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Why Do They Hate Us?
By keith harmon snow
Someone said, "They hate us because we don’t even know why they hate us." Letters and articles in the February 14 Voice by Kirk D. Sinclair, Bob Davidson, Chad Barlow, Alan H. Stein, Gerald E. Sheagren, Gabrielle Bernard, and Richard Ackermann all in some way speak to "why they hate us." The "Hindu Kush" clip [by Bud Stefanski] is hardly worth mention, except to say that the terrorism we are perpetuating will certainly come back on us. It’s called karma. They hate us because we don’t even know what karma is.
Richard Johnston [Our Roadways Threaten Wildlife] gave me some hope, on the other hand, for his is a rational and respectful letter, without sarcasm or hatred, addressing the horrors of human decimation of wildlife. Johnston shares compassion and love, and he transcends the anthropocentric ethos that is killing us. His letter is thoughtful.
Mr. Sinclair [Fewer Ecological Risks with Nuclear Energy] is respectful too, but his is irresponsible fiction. Like most of us in the U.S., Mr. Sinclair has not done his homework, or is blinded by his interests, and he dismisses the ecological and democratic hostility of all big energy corporations.
So they hate us because they can separate news from propaganda. Look beyond the lies of corporate media and you will find that electricity "too cheap to meter" meant nuclear power plants "too expensive to operate." Mr. Sinclair peddles the "atoms for peace" deception because billions of dollars and decades of propaganda persuaded good, trusting people like him that nuclear power is safe, clean and affordable. Where the propagandists failed to persuade, science finished the job.
Nuclear plants release deadly radiation into air and water every minute of operation, and in decommissioning it will be even worse (as at the Yankee Atomic reactor in Rowe, MA). Daily releases occur because nuclear reactors can’t operate otherwise. Profits, not reason, dictate the level of resources allocated for safety. Mr. Sinclair is confused in stating that he is "not a proponent of nuclear energy." He downplays the problem of nuclear waste. U.S. taxpayers funded the mess, and we fund the shuffling of that mess around, poking the poisons into holes that will never contain them.
Big tobacco does not alone stand for monumental death and deception, and Americans are so gullible, but that does not excuse us. Perhaps they hate us because we export nuclear poisons and weapons even while they scream: WE DON’T WANT IT! If they hate us, it is because we don’t know how to listen.
The cult of the atom has proliferated in secrecy and denial since the first Africans were slaughtered for uranium in Congo; uranium mining alone has caused untold death and despair, even in the U.S. This occurs at profound taxpayer expense and it is telling that—fifty years after McCarthy—Mr. Sheagren [The United Nitwits] still blames the great Red menace for U.S. woes. Noting huge taxpayer subsidies to multinational corporations, and the power they wield, I would say to Mr. Sheagren: that, truly, is communism (corporate)!
How many people died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki due to the nuclear fission experiment that spawned the "peaceful atom" mythology? According to the tone and tenor of Mr. Barlow’s letter [Some War Is Necessary], the Japanese must have deserved what we gave them. We—read: U.S.—were good; and they—read: Germany and Japan—were evil.
Note that the Russians were evil, until they attacked the Nazis, and then they were good, until WWII ended, and then they were evil again. General Noriega was good, until he told the U.S. to go to hell (and kept a few million in CIA drug-running profits); then he was evil. Saddam Hussein was lovely, and U.S. companies provided him with nuclear and biological weapon technologies (in the 1980s) until the U.S. ran out of the "old hound dogs of Communism"—as Mr. Sheagren puts it—and needed anyone to attack. Then Saddam became the new evil. If they hate us, it is because we cannot be taken seriously, and we cannot be trusted.
War is sometimes necessary says Mr. Barlow, who will never admit that the U.S. government ignored the coming invasion of Pearl Harbor. Ditto, George Bush—and the organized criminals we mistakenly refer to as "the government"—who had advance warning of September 11. The anthrax scare in the U.S. post-9/11 seems to have come out of the Department of Defense—but I don't expect Mr. Barlow to ever admit such heresy. It is easy to swallow lies from Powell and Rumsfeld and not think for yourself. Easy to blame those dammed North Koreans, but what about the U.S. tanks that killed the four South Korean children (in 2002)? The U.S. supports terror in South Korea—and THEY DON’T WANT IT!
Mr. Sheagren furthers the "evil people" idea: Iraqis, Iranians, Chinese, Libyans and even the French are less than people, and they don’t deserve representation at the UN. The implication is that Americans set the standard of leadership—and not terrorism. Certainly, Japanese were less than people in 1942, because we interned and persecuted Japanese in the U.S. Now we jail and torture Middle Eastern people. Indeed, they have no rights at all, even in America.
Perhaps "they" hate the U.S. because we biologically contaminated Iraqi water supplies (in 1991). Ask Columbian peasants suffering under the U.S. "Plan Columbia" why they hate us. Ask people at Mai Lai not why, but if they hate the U.S. Do they hate us? Or have they forgiven us that massacre? Has anyone asked them? They hate us because we presume to speak for them.
In Mr. Davidson’s reading of the food chain [Food for Thought], Clinton is an aberration, not the usual President, and like blacks and women in the U.S. he is responsible for persecuting the beleaguered white American male. Now, here is some real scapegoating, and Mr. Davidson’s letter seethes with white supremacy, sexism and hatred. If they hate us, it is because we are insular and xenophobic and racist.
Ms. Bernard [Still Time to Speak the Truth] defends Clinton. Well, Ms. Bernard said nothing about the U.S. war in Congo and the Clinton/ Bush mining interests there (e.g., AMF, Barrick Gold). Over 3.5 million are dead in Congo, but to most people in the U.S., Africans are not people. Ralph Nader is not responsible for what we have now; rather it is uneducated Americans who believe that Republicans are different from Democrats. Nader was the only conscionable choice, Ms. Bernard, and that is why I voted for him.
Anyways, most of us in the U.S. get our educations from the nightly so-called "news," and so we risk mutating into TV dinners made from genetically modified crops, grown on stolen land, in countries we have wrecked. If "they" hate us, it is because we are arrogant, we celebrate U.S. arrogance, and we know little about the world, even as we plunder it.
Consider the "greater hell" under Hitler, Mr. Barlow. Allen Dulles (CIA, 1947-61) and John Foster Dulles (U.S. Secretary of State) were lawyers with Cromwell and Sullivan, teamed with Schroeder Banks to finance Hitler. U.S. troops died in Europe due to weapons from Krupps and I.G. Farben—German companies working with Standard Oil, Chase Bank, and other U.S. patriots.
Rockefellers, DuPonts, Morgans and Bush boys never faced the draft. It’s too bad Americans keep sending children to fight and be maimed and die—not for us, but for profits. Blacks suffer under U.S. war, as under U.S. domestic policies, and that is not "food for thought," Mr. Davidson, but selective murder.
"Leaders" like Eisenhower, Rumsfeld, Bush, Rockefeller—through General Electric, Lockheed, Bechtel, Halliburton—fabricated the Cold War and the unprecedented democratic and ecological hostility of nuclear power and weapons. Now they fabricate Iraq. These corporations are arrogant, secretive and corrupt, polluting, stealing land and water, displacing American jobs, operating beyond oversight, deep in Saudi Arabia, entrenched in the terrorism of the U.S. military apparatus. Perhaps they hate the U.S. for our permanent warfare economy. Perhaps they hate us for our greed.
The American designation of "war criminal" is merely victor’s justice, as seen today at the Rwanda Tribunals, where Bush, Clinton, Rumsfeld, Albright, Cheney and Powell should all be on trial. So forget about Nuremberg: under the CIA, thousands of Nazi war criminals entered U.S. nuclear and bio-warfare programs, as well as that other specious American god—NASA. Shuttle astronauts are not innocent victims, and NASA is not cash-starved, Ms. Bernard, nor is it "hundreds of millions" of dollars that go into the "Star Wars" hoax, but tens of billions.
Mr. Ackermann’s "U2 Solution" is equally ludicrous. Billions of taxpayers dollars have perfected NASA’s war-fighting capabilities, and that is why Powell lied to us and the UN—any excuse at all to play with their "toys" of death and despair. If they hate the U.S., it is because we feed our children the mythologies of space, while millions of their children die from starvation, disease, and U.S. military operations.
Mr. Stein [Arafat Chose War] might ask the Israeli general who advised the invasion of Zaire (in 1996) about his gold concessions (near Bush’s). And what, indeed, was an Israeli military agent doing on the (exploded) shuttle, Mr. Stein? Burkina Faso (that is a country) is Israel’s base in Africa; the Mossad spawns terror across Africa, furthering such democratic ideals as diamonds.
You can’t beat the shit out of a people (Palestine) with superior military force and violence, for decades, and expect them to love you. Of course, Mr. Stein won’t hear any challenge to his private fear, and that is his terrorism. Anyway, war is peace, says Mr. Stein.
Any compassionate Israeli, or Jew, or Christian would honor the motto of Auschwitz and Buchenwald and admit that "never again" means NEVER!—and not the great American denial that "it doesn’t apply to us."
Speaking of assassination and U.S. Presidents, Mr. Barlow, who killed JFK? Was it the CIA? It was not Lee Harvey Oswald. Was it American patriots like Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond, who hold 50-year grudges against an entire nation of innocent people—to the point of starvation of women and children? "They" should hate us because we do not forgive. "They" should hate us for our childishness. But most Cuban people don’t hate the U.S.
There is no "food for thought" in hate. Just a bunch of arrogant Americans sitting around getting drunk and stupid, watching football and eating up the propaganda faster than the pizza, and complaining about their women—women tired of being beaten up, ignored or raped by men who haven’t even begun to consider that they are not "their" women. You know, those audacious American feminists who—like the Palestinian terrorists, and starving Afghani fundamentalists, and disenfranchised black Afro-Americanists, and rabid U.S. environmentalists—are so tired of being shit on that they finally said "enough is enough" and up and ran away. Unfortunately, for too many people, there isn’t anywhere to run and no way to get.
Sadly, and I mean sadly—not the rah, rah, rah of Americans bemoaning New York City—the U.S. is in deep distress. Perhaps too many of us, like Mr. Sheagren, sit around on weekends and play little words games with ourselves. If we stopped and looked around—really opened our eyes—we might come up with some real biting truths, and we might begin to see not why they hate us, but just how much we hate each other, and ourselves.
Anyway, most of them don’t hate us. That is just another projection, an invention of the American mind to try to make sense of its own madness and deracination (look that one up). And so I say that if you haven’t been abroad, perhaps you should go. Spreading fear is not doing us any good. If we are truly brave and free, we will look into our own hearts and see that most of them really love us.
Ultimately, there is no us and them. By dividing humanity, Americans make the most basic wrong assumption. Indeed, I have hit on the one thing that is so widely celebrated, held dearer in America than anything else—and that is our patriotism. (When Germany had it, we called it fascism.)
There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.
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