Wired: Echelon Furor Ends in a Whimper

[David_Biggins@usermgmt.com]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Owen Lewis [mailto:oml@eloka.demon.co.uk]
> Sent: Friday, July 06, 2001 01:41
> To: ukcrypto@chiark.greenend.org.uk
> Subject: RE: Wired: Echelon Furor Ends in a Whimper

Sorry, Owen, but I can't really agree.   This is the wrong place for
this discussion, and I don't want to upset the moderators,  but:

> ... Whatever
> dear old Uncle Sam may or may not have got up to in this 
> century, he has not, in the quest of 'political control':
> 
> 	-	Effectively eliminated one or more races from 
> an entire continent.

With a little stretch on the time span, I suspect that the Native
Americans may disagree.

> 
> 	-	Exterminated, by shooting, burning, starvation, 
> disease and slave labour untold millions (20M+) of his own people.

Again, the Native Americans may disagree...  And within the last couple
of hundred, its record on slavery is no better than anyone else's.

> 	-	Eliminated political dissent within his own 
> borders or anyone else's.

You must be joking.  US attempts to destabilise other (smaller)
countries' communist governments (which surely counts as "political
control" are a matter of record.  

US shoring up of capitalist dictators in other (smaller) countries is
equally a matter of record.  

Both of these give clear cases of elimination of political dissent.

> 	-	Preached race or religious hatred as state 
> policy at home and abroad.

Preached it, no.  Practiced it, yes.  Its attitude to the Muslim Arabs
has NOT been entirely defensible.  

And its attitude to China is of increasing concern in this context.

> 	-	Occupied the land of others at the point of a 
> bayonet, claiming some
> ancient, God given right apparent to none but himself.

Again, not within your hundred years, but...

> 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. 

Indeed.

> However, he is not the vicious 
> psychotic thug
> that some (stand up K & P) would like to depict him as.

No.  But he has become un-selfconsciously domineering and arrogant -
much as we were perhaps a century ago,  and is ignoring many of the
lessons of history.