everyone has a stake in the world and only the
actually unbalanced few feel any need for such attacks. What we
are doing now is about as sensible as attempting to put out a
fire with a flame-thrower. Concentration on the fear will not
help much either. Fixing the real woes of the world that feed
terrorism is very much required. And no, this does not mean
that "the terrorists win". It means we behave like responsible
life-positive future-positive adults instead of warring, looting
tribes of monkeys equipped with super-technology.
If the "leaders" are primarily concerned with "the bottom line"
and do not notice much unless it directly threatens them or the
bottom line then it is no wonder we are in this kind of crisis.
- samantha
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