Bill Sykes' Newsletter
from America.
(November 2002)
An ex-Brit gives his views-(without fear
or favor)---of the American Scene
My response.
 I
understand where the writer is coming from, (American phraseology),
and understand his comparison between the Bhopal disaster
and the acts of terrorism in the United States with respect
to the number of lives lost, but obviously under different
circumstances.
One really cannot make a relative comparison bettween the
two disasters, as the Bhopal incident was the negligence
of a profit making company, whilst the attack on the United
States was an act of terrorism sponsored by several nations,
yet the end result was the same, a tragic loss of many lives
and a large number of casualties.
The fact still remains that the American people have long
since forgotten the Bhopal disaster, (even if they knew
about it in the first place), but the thought of their own
disaster is still fresh in their minds and will become a
national day of mourning.
With respect to American arrogance, perhaps they are not
really aware that some of their actions can be seen by other
nations as being arrogant and they certainly don’t
wish to acknowledge that the world has perceived them of
being guilty of arrogance.
But to be fair I must point out that the people of Britain,
France, Germany, and especially the people of Israel, amongst
other nations share similar degrees of arrogance.
 The
American Government can find huge sums of money to conduct
military actions worldwide but very little money, if any,
to set up a viable health care system, which would cater
to the poor, the infirm, and in many cases the old people
on fixed incomes who cannot afford the cost of health care
and prescription medicines. This is criminal in a country
so affluent.
Your comments on what I would call ”The Big Brother”
restrictions that have fallen upon us since the advent of
the September eleventh terrorist actions are rapidly eroding
the basic human rights of the individual, (which we Americans
have been so fortunate and proud to have had for the last
two hundred years), to a point of perhaps becoming a future
totalitarian regime. !!!
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