Site Presented By
Sunday, Jul 12, 2009
[Read "Falling Arches" by Michelle Goldberg.]
Wow. I thought there was no good news anymore until I read your article about the McDonald's bombings. If extremists -- or even just people with healthy taste buds -- could torch every McDonald's in existence without hurting any personnel, and blow up all the KFCs to boot, the world could only become a better place.
The only thing that irks me, as an American, is that McDonald's and Americanism are considered synonymous. I've lived in America all my 47 years, and I never gave that corporation permission to represent my culture. I haven't even eaten at a McDonald's since I became old enough to know better. Let the world know that many of us Americans consider corporations like McDonald's oppressive alien entities. And pass the gasoline!
-- Kyle Gann
[Read "Did Timothy McVeigh Have Iraqi Helpers?" by Eric Boehlert.]
I understand that the Oklahoma City bombing does not reverberate very strongly in the minds of most Americans. Compared to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, the tragedy of April 19, 1995, now seems important only in that it helped to better prepare intelligence and emergency workers for post-terrorism readiness.
The Oklahoma City bombing registers very strongly for me. I am from Norman, Okla., and was going to school at the University of Oklahoma on the day of the bombing. April 19, 1995, was my 20th birthday.
I find the allegations of Iraqi conspiracy very unsettling in their bald attempts to politicize a human tragedy. The circumstantial evidence quoted, be it 2,000 pages' worth or 2 million, does not account for two basic failings in its logic: one, that McVeigh's copy of "The Turner Diaries" did not classify Arabs as Caucasians, and two, that the date's significance -- the two year anniversary of the raid of the Branch Davidian complex in Waco, Texas -- holds no special importance to Iraq that we know of. McVeigh mentioned it frequently.
To use this event to foment hatred for all things Arab, or to attempt to add anecdotal justification to an invasion of Iraq, is to capitalize on the deaths of 168 Americans who, perhaps not coincidentally, were murdered by a fanatically right-wing, white American man.
-- Rick Lockett
Another reason right wingers are so keen on the supposed McVeigh-Iraqi connection is the hope that McVeigh's beliefs and actions will be distanced from their own political views. The truth is that Timothy McVeigh was the end product of rhetoric that the right still uses to further its interests.
-- Bill Faulk
[Read "Day of the Dead" by Max Blumenthal.]
Thank you for reminding me why I became a Salon Benefactor. This is investigative reporting at its best.
I hope this gets picked up by other media, and I hope there's a followup. This is exactly the nightmare scenario that NAFTA opponents envisioned: If you set up a place that's attractive to corporations because it's cheap and unregulated, the people they exploit will be lucky to get indifference from their employers. There's no transportation for the workers because that costs money. There's no attempt to care for the employees or follow up on their disappearance because that costs money, and the employees are disposable -- there's no shortage of desperate people to take their place on the lines. Nobody should be surprised that this has happened, but everyone should be outraged.
Give 'em hell, boys and girls. And again, thank you.
-- James Robinson
