Subject: [fem-women2000 710] Les Penelopes Statement - How a barbarism can hide another one
From: lalamaziwa <lalamaziwa@jca.apc.org>
Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 23:25:40 +0900
Seq: 710
---------------- Original message follows ---------------- From: palmieri@mire.net Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 22:57:13 +0100 Subject: Les Penelopes statement - Une barbarie peut en cacher une autre -- Les Penelopes http://www.penelopes.org How a barbarism can hide another one Thousands of dead under ruins, entire populations frightened. Enough is enough! No! To assert that the USA are strongly responsible for this tragedy is no basic anti-americanism. Isn't the dreadful attack hurting the heart of the American empire the fruit of the American methods themselves? Aren't we witnessing one of these military assaults cherished by the American commandment staff? War has been declared, we are told. It's nothing new! The twin towers prisoners are not the first victims of the barbarism, and barbarism has not a single face called terrorism. Thousands of dead, daily and worlwide, are victims of structural adjustment plans and debts. How much does blood cost? Is American blood more expensive than Palestinian, Algerian, Congolese, Mexican or Filipino blood, in financial, human and social terms? Today the media are druming that "we are all American". Which "we" are we talking about? We, the Western people? We, the wealthy countries inhabitants? Those countries, G8 countries, are the same which sell weapons to the South, which support and implement there dictatorships without taking care of the peoples' sufferings. We don't back these policies at all but we fight them for a long time now. During these dramatic times words and images are of such weight. The US appear to be the leaders of the "free world". But what kind of democracy are we talking about? A democracy using death penalty? A democracy implementing a poor/rich apartheid? Does mankind history disappear under the ruins of the World Trade Center, with its doubts, its dreams and its utopia? Israeli "democracy" becomes legitimate and Palestinian "terrorism" accused. How can we point out that Middle East populations are responsible of this horror? Such a confusion between populations and fundamentalist movements/governments carries fear and danger. Only a few days after the failure of the international conference against racism, if Israel and the US were willing to feed hatred against an hostile crowd of Muslims, so called "Arabs", they couldn't have imagined a better way. People throughout the world are worried. They wait for retaliation. Nonetheless not all American citizens do follow George W. Bush and his administration, as opposed to polls. Not all of them do favour multinational firms despotism, suicidal overexploitation of natural resources and disparition of social rules. Some of them, instead of a "revenge", do question the US foreign policy and those of the Western world. They call for sharing wealth with more equity and for an international solidarity. We, Les Penelopes, join fully these Americans. _________________________________________________________________________ fem-Women2000@jca.apc.org for Women 2000, UN Special Session on Beijing+5 Searcheable Archive http://www.jca.apc.org/fem/news/women2000/index.shtml visit fem-net HomePage for other mailing lists http://www.jca.apc.org/fem