One problem is that, like the French, the U.S. is always sticking its fingers where they don't belong. It's one thing for them to offer to help someone, but to offer that and then say, "We'll help you do it OUR way, but otherwise, to hell with you ..." creates ill will. Likewise, when our missionaries go to countries where there's an established religion, and, in some cases, a STATE religion, and then try to sell their own bill of goods, it doesn't make folks like to accept U.S. aid. If our way of doing things were so much better than that of other cultures, we wouldn't have to give it the hard sell. People would flock to us to find out how we do it. That's not happening. True, Mexicans are coming here to get our dollars, and, true, their president wants us to let them, so they can ship the dollars back to Mexico where they can use 'em without the strings attached that come with government aid. I've only talked to a very few Palestinians, but I can tell you for sure that they agree on one thing. That's that the land they once called Palestine was stolen from them by the winners after WW-II and simply given to a competing cultural group, who then began to bully and exploit them. Now, I'm not sure what really happened, but it's clear that this group sees things that way. The U.S. had interests to defend in the middle east during the "cold war" and it's likely the U.S. oil interests see that need as ongoing. With Dubya's orientation, it's likely he sees things that way too. The recent Israeli treatment of the Palestinians, and their handling of the "peace process" does seem, to me at least, more reminiscent of the way the Nazis went about treating conquered people than the way one would hope a purportedly civilized group would treat another, even a competing one. If we treated the illegal Mexican/Latin immigrants the way the Israelis treat the Palestinians, there would be a cry of outrage from the farthest reaches of the civilized world. Why that doesn't happen with respect to the Israelis is a mystery. The constant U.S. meddling in the internal affairs of other nations, regardless of how warranted by the values of our own culture, is an irritant to other nations, and, frankly, should stop. I think the enormous amounts of foreign aid given to Israel, which is one of our most predatory and unethical adversaries in the high-tech industry, should stop too, until they begin to embrace the same values that we insist other recipients of U.S. foreign aid are forced, by purse-string, to accept. Until U.S. policies take on a more balanced proportion, the smaller nations of the world will have to deal with the U.S. as one might when wrestling with a gorilla . . . Set his nuts on fire . . . It's not nice, but, from their prespective, it's necessary. Now, none of this justifies the barbaric acts of the probably small group that hijacked those airliners and subsequently used them as weapons of terror, but it might explain, just a little bit, the things we saw on the tube in the form of those street celebrations in Palestine and elsewhere. Nobody likes a bully that goes around telling folks, "No, no, no ... you're doing it wrong. What you ought to do is ..." Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Douglas Quebbeman" <dhquebbeman(a)theestopinalgroup.com> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2001 10:32 AM Subject: RE: OT: World Trade crash...