you get it. i get it. but how does the u.s. public get it when you are fed only jingoism about foreign affairs: 'israel is our friend', 'palestinians are terrorists'. legitamite debate is squashed in our newsprint & t.v. media. the government does not explain or reason to the public here, it shampoos our brains with jingoism & jedi mind-control-like statements (see above) that are then repeated by the same media & then the public in lieu of discussion. bring up a criticism of israel & our funding their oppression (& most of the public here has no idea we send them $3 billion a year) & you are labled an anti-semite. implicit & sometimes overt is the racial bias against the islamic world & arabs in particular. they have even been portrayed in hollywood for the longest time on our t.v. & movie theaters here & around the world to all be demonic terrorists (so it was pretty self-fulfilling to me the events of sept 11th.), while the jewish & jewish -american culture has been portrayed as nothing but wholesome. what i am saying is that americans have been trained to look down on those who we wish to oppress or neglect. the events of the 11th should have proven that we must pull together with the rest of the neglected world as equals, with the carrot, not the stick, & try to start to reverse the damage we have done. i come from an area of the u.s. that is very segregated: there's the mostly white subburbs around detroit & the mostly black detroit inner city. but we also have to the west of detroit the highest arab american population in the u.s. (4 more algerian terrorists have been captured here, fyi). we have serious issues amongst ourselves, but we all all americans, too, & there is a high degree of respect. if only the average Middleeastern & asian people , from pakistan to algeria, knew how much the average american people would embrace them as a people without all of this political interference & spinning, i really believe it would heal the world & end all this inflamatory rhetoric we are all fed by our various rulers