(UK) Observer: The bloody outcome of two worlds at war

[muriel_volestrangler]

Before the meeting, voices from all over the world - economists, rock singers, ecologists, religious leaders - appealed, in the name of conscience and solidarity, for new, unprecedented decisions, for some change that might improve the planet's future chances. And what happened? After you've sorted through the rhetoric ... almost nothing. A little dance of statistics. Why?

Fanaticism comes from any form of chosen blindness accompanying the pursuit of a single dogma. The G8's dogma is that the making of profit has to be mankind's guiding principle before which everything else from the traditional past or aspiring future must be sacrificed as illusion.

The so-called war against terrorism is, in fact, a war between two fanaticisms. To bracket the two together seems outrageous. One is theocratic, the other pos itivist and secular. One is the fervent belief of a defensive minority, the other the unquestioned assumption of an amorphous, confident elite. One sets out to kill, the other plunders, leaves and lets die. One is strict, the other lax. One brooks no argument, the other 'communicates' and tries to 'spin' into every corner of the world. One claims the right to spill innocent blood, the other the right to sell the entire earth's water. Outrageous to compare them!

Yet the outrage of what happened in London on the Piccadilly Line, the Circle Line and the No 30 bus was the misadventure of many thousands of vulnerable people, struggling to survive and make some sense of their lives, being inadvertently caught in the global crossfire of those two fanaticisms.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1530216,00.html

[bemildred]

1. Props to Mr. Berger.

Much better than the usual thin gruel we are served in the Guardian.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. Yes, well, the management did try to distance themselves a bit

with the introduction "In a fierce piece of personal polemic, a leading cultural commentator argues that the West's capitalists can be just as 'fanatical' as Muslim fundamentalists".

[wurzel]

3. Why do we only get sane discourse from foreign sources?

That penultimate paragraph is a gem of sanity that blows this "they hate us for freedoms" rubbish out of the water.