American flame wars or is it the summer hole?

[KXX4493553 at aol.com]

Come on, guys, don't be so silly. I have more and more the impression this 
list is an American kindergarden and you're baking sand cookies.

I think the most important thing is that the best tradition of Anglo-Saxon 
political thinking is more and more lost, the idea of the "Balance of power". 
 I think Mr. Bush and his "think tanks" think the US as the last super-power 
is a kind of Roman Empire, but we all know what happened with the Roman 
Empire.

9/11 was the consequence of incompetence, inability and the competition 
between several "services" who mistrust each other (CIA, FBI). They are no 
"monolith block" (I hope this is the right expression). And, of course, some 
saw this as a very good opportunity to change several things in the country.

The "war on terrorism" has one problem: this is a new kind of terrorism, the 
"terrorism of globalization", and there is no "real" enemy any longer. The 
enemy is invisible and can be everywhere. Al Quaida and Bin Laden are myths, 
pop-idols  and it is no longer important if Bin Laden is still alive or not. 
Bin Laden has become the Che Guevera of the Arab world, and if he is dead 
he's a martyr. Smashing bombs on suicide killers is not very effective. The 
more you provoke "colleteral damages", the more you create new monsters. This 
is also the problem of Mr. Sharon in Israel.

The only way you can fight terrorism in the long run is changing their 
conditions of life. And the secularization of Islam.

Another "colleteral damage" is the abolishing of civil liberties in the name 
of the "war on terrorism". This happens in Europe, too, but the US is the 
"avantgarde" in this development.

Concerning Pynchon: for me the Playboy Interview has not much substance. 
Okay, so what? Pynchon is of course belonging to the "community" of the 
"sixties people", and his books are about the era of the cold war (and the 
pre-conditions of the cold war in GR for example). His books are NOT about 
the neo-liberal era. It doesn't fit together. The situation now you can't 
also compare with "1984". Big Brother is in deed watching you, but the 
neo-liberal era you can more compare with Manchester capitalism. The question 
is what to do with all the superfluous people capitalism doesn't need any 
longer for its production process (80 % of mankind as we know). And for this 
nobody has an answer, Pynchon included

kwp
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