Wired: Echelon Furor Ends in a Whimper

[Owen Lewis]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk
> [mailto:ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk]On Behalf Of Ken Brown
> Sent: 06 July 2001 16:33
> To: ukcrypto@chiark.greenend.org.uk
> Subject: Re: Wired: Echelon Furor Ends in a Whimper
>
>
> Owen Lewis wrote:
>
> > Whatever
> > dear old Uncle Sam may or may not have got up to in this century,
>
> I assume you mean the previous century, they haven't had time in the
> 21st yet.

In this hundred years.

> > he has
> > not, in the quest of 'political control':
> >
> >         -       Effectively eliminated one or more races from
> an entire continent.
>
> That's because they had all but finished the job in the 19th century. By
> the 1890s the starving remnants of the native Americans were reduced to
> a level where they could be kept going as a tourist attraction

Were that true, there would not be so many to moan about it today.

Besides mankind's views of such things have change more in the last 100
years than in all previous history. Personally, and as an abo Brit, there's
nothing I enjoy more of a Summer's evening than squatting outside the local
pub with my hand out, complaining about how my forebears were killed,
burned, raped and enslaved by the
Romans/Angles/Jutes/Saxons/Danes/Vikings/Normans. Frankly, I think the rest
of the EU ought to keep me and all my compatriots for the rest of our lives
(stress counselling included) for the perfectly horrid things they did to my
relations over some thousand years or more.
>
> >         -       Exterminated, by shooting, burning, starvation,
> disease and slave labour
> > untold millions (20M+) of his own people.
>
> I'll give you that one.
>
> >         -       Eliminated political dissent within his own
> borders or anyone else's.
>
> I don't think anyone has ever *eliminated* political dissent anywhere. A
> number of people have tried, including the US establishment.

Cite? McCarthyism was a weak gesture in that direction, granted - but look
at what happened to McCarthy.
>
> >         -       Preached race or religious hatred as state
> policy at home and abroad.
>
> Government-sponsored race hatred and segregation was a feature of life
> over much of the USA as recently as the 1950s and 1960s as you know.
> Not on the level of South Africa or the Nazis, but it was there, and it
> was public policy.

Your argument is too sloppy to hold together. Race or religious hatred as
state policy is quite specific. Your response (excepting the Nazis) is
wobbles around the specific, avoiding it. Ruanda, Burundi, the Balkan states
(some) and the Indian subcontinent provide much more exact and powerful
examples. Cambodia too, if one includes class hatred which is equally
illogical, unpleasant and potentially lethal. We are back to consideration
of eyes motes and beams once again.
>
> >         -       Occupied the land of others at the point of a
> bayonet, claiming some
> > ancient, God given right apparent to none but himself.
>
> Come off it! Yes they bloody well did and you know it. Nicaragua is the
> obvious case, but there are others.

In the 20th Cent? Really? Can you cite? Why they never even popped poor old
Jacomo Arbenz's clogs in 1947 (though they may has acted in a consultancy
capacity to those who did).
>
> I'm not saying they were any worse than most other countries but to
> claim that they were better is egregious.

And I, very carefully, never argued that they were any better. What is true
is that Uncle Sam is not the 'Great Satan' of this modern world. I don't
find it necessary to admire everything he has done or now does - or even
like him over much - to hold to that. The greatest horrors of the modern
world have all come from others.
>
> >
> > One could go on but you get the point I think. Balance in all
> things, mon
> > vieux. Uncle Sam surely is not perfect and - like the rest of
> us - he makes
> > mistakes from time to time. However, he is not the vicious
> psychotic thug
> > that some (stand up K & P) would like to depict him as.
>
> K & P?  The peanut brand?????

Nah. Khomeini and Pinter (snipped away)

Owen