I’m sick of Americans. Or rather, the sanctimonious bullshitting Americans that’s all we see of the country here in Oz.

They have the hide and the audacity to make out that when 3000 Americans are killed in a horrible attack, that that’s somehow more morally rephrehensible than the hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by the US in one way or another in countries overseas.

The obvious implication – that Americans are different, and better, than everyone else in the world, seems not to be mentioned by many people. Or perhaps the other implication to be drawn from this – the similarity of this view to that of the pre-WW2 Japanese, and the similarity in the view that this difference gives them the right, and the duty, to rescue the rest of the world from themselves.

The other thing that gets me is the portrayal of the ‘terrorists’ themselves. Obviously they are religious fanatics, crazed with the delusions that America is screwing them over, and are thus paragons of evil.

But which is more wrong – people who kill others, and themselves, in order to achieve a goal, or people who kill others because they’re drug fucked out of their minds, like US soldiers did at a small town in Vietnam called My Laiduring the Vietnam War.

At least the terrorists have the courage of their convictions, the courage to stand up and take some sort of action to change the world, instead of sitting around at home, watching live coverage of sentimental bullshit commemoration ceremonies and nodding to each other significantly while flipping to other channels with their ‘unseen footage’ and uplifting stories of heroism.

So, one year on from what was always going to be a historically significant day – what are we left with? America pulling its usual crap, stomping around the world screaming ‘DEMOCRACY’ at the top of its lungs, while attempting to do a little ‘regime change’ in countries that they don’t agree with. Israel and Palestine busy killing each other with a thousand nicks and cuts, India and Pakistan calling each othe terrorists and asking for world help in attacking each other, and so on and so on and so on.

Really not much difference, I guess.

Another interesting article today in the SMH: Trust fund runs dry in bleak world.

It’s about how people don’t feel safe anymore, snice things like September 11, the murder of the two schoolgirls in Britain, the Catholic Church’s problems with the priesthood, the corruption of the police force, and so on.

Now it seems to me that there are two reasons for this:

Firstly, the media. It’s taken as given that bad news rates better than good new, and because of the unprecedented ease of communication, the problems of people around the world seem like they’re in our own neighbourhood. As with many things, this is good and bad, good because we can feel more for people regardless of where they are or what they look like, but bad because it can create feelings of helplessness and lack of safety.

Secondly, and more importantly, is people not taking responsibility for their own actions. Rather than, say, teaching children about self-reliance and how to spot people you should not trust, parents cry out for more policemen to protect their children.

Rather than looking on Flight 93 and the fact that the hijackers were stopped by normal passengers, we are told to obsess about the brave heroes who died in the horrible collapse of the twin towers.

Here’s a good example:

The skies have become a zone of fear. Once we worried about turbulence or the rare possibility of being on a plane that crashed. A year ago, in New York and Washington, terrorists turned ordinary scheduled domestic flights into lethal weapons that flew into crowded landmark buildings and murdered thousands. We now live with the apprehension that it could happen again – and on a flight we are taking.

Never mind the fact that there is no way in hell that three or four people armed with bladed weapons could stand up against even a hundred of the passengers on most airplane flights today.

Instead, we’re all so paralysed with the fear of something happening to us that we give those who have learned to let go of their fear power over us.

Rather than learning to have the self-confidence to defend ourselves against physical harm, we cry out for more police, more money spent on crime reduction, more money thrown down the bottomless pit that is creating a ‘stable society’ from the top down.

I think it was Confiucius who said something along the lines of ‘Before fixing the world, fix yourself.’

Broad societal change can’t be brought about by the imposition of laws, standards, and whatnot from above. Laws are only truly obeyed when they are the reflection of the standards of the community. Without this accurate reflection, laws will be evaded, pushed, and bent until they scream.

I just hope that if I was ever in a situation like the people on Flight 93, I would have the courage to embrace the possibility of death in the hope that it would being life.

After reading these well-written thoughts about American foreign policy sincs 9/11, I got to thinking myself, about an irony that no one else seems to have mentioned.

The US has for centuries now been a proponent of democracy. For everyone, everywhere, ideally. Personally, I have no problem with this. However, because of this position, and because of the increased access to media, even in poorer countries, governments are now in the position of being forced to listen more closely to their citizens. This applies equally to totalitarian or fundamentalist regimes, as they are much less able to stop undesirable information from flowing to their citizens. (Although that doesn’t mean they’re not willing to try – witness China trying to block Google because they wouldn’t suppress certain information.)

So firstly, we have that governments have to listen more to their citizens. The second point is that US policies of the last 30 or 40 years have alienated people of non-US allied countries on a scale unheard of in the past, thanks to those same people’s access to media.

Thus, the US has sown the seeds of trouble against itself not only in the well-talked about ways, but in the more general fashion of really pissing off large numbers of people.

This is what the article talks about – the fact that these days, it only takes a group of a dozen well organised and funded individuals to be able to produce something as profound as 9/11. And that was without these individuals obtaining nukes or biological weapons.

‘The Sum of All Fears’ is in cinemas in Australia now. It’s about a group of fascists who smuggle a nulcear device into America and set it off under a football stadium in the middle of a match. The point the movie raises is that there is no way to protect against this using normal security measures. None. Zip.

Given enough time and effort, any security system can be breached. And with the availability of weapons of mass destruction, this is a huge deal. What the article is saying is that the US needs to think more about how its policies are pissing people off – and the ‘people’ here does not mean ‘other governments’, but instead, actually other people. The US is always going to be under threat from militant Islam until it deals with the things that are pissing the extremists off.

Until then, though, I think it’s only a matter of time before something happens to make 9/11 look like a day at the circus. All it takes is people who are pissed off enough about something to weather the consequences.

Trang says to say ‘Hi’ to everyone from New York! She also told me not to say on her behalf ‘nurney nurney nurney, I’m in New York and you’re not!’, so I won’t.

Days until she gets back: 31

Koge Donbo, the artist behind Charat, has a web page of Harry Potter fanart. Keep in mind that Digi Charat is possibly the most kawaii (cute) anime ever. In particular, check out the Ginny Weasley picture. Now that’s cute!

I’ve liked Ross Gittin’s articles in the SMH since I first read them when I was doing Economics in years 11 and 12. It seems, though, that he’s getting more distrustful and cynical as he gets older. His latest piece is about how the Liberal governments vaunted tax reform is a lot of shit. More power to Ross.

Maintain the rage, Mr Gittins!

Days until Trang gets back: 34

Trang flew out yesterday. I miss her.

I know she’s having fun, though. At least, she better be, or there’ll be trouble!