Margaret Bassett's picture

You described the situation

What to do, that's the hard part. In this, like most subjects on the agenda these days, to solve the problem by removing Bush is helpful but only a partial answer. On the US political scene, we have to ask how we got Bush in the first place. His aggressive stance was enhanced by events on 9/ll, but his countenance had many voters hoodwinked on the "compassionate conservative" pitch. When the Oklahoma City bombing happened, it took careful explaining to convince the public that it was a "homegrown" crime. When we had long lines at the gas pump, we knew something was amiss. And each time the price went up, there was a hunch that the Arabs did it.
Just as the fanatic fundamentalists (Christian) in the US chanted a litany, fanatic Islamists could counter-chant. And I might add while they were chanting they placed little Israel out in front to catch the flak.
Before 9/11, when the UN held its human rights conference in Durbin, Bush was adamant about not attending the meetings. There was talk of whether Colin Powell was too senior.
In the United States if one holds deed to land with mineral rights, one has the option to sign a contract, or not, for exploration by an oil company. If one sells the land, one can sell it with or without the mineral rights. Other countries probably have different laws to protect the property holder. But nowhere, except if imperialism prevails, does a sovereign nation--rogue or otherwise--have a desire to lose property, above or below ground.


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I always have difficulty expressing my political judgments in a clear, emphatic, and strong way—I feel pretentious, as if I'm saying things that are not quite true. This is because I know I cannot reduce my thoughts about life to the music of a single voice and a single point of view—I am, after all, a novelist, the kind of novelist who makes it his business to identify with all of his characters, especially the bad ones. Living as I do in a world where, in a very short time, someone who has been a victim of tyranny and oppression can suddenly become one of the oppressors, I know also that holding strong beliefs about the nature of things and people is itself a difficult enterprise. I do also believe that most of us entertain these contradictory thoughts simultaneously, in a spirit of good will and with the best of intentions. The pleasure of writing novels comes from exploring this peculiarly modern condition whereby people are forever contradicting their own minds. It is because our modern minds are so slippery that freedom of expression becomes so important: we need it to understand ourselves, our shady, contradictory, inner thoughts, and the pride and shame that I mentioned earlier.


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