Filmmaking for peace...

[Alex]

Imagine for a moment you were a crack dealer, now read back your post, and substitute the word crack for Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Ultimately, we use 25% of the world's resources in America, but we only have 5% of the world's population...so our way of life CANNOT be followed everywhere else in the world.

And I agree, it is time to shoot some film.

------------------
Alex

[Matt Pacini]

Listen, all this arguing about the "evil" spreading of American capitalism comes from a basic misunderstanding of the concept on the part of third world countries:

These people are living as they have for thousands of years, barely surviving in harsh physical and political situations, but all of a sudden, they see glimpes of the wealth and advances that western society enjoys, along with better healthcare, etc., and they are jealous.

So they complain about it, and ask us to help their situation.
Well, guess what?
We are more than happy to share the ideals and concepts that will help a people become better off like we are: hard work and enginuity, and all the other things that make a capitalistic society work.

Well, that's not what they want. They just want us to send them the cash, and expect nothing in return!
"Give us the goodies, don't make us "be western".
So they bitch (just like some of you) that we are trying to Americanize them, and why won't we just help them, etc. etc,.
So they take over our businesses that we have built in their countries, that provide jobs for them, or just blow them up because they're evil "American symbols" like the KFC in Pakistan. (I'm sure the workers there are thrilled now that they can't work there anymore and feed their families.).
Well money doesn't just grow on trees over here, it's come from hard work and enterprise, and they just do not get it at all.
I've known people from all over the world, and had in-depth discussions with many friends from the former Soviet Union, and they said they were shocked when they got here, because they thought it was going to be just like home: the government giving you stuff, but here, you would get more stuff!
They soon found out, that everyone has to work hard, try to do things better, etc.
And Alex, these evil corporations are merely providing a product that people are buying, including yourself.
Do you want some huge government agency to provide all of our products and services so corporations won't victimize us?
Like the governemnt doesn't have it's own form of exploitation of it's "customers".
Spend the afternoon in the DMV, if you want to get a taste of how it is when corporations are not the ones providing the products.

Matt Pacini

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[Alex]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Courier, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Matt Pacini:
Listen, all this arguing about the "evil" spreading of American capitalism comes from a basic misunderstanding of the concept on the part of third world countries:

These people are living as they have for thousands of years, barely surviving in harsh physical and political situations, but all of a sudden, they see glimpes of the wealth and advances that western society enjoys, along with better healthcare, etc., and they are jealous.

Matt Pacini
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The key word is "glimpses". Are they glimpses, or the first inroads by Western Civilization to increase revenue in foreign countries where we are not welcome because inevitably, we permantly change their culture.

------------------
Alex

[This message has been edited by Alex (edited October 14, 2001).]

[redrice]

hi roger!

"The same with Saddam. He's a fat man in a country of starving people. Yet, to hear him tell it, that's OUR fault."

it is our fault as well as his: we completely destroyed the infrastructure of irak - completely and utterly. and then we prevented the regime from importing lots of the stuff they need to rebuild the country, in terms of providing basic public hygeine, on the grounds that it is 'dual use', i.e. because soldiers need clean water and basic medicines, civilians cannot have them either.

saddam has a lot of money, and has benefited enormously from the situation: but even if he spent all the money he has which has not been frozen, he would not be able to buy the basic supplies he needs to prevent his people dying, because we have placed an embargo on them.

maybe fewer people would have died: but the numbers would still be in the hundreds of thousands. we are co-responsible. it is not, him or us. we are doing this to the iraki people together.

when a whole string of senior career buraeucrats resign on a matter of principle, then i think that's a sign that something is seriously wrong.

"If the terrorists had no other means to help their people than to strike out at their repressors, then I would say they have a legitimate beef. However, Osama not only has the financial means to help make his country prosperous though non violent ways, he has the intelligence and influence to make a difference. The fact that he CHOOSES a more violent path is what makes him no different from any other criminal, in my book."

this is just not true. on the one hand, most of his assets have been frozen, so he has no access to his wealth. on the other hand, the saudi regime is one of the most oppresive in the world, and the main reason it has not been violently overthrown is because we continue to fund them, by buying the oil they have stolen from their people, and by providing them with arms, so that they can continue to arrest, torture and murder dissidents, while they themselves live like mafiosi. which is what they are.

to pretend that we are against organised crime, while we continue to deal with the middle eastern leaders as friends - 'moderate, sensible Arabs" as tony blair recently called them - is simply ridiculous.

"...their "silly little private ambitions" obviously have no merit or they would have the majority of the Muslim world praising them instead of condemning them"

most muslims in the street that i have met despise terrorists for their violence, yet admire them for standing up to the united states, which is perceived as supporting regimes which oppress them, - not only israel, but most of the regimes in the region. this kind of schizophrenia just goes with the territory.

hi dominic:

"Look around the world , this concept of a morality based upon physical force is precisely why the world is a twisted mess."

i agree entirely - i just disagree with your interpretation of who is doing the initiation.

roger, again:

"The same freedom that lets you CHOOSE to be an editor instead of a dirt farmer."

i'm not sure people really have that choice. in those parts of the world were subsistence farming is still a viable choice, because there are real communities to provide mutual support networks, and real traditions so that people can learn how to farm so as to get the best from the land, those who want to remain on the land are subjected to a combination of terror and bribery to make them stop. and in those parts of the world in which we are 'free' to make that choice - if we have the money to buy land, which few people in europe do - the infrastructure which would make a small-scale local rural community viable is just not there any more, because it has been torn up.

there's more to freedom of choice than absence of coercion. if i lock you in a video store, then tell you you're free to eat anything you like, i'm not really giving you much of a choice, am i?

hi digvid:

i understand the point you want to make about the history of palestine/israel, and there's just one aspect of that i want to comment on:

"1880 - sparsely populated area"

i've read a lot of the 19th century accounts by european travellers to palestine. they rest on the same prejudices which can be found in any pre-colonial account of lands to be conquered - i.e., there are not many people, and the ones that are there are not doing much to make the land productive.

after europe had been through the enclosures and the agricultural revolution, we lost the ability to see other forms of agriculture, and the other forms of economic and social organisation that go with them. this 'blindness' was the pre-condition for enrolling well-meaning people in what turned out to be missions of destruction and extermination. i say that thinking of the west indies, not of palestine. but the mindset which made each of these colonisations possible was the same, even if the way in which they were conducted, and the resistance they met with, were different.

"Despite claims to the contrary, America is not "propping up" any regime in the Middle-East. There is currently no government in any Middle-Eastern country that was installed by the United States."

the cia were instrumental in bringing the Baath party to power in Irak back in 1963, while without the assistance of the UK and the US, the house of saud would certainly not have survived this long.

egypt is the largest recipient of US aid after israel: they spend most of it on police and army to keep the people down. without that money, the government of mubarak would probably have been overthrown during the gulf war.

but these are just details: the real issue is that if the West did not have such a thirst for other people's natural resources, in particular oil, the power politics and interests would simply not be in place for local tyrants to play us off one against the other, and gain our support for their sordid little schemes. it is our desire to get what they have on the cheap which tilts the balance in their favour, and against the people and democracy.

hi again digvid:

"Are you saying that our attacks on Afghanistan have something to do with our energy policy???"

of course: most of the world's known untapped natural resources are in central asia, and afghanistant is in a crucial strategic location. but that's not the real problem. the real problem is that if there were democratic governments in the middle east, they would charge the US a lot more for oil, because they would want to build hospitals and roads with the income, and not just buy private jets and porn videos and flamethrowers, like the current gang. and if the price of oil rose substantially, the US would no longer be a super power - it would be just another country, like portugal, or maybe new zealand. and it is the fact that this is intolerable to the US leadership - even if many americans would be quite happy with it, if they thought about it - which is the cause of much of what is currently wrong with the world. (of course, we europeans are no better - we're just poorer and less extraverted).

"Please pardon me if I seem disrespectful, but I think we are being dangerously naive if we think for one moment that we can reason with or have peace with bin Laden or like-minded people."

the taliban have been bending over backwards (behind the scenes - you won't see this on CNN) for an accommodation with the US for the last 2 years, and the US has behaved exactly as they have towards irak: every time the taliban give the administration what they want, the administration shifts the goal posts, and refuses to recognise what they have done.

and as for your aside, roger: "I am all for loving anyone that doesn't want to kill me on sight":

i don't think for a minute that bin laden is the master criminal the media make him out to be - his network is too diffuse and too decentralised for that to make any sense. he's more like the madeline albright of fundamentalism, than the colin powell or the george bush. but supposing that he were to get what he wanted, then i think he would have quite enough on his plate without taking pot shots at random americans.

stil i'm just glad that your leaders have such wonderfully double standards - otherwise, you might have been supporting spain in bombing raids on london when we refused to extradite pinochet - a man with far more blood on his hands than osama bin laden. but then, i guess the fact that he talked about free markets while he murdered people makes him so much less threatening?...

roger, again:

"The countries that bitch about living in dirt NOW lived in dirt for thousands of years BEFORE there was any such thing as the United States and, certainly, long before the concept of "the west" was ever coined."

no, that's not true - at least, not in the sense you seem to mean. of course, the US didn't invent the modern world. but your so-called 'multinational' companies are now the main force driving the worlwide onslaught on people who 'live in dirt'. before the West generated the concept, those people were farmers and hunters, and where they were free from the interference of others' greed and power, enjoyed lives of extraordinary richness, when compared to our own. that's why we have, as a whole, not just destroyed such societies, but generally been forced to lie about them after they were gone.

to talk about other civilisations in such dismissive terms is not just a detail: it's the ROOT of the problem.

"if you choose to live on a mountain and CAN'T provide for your family, is it the fault of the west for achieving where you have failed?"

yes it is, if we in the west only 'achieved' by taking your land, your oil, your rubber; by burning down your villages and flooding your valleys; and by supporting your local warlords and turning them into business tycoons, who took your land from you, and made you beg for work, because now you had to buy what before you could make for yourself.

just read the world bank report: it's still happening, in india, in africa, etc etc.

all good wishes,

peter



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[MovieStuff]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Courier, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by redrice:

Roger wrote:
"The same with Saddam. He's a fat man in a country of starving people. Yet, to hear him tell it, that's OUR fault."

Peter replied:

Saddam has a lot of money, and has benefited enormously from the situation: but even if he spent all the money he has which has not been frozen, he would not be able to buy the basic supplies he needs to prevent his people dying, because we have placed an embargo on them.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

With all due respect, Peter, you casually leave out the most important point here: WHY were Saddam's assets frozen and WHY is there an embargo? Just for us to be mean? Hell no! He was using his resources to support terrorism across the globe. If here were to fold camp and leave, stop supporting terrorism OR use his considerable wealth as a benevolent benefactor for his people, then the assets would not need to be frozen and the embargo would be lifted. And, by the way, these "punishments" were enforced INSTEAD of bombing the crap out of his country. Again, despite all the frozen assets and the embargoes, he doesn't seem to be losing weight as fast as his people do.


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Courier, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by redrice:

Roger wrote:
"If the terrorists had no other means to help their people than to strike out at their repressors, then I would say they have a legitimate beef. However, Osama not only has the financial means to help make his country prosperous though non violent ways, he has the intelligence and influence to make a difference. The fact that he CHOOSES a more violent path is what makes him no different from any other criminal, in my book."

Peter replied:

This is just not true. on the one hand, most of his assets have been frozen, so he has no access to his wealth. on the other hand, the saudi regime is one of the most oppresive in the world, and the main reason it has not been violently overthrown is because we continue to fund them, by buying the oil they have stolen from their people, and by providing them with arms, so that they can continue to arrest, torture and murder dissidents, while they themselves live like mafiosi. which is what they are.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well, again, you've got the cart before the horse as far as the concept of frozen assets goes. His assets weren't frozen just for the hell of it on a whim, you know? He was using his money to fund terrorism instead of building schools and businesses and providing jobs. No matter how you slice it, he CHOSE to be a criminal. The infidels didn't make him one.

Beyond that, you are confusing the ethics of companies with national policy. It is not the job of the west to convert entire nations over to Christianity, Judiasm or Muslim. How they conduct their business with their money and their people is their business. If they embrace a religion that they also use to govern their people, that's their business. If they fail as a society for doing so, that's also their business. But, in the end, their people must live with the decisions made by their leaders or get rid of them, as we did with the British long ago. If we can do it in a short 200 years, there's nothing that these people can't do, as well.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Courier, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by redrice:

Roger wrote: "I am all for loving anyone that doesn't want to kill me on sight"

Peter replied:
i don't think for a minute that bin laden is the master criminal the media make him out to be - his network is too diffuse and too decentralised for that to make any sense.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Gee, Peter, looking at the big hole in the ground where the WTC used to be, I sure am glad Osama isn't very organized. How comforting.

Roger

[redrice]

hi roger:

"No matter how you slice it, he CHOSE to be a criminal. The infidels didn't make him one."

i cant believe you said that.

1. he was trained and funded by the CIA, as even the CIA admit.

2. your conception of choice suggests to me you have no idea what it might be like to live in a police state. bin laden isnt interested, as far as we know, in charitable works; his original aim was to overthrow the government of saudi arabia. i think that that, in itself, is a perfectly reasonable aim.

if the US had helped him do that, instead of helping him fight the soviets, afghanistan might today have several million more inhabitants, and the WTC might never have been bombed and all those people killed on september 11.

"It is not the job of the west to convert entire nations over to Christianity, Judiasm or Muslim. How they conduct their business with their money and their people is their business."

how i wish that was true. but you must know that the rest of the world sees US national policy as ENTIRELY subordinated to US business interests, and the US as representing the power of money, not freedom and human rights.

so either the rest of the world is terminally stupid, or there is something your government is not telling you.

stay well,

peter

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[redrice]

roger (also):

"With all due respect, Peter, you casually leave out the most important point here: WHY were Saddam's assets frozen and WHY is there an embargo?"

i don't see why this is the most important point. we are punishing a whole people for the actions of one man and the small gang of thugs around him. where is the justice in that? how does that make us any different from saddam himself, or ghadaffi, or bin laden?

peter

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[Dominic3]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by redrice:
but your so-called 'multinational' companies are now the main force driving the worlwide onslaught on people who 'live in dirt'. before the West generated the concept, those people were farmers and hunters, and where they were free from the interference of others' greed and power, enjoyed lives of extraordinary richness, when compared to our own. that's why we have, as a whole, not just destroyed such societies, but generally been forced to lie about them after they were gone".

Peter, I fear your motive when you say that ,"they were free from the interference of others' greed and power, enjoyed lives of extraordinary richness" - this is utter nonsence. The civilisation you are defending was primitive collectivism and mysticism - there was no legal system defending human rights, no science, no reason etc., and as far as a life of "richness" is concerend they lived in poverty and disease - just compare their life expectancy figures with that of the west after the industrial revolution.

I have a solution for you Peter, why don't all the multi-national companies that you despise just stop creating anymore wealth and jobs for these nations you defend which have up until now been subsidised in wealth, science, technology, medicine and industrial development - then we will see how well these nations fair on there own living in a style of "extraordinary richness" that you so admire. No one is stopping you from setting up a multi- national corporation that creates huge amounts of wealth and jobs instead of criticisng those that do create the wealth in this world.

It sounds to me as though you want all the benefits of free market capitalism but without the cause. Intellectual freedom can not exist without political freedom, political freedom can not exists without economic freedom, a free mind and a free market are corollaries.

[redrice]

hi dominic:

"The civilistaion you are defending was primitive collectivsim and mysticism - there was no legal system defending human rights, no science, no reason and as far as a life of "richness" is concerend they lived in poverty and disease - just compare their life expectancy figures with that of the west after the industrial revolution."

i quite like the idea of primitive collectivism and mysticism: sounds like some of my favourite super 8 films....:-).

however, i think the rest of your sentence just betrays your utter ignorance of the past, and of the world outside the West. i've lived and worked in islamic societies, and in societies in which people had no money, where all labour was undertaken by hand, where the major activity was growing food for oneself and one's neighbours, and which would have rated in the bottom 2% of the UN's world poverty league.

i've seen lots of poverty in large cities, in europe as well as in the third world; but i've never seen anything i would call poverty in any rural society where people still have access to land and are able to provide for themselves.

i grant you, we have made huge progress with reducing infant mortality rates. but i think most of modern medicine is just an expensive and elaborate (primitive? mystical?) ritual which preys upon our fear of death (life expectancy rates at age 8 haven't actually changed at all in the last 100 years). and i also think you are confusing technological progress with spiritual progress.

i think people are free when they can provide for themselves, and don't depend upon faceless, anonymous forces, whether it is the State that you hate so much, or some corporation with its headquarters on the other side of the world, or a stock market trader in bangkok or new york, in order to get enough to eat that night for their families.

i also think people are more responsible when they draw only on the resources which they have to hand, and don't get accustomed to a way of life which depends upon them living off other people's natural capital. so i think mutual responsibility and freedom generally go together, and more of one means more of the other, whereas you seem to think they are polar opposites.

perhaps we just have very different experiences of life?

stay well,

peter



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[MovieStuff]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Courier, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by redrice:

Roger wrote:
"No matter how you slice it, he CHOSE to be a criminal. The infidels didn't make him one."

Peter replied:
1. he was trained and funded by the CIA, as even the CIA admit.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

So what's your point? That all CIA agents are criminals? They may have trained him, but what he does with that training is the difference you ignore. There are no doubt porno movies shot in Super 8. I guess that means all who have training in shooting Super 8 are creaters of pornography? Your connection of the dots is a bit weak, Peter. Again, Osama is nothing more than a run of the mill criminal that happens to have money to back him. Take that money away and he's just a dirty, stinky guy with a chip on his shoulder and a fetish for machine guns. He has the means to do something positive without violence and he chooses violence. There is no amount of spin that you can do to justify that decision.


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Courier, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by redrice:

2. your conception of choice suggests to me you have no idea what it might be like to live in a police state.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Again, what's your point? I don't know what it's like to wear women's underwear, either. Do you? Are you suggesting that Osama was forced to be a criminal? Are you suggesting that commiting acts of terrorism is the only tool available for one of the richest men in the world to help his people? Again, what he chose to do with his considerable wealth and influence is the difference. He isn't some destitute, down on his luck junky robbing someone because he's desperate and feels he has no choice. He has nothing BUT choices and he chooses violence and agression over progress, every time he's given a chance.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Courier, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by redrice:

bin laden isnt interested, as far as we know, in charitable works; his original aim was to overthrow the government of saudi arabia. i think that that, in itself, is a perfectly reasonable aim.

if the US had helped him do that, instead of helping him fight the soviets, afghanistan might today have several million more inhabitants, and the WTC might never have been bombed and all those people killed on september 11.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Lots of 'maybes' there, Peter. The only thing that I know for sure is that he attacked a non-military target specifically to take out as many innocent 'infidels' as he possibly could. Besides, as I said before, at some point in time you have to just accept your losses and say,"This is what we have to work with. Now, let's move forward in a productive manner and join the rest of the civilized world." Osama and his people have always had that as an option. Again, a choice was made for a more violent and agressive path.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Courier, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by redrice:

Roger wrote:
"It is not the job of the west to convert entire nations over to Christianity, Judiasm or Muslim. How they conduct their business with their money and their people is their business."

Peter replied:
how i wish that was true. but you must know that the rest of the world sees US national policy as ENTIRELY subordinated to US business interests, and the US as representing the power of money, not freedom and human rights.

so either the rest of the world is terminally stupid, or there is something your government is not telling you.

stay well,

peter
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

How can I possibly stay well, Peter? I obviously live in a country that is so incredibly corrupted due to business and politics that you find it oppressive. Of course there are things that our government isn't telling us. What, we are the ONLY country on the face of the earth with governments that are concerned about business interests and a healthy economy and have things they consider vital to national security? I suppose the goverment of Belgium tells its citizens every little secret.

How the rest of an ungrateful world views the U.S. is a big part of the problem, in my book. These countries want the benefits of US intervention, assistance and technology but deny us the right to get pissed off and protect our own interests when threatened. In short, they want their cake and eat it, too. And, make no mistake, this goes for Israel and Arabs alike.

I think the only thing you and I might agree on is that I would like to see the U.S. just pull out of all other countries and let them duke it out on their own. THEN we'll see how things stand, economy wise. It doesn't need to be this complicated.

Roger