From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sat Oct 09 2004 - 14:17:18 BST
Hi DM,
> I am oppressed too. But I suspect if we divided the
> Earth's resources by the number of people you and
> me would be sitting quite near the top -score wise.
Ever wonder why that is so? Maybe freedom and capitalism had something to
do with it.
> Now people can get pretty
> misled, and for me violence is a crap way to try and
> sort problems out if there is any other alternative and
> usually there is (we should try dropping more books and radios
> than bombs for instance), but just maybe, I say to myself,
> if someone is strapping a bomb to themselves, someone
> else has really been backing them into a corner.
I can't imagine any "corner" that would justify the act of a suicide
bomber.
> There are other sorts of oppression
> as you hint at. Inequality is always oppression unless we commonly
> agree it is fair.
Inequality is oppression? That's a new one on me. I don't feel oppressed
by Bill Gates or Theresa Kerry.
> We lack this common agreement these days because
> the world is a diverse place but now more so than before it is a single
> living space. We need to reconstruct our solidarity. Where we are subject
> to the inequality that we have commonly accepted. It begins with something
> like accepting a common law because most of us reject rule by might is
> right. Its always kind of hard to persuade those that are currently in
> possession of might. For me terrorism is incapable of overcoming
> oppression, but I can't help thinking that behind such hopeless and
> destructive activity there is genuine oppression.I suggest, such is
> conscience. We need real international law as a way forward. We may always
> be oppressed, such is civilisation if it survives, we have to put up with
> other people and all the demands they put on us, but the hope is to have as
> little oppression as we can, is that not the highest goal of civilisation?
> It is what makes individuality possible. A place where we can agree to
> disagree and not a place where we fight it out to the death.
Your argument seems to boil down to inequality causes terrorism, and that
if we just would redistribute wealth throughout the world under some sort
of grand socialist scheme, all would be well. If that's not what you have
in mind, I'm at a loss to understand what your plan for invoking
"international law" would entail. Perhaps you will further explain.
Platt
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