Sunday, November 7, 2004, 6:36:37 PM, Andreas Ramos wrote: AR> From: "Judy Evans" <judithevans001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> >> well yes, there are a fair number of places that, though they have not >> managed fully to >> implement equal pay for women, have liberal abortion laws, laws against >> discrimination on >> the grounds of sex, race, disability, sexual orientation, and age. And of >> course they are >> normally simply less "religious" than the US, though the UK is probably >> particularly >> non-Christian. AR> For me, it's not so much an issue of personal freedoms (these AR> tend to be mostly theorectical AR> anyway). AR> The important things is to feel secure to be living in a country that has an accepted, AR> functional legal system, is embedded within the international AR> legal structure, and is moving AR> forward towards a global fellowship of all nations, all cultures. I agree. And I would say that while we have fewer freedoms than you in theory, substantively, currently, we have more. AR> trying to work out a conference AR> with Iran by late November. The UK government has flatly refused to go along with a US AR> attack. And this of course is just the signals the Bushies AR> want to hear: they will not allow AR> other countries to tell the USA not to attack. This is something of a no-win for the UK! AR> I've been reading Coll's Ghost Wars. It's the account of the Islamic guerilla war in AR> Afghanistan. Basically, the USA put up the money and Pakistan implemented the war. The USA AR> was generally clueless about Islamic guerillas; all they AR> cared was that the guerillas were AR> anti-USSR. I read that too (not that book) - many people in Afghanistan knew better, of course: they wanted the Soviet puppet regime to fall, but they feared for the future. AR> The USA is too out-of-control and reckless. our military are deeply concerned about US military tactics in Iraq. -- Judy Evans, Cardiff, UK mailto:judithevans001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html