The more intensive thinking about the topic of „September 11^th” had some positive side effects. For example, I received e-mails from people I haven’t talked to for quite a long time. Furthermore, you raise topics which have been in the back of your head all the time, but the project at work was more important or the movie at the cinema more interesting.

Secondary, I sort of stirred up a hornet’s nest of topics, which I was aware of though but I’ve never really thought about them properly - very often due to shortage of time, but mostly due to a lack of information. In this context I’d like to recommend again the web page of Mathias Bröckers (www.broeckers.com resp. „The WTC Conspiracy“-serial http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/special/wtc/default.html – only in German, sorry). A book has been recently published from the German publishing house „Zweitausendeins“ (“2001”). I’d also like to emphasise that I won’t get any commission for that J Everything on one’s own free will – but those who want to do something good to themselves should check it out.

Furthermore, I’d also like to mention another interesting side effect when dealing with the „important things“ of this time. I assume, the first days I went through the same experiences as the majority of those who read these e-mails and/or search for more information on the Internet. At the beginning it’s like reading a good whodunit, but actually one doesn’t really want to imagine that all this could be really true. The longer you deal with these topics, the “more normal” the backgrounds get. I think, the intention is NOT to blunt people emotionally but on the contrary to sensitise them for those things, which are as much important as the small things and problems in our everyday life.

If one wants to deal with “America’s foreign affairs”, one just has to open any newspaper. They are involved almost everywhere – Cuba, Korea, Vietnam, half of South America, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan etc. etc. It is almost unjust not to list all the other nations where the US needed to interfere with their interests.

I’d like to paste part of an article written by William Blum (William Blum left the American Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1967 as a protest to the American war against Vietnam. He became on of the founders and editors of the Washington Free Press, which was the first "alternative" newspaper in the capital.)

(Links to the complete articles - German: http://www.miprox.de/USA_speziell/US-Interventionen.html, English: http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/blum.htm)

The engine of American foreign policy has been fueled not by a devotion to any kind of morality, but rather by the necessity to serve other imperatives, which can be summarized as follows:
1)  making the world safe for American corporations; 
2)  enhancing the financial statements of defence contractors at home who have contributed generously to members of congress; 
3)  preventing the rise of any society that might serve as a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model; 
4)  extending political and economic hegemony over as wide an area as possible, as befits a "great power."
This in the name of fighting a supposed moral crusade against what cold warriors convinced themselves, and the American people, was the existence of an evil International Communist Conspiracy, which in fact never existed, evil or not.

What one can read in this article sounds partly so unbelievable that one may tend to not want to believe it at all. The list of „human aid“ given by the USA to other nations in the world for the „maintenance of Democracy“ could be easily extended – Yugoslavia, again Afghanistan, Columbia, Venezuela etc. It seems that there is not a single corner in this world, which hasn’t been seen by a GI or a CIA man. Basically, Afghanistan was just another milestone in the American History – one of many. That for the 3000 dead people of “September 11^th” several thousand Afghans had to die is one of the normalities, which I was talking about in the last e-mail. “If we bomb your country down to the ground, you also have to live with the fact, that some people will die in the name of freedom and justice.” But someday Hollywood will bring out another nice little “Rambo” movie and show heroic GIs in their heroic fight against the Evil. And our children will find the soldiers as cool, brave and just as I found “Rambo” 15 years ago.

Besides, did anyone know that the German Film Assessment Centre awarded the movie “Rambo III” the predicate “Particularly Valuable” during the times of the Cold War? I don’t want to talk about art and its assessment right now, but the movie “Pearl Harbor” just came to my mind – next time more about that.

I know that some of you will feel like driven back to the old GDR times when reading this article. “The Evil Imperialism! The Evil US!” They had heard such slogans for too long and subsequently the fall of the Socialism was the negation of the whole idea and everything, which was related to it. But some may have noticed that the “Victory over Socialism” didn’t strengthen Capitalism but brought a heavy imbalance to it. And if they won’t manage to find a new enemy, it will get pretty cramped for the US economy. And at the end of the day for us as well – if we continue relying blindly and supporting the USA.

Therefore it’s quite clear for some people (but in a different way as I see it), that a prospering economy needs wars to give the people those things they believe to need. To maintain the whole system of Capitalism it is thus important to convince the population that they will suffer. Therefore the “developed civilised world” invented terms like “fear of existence”. Strangely, the other 80 % of the world’s population, who owns just 5 % of the world-wide possessions, most probably don’t even know what this term means. All we really have to do in this life is just one simple thing – to die one fine day.

However, we in the “civilised world” know that one also has to think about tomorrow and that one should not just live for the day. And many of us even think about the day after tomorrow. Saving up for their pensions, but believe that children are “too expansive”. Therefore Europe has had – for “inexplicable reasons” – a negative development of the population for years. But one doesn’t really want to face such facts when thinking about one’s pension. “It will work somehow.” Have you ever thought about the fact, that those people who make the laws and to whom we give our money today, will be dead at the time when we will be supposed to get our pensions? You cannot sue anyone then J

When I met one of my Indian friends in Berlin 1998, he said: “The German system has reached its limits. It is standing still.” At that time I didn’t really know what he wanted to tell me – I just could guess. When looking at the education, health and family policy (just a selection) today, I now know what he meant 4 years ago.

Have a nice, sunny weekend. Yours, Michael. 

You can also forward this e-mail to people you know – I don’t mind that at all.

PS: Next time I will continue writing about Germany and the USA – the „Third Reich“ and the US.