Optimism, Osama, and Global Perspectives

Here's a GREAT article on Optimism from Howard Zinn:

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1108-21.htm

And here's an excerpt from it:

"Even when we don't "win," there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we
have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile.
We need hope."

Here's a link to Osama's complete November video. It's amazing that this wasn't made available to us - as scary as it is to read.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/79C6AF22-98FB-4A1C-B21F-2BC36E87F61F.htm


As much as we are loathe to read messages from a person who seems
intent on killing us, I believe its tremendously important to do so.

We all tend look to the past to make sense of the incomprehensible
that is happening in the present. This can be useful but ONLY if we
keep very mindful of how the situation in the present is different
from the past.

The world of today is radically different from the world of World War
Two or even the Vietnam war. The population of the planet has more
than doubled since 1950. computers, the Internet, satellite TV,
contact lenses, biotechnology, microwave cooking, hand held
calculators, food preservatives, compact discs, vcrs, cell phones, and
who knows what else were not around in the mid 1960s and not even
dreamed of in the 1940s.

To me, the biggest difference is the population. The planet has a
finite amount of resources and the population increase is putting a
tremendous strain on those resources.

I suppose that fossil-fuel energy is the resource causing us the
greatest amount of concern. Our society uses a disproportionate
percentage of the world's supply.

With just 6% of the world's population the US and Canada consume
nearly 30% of the world's energy. The US with just 3% of proven
reserves uses a quarter of global oil production. (source:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JQP/is
_2001_June/ai_75833148)

For our economy to continue to grow...we MUST continue to use this
disproportionate amount of the world's fossil fuel.

To me this means we are energy junkies. We will kill, cheat, lie, or
steal to feed our habit. And that is what we are doing. That is why, I
believe, the polar ice caps are melting, why we have prostituted
ourselves to the Saudis, and why we are fighting the war in Iraq.

The victims of our crimes do not know how to stop us; hence
terrorism...the act of the desperate and cornered. Religious
fanaticism catches fire quickly in this kind of an atmosphere. With no
earthly explanation for this desperation people turn toward God for
the answer. And then the religion becomes part of the justification;
if God is Good we should not suffer this way. And God naturally is on
'our' side.

That doesn't excuse it, of course, but it explains it. Just as 'we'
see 911 from the perspective of a victim so the Arab world must see
our wars from that same perspective. They feel 'justified' in
attacking us for our wrongs just as we feel 'justified' in attacking
them for theirs.

The only way out of this, I believe, is for something new and
different to occur. We have to keep talking, thinking, and then acting
on these thoughts in ways that result in a new global paradigm that
allow us to coexist on a GLOBAL scale. With the increase in world
population there can be no more nationalistic interests; it just won;t
work. Their interests ARE ours and ours ARE theirs whether anyone
likes it or not.

To pretend otherwise precludes the orientation to reality that is an
essential component of effective problem solving.