Fighting Terrorism: The price we have to pay
Wretchard of the Belmont Club has an entry in his blog that I found really good. It's a really terrific piece of writing, strong and to the point, wasting no words to deliver a heart-rending reality.
Wednesday, September 01, 2004This is the price we have to pay for a stupid war. America should have let things as they are in Iraq. But it couldn't. Bush had to have a war for his re-election campaign. And so the terrorist kidnappings happened. And the suicide bombings. Not to mention the sharp rise in oil prices worldwide. Life has become so difficult for the Filipino because of this Ugly American, Dubya. Ugly in every way.
The Day
The seizure of 200 schoolchildren with their parents in Russia, for a total of perhaps 400, presumably by Chechen terrorists, caps a stemwinder of a newsday. The amazing thing is that the headlines were all of a piece: 12 Nepalis executed in Iraq; 2 French journalists held hostage in Iraq; 16 killed in twin bus bombing attacks in Israel; 10 dead in a bombing attack on a Moscow subway. xxx
I was just on the phone with my Dale and he was telling me he was proposing to increase the salary of his number one guy, the one who oversees all the factory operations. It's a garments company. The No. 1 guy takes home P70,000.00 -- a month. A MONTH.
I remarked that it was obscene. The minimum daily wage for a laborer is P280.00, for eight hours' work. That's P11,200.00 a month. And this guy's take-home pay's P90,000.00 A MONTH. I don't care if he's effective, efficient and dedicated. It's obscene. No one should earn so much in this time of hunger and destitution, not to mention war.
My Dale then said that he'd better not tell me how much he earns in a month. I said he was a capitalist pig. He laughed and corrected me: he was, he said, a mere capitalist tool, with a social conscience. According to his logic, how can he give away money if he doesn't earn any? Specious argument and I let him know it.
He just laughed at my bourgeois pretensions at being left-of-center.
If I had a take-home pay of P90,000 a month, I could easily support not only myself but my aging parents and my brother's family of a wife and two kids, plus two dogs, as well.
In the news last night, it was reported that gas prices had increased ten time since the start of the year. Talk about instability.
posted by Emyn Galad @ Friday, September 03, 2004
2 Comments:
i'm posting this anonymously for obvious reasons.
I'm 23 years old and my job pays me 59k pesos a month (I work in the Philippines). Does that sound like an injustice to you? Well, yeah it does. But, then again, you need just as much to actually make a difference in your life. Even with 60k a month, I wouldn't be able to provide for a family. Since I'm single, that's good.
On a different note, I think you may have been a little to narrow minded beating up on Bush like that. I am against war of course but war is both inevitable and necessary. If there was no war, there will still be terrorists out there and they will find reasons to do terrible things.
Congratulations! At 23, earning that much? Great! But you're looking to make a difference in your life; I'm looking to make a difference in the life of my country.
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