Email 4
From PE
I have e-mailed you before, but once again:
thank God, Allah, Fate, the Cosmos, lady luck, or more appropriatly
your hard work, that this web-site exists. There are other progressive
sites, but yours, is the most accessible, has the best and most
inspiring quotes, and most importantly, offers information about
most of the peices to this Orwellian puzzle we live in.
I am curious how this web site evolved
to it's present state. Did you start out intending to give information
to would be travelers only? Perhaps a little dose of reality before
their journey? Whether coincidental or not, I love the fact that
an unwitting citizen who is looking for travel information might
stumble onto this site and potentially be transformed into an
independent thinker. I also fantasize that the FBI and CIA waste
untold numbers of man hours and dollars of our tax revenues monitoring
this site (and others) and worrying. I hope they lose lots of
sleep. Hi you jerks!
Don't you ever die Steve, I don't know
if I could retain my sanity without the occasional transfusion
of it I get from visiting your site.
_____
Steve's reply
Thank you for your kind words.
I started the TWT website to provide travel
info, but as I read, and became more aware of the disastrous impact
of US foreign policy in the Third World, the corporate control
of American media and the propaganda we are fed as "news",
and the deterioration of American democracy, the content of the
TWT website changed. Travel info is now a very small part. Few
visitors now come for travel; the vast majority arrive while searching
for one of the many subjects/issues included on the site. Some
visitors, like you, come back again and again. Most probably come
only once and do not stay long, but they nevertheless are exposed,
however briefly, to a non-mainstream-media point of view.
I plan to continue adding material to
the site; it has become something of an obsession. The limits
are my reading speed and my time. There is certainly no paucity
of material.
I am sure the website is on a few significant
email lists. Maybe some who come to the site will learn things
that get them to realize how immoral and rotten U.S. foreign policy
really is. That is my hope.
***
From SR
i have some comments, but this email has
a happy ending... this is an excerpt of a letter from your "email
third world traveler has received..."
"Most Americans would get sick if
they knew what their government is doing is
their name and how these policies are impacting Americans here
at home and
others around the world. And they would be outraged if they began
to understand that most of the news is propaganda, designed not
to provide the truth but to distract people and to control their
ideas. It is the responsibility of those who are knowledgeable
to demand a free and open press, to work to reform our system,
and to fight for true democracy and social and economic justice
in the world. We don't see Chomsky, Parenti, Herman and Zinn,
or hear them, or read them because those in power don't want us
to. Therefore we must inform ourselves, we must inform others,
and then we must demand change"
i only briefly logged on to this site, and i think it is very
socially conscious... however, i am struck by one immediate, pesky
problem: have you ever read michele foucalult? a french philosopher
was he, wiht many interesting theories on power. he pointed out
that the typical belief is just what was written above.... that
the rich have power over the poor and ignorant, that there is
a center of power in the rich. more realistically, he explains
a system where there are many centers of power, where both the
rich and the poor are part of a large system.... the previous
idea assumes that if the poor/ignorant somehow overhthrew/figured
out what the big bad rich guys were up to, they could shift power
by somehow replacing the rich. [it's as if we think that the powerful
people sit on a throne and if only we could get them off that
throne, we'd be okay].
sorry, this is so simplified. the only
thing is that i don't think it's only the government that helps
keep people ignorant, it is the people themselves... the entire
system is built for gridlock, ask any political science major...
and people often times come home from a hard day's work and allow
themselves to be fooled...
most people DO have a vague idea about
the really fucked up things our government does.... most people
know that there is a central intelligence
organization, they simply think it has no relevance to them. same
thing with our cooperation with the nazis... it isn't some mind
blowing secret that we assisted the nazis during world war two...
but it's "in the past" as some people say. the only
famous people to speak out again how fast technology is growing
and taking over have been the luddites and the unabomber. not
good press. and most people that hear information about how the
governemnt controls us immediately think "conspiracy theory"
and marginalize these concepts as fringe alarmist, crazy, wacko,
subversive.
i'm sorry to ramble, because i do have a point. i went back to
your site and found a more relavant quote to begin with:
Many of us regard ourselves as mildly
liberal or centrist politically, voice fairly pleasant sentiments
about our poor children, contribute money to send poor kids to
summer camp, feel benevolent. We're not nazis; we're nice people.
We read sophisticated books. We go to church. We go to synagogue.
Meanwhile, we put other people's children into an economic and
environmental death zone. We make it hard for them to get out.
We strip the place bare of amenities. And we sit back and say
to ourselves, "Well, I hope that they don't kill each other
off. But if they do, it's not my fault."
Jonathan Kozol is right on with his notion
that we sit back and pretend that none of this business concerns
us. i'm a big phillip slater fan.. have you read "the pursuit
of loneliness?" he has a lot of the same ideas, and the first
big problem is making the average American, not just the activists,
realize that all of this stuff IS RELEVANT to their lives. otherwise
they are just going to change the channel or log off this site
when the info gets too harsh.
with that in mind, let me tell you what
i am up to.
in a few weeks i will tell you more, but
i am embarking on a project that will hopefully open some eyes.
i feel that the type of social consciesness so plentiful on your
site is wonderful, but it is not packaged in a way that is going
to bring in the people who really need to get the information.
your site has probably been frequented by many scholars and college
grads... this kind of info needs to be seen by all. you can't
force people into this... but you can redirect them subtly. this
does not involve getting sponsors or selling out. but i wouldn't
want to direct people to your site without your permission, so
let me know if you want people directed to your site. i'll be
able to give you more details in a few weeks, i hope.
who knows. we'll see. i hope i can help.
_____
Steve's reply
Thank you for your comments.
I agree with Jonothan Kozol. Those of
us who are informed, are part of the problem, unless we try to
change things. And, the uninformed have to be informed by us,
as best we can
I agree that most people know something
is rotten, but do nothing. It's the "good" German syndrome.
As long as people are doing OK and the "sludge is not coming
over our doorstep", we look the other way. It is human nature
I guess.
But, I disagree that most people know
what the government is doing in their name. Up until 10 years
ago I didn't. Now I do, but no thanks to the sources from which
I used to get most of my news. I sympathize with Americans who
have problems getting the truth from the mainstream media. I tried.
Then I gave up and sought other sources of information. It was
not easy. I had read Newsweek and Time, watched CNN and Network
news, and even read the Christian Science Monitor newspaper. But,
it was not until I began to read the independent progressive press,
and read books by Chomsky, Zinn, Parenti, etc., that I realized
how little I really knew about what my country was up to in the
world. Now, I read all of the time, and I contlinue to learn "everything
I didn't really want to know".
Most Americans come home from work, watch
sitcoms and CNN or NBC and then go to bed. They never have a chance
to learn the real nature of the corporate agenda and America's
role in keeping the poor poor for the sake of business profits.
They will never "have-a- clue".
Those in power thrive on the system as
it is. They know the system's rules and they don't want them changed.
And, they will do whatever they have to to keep those who want
to change the rules form doing so. So much for justice, morality,
ethics and human rights.
So, those that want to make progressive
changes in the system are marginalized, made to feel like wierdos.
It is effective.
But, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said,
"Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest
that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest. "
This website is my protest.
***
From NR
How interesting. Let me give you a little
background to why I write this letter. My career goal has always
been to work for the Central Intelligence Agency. I have focused
very hard on my studies to work towards this goal. I was looking
online for information about the CIA, when I stumbled into your
site. It brought a question to me. Where are your priorities?
First off, what you want to do, what you
want to post, what propaganda you want to spread, that is none
of my business. Your rights and mine are protected by the Constitution,
and I shall not infringe on that.
But I do have a right to question. You
are making your site out to make this world a better all-knowing
place. Now, I'm guessing CIA's record most likely isn't completely
clean, but what are you going to gain by making these things public,
most of them myths passed on to anyone who takes these things
as Gospel? You are an American.
Without this country, you could not sit
there and bring down one of the organizations that guarantees
you that freedom. What do you want from your country? We live
in a Democratic society that is FAR SUPERIOR to any other nation
in the world. If you have problems with how things are, move to
Moscow. Then we can see your opinions of this country. Would you
rather the government forced its issues and its practices down
your throat?
That exact system was employed by Stalin
and Hitler, and we both know how successful they turned out to
be.
I just am curious why anyone who has the
right to bash the American government, would. To me it's simple
hypocrisy. But what do I know? I'm only a free American, and it
is my goal in life to keep this free, so you can bash me for my
future line of work.
_____
Steve's reply
Thank you for your comments. Let me give
you a little background. I am a retired professional, raised by
a single mother - my father died when I was 2 years old. I have
taught in graduate school and I was in private practice for 26
years. I do not have a chip on my shoulder. America has been good
to me.
I was raised to believe that America was
the greatest place on earth, that it valued truth and democracy,
and that it stood up for the oppressed and unfree around the world.
The Vietnam War opened my eyes to another
America, one that oppressed and exploited, and lied about it.
I took part in a demonstration against the War in 1971, at age
31, the first time I ever did so.
I began to question what I had been taught,
and started to read books and articles that offered a different
view of America, one that dissented from the mainstream conventional
wisdom, one that criticized and disagreed with many U.S. government
policies. I came to realize that I had been lied to all of my
life. That although America is big, and strong, and wealthy, it
has used its power and its wealth to do some very nasty things
to poor and defenseless people, in order to protect and enhance
U.S. business interests around the world - behind American policies
are always American business interests.
I came to understand that my government's
vows to support democracy in the world were phony. That, in my
name, the U.S. government supported the meanest dictators and
tyrants, taught torture and psychological warfare to soldiers
to use on their own people, undermined and helped overthrow democratically
elected governments, set up death squads, assassinated leaders,
and consistently tried to prevent any and all social reform movements
in the Third World from succeeding. Our government's fear, backed
by U.S. business, has always been that if one reform movement
did succeed in improving the lives of the majority of its people,
others in the Third World might try a different, non-U.S. model,
to better the lives of the majority of their people.
I have come to the conclusion that most
Americans are good, decent people, and that they would not support
most of the horrid things the U.S. does in the world. I realize
that most of those who work in the U.S. government or for government
agencies, do their jobs and carry out the directives of their
superiors with the best of intentions, because they feel that
in doing so they are strengthening democracy, helping people,
and making their country and the world a better place. I have
come to the conclusion that they are often wrong.
I have been exposed to patriotic pomp
and rhetoric all of my life - the speeches, the flag-waving, the
national anthem, the parades. I accepted it and believed it as
most Americans do. But, now, I feel betrayed. I realize that the
values that the American people are taught and the policies of
the American government are not the same. That while we are saluting
the flag, our government is teaching torture techniques to death
squads in Guatemala and El Salvador to use on their own people.
While we are singing about the land of the free and the home of
the brave, U.S. soldiers are supporting dictators who rob and
immiserate their countries, transferring billions of U.S. aid
dollars and their countrymen's' hard earned money to personal
bank accounts in New York and Zurich. While American families
watch Fourth of July parades, women and children in Angola or
Indonesia are being killed by U.S.-trained soldiers using U.S.-supplied
weapons. While we care for our children, sheltering and protecting
them, the U.S.- backed "structural adjustment' programs of
the IMF and World Bank, demand that poor children in Africa and
Latin America go without health care, without food, without educations
so that loans made years ago to U.S.-supported dictators, are
repaid to wealthy New York banks.
I don't fault you for believing in America,
for joining the CIA, for working for your country overseas. At
one time I believed as you do. But, don't fault me for disagreeing
with your vision of this country. You like America the way it
is. I don't. I think it could be better.
I don't have to be a "commie"
to disagree and dissent. If no one tried to eliminate injustice
in this country we would still have slavery and child labor.
My website is a small attempt to inform
people about another side of this country's policies, and to help
them act, not to destroy America, but to make its policies more
humane, more just , more democratic.
Look at my website, think about the many
voices included there who offer another view of American policies
and American history. These are not my ideas, but the ideas of
many people most of whom you will never hear about or see in the
mainstream media, because the people at the top are afraid their
ideas might confuse people and make them think "out-of-the-box".
The American Revolution was started by
American's who disagreed with the policies of their government,
thought those policies were unjust and wanted to change them.
American history is filled with events, actions and ideas that
led to changes that made America a better place. That's the American
way. In a very small way that's what I am trylng to do.
*
NR's reply
I thank you for opening me up to a new
side of this issue. You come off as someone with an intelligent
approach to this issue, compared to some of the lunatics out there.
I'm sorry if I came off as rude, but I know I speak for both of
us when I say that I hope your information is false.
***
***
From Angela G.
I was overwhelmed with your site! This
is one of the best I have seen for uncovering some truths re:
human rights, government actions, transnational corporations,
etc. I am really impressed!
***
From Ian S.
Just been looking at you site on the internet....
I'ts fantastic..... Printed off over 100 pages....
***
From Mark W
Truely one of the best sites on the
Web. So much truth. So big of an indicment of the whole current
economic, political system. Keep up the excellent work. I wish
I could be more involved in some way.
***
From LL
Just wanted to express my appreciation
for your Third World Traveler web-site. It's one of the best sites
of it's kind that I've seen. I especially appreciate the Howard
Zinn page.
***
From Chris
I'd just like to say that I am thoroughly
impressed with your website as a newcomer to it. I don't think
I've ever found such an in-depth website about exactly the kind
of information I'm looking for. I used to spend a lot of time
looking for information on this or that, and now, most of it is
readily available to me. I want to thank you for the invaluable
service that this site serves and wish to extend good luck to
you in the future.
***
From RH
Like all states, the United States has
a multitude of sins, but you and your kind backed the tyranny
of the Soviet Union for seventy years, and hate Reagan for having
led the United States to victory in the Cold War. The US Army
Air Corps burnt hundreds of thousands of 'innocent' civilians
to death during the Second World War - and we rightly do not apologize
for that either. This time around, Athens won and I am glad it
did. Your kind would have betrayed Greece to the Persians.
As to the Serbs. the have the right of
every sovereign state to supress treason and rebellion. The Nazis
were indicted for what they did to their neighbors, not to their
own Germans. Read what Sheridan did to the Shenandoah valley in
1864 during our own Civil War, and you will get a perspective
on putting down an ethnic uprising. Nasty, yes, but "War
is cruelty and you cannot refine it". - William Tecumsah
Sherman.
P.S. Ain't it ironic your president Clinton
nominated Hookbrooke, one of Marcos' strongest supporters? Pat
Derian isn't even a footnote now. How come no one's mentioning
this?
_____
Steve's reply
First, I never backed the tyranny of the
Soviet Union. The USSR was a totalitarian nightmare put in place
by Stalin to force the USSR into the 20th century as an industrialized
power, in response to the threat by the European countries and
the US. Stalin succeeded, but the price the Russian people have
had to pay is monumental.
Second, Reagan didn't lead the US to a
great victory in the Cold War. He helped bankrupt a Third World
country that had nuclear weapons and lots of poor, miserable people.
The USSR was already a sick country in 1989, and in a last dying
gasp, it commited economic suicide trying to keep up militarily
with an American economy 10 + times the size of its own. And the
Russian people are the ones who are suffering as a result. The
life expectancy in Russia has dropped 15 to 20 years since its
economy collapsed. The economy is one-quarter its previous size.The
country is a gangster state - the Russian mafia has more money
than the State. The army is not being paid. Nuclear weapons are
not being maintained. The environmental damage is unmeasurable.
The Cold War days may look good to us
in a few years as China moves along the same path to industrialization,
and world pollution. Or if China and Russia perceive the U.S.
as a threat to their countries and to their "manhood",
we may be faced with a confrontation between us and the two-of-them.
If you think the world is better off today,
now that the Cold War is over, look around. More people are poor,
more people are exploited, more people are dying, more people
are going hungry. Of course, now that the "evil empire"
is dead, we are being alerted about the future "yellow peril"
(China).
If Americans ever wake up, they will realize
that they have been taken for a very expensive ride to nowhere.
As middle-class wages stagnate, as workers are down-sized, as
kids kill kids, as cities fall-apart and jails fill-up, the weapons-manufacturers
are making a hell-of-a-lot of money building missles and bombers,
then sellling them to our Third-World-dictator-pals who make war
on their own people. Then, the Lockheeds and Rockwells come back
to their patrons in Congress and the White House (and the U.S.
taxpayers) and say, "Gosh, "Pakistan" has these
great new weapons that we sold them and made a ton of money on;
now we need to build bigger and better weapons to protect the
American people from the weapons we sold to "Pakistan"."
It is the greatest scam in the history of the world.
Finally, the Nuremberg Trials. Hitler
came to power as the Chancellor of Germany in democratic elections,
during the terrible economic times after Germany's defeat in WWI.
While he committed his atrocities, the German people looked the
other way - they didn't want to know what was going on. Neither
do Americans. As long as we are doing OK, we don't want to know
what our government is doing to others around the world.
As for those "bad" Nazis, ITT,
Ford, and other US-corporations worked with Hitler to build military
vehicles and improve the telephone system in Nazi Germany with
the knowledge of the US government.
If there were another Nuremberg, US presidents,
secretaries of State and Defense, Pentagon generals, National
Security Agency and CIA officers, and many other knowledgeable
government officials would certainly be tried and convicted for
"crimes against humanity -- in 1965, 500,000 Indonesians
were killed in a bloody U.S.-supported coup by General Suharto;
in 1975, while Ford and Kissinger winked, Indonesian President
Suharto invaded East Timor, killing 200,000 people, one-third
of the population; in Guatemala, over 30 years, the US-trained
and supplied military made war on its people, killing 150,00 to
200,000 Guatemalans; in Chile, in 1973, Kissinger and Nixon arranged
the overthrow of its democratically-elected president Salavador
Allende by US-supported Augusto Pinochet. Allende ended up dead;
in southeast Asia, the US fought an illegal war (war was never
declared) and bombed Cambodian and Laotian peasants into the Stone
Age; and in Iraq, our favorite "rogue state", since
1991, more than 1,000,000 Iraqis have died from US-led sanctions
on food, medicine and sanitation equipment, including over 500,000
chiildren . Twice as many Iraqi children die each year than prior
to the sanctions. What was once the best health care system in
the Middle East is now in shambles. And, Saddam, "our Hitler",
is still in power. If we want to get rid of Saddam, how come the
only ones doing the suffering are innocent civilians, especially
children. All of these glorious 'victories" silently supported
by "good" Americans - in the the same way "good"
Germans supported Hitler's atrocities.
I could go on (I have already). I am neither
a communist nor a socialist. I don' t want to destroy this country
or our system. Americans need to wake up to the reality of what
their government does in their name, and begin to say to their
elected officials, "If you act like Nazis, people around
the world will see you as Nazis. If we support your policies,
out of ignorance or out of selfishness, we will be no better than
the "good" Germans who ignored the Holocaust."
Steve
PS Clinton is no hero of mine; neither
is Holbrooke.
***
From Pupship
Your agenda is unclear to me. You say
you want a government that serves "the majority"; does
this mean that a person in a minority should NOT be served? In
what way would policies be determined and executed? Would the
people vote on every issue? That sounds impractical, but if that
isn't the case, then who would decide what policies would be enacted
and how? And how would they be financed?
*
What kind of ethics do you subscribe to?
Most of what you talk about is humanitarian and although I differ
somewhat with some of the particulars, it's safe to say we both
despise dictatorship and lies.You're probably busy, but if you
don't mind, what is your stand on:
Technological progress?
Free market?
Bureaucracy?
Socialism?
Capitalism?
Individual rights vs. collective benefits at their expense?
And: how do you personally define and understand theword "happiness"?
Also, concerning environmentalism, all
I've really heard has been claims and polemics from all sides
of the issue with no accompanying evidence, and I am suspicious
of the EPA as I am of any other government agency with an indeterminate
agenda. Being conscientiously skeptical about any claim anyone
makes about anything with no evidence, I have chosen to suspend
judgement until I can find some hard facts about it. Know where
to go concerning that?
___
Steve's reply
I'm not too busy to discuss the future
of democracy in America and world survival. If I had answers to
all of the important questions, I would probably be even busier
than I now am. But I do have some answers. Here they are.
You ask about my stand on technological
progress. I have no stand. Technological progress will continue
to occur. The real question is: Will advances in technology be
used to better the lives of human beings and to improve conditions
on this planet, or will technology outstrip morality and common
sense and become the undoing of our species and maybe even our
world.
As far as the " free market"
is concerned, it is neither free nor fair. When transnational
corporations are subsidized with tax breaks, pay almost no taxes
and enjoy advantageous government trade preferences, the system
is not free. Transnational corporations competing with subsistance
farmers is not fair. In the "free market", Third World
poor are supposed to compete against technologically sophisticated
First World countries, and succeed. This is not likely. A more
likely scenario is that industrialized nations and their transnational
corporations will control the lives and the livelihoods of the
vast majority in the underdeveloped countries of the world. It
is 21st century colonialism -- the powerful controlling the weak,
exploiting them and and making them weaker, so that we in the
West may maintain our lifestyles. The Third World is being asked
to fight with both hands tied behind its back, and it is losing,
badly.
Bureaucracy is not exclusive to government.
Try reaching someone at Citibank or Monsanto or AT&T with
a complaint or a problem, and you will find a private enterprise
bureaucracy equal to that of government. The difference is that
if you are unhappy with government you can call your Congressman,
or you can vote him out of office; if you are unhappy with PG&E
or with your corporate conglomerate HMO, you are out of luck.
These are totalitarian institutions that respond only to power.
In our society power follows money, and we have neither.
Socialism? It has been placed together
with liberalism, pacificism, and communism, and catagorized with
Hitler and the Devil. Our capitalist system will tolerate no competition,
no matter how weak and impotent, from other social philosophies.
All of these ideologies have some good points, some positive ideas,
but Americans will never be allowed to evaluate them for themselves.
The ruling elite of our society have a great fear that if we are
exposed to any system that offers a humane society which treats
people fairly and provides a caring environment for people to
raise their children and live their lives, they might prefer it
to our present survival-of-the-fittest system. The ruling elite
will not take that chance. They have too much to loose. So they
keep Americans ignorant, propagandize against any other possibitlies,
and control us all. Socialism is not all good and it is not all
bad. We should be given the facts and be allowed to choose the
best from any system.
Capitalism. What can I say. It is our
system and it has treated many of us well, including myself. I
am a have, not a have-not. But, the system is inherently unfair.
Those without the right families, the right neighborhoods, the
right educations or the right opportunities, are out of luck.
It is a winner-take-all society; there are some winners and many
losers. Capitalism with a human face might be a good system, but
we will never know, because the goal of capitalism as it is now
practiced is to allow individuals to make as much money as possible;
to accumulate as many things as possible. That's it. There is
no social component; there is no goal for the betterment of the
society and its people. "Capitalists" do not consider
the quality of people's lives, their struggles or their needs,
as their responsibilities. They concern themselves only with the
bottom-line. Just look at the stock market -- the altar where
those who worship the religion of money pray. Corporate stocks
rise when corporations fire employees. Those fired may be unable
to feed their families or pay their mortgages, but stockholders
and corporate executives cheer because the stock market went up.
People have become cogs in the capitalist wheel. They are being
chewed up and spit out, while those at the top cheer. As now instituted,
our capitalistic system is sick. When a system values stocks and
profits over people, it is time for a change.
We are a country founded by the individual.
People fought to survive and thrive and the country grew and prospered.
That was then, this is now. We are a different society than we
were in the 1600s, 1700s, and the 1800s. Our country has wealth
and is secure. There are no real threats (except those manufactured
by our government and the military-industrial complex to frighten
the public). It is time that our capitalist system changes to
reflect the changes in the world. We are on top. We can protect
ourselves from any threats and remain strong, and still build
a caring society that values people and nature, and no longer
exploits the weak and vulnerable in the world. Ours is a system
that has forgotten its reason for being -- not just to accumulate,
but to provide a just and humane society for people. It's time
not to give away our country's wealth but to to share it. Capitalism
with a human face is what we should be striving for. It is time
for corporations and individuals to say. "I have enough.
Let others have some." But, this is a very foreign concept
in America today.
Happiness is another story. Our society's
goal should not be to make people happy. No one and no system
can do that. Our society's goal however should be to level the
playing-field, give people a chance to make themselves happy.
A decent place to live, a job that pays a living wage, health
care, an opportunity for a good education, a system that taxes
based on a person's ability to pay, an electoral system that guarantees
one person one vote, not one dollar one vote, a society that doesn't
just pay lip-service to children and families but actually helps
them grow and live lives of dignity.
Am I asking too much? I don't think so.
I am an American. I believe things can
be better. That's how I was raised. That's the American way.
***
From Christina N
My parents were missionaries in Brazil
when I was very young. I was only five years old when we went,
and ten years old when we returned. The impression it made on
me, however, to see other kids my age starving to death while
I was healthy and well-fed has been nearly an unbearable burden
to live with. I am twenty-three, now, but the pain I saw is still
so close to me, I am searching desperately for a way to help the
problem of poverty in Brazil, even thought it is such a huge problem.
I feel a little helpless because it is so overwhelming, but I
have this idea about wanting to open some sort of channel from
the United States to Brazil. What I need is someone or some organization
in Brazil to whom I can directly send food, clothing, first aid
kits, blankets, or whatever else they might need. I need this
to be someone who can get the materials directly to the people.
I realize that the world does not have so much of a food problem
as it has a distribution problem. If I can set up some sort of
partnership with someone I will work on rounding up materials
here in the U.S.. What I need now is to find someone I can ship
the materials to who can then distribute it to the people.
If you can help me with this, it would
be PARAMOUNTLY significant to me. If you cannot, but have names
of people who can help me, or suggestions of how to go about achieving
this goal, please, please, please tell me. Please, please respond
to this note, even if it is to steer me in another direction.
I want so much to help people. I just need help finding out how
I can. Thank you so much for your time.
___
Steve's reply
I don't have that information but I will
give some resources that may be able to help.
Global Exchange
http://www.globalexchange.org/
2017 Mission Street #303
San Francisco, California 94110
phone (415) 255-7296 fax (415) 255-7498
email info@globalexchange.org
The Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First)
398 60th Street, Oakland, CA 94618 USA
Tel: (510) 654-4400
Fax: (510) 654-4551
E-mail: foodfirst@igc.apc.org
URL: www.foodfirst.org
Oxfam America
http://www.oxfamamerica.org/
Marin Interfaith Task Force on Latin America
(no web site)
415-924-3227
Good luck.
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