Dear People of the World (formerly Dear Americans)

Today marked 7th anniversary of 911 attack on WTC and Pentagon.

The U.S. army attacked Afghan and Iraq without mercy to civilians. The purpose was to find Bin-laden.

 But where is he now? In Guantanamo?

Things are getting worse since 911. The photo was taken in July, 1993 just after first terrorist attack took place in WTC. As you see, I was wearing United Nations T shirt. I don' t have that shirt any more.

I think 911 opened the door to awful 21st century.

Kind of heartwarming story in it.

The TV commercial for Suntory's Whiskey, Johnny Walker Black Label. Although I don't like whiskey, this ad is my favourite. That was aired maybe 2 decades ago. I just recently found it on You Tube.

The conversation between 2 young guys.

At first, a guy in the bar saw his friend giving $ 10 bill to a begger on the street.

Then his friend came in and they met each other. A guy with glasses said "You were deceived. She had no sick child."

But his friend smiled and replied "I am glad there is no sick child."

It just gives you the idea of what is the most important thing in our life.

That is the title of a book written by Mika Tsutsumi, who wrote this book, which I wrote the review of.

She has lived in New York as college student and office worker but since she experienced 911 turmoil, she started to learn what went wrong in the U.S.

In this book, she paid attention to poverty issue. Some of the things mentioned overlap in her previous book.

The book became best-selling non-fiction book in Japan. It was sold at the price of 700 yen (US$7).

At first she talked about subprime loan crisis. The real estate business took mean advantage of poor people who have dreams of having their own houses, which they could never afford by their cheap salaries. They ended up losing  houses and dreams and then being poorer than before.

50 million people don't have medical insurance. 60 million live by the wage under $7 per day. 35 million people are in hunger. That was a result of free economy. The poor gets poorer, the rich gets richer.

Although so many are in hunger, but at the same time so many of them are suffering from obesity. The poverty and the obesity are linked. Poor people cannot afford healthy food. They had to buy cheap junk food which is filled with oil and contain less nutrition. They get fat but lack nutrition that result in sickness but they have no medical insurance to cure. The medical insurance issue she mentioned is similar to Micheal Moore's "Sicko."

Americans favour free competition, smaller government, and privatization. Hurricane Katrina was a catastrophie caused by privatization. FEMA was privatized and disaster prevention budget was cut-off.

In the last chapter, she described working poor became new type of military drafting system. A truck driver was offered high-paying job in Iraq by a military contractor. After months of labor in Iraq, he got leukemia because he drunk highly radioactive water. He had no insurance coverage to take care of his illness. Even though he got a big money for that job, he had to use all of it to cure the illness and ended up being poorer and getting heavy illness.

The poor people had no choice but to work for the military which offers only very hard and dangerous tasks.

That is the true figure of America, now. The popularity of Obama seems to be supported by those who experience such hard situations.

Today the U.S. marked very historical moment, Afro-American was nominated for presidential candidate of major political party. Some might hope because he is Black, he should know how the oppressed feel.

Can Ob(s)ama-Bi(nla)den change things better for the U.S. rather than fighting against terrorists outside their country? No more war and poverty, please! 

This is the sequel of already posted article "Ich bin ein Berliner." My trip in Europe last month. After I enjoyed my 2 day stay in Berlin, I flew to Krakow, the old capital of Poland. From the city, I went to one of the famous World Heritage sites. It took 1 and a half hour to get to Auschwitz Museum by car. It was clear and sunny day. The place looked strangely beautiful although what happend there was so scary. At first I went to the second part of the former concentration camp, Birkenau.

Over 1 million people were said to be murdered there. The below photo is the bombed gas chamber. Nazis bombed the chamber when they left that place to destroy the evidence. It looked like Roman ruin to me.

The below is where the prisoners slept and their toilet.

Also the below is the site of forced labour in the ditch.

The below is the freight train car used for deportation of the prisoners. No seats in it. They had to stand up inside for days without food.

Then I went to the Auschwitz. That is me in front of the famous gate "ARBEIT MACHT FREI. (Labor makes you free.)" But the prisoners never became free. 90% of them died inside the camp.