Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Angaangaq Lyberth: Interesting. And you are absolutely right. You and I we have no understood the significance of our equality. As a Native American we say that in the east the yellow people where the sun rises. But when you look at every time the sun rises it’s supposed to be yellow. But because of the pollution it’s always pink now. So that means that the yellow people are not living to their spiritual responsibility. In the south when the sun shine highest upon us, she’s always white and there is no shadow amongst us. So white people are supposed to be removing all the differences we all have. But they have no lived up to their spiritual responsibility. Then in the west where the sun sets, she’s always red. And in the west where the harvests happen you and I we’re supposed to have a feast. And after the feast we shall grow to be comfortably visiting one another. But we’re bickering amongst ourselves. So the red man has not lived up to his spiritual responsibility either. And at night, where everything is black, black man, he is supposed to ensure safety for all at night. But did you know that everywhere, including in Berlin, and in Philadelphia, every home is locked up. So we’ve become the prisoners in our own homes every single day. And thus we don’t have that freedom. The black man is not living up to his spiritual responsibility either. So unless you and I, we all learn to live up to our spiritual responsibility, yes, we will always have a difference. Always. And it needs to be removed. You and I we need to recognize that we are all equal, no matter what race we carry. Did you hear my answer? I pray so.

by Angaangaq Lyberth

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Anthony Arnove: Really, I think the question from Jason is a question that Jason can answer far better than me. And in particular, I have problem with the notion of loving or defending a country when love of one’s country and defense of one’s country today is defined in terms of militarism or nationalism of an ideology. There’s something unique or special or exceptional, in particular, about the country that Jason is from, and I am from the United States. I reject that idea, I reject the premise of nationalism, which ultimately is a form or racism or chauvinism, which is used to sell war, to prop up the idea that the United States is superior to other countries, which is an idea I reject. We have to find ways of crossing these national boundaries and finding what unites us internationally, what unites us globally, because the problems we confront can’t be defined in terms of nations. And every nation has an ideology of exceptionalism, of patriotism, of nationalism, and historically, we’ve seen not only how those were used to drive countries to war, but are used to oppress minorities or oppress people at home on the basis of those ideologies, to oppress people who don’t fit into the national – the nationalist framework, whether they are ethnic groups or otherwise. So, I don’t feel a connection with that feeling of love or defense of my country. I feel quite the opposite. I feel that Malcolm X really speaks to the question when he said that what he saw in the United States was not an American dream, but an American nightmare, and I think that that approach, that understanding really speaks the experience of so many people, not only in the United States, but around the world, who don’t feel that connection with their own state.

by Anthony Arnove

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Anuradha Koirala:

by Anuradha Koirala

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Anuradha Mittal: That’s a brilliant question and I am going to answer it as a woman, as somebody from India. I would say that actually I love my country, and what is a country. Country is in some ways a figment of imagination; in some ways it’s a sense of community; and it is a part of a larger community, the global community. And so, I find myself loving India, loving Asia, loving this world. But at the same time, I think I defend it because I love it as I would love my own mother. And in terms of defense, I would say the way I defend it is by actually pointing out what is wrong with my country because I am a patriot. When my country spends huge amounts of money on defense, -- in fact, India is the third largest spender on defense in the world after U.S. and China -- while at the same time it is home to nearly 380 million people who go to bed hungry or it is a country where 380 million people live on less than a dollar a day, the way I defend my country is to point out what’s wrong with that picture. So, the only way I know how to love and defend my country is a) because I belong there because I am a patriot; but at the same time if I don’t point out what’s wrong with my country, then nobody else will. It’s like, if my mother has a problem, in this case my mother has an addiction to military expenditures, it has to be us as children to point it out. And that’s the relationship I have with my country.

by Anuradha Mittal

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Ashok Gangadean: I think this is an excellent question. I am from Philadelphia, teaching at Haverford College outside of Philadelphia, so I appreciate the source of this from Jason Robinson about being a black American. And I think this question really can be asked in a much wider sense as Jason suggests. Why someone can say as a women, why as American women who feel oppressed and marginalized in my business or in my work or in my life or in my home still continue to love my country when I am treated this way. Well, it's right to love your country, it’s right to be patriotic in its higher sense even though there is continuing injustice. Because as I’ve been suggesting in my other responses, there are two different cultural spaces, the culture of being an integral awakened human being, living in global consciousness and the values that come with that kind of culture in which one should love oneself and one's community and cultivate it, in contrast to an ego-based culture and ego-based America for example where there is sexism and racism, and all kinds of marginalization and economic injustice and slavery in all kinds of forms still continuing because ego minds are enslaved minds and reflect that kind of enslavement, and hierarchy, and objectification and alienation. That's really what this question is talking about. So, in a more generic sense when one is living in an ego-oppressive culture, we are all marginalized and all oppressed and we oppress ourselves most ironically. So, the question is, do I continue to affirm the higher way of being a human? So, an African America, a women and a citizen, an everyday citizen, seeing herself as a more awakened integral citizen, a global citizen, living in a culture that is still dominated by the old dysfunctional ego-mental patterns that repress and fragment and violate us all. That is really what this question is about. So, they will always be minorities and alienated repressed factors in such a culture. And, I would just say, it's right and proper to continue to live the high culture so that this transformation.

by Ashok Gangadean

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Audrey Kitagawa: Well, I think that as a black American, if you're a black American framing this question, I think you can answer it better for yourself as to why you would love and defend a country that you in turn may feel treats you like an unwanted child. But this whole aspect of loving and defending your country really is a matter of national identity and the ways in which we give our lives identification that in ways that are important to us, so love for country and being an American citizen may be more important than being identified as a black American or an Asian-American or being identified according to your race. And to the extent that it gives you a sense of pride to be able to love your country and to have identification with your country and to be able to value loyalty to your country, then those are values that you embrace, and to the extent that it also helps you to love your country and defend your country, then you would feel that this identification of yourself as an American in the totality of things becomes more important than being able to see how your country treats you as a black American.

by Audrey Kitagawa

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Benjamin Fahrer: It is about conditionment that our system has placed upon us in a different habitual patterns in which we have fallin into. What we identify with, we are identifying with our country, is that I am a patriot, I am a countryman, I must defend my country. That is what we identify with. And that’s what we are conditioned to believed, as we are programmed to believe to television and different media. It doesn’t matter how the country treats you, and if you are stuck in that condition and you’re unable to break free from that. And it treat you worse and it treat you like unwanted child, and leave you in the gutter and you still defended it because it’s what you believe in. It’s all about our beliefs story. If we know what we believed in, what we fight for, it doesn’t matter how we’re treated so much. But if we don’t know what it is that we truly identifying worth that is not coming from within, if it’s coming from without. There is a conditionment and a programming on to us that we should be this way and we should defend our country in this way. If that’s coming from the outside and not inside, and it shouldn’t, then we should ask ourselves why do we love our country? Why do we want to defend it? There is so much oppression in other countries and so much oppression in America with the African-Americans, but also many others ethnic groups. This is a very good question as we are in a time of war. And it is usually the groups of the oppressed that go to those wars to defend the countries. And the fathers, those that are being unwanted, -- treating those like unwanted children and not going to war.

by Benjamin Fahrer

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Benson Venegas: It's not a question of pride, as though some of these military system try to show us or indicate us. It's a game with our dignity. The truth is, and a reality that I will see around the world, is that poor people, kids, are being recruited to be soldiers, in wars that they're not supposedly, or interested initially to fight. Because of economic and political power, strong power interest. So we need to change this. People need to see that is not about pride. Is a game of your dignity. So you need to see this as a way where you need to create different solutions. We need to resolve some of the more general question that has to do with global conflicts around the world. We need a system that really can bring peace to humanity. And where innocent people are not being used either as weapons or are victims of these weapons, that in fact it turns out to be a business to have these - to sell these weapons as part of war or conflict. Or to get access to resources that other countries have that can give me economical power in a global economy. So there's a ethic failure, a loss of value, that we need to recover to be able to advance in the solutions, to find the solutions to these problems that has to do with involvement of cultures into global conflicts.

by Benson Venegas

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Beverly Schwartz:

by Beverly Schwartz

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Bianca Jagger: Answertext will be available soon.

by Bianca Jagger

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Bora Cosic: Regardless to your skin color, you have to slowly emancipate your self in the country you are living in. Then living somewhere is often coincidence, especially if the person is born there. However, not even father country has all rights on the people that grow up there. My Serbs and Croatians suffer from the same disease as you. Often they are resent on the birth clod and often their lives on it are hard, but still they fall in enthusiasm by home lands name being mentioned or the sight of its flag. This is a sign that those people are immature. However, the fact that you asked this question yourself, I rely on the fact that you will achieve this mature sooner or later.

by Bora Cosic

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Brian J. Weller: Answertext will be available soon.

by Brian J. Weller

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Catherine David: As I’m not really concerned what means I’m not objectively part of a particularly repressed, outcasted group, I could imagine not to answer. It seems to me that this would be a little short-sighted, a bit economic and that I would have my firm opinion. It is evident that every person, who is a citizen or a resident of a country where he or she shares a minimum of the day-to-day life – I do not know if this is a question of values in this case - is unjustifiably outcasted, has to revolt – even if to revolt is a word which is a bit “old fashioned”, I do not know if you prefer to rebel and to protest, to request in a very lively manner, in some cases even they have to regard the violent way so his or her rights are respected. I think that this is not very good, but what else could one say.

by Catherine David

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

China Keitetsi:

by China Keitetsi

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Constantin von Barloewen: National identity and cultural identity often diverge. If we consider, e.g. Brazil, where an ethnic democracy was assumed for a long time, I am thinking of Gilberto Freyre, "Casa grande e senzala" in the thirties. This utopia of an ethnic democracy. Many, I am thinking of North America with its civil wars. National identities are helpful for a conscienceness that often cannot be provided by individual ethnic groups. Many of the black Brazilians consider themselves to be Brazilians, they feel they have possibilities of identification, even if they are not socially privileged or even absolutely under privileged. Is it a contradiction. Minorities have to be integrated into national identities, otherwise they cannot integrate into a global responsibility. But it is obvious that the black population in America rather identifies with Africa than with America, simply because the social circumstances in these black African states correspond more with them than the economic integration allows them to in America. The same applies to Africa, it applies to Asia. If we take India, a state with 150 millions of Muslims, of the 1.1 billion Indians there are not only Hindus, there are 150 millions of Muslims who still think of themselves as Indians. Ethnic identity is not always identical with national identity. This is a conflict.

by Constantin von Barloewen

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Cornel West: Well, I think it is very important that we love justice and freedom as opposed to simply loving flags and symbols. There is no doubt that black people in the United States, 244 years we were enslaved, over 90 years we were Jim Crow dealing with American terrorism, dealing with lynching, dealing with rights denied, liberties violated, dealing with discrimination and segregation. I’ve often had very little reason to want to defend the United States, and yet historically we know millions of black people have decided to fight in U.S. armies anyway, based on the hope of promise that United States would not treat them as unwanted children as it were. And, often times these hopes have been shattered; these promises have been broken. I think in the end we must always put justice and democracy as universal ideals, as global ideals, as international ideals at the center of who we are and what we do and, therefore, patriotism – therefore, all forms of nationalism must be subordinate to quest for justice, quest for democracy.

by Cornel West

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Dedi Baron: Answertext will be available soon.

by Dedi Baron

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Donato Bayu Bay Bumacas: The issue of apartheid and discrimination is a centuries old issue, and in fact majority of us local and indigenous people still experience similar things, feel that this issue is against our human rights. This is a basic issue where we local and indigenous peoples especially black are brothers and that they should really face squarely. But, if you ask me an advice being on the same situation, I would like to encourage you by saying, show your worth, serve others, and be a responsible citizen. And on doing those you will make a difference because it's only by making difference that we can contribute to the world in spite of this widely apartheid discrimination that is going on in the world. Let's make ourself productive and offer ourself to be of service to others even if we do not feel serving those countries who are practicing apartheid and discrimination. Let's do – let’s show our worth and have that commitment to serve others, and we will make a difference.

by Donato Bayu Bay Bumacas