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The Expat Page or Why Ian Abram Moved to China
For those who are materially well off, but morally uncomfortable, the first question you must ask yourself is do you really want to climb out of it? How far are you prepared to go? Has the crevasse become too comfortable? ---Arundhati Roy A letter on the topic to my mom: Dear mom, ...as
for the Iraq thing: you all pay your taxes, don't you?
If you didn't support the war in real terms, you couldn't be a
citizen there. I've read that
something like one quarter of your tax money goes to the army.
People say on the one hand that it's a remote issue, and on the
other hand give substantial support to it.
I learned this in the Hiroshima museum.
there you can see a detailed account of how Japanese society
supported an empire, about "the sound of silence". If
everyone thinks that because the war is in a far away place, that it
somehow doesn't have anything to do with anything at home, isn't that just
like WW1 Austria? people there just waltzed around at big parties while
country's youth were out shooting people. This
contrast gave birth to many profound works of art and music, from Gustav
Klimt to Arnold Schoenberg. I
think artists find it particularly disturbing, maybe because of their
sensitivity to life. I'm sensitive enough to it that it makes me nauseous just to hear about it,
just to know it's there. So
that's why I say that if America weren't at war, I'd feel much better
about going there. A
wartime country has tense security and a more or less remote danger of an
outbreak of violence. Maybe I
look a little Arabic with my beard. (people
in Israel spoke Hebrew to me and not to the American Jews, because they
thought I looked like a local). But
these things don't matter as much to me as that war smell everything American
has. there's the
hawks, like Kerry, the chicken hawks, like Rumsfeld, and the chickens,
which is all those apathetic citizens. I
learned during the Yugoslavian war that war really hurts people.
It hurt Zoran, I saw his eyes well up with tears.
I also learned that those who are willing to protest in a
substantial way are now in such a tiny minority, that there's no use to
staying there and trying to change it.
I hope to be involved in other, more dynamic countries, and hope
that these countries, for example, China, India, Russia...get strong
enough to balance out what is now a pattern of egregious abuse of power by the US.
Ian Abram 2004/09/24
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"Green Cats" is very general, it's not even specific to propaganda. But I think current American propaganda is a good illustration of the poem's meaning. Before reading about an issue I always keep in mind my personal principles, like the ones my mother taught me, e.g. violence doesn't solve anything. I find it appalling how many Americans love God, Country, and War. And those that don't love these things might still believe that there's profit in war. All of these things are abominable fallacies, and are as silly as green cats. I pine for the day when more Americans actually believe in humanitarian causes-- when more people will actually study a little bit about a foreign country before they decide to deride its leader and condone the slaughter its people. To think of Vietnam, Cambodia and Korea...and the six million people killed here in Southeast Asia, it's a atrocity that will be remembered forever. All the lies from such a so-called honesty-loving culture: "bombs for peace" in Yugoslavia, "bombs for freedom" in Iraq, all the "bombs for money" and lower gas prices. So many good reasons to kill people, so little time! It's fun to be a libertarian and stuff, but seriously folks...for anybody who lives in America and "opposes" the war, they still pay their taxes and pay for the bombs. This is my most important reason for expatriating. Some pictures worth contemplating:
The basis for South Park's "Satan and Saddam Hussein" skit.
Daddy Warbucks' new bill.
What are my sources? What leads me to such extreme and and unfair peace loving? The answer lies somewhere within Antiwar.com. Its editor is a feisty and very humorous gay guy that I met in Colorado. It's ranked in the top sixty most visited news websites in America. It's basically a compilation of links to news that relates to war propaganda and includes regular columns from people in very different places. The most interesting thing, which I think could help everybody get past AP and Reuters (the ONLY sources for international news in American media) is the sources page--a page filled with links to countless countries' English news. This way you could, for example, read a story in the states about Russia, and then read about the same story in the St. Petersburg Times. It's a good way to get different angles on things. In answering the subject of this page, I've posted an article on American torture practices, written by Alexander Cockburn. I think after reading this anyone can understand why I am absolutely ashamed to carry an American passport, why I steadfastly oppose and wish the just desserts for the new war-loving US, and finally why I've decided to never again set foot on its soil. Ian Abram 2004/05
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