I've just started reading the book Escaping Plato's Cave, How America's Blindness To The Rest Of The World Threatens Our Survival...the author is Mort Rosenblum.

Chapter 3 is entitled Why Do "They" Hate Us?

In this chapter, Rosenblum takes a paragraph to mention the speech given by Harold Pinter in acceptance of his 2005 Nobel Prize.

Having no memory of Pinter, I looked the speech up and discovered this...

Part 1...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHAMjeGf3MI

Part 2...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlkKuw-sCFY&feature=related

Part 3...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKb9e8XgPSg&feature=related

Part 4...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rMi5NDde0s&feature=related

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I do not fight fascists because I think I can win.
I fight them because they are fascists.
Chris Hedges

A riot is the language of the unheard. -Martin Luther King, Jr.

I'm pretty sure that people hate us for many reasons. The biggest being illiteracy. If the Muslim world would educate its women we'd eliminate reasons for people to hate. They'd be able to take care of themselves and improve their own lives without waiting for handouts from other countries. check out the link in my sig. Greg mortenson is dealing with the problem 1 school at a time. Making a difference it the poorest places on Earth is where we need to start. Believe it or not, a village can get a school build for $12,000 including labor. A teacher costs about $100/Year. I don't want to spell out the whole book for you but the problems are quite easy to remedy.

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

Escaping Plato's Cave, How America's Blindness To The Rest Of The World Threatens Our Survival

Ahhh ... but the cave can *seem* so comfortable at times ... and how can the world blame us ... if our eyes are so tightly closed that we can't see a thing?

Too many American's are just so busy and care so much about Budweiser, Mom, and Apple Pie that they just don't have the time to 'think' much about what our country is doing, or why.

And too many others, like me, have seen too much and have said or done too little. So I've decided that "If you see something say something!" makes a lot of sense. All in the most patriotic way that I can imagine. Our survival depends on our success in identifying and correcting some of the problems that we have created here and around the world.

I found this propaganda quite enlightening as well, speaking of our 'peace with honor' policy in Viet Nam and other foreign policies.

Thanks for posting the Harold Pinter links. They were new to me as well.

Thanks for that Phil. My wife isn't pleased because I'm supposed to be installing the new dishwasher right now. I opened the link expecting something that would be about 5 minutes in duration. LOL

This link will be quite an eye opener to those who will actually open their eyes.
Kissinger is the product of US corporate imperialism. He is the lesson everyone should be aware of when they allow themselves to blindly serve power.

Every aspect of life brings us into contact with people like Kissinger. These are people so convinced they are right that they will use lies and deceit to make their case.
Never once thinking that perhaps, by having to use lies, they may not be correct.

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I do not fight fascists because I think I can win.
I fight them because they are fascists.
Chris Hedges

A riot is the language of the unheard. -Martin Luther King, Jr.

Every aspect of life brings us into contact with people like Kissinger. These are people so convinced they are right that they will use lies and deceit to make their case.
Never once thinking that perhaps, by having to use lies, they may not be correct.

Dude, it's like you've visited my workplace or something. :)

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I found this propaganda quite enlightening as well, speaking of our 'peace with honor' policy in Viet Nam and other foreign policies.

I should have pointed out that this 'propaganda' was presented as a movie titled "The Trials of Henry Kissinger (2002)" and I was quite surprised to see it available online in its entirety. I had first noticed it a few weeks earlier in NetFlix's instantly available listings.

Near the end of the movie after about an hour and seventeen minutes, Kissinger spoke volumes in his own defense:

"The average person thinks that morality can be applied as directly to the conduct of states to each other as it can to human relations. That is not always the case because sometimes statesmen have to choose among evils."

I think it is time [again] for the citizens of the world to step out of our caves to help create more reasonable alternatives for the leaders we choose. In short, I do not for an instant believe that our problems are all the fault of our leaders or many failed systems of belief or 'evil' actions. What we are seeing today is the result of generation upon generation of neglect and resigned acceptance of worldly 'evil' by the majority of humanity.

In the words of Dylan, "The Times They Are A-changin' (1964)" [again] yet, they still seem similar to the days when Plato warned us about the Caves we often choose to live in. Incidently, the Dylan link above is one of the worst renditions of that song I've ever seen & heard ... but, it is a reminder ( to me ) that if Dylan can write, sing, and make a subtle difference in the world ... then anyone can, even me.

Lyrics

For nearly a century now the US has had a messianic complex. It looks at the world and thinks about how to improve it by making them into good Americans.

Those Muslim countries (a few in the middle east without enough teachers to do the job) must start educating their women like we did in 1900. Let me 'splain something to you boys and girls. The deadliest species to ever walk the earth is a killer ape and half of them are female. Women are the greater of the two as protectors and preservers of the status quo. When women start wanting an education they will demand it an get it. The entire last century of women's rights in the West has not a damned thing to do with men giving a thing but with women taking the thing. Suffragettes were arrested until the mayor's wife became a suffragette.

That is the way society works. There is not a single thing that happened in the civil rights days of the 50s and 60s that could not have happened decades earlier.

Unfortunately messianic America believes democracy blossoms from the barrel of a gun.

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Unvarnished
Haaretz
Jerusalem Post
The origin of the Yahweh Cult

American Imperialism didn't really get started until the post WWII years.

Dont get me wrong Teddy Roosevelt did a bit of land grabbing after the Spanish American war. but after that we had a good 40 years of isolationism. do think we are financially becoming isolated again as a country. our businesses are flowing into foreign nations with their goods but the money and good will of the country is being hindered once again by the very companies that are expanding into foreign countries. By avoiding and manipulating the countries tax code Corporations have made it their business to avoid paying taxes and making sure they get every dollar they can from the consumers of their goods.

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope