NP - Propaganda (formerly Ashcroft to Pursue Suicide Doctors)

[JBFRAME at aol.com]

In a message dated 11/08/2001 1:16:48 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
lycidas2 at earthlink.net writes:


> You can turn to CNN for the unvarnished truth. I guess that's where you
> got the idea that General Musharraf is our good friend in the area. Did
> this organization ever publish a paper on the opium trade in India?
> Larger,  licit and illicit, than both Pakistan's and Afghanistan's. 
> 
> It's a very sad situation. Two very poor nations in debt up to their eye
> balls. 
> Pakistan spends half of its money on debt service and around 3.5% of GDP
> (about equal to what the USA spends) on defense. India spends less. 
> They did not get into the red by building nukes or buying weapons or
> even by failing to end their protracted and vicious war. Of course
> spending money on weapons when you are so poor is a sin and a crime, but
> the CIA and the USA, while not innocent in all this, is not responsible
> for the poverty and addiction and debt in these nations.
> 
> 

I was, of course, being completely ironic when I said you can turn to CNN for 
the "unvarnished truth."  Sorry, the truth is, there is no truth.  South Asia 
Analysis Group is just as much into their agenda as CNN, which is basically a 
mouthpiece for the USA's coalition.  And, yes, they lie & distort the facts, 
just like CNN.  I agree that both India & Pakistan are ripping off their 
people, but they have a mini Cold War going, which is a very expensive deal.  
The USA also spent astronomical sums on weapons during its cold war, allowing 
much suffering (I must say, of course not as much suffering, but too much in 
the context of the richest nation on earth).  Now I know there are objections 
to the foregoing.  Our motive are purer -- It was really the Soviets' fault, 
etc. ad infinitum.  I concede all this.  It has little weight in the great 
scheme of things.  I really believe that while we do have a higher standard 
of living materially, there is a lot of hypocrisy involved.  Most of us are 
middle class people of European extraction.  For those of African, 
Latin-American & Native American, things are a lot closer to what we would 
call third world standards.  But then, we all know this.  
While not fully responsible for the mess in South Asia, the USA (with all its 
agencies) does bear its own responsibility for manipulating & exacerbating 
the tensions already existing, again showing incredible hypocrisy in its 
insistance on all others obeying the rules we freely ignore when it suits our 
purposes.  Of course all the other nations do this too, its just that they 
don't seem to take the high moral tone constantly. 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20011109/9503ce87/attachment.html>