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.


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