From: Brian D Williams (talon57@well.com)
Date: Tue Aug 13 2002 - 10:10:37 MDT
>From: Amara Graps <amara@amara.com>
>During the week after September 11, I was finishing my bike trip
>in Tenerife and spending it with a group of volcanologists on the
>top of El Teide volcano in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain.
>(Strange way to spend my holiday, I know.) There was one other
>American besides me in that group of 30 scientists, the rest of
>the people were from Britain, Iceland, Spain, Italy, Germany and
>France. Televisions were turned on in people's rooms constantly,
>watching the news to see what and how the U.S. would react to the
>attacks. They were expecting something like WWIII to break out,
>and instead the U.S. government deliberated long and hard about
>how best to respond. That impressed the nonAmericans in this group
>of people. They had expected a wild and careless response. During
>those immediate weeks afterwards, the time was ripe and raw for
>fresh new changes in government policies, everywhere, not only in
>the U.S. Changes that showed respect, understanding, justice,
>fairness.
You change policies when you find some wrong, we didn't.
>It makes me sad and also angry that such a great opportunity was
>missed. The U.S. government has a most amazing document called the
>Constitution and an amazing ability to be open to changes, but
>instead it followed a very old and well-worn path that thousands
>of years of human history has shown will fail. Following fears.
>Instead of the world being more open, and differences between
>cultures and religions being accepted and understood better, now
>the world is more closed, much much less free and several orders>
of magnitude more paranoid than it was before.
Maybe I'm missing your point here.
Pre 9/11 I had great respect for Islam, after 9/11 watching the
actions of members of Islamic countries and their representatives
I essentially lost most if not all respect for it.
I still respect people and honor their right to order their own
lives, but have a lot less respect for what many of them believe.
Brian
Member:
Extropy Institute, www.extropy.org
National Rifle Association, www.nra.org, 1.800.672.3888
SBC/Ameritech Data Center Chicago, IL, Local 134 I.B.E.W
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