Susan, you wrote that the letter i quoted was one-sided and that's true. The original question was asking why are people angry with America and the replies have been trying to answer this. If the question had been "What do people love about America?" the answers would have been quite different.

GlobalGS - you wrote some fairly thoughtful responses to the replies you have received. But i want to reply to one comment you made: "Some of the countries that have gotten the blunt end of the stick (Iran, Syria, Iraq (invading Kuwait) etc....) have in the past acted aggressively and thereby deserved a good slap upside the head, by the big kid on the block". Perhaps you should compare the number of innocent people who have died and are still dying as a result of US aggression with the crimes committed by these other countries. Then you might be able to understand the anger throughout the world. I think Osama Bin Laden and Al Quaeda have a fairly similar philosophy to you on that one.

And as for the statistics you quoted, i suspect they would be a whole lot worse if more people actually knew what was going on. Most people don't know and that included Pete and I until about a month ago when an American friend sent us the above link to Democracy Now. DN is one of the very few independent (and therefore unbiased) media channels in the US. All of the mainstream media are owned by big business. As Amy Goodman writes: "This is a well-oiled propaganda machine that is re-packaging government spin and passing it off as journalism". It seems that the people of America are being brainwashed by hype. No wonder they are confused about the backlash or "blowback" as the CIA calls it. Wars (including the War on Terrorism) are being justified, marketed, implemented, sanitised and glorified. Do ordinary American people have any idea of extent of the death, injury and suffering their government is inflicting? Perhaps only the soldiers do, and i do feel really sorry for them.

I apologise for the length of my emails, but the reason i am writing so passionately about this is that i fear that we are balancing on the brink of a third world war. It seems to be mainly about rapidly diminishing oil resources, but in many developing countries supply of fresh water is also becoming a crucial issue. War is not the best way to solve these problems and maybe it is not too late to turn things about. Whatever happened to good old fashioned diplomacy and respect for human rights in dealing with problems?

I guess the key issue for me is that the massive poverty and suffering in the world has been exacerbated rather than relieved by US foreign policy, and most of the suffering and death is easily preventable. E.g. if the money spent on warmongering was instead spent on foreign aid and reconciliation.

If you want to see some really staggering statistics on poverty and the uneven distribution of wealth, have a look at the website of the Alliance for Sustainability: [URL=http://www.mtn.org/iasa/povstats.html]

Jenny


[This message has been edited by beddhist (edited 21 January 2005).]

__________________
Cheers,
Peter.

Europe to NZ 2006-10