I don't post on XMCA; I lurk, but you have all enticed me out of the shadows
on this issue. This is a bit of a ramble too.
First, hordes of Americans are not about to go on a rampage or terror
against Arab-American or Islamic neighbors. Yeah, some idiots will, most
likely cause they lack another channel such as XMCA to discuss their
feelings. And frankly, if my daughter or son or husband or mother were in
the WTC, I might be inclined to do that too. Well, no, of course not. The
thing I find most disturbing in the US and Western response is the rise of
'the other' ... lots of West vs. Middle East... lots of good vs. evil...
lots of nationalism. I have not put a flag outside my house and don't want
to do so, except on the 4th of July as a decoration. I find the whole notion
of flag waving at this time appalling.
Pardon my escape from AT, but I think that, as a grand community of
practice, Capitalism misunderstands the consequences of hoarding knowledge
(which I take to be the coin of the realm) and instead shares only 'help,'
often in the form of market products. (jees, I hope it only misunderstands
and doesn't come from a deeper meaner intentionality.) The oppression of
the West is exactly this, imho. We don't export knowledge, just products of
knowledge. This is the marginalization that is keeping folks down (and it's
happening inside the West as well as outside it.) It's cruelly ironic,
indicative, and sad that in order to hijack a plane as pilots, the
terrorists had to come reside in the US for several months while they
attended pilot school here in the USA. How they must have loathed that.
IMHO, assuming he is working for 'his people,' Bin Laden would do better to
hijack corporate scientists and use his millions to set up pharmaceutical
companies and agribusiness owned and operated by nationals to solve local
crises in food and medical production based on knowledge bought or
stolen/liberated from the West. While empowering locally, such enterprises
could also export. India's doing considerably better for its self and a
growing number of its citizens by supporting a booming programming and
software development infrastructure which draws outside money.
Rather than responding to the arms and armies aspect of this moment, we
should try working the another side of the problem: access to knowledge.
imho, from a lurker,
Linda P.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Oct 10 2001 - 15:49:15 PDT