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To: pater tenebrarum who wrote (883)12/13/2001 5:34:10 PM
From: NOW  Respond to of 39344
 
salon.com



To: pater tenebrarum who wrote (883)12/13/2001 10:21:16 PM
From: marynell  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 39344
 
>i congratulate them on this stance, and fervently hope >that their non-government anarcho-capitalist experiment >succeeds!

Excellent. If Somalia continues to improve at this rate, you may want to move there in 1000 years.

>i can very well imagine a world WITHOUT governments.

I assume that you mean a world without large, centralized governments. Can you name a time or place in which the human species has not had a government. Do you believe that government is not natural to higher mammals?

>there would probably be a lot less bloodshed and >oppression if the world were differently organized.

Can you offer a model or a world organized with no government?

>it is in fact colonialism that has produced him. . . . it >would be highly unlikely that Bin Laden and his ilk would >regard us as targets.

Saudi Arabia was a colony of the Ottomans. Britain and the U.S. took the Arabian Penninsula from the Ottomans and gave it to the Saudi family. Then we found their oil for them and produced it for them. Suppose that the West had never arrived, and the Ottomans still ruled the Arabian Penninsula and technolgy had advanced as it always does. Then there would have been anti-Ottoman Bin Ladens, and they would eventually obtain weapons of enormous destructive power, which they would use against the Ottomans. Now, if the Arabs want oil money, then they must have oil. And to have oil, they must have us. If they have us, then they will hate us. If they hate us, then they will kill us.

On the other hand, we could refuse to buy Saudi oil, in which case they would become ever poorer, since their fertility rate is an astonishing 6.5 births per female. As they become poorer, they become even more hateful.

>but many Muslims see this in a different light - they >think we're hypocrites, and they're quite right in that >regard. since if it were REALLY the values of liberty and >democracy we wanted to defend, we wouldn't support a >string of feudal, decidedly undemocratic regimes in >operetta land.

Feudal, undemocratic regimes is all that cental Asia knows. In order to "REALLY" have liberty and democracy in central Asia, you would have to invade it, take all the children from the adults, and reeducate the region. In other words, you would have to implement massive imperialism, which is exactly what the Anglo/Americans have done over much of the world, and with great benefit to those who have been lucky enough to live in the former colonies of the British Empire.

What government would should we support in Afganistan to prove that we are REALLY liberty-lovers?

>in reality, our access to the Mid East's oil reserves >informs our policies toward the region. good from our >point of view, since our life style depends on this oil, >but from the point of view of the populations of these >countries naturally reprehensible.

So should we tear down all of the oil wells that we built, fill the holes with cement, and burn the processing facilities? What then would happen to a region in which the birth rate is 33 per 1000 and the death rate is 7 per 1000?

>but then, i'd rather cast my lot with us than with them, >for obvious reasons.

Since you are a "blame America first" type of libertarian in the tradition of Doug Casey, who is the worst investment advisor ever, I am surprised that you would admit this. Having admitted it, I am nevertheless curious to know what are your "obvious reasons."

> but i have no illusions as to why we're there.

No shit, Sherlock. Do you think that we spend billions of dollars and hundreds of lives to enjoy the sand in the Saudi sun?

>the price of AIDS medicine makes no difference? i disagree >with that. a great deal of the medical help Africans get >is provided by foreign NGO's that depend on donations to >do their work. if they could buy ten times as much AIDS >medication as they can now, they could do a lot more.

Has it ever occured to you that the blame lies with the African barbarians? Perhaps they could stop f-----g like wild animals?

>and i agree that a radical approach may be needed in Africa to defeat the AIDS epidemic.

What would such a radical approach be? Certainly it can not be initiated by the imperialistic West? Perhaps the Africans can consult more witch doctors?