The Logic Off Topic list

<david@...> wrote:

>   From what I've read, I can see that there is much jealousy and
> hatred toward us.

Hi David,

I don't know how much of this is pointed towards myself, but I would like to
make something clear:

I NEVER "hate" anybody personally without really knowing him/her.
Having said that it's simply impossible for me to "hate" any US citizens in
general.
So, when I'm talking about "you" or "the US" I speak about your government
rather than about any defined person/s. Whenever I'm talking about "us" or
"germany" it's exactly the same, I'm not talking about concrete persons.
This is also something what I wonder about... Because I thought that this
more "general" kind of speech was clear I'm really astonished that quite
some of you US folks seem to take it so personal though - whenever someone's
saying things such as "you stupid german fucks", do you think I really see
that as any kind of personal attack? Not at all! Sometimes (pretty often,
unfortunately) I even have to agree!

>   My feelings about all this is that, now I know what you really feel,
> you've made it clear, knowing the disgust that you have for us.

As said, this is really not the case.
I mean, how can I have any disgust for you (as a person)? In the past you've
allways been a friendly and helpful guy, even doing some nice music (of
course that's just a very small part of your personality so I can't tell if
you really are, but I couldn't tell anything else either).
I also don't "hate" you for being an american or whatever. I mean, I
wouldn't want to be hated myself too just because we have a stupid
government as well.

Anyways, let me try to make it a bit more clear why some of "us" (europeans
and the rest of the non-american world) might seem a bit annoyed about "the
US" sometimes.
(Please note: A lot of what I will say is 100% true for "our" countries as
well)

There's pretty much occasions where the US simply was like "going our own
way" rather than agreeing on international conventions. As I allready
mentioned in a previous post, the Kyoto agreement is a perfect example for
that. This is a fucken stupid thing! If we want to rescue what's left in
this ecological poor world we gotta do it all together.
There's a lot of things happening (especially) in the US simply driving me
mad. You (NO, not you as a person) simply don't seem to care about things
such as energy-per-head wastement. Of yourse that's basically a political
thing, but of course these things are part of people over there as well -
for example, usually they don't care too much about how many litres of fuel
their cars need (at least that was my experience when I've been over there).
Don't get me wrong, I'm as annoyed by the german government, having no
tempolimit as one of the few countries with a green party being part of our
government coalition is incredibly lame too.
There would be quite some other examples (such as the meat-per-head
consumption).
I'm not saying that people over here are any better per se, but at least
some folks learned something allready. Sure, we HAD to learn some things the
hard way. There's simply not enough resources over here (energy, land) so we
have to be pretty careful. But at least *some* people allready learned from
that.
A small personal example: I sold my car almost 3 years ago. Not that it
wasn't comfortable to own one, but I found that waste of energy disgusting.
I even made myself some special bagpack to carry a small amp, floor pedal
and guitar on my bike. For larger gigs of course we have to use a bus (from
the rental), sometimes I might also take a taxi to go there. Unfortunately
now I will have to buy a car again, but believe me, it will be a super low
powered one using less than 7 litres/100km.
Note: I LOVE to drive fast - but I just can't stand the things resulting out
of that.
Btw, I also buy ecologically proper food (even if it's damn expensive) and I
don't eat any meat at home (it's enough to have meat once or twice a week on
some gigs).
Sure, with these things I'm defenitely belonging to some minority over here
as well, but there's more and more people thinking the same.
Anyways, as a result of my personal style of living and looking towards
things, also as a result of being a true lover of nature, animals, clean
water and fresh air I really hate it to know there's a large amount of
people just not caring about these things at all. And unfortunately "the US"
is the top country in such aspects (I guess this can be proven easily by
some stats), at least in the western world.
Again, I am NOT talking about you (or anybody) as a person - I don't know
what you're eating or what kinda cars you drive - but there must be some
people in the US causing such statistics.

As said above, we (me included) had to learn this the hard way - but why in
the world can't "the US" just take that as a bad example and NOT follow us
the same way but rather be warned instead?

OK, I guess all this was started by the recent terrorist attacks and the US
reaction on them, I will try to comment on that as good as possible (my
political english unfortunately is pretty much limited).

I allready said so in some previous mail, as long as the US wasn't attacked
personally nobody cared about things. The Taliban ruled, the afghanian north
alliance was existing (no word of any US support for them), Bin Laden was
living too.
Nobody cared about them (well, a few underpowered help organisations did).
Well, the US cared - they supported the Mudjahiddin back then when
Afghanistan was fighting against the USSR.

This is just like the same as what happened back in the gulf war days.
Nobody cared about Saddam Hussein being the slaughter (that he still is) of
poor people (let alone the fact that he's been supported by western
countries during gulf war I). But of course, once he attacked Kuwait, it was
about the oil resources so someone had to strike him.
But instead of removing this monster from planet earth for all the times
(which, in his special case, REALLY would've meant a lot as there was no
person who could've followed him) you (well, in that case WE) only got
Kuwait back.
Yeah, I know "that was a human thing, we had to free the poor people in
Kuwait". Hrm, what about all the other places in the world where things like
that happened (Ruanda? Taiwan?)? Does any international alliance even care?
No, because it's not against any of their interests. Sure, Kosovo was "freed
up" but hey, a) was it really freed up? Not at all... and b) that was to
maintain some european stability - pretty important in terms of world
economics.

Now that the US has been attacked by terrorists it's happening again. But
again it's not a matter of "human rights" or whatever but it's just that the
US has been attacked personally and people want to see some revenge (at
least that's my feelings about it).
Sure, there's some helping good being throwed over Afghanistan, but
unfortunately that doesn't mean anything (according to some french help
organisation they interviewed in the news all those goodies are like a drop
of water on a hot stone).
Also there's no reason why attacking a country would help against
international terrorism at all. IMO things will only get worse.
In europe MANY people believe that a war against Afghanistan will bring you
anywhere, it's just our governments stupidly following some international
pseudo alliance which was caused by US statements such as "Hey, the world
has been attacked, everybody not following us is against us!".

Personally I might believe in limited strategic actions against terrorism
(such as infiltrating their organisations, hunting their leaders, looking
for their bank accounts), I also might agree that supporting the north
alliance in Afghanistan could be ok-ish (even if I doubt that because
Afghanistan per se is more like a bunch of tribes rather than one nation),
but I don't agree that ANY war will cure anything. Again the last gulf war
is a good example. Saddam is still surpressing his poor nation and he even
got enough biological and chemical weapons ready to kill the world
population 4 times (if not more). Back then a limited strike against Saddam
(combined with some support for their opposition) might have been the best
thing to do as well.

After all, as the result of things described above, some people over here
(including me) have an impression like:
If the US think they don't need to agree on international conventions, these
simply won't happen (Kyoto).
If the US however think now it's time to strike someone, everybody has to
follow them.
Of course, our governments just might be dumb enough to follow them all the
time, so maybe that's part of the problem as well.

And again, this has NOTHING to do with any personal things, when I've been
in the states I met many nice people and most of them welcomed me hartly and
all.

I'm sorry, but I can't explain things (especially all that political stuff)
any better.

Regards,
Sascha