The Anti-American Issue

[Fidel]

Maybe we should discuss this issue like civilized whoremongers?

 

About 6 months back, I bumped into an American guy named Mark Levine. He seemed like a nice guy, and when I asked what he was doing in town, he told me he was writing a book and he was here to do some research. The book he was working on has now been published, and it is entitled "Why they DON'T hate us: Lifting the veil on the axis of evil".

 

Incidentally, he's also a Grammy award winning jazz/rock musician, from Wikipedia:

Mark LeVine is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine. He's also a religious scholar and a musician. He received his B.A. in comparative religion and biblical studies from Hunter College and his M.A. and Ph.D. from New York University's Department of Middle Eastern Studies. He speaks Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, and Persian, as well as Italian, French and German.

 

LeVine is an accomplished rock guitarist and has played with noted rock and world beat musicians such as Mick Jagger, Chuck D, Michael Franti, and Doctor John. He recorded with Morroccan Hassan Hakmoun and the French Gypsy band Les Yeux Noirs on Ozomatli's album Street Signs which won the Grammy for Best Latin Rock/Alternative album in 2005.

 

Basically, he's a pretty smart guy.

 

Anyway, I picked up his book the other day, and I've been leafing through it. It makes for interesting reading.

 

Below is an excerpt which I find thought provoking, and which I believe is a reasonable explanation for current anti-US sentiment.

 

Have a read and let me know what you think:

"What people across the world are scared to death of, is the 'global virus' being spread by a consumption crazy culture, one which colonizes individuals around the world one by one, until they are assimilated into the smoothly functioning logic of production.

 

Against this vision of America as a virus, and the 'inhuman globalization' it has spread, what kind of world do people want? At the dawn of the 21st century, millions of people are still fighting, killing and dying to answer that question. Yet how ever deep the anger and intense the violence, millions of Muslims, Europeans and people everywhere yearn for the kind of 'human nationalism' that once symbolized America (even if it was just a symbol) as a beacon of freedom to the world."

 

.... discuss... oh and try to keep it clean!

 

 

[Fidel]

KS, I'll understand if you want to lock this thread right now, since it is not "news" and is likely to lead to disagreements.

[Flashermac]

<< ... millions of Muslims, Europeans and people everywhere yearn for the kind of 'human nationalism' that once symbolized America (even if it was just a symbol) as a beacon of freedom to the world." >>

 

But millions of other's ... don't.

 

 

[Fidel]

Well, that may be so, but if you think about it, it wasn't long ago that the Islamists were looking for, and receiving support from the US, for example.

 

Whether the status of the US as a beacon of freedom was merely symbolic or not, there was a time, not all that long ago, when the US was considered by many people a nation that fought for the right things.

[Guest lazyphil]

yes the usa helped the mujahadeen fight the russians then the bastards betrayed that assistance fucking cunts.

[Flashermac]

I was in the US when the Soviet Union collapsed. There was euphoria and a hope that now the world would be safer and a lot more peaceful. (How many conflicts of the 1960s and '70s were really proxy wars between the US and the Soviets? Even the US support to Osama and company in Afganistan was aimed at the Soviets.)

 

I also remember that when defence spending was slashed, bases began being shut and the military was being scaled back, there was suddenly a lot of unemployment. I recall people suggesting the US needed a new enemy of some sort to justify the spending again. I'd expected it to be China, but instead it turned out to be radical Islam.

 

Actually al Quaeda and company came about as a reaction to perceived American interference in the Gulf War of '92. Suddenly, the infidel armies had set foot on the "sacred sand" of Saudi Arabia. Bet Papa Bush never thought of that!

 

Things would be so much nicer if the US government would go back to 1930s style isolationism. But there's as much chance of that happening as Ron Paul being elected president. Also, if the US did so, what would China's reaction be? Probably something not very nice.

 

 

 

[rogueyam]

Whether the status of the US as a beacon of freedom was merely symbolic or not, there was a time, not all that long ago, when the US was considered by many people a nation that fought for the right things.

 

People's perceptions of America have certainly changed over the last several decades. There have been other changes as well such as the collapse of the USSR, the liberation of Eastern Europe, the economic rise of East Asia and in particular China, etc.

 

But I do not believe that the US has changed so much in terms of whether we truly are a beacon of freedom or what it is we fight for. I think the wars today in Iraq and Afghanistan are not so different from Iraq 1990, Vietnam, Korea, and even WWII. And I think that all the rhetoric about the Bush Administration having changed how America is and what our goals are is nothing but psychotic leftist lies.

 

We stand for the same things as before and we do things in pretty much the same way as before. It's just the rest of the world has gotten richer, more cynical, and more decadent and is looking for someone to blame for their ennui. It is Europe and the left and the Asian elites that have really changed, not America.

[Fidel]

I totally disagree with you Rogue.

 

If we go back to the original post, Levine suggests that it is the colonization of the world through mass consumption, one person at a time, the drive to force everyone to be alike, the use of sanctions, military power, grant aid and loans to quite literally dismantle cultures across the world and remould them in the image of the US that is troubling everyone.

 

Look at the US led institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO. They basically force countries, through "structural readjustments", to adopt the US economic system.

 

This is often extremely damaging and upsetting for so many people.

 

Under current US policy, we're moving closer and closer to a "Brave New World".

 

This is what people are resisting.

 

And whatever way you look at it, Rogue, the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan are not about bringing peace, democracy and so on. These are wars of occupation.

 

The purpose of the occupation is also to remould these countries so that they too conform to the system most favoured by neo-conservatives.

[Hugh_Hoy]

If we go back to the original post, Levine suggests that it is the colonization of the world through mass consumption, one person at a time, the drive to force everyone to be alike, the use of sanctions, military power, grant aid and loans to quite literally dismantle cultures across the world and remould them in the image of the US that is troubling everyone.

 

"Levine"? Why go back to him? What makes him an authority merely because he wrote a book? "There's a book in everybody". He is one person with an opinion. Sounds a bit like taking a paragraph out of a book by Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter or another Levine and drawing the conclusion that what they say is true and factual.

 

HH

 

[Fidel]

Oh for Fark's sake! KS. You can lock the thread now. Hugh Hoy is here.

 

It was a big mistake to try to have this discussion on here.

 

OK. I'm out boys...