Those lives are more human than ours (article and cartoon by Latuff)

In 1994 ethnic conflict between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, Africa, killed around 500 thousand people, mostly by blows of machetes. This fact was shown on TVs around the world, but we were not so touched by it.

Bombed in 1991 by USA, Iraq is suffering from economic sanctions imposed by United Nations. Result of this embargo is deprivation in the country of provisions, including medicines, resulting in the deaths of an unknown number of human beings. Children mainly. Again, we seem not to be so moved.

Recently, Palestinian children and teenagers armed with stones and slings have been shot to death by Israeli troops in the Occupied Territories of West Bank and Gaza. Images come daily in the news bulletins, but not enough to move us.

However, scenes of the attack on the World Trade Center suceeded in producing tears around the world. How to understand this strange sensibility? Sure! The Rwandans, Iraquis, Palestinians...they are not like us, common citizens from Western. Americans are!!!

Those lives are more human than ours.

We spent a lot of time eating their fast food, listening to their rock 'n roll, wearing their jeans, watching their Rambos and Titanics, that we ended up believing we are just like our "Brothers from North". We hold on to this idea to forget our own status of deprivation. Who cares if rained "made in USA" bombs in Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Serbia? It's about THEM and not US. I speak english and I know who Michael Jackson is. I've got a pair of Nike tennis shoes and have just pierced my nose, just like I saw in a movie. I feel myself almost an American. By the way, who said I am a Latin American? I am an A-m-e-r-i-c-a-n!!!

That's the same concept that makes US interventions seem fair in foreign countries on behalf of freedom and democracy. It's for our own welfare. Uncle Sam is defending ourselves from THEM.

Our stupid complicity has agreed to american hegemony for all this time. But change comes fast, aboard passenger planes. Not even Francis Fukuyama could have expected this...

What crashed against Twin Towers was History. The same History, which reduced to ruins powerful empires such as Egyptian and Roman, started to corrode former untouchable yankee kingdom. No counterattack from U.S. can to reverse such an impact. Final countdown for the end of the last world superpower is in progress already. It's impossible to foresee when it will finish, but undoubtedly it's an irreversible process.

The day 11 of September can be understood as a kind of "Tet Offensive" for American nation. It didn't defeat it, but reported the nearness...