From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Mon Nov 25 2002 - 21:37:35 MST
Dear Greg,
> I can't begin to express how upset it makes me when I see the
> direction that the U.S. is going.
[...]
>but I wonder if your point of view as an expatriate
??? My best friends and family are in the U.S., my closest ties
remain in the U.S. I have the opposite feelings to what your statement
implies. I have emotional tugging all of the time from the people
I love to return to the U.S.
>I see the workings of the justice system in the US every day from the
>inside and I haven't seen any sort of massive erosion of civil rights in
> the U.S. The tone of your post hints that you may think such a thing is
>happening.
There was much more than the civil right infringements in my message,
though, and my news came from libertarian sources (sites like Reason),
not newspapers.
>And please don't get the idea that some kind of "neighborhood committee"
>system has somehow been instituted in the U.S. It hasn't.
Oh, I thought the TIPS was passed. My American colleagues last summer
told me it was an insane program, a joke, then I heard from somewhere
(don't remember where), that it was passed. Is it not passed, then?
>Finally, there's no question in my mind that the mainstream press in
>much of Europe is anti-American in a subtle way that pervades editorial
>policy and reporting.
OK, perhaps, but most of my news regarding the U.S. comes from my friends
(here and in the U.S>), what I see written in groups like this or libertarian
or science groups and The Economist (which is British, I know), and the
International Herald Tribune (which draws its U.S. news from the New
York Times,
I believe) because I don't have time, money, access to read other things.
I do not have a T.V., so I'm mostly immune from press slants, far far less
than most other people, German, Italian, other European or U.S. or otherwise.
One thing for sure I know I'm sensitive to, and that is propaganda,
because of my Latvian background. Redefined words like 'liberty' or
'freedom', for sure, trigger my sensitivities, and my alarm bells
about that came from people more than editorials in U.S. newspapers.
I will observe and listen more when I'm there next month.
Amara
-- through December 2002: Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Cosmic Dust Group, Heidelberg, Deutschland from January 2003: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario, Roma, Italia
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