Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: [OT] facism gaining ground in US

[Neil Thompson]

On Tue, Jul 13, 2004 at 03:32:43AM -0700, Tom Lord wrote:
> 
>     > From: nadim <address@hidden>
> 
>     > - You are talking quite a lot about things happening outside the
>     > US. It is certainly unconscious but that's a way of _not_
>     > talking about what is happening in the US.
> 
> It's very hard for any of us to tell what's going on in the US.  It's
> a big place and different regions are very, well, different.  We don't
> have hundreds of years of tradition about travel and reception of
> visitors.  We mostly hear about one another the same way you hear
> about us: on TV (or, for the intellektooals, the radio, papers and
> other periodicals).

...major snippage...

<LURK status=disabled>

For another "view from the outside", co-incidentally, one of South Africa's most
respected journalists, Allistair Sparks, who was exceptionally unpopular with 
the
apartheid government in the bad old days, has today written a guest editorial 
headlined -

"Islands of freedom no more"

I quote -

"Strange how quickly the worm can turn.  It seems only yesterday that I found it
necessary to escape periodically from the moral opressiveness of reporting from
the rockface of apartheid injustices and travel abroad for a brief moment of 
respite 'You have to unclench your fists' is how the late Rene de Villiers (...)
once described it as we shared sentiments.  

One would travel from the intensity of SA, with its stories of forced removals,
detentions without trial, the torture of prisoners and those wrenching Fugard
plays, 'The Island' and 'Sizwe Banzi is Dead' to breath the air of freedom 
and democratic decency in London and New York.

No longer.  Today the American and British newspapers are filled with stories of
detentions without trial and the torture of political prisoners in Baghdad's Abu
Graib prison; while Michael Moore's scorching anti-Bush movie Farenheit 9/11 is
playing to packed houses in the US and I have just returned from watching the 
West
End premiere of a docu-drama called Guantanamo, which is causing British 
audiences
to clench their fists.

This time it was a relief to return to the relative tranqillity of SA - even if
our theatre scene has lost its edge."
(...)

- unquote  

There are many countries (including mine) where we have seen the piece by piece
implementation of repressive and restrictive laws - each of them seemingly
'justified and necessary' which when woven together create a completely un-free
society.

Shoudn't the US learn from the lessons of history?  After all, it was one of 
yours,
Benjamin Franklin, I think, who said something along the lines of 'They that can
give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither 
liberty nor safety.'

</LURK>

-- 
Cheers! (Relax...have a homebrew)

Neil

THEOREM: VI is perfect.
PROOF: VI in roman numerals is 6.  The natural numbers < 6 which divide 6 are
1, 2, and 3. 1+2+3 = 6.  So 6 is a perfect number.  Therefore, VI is perfect.
QED
                                                    -- Arthur Tateishi