U.S. is losing the sympathy of the world

On Fri, 12 Sep 2003 13:34:57 +0100, John Mullen wrote:
"Alan Lothian" wrote in message
...
In article , John
Mullen wrote:

Richard Bernstein, NYT
Reprinted in the International Herald Tribune.

U.S. is losing the sympathy of the world

snip of loads of stuff distributed around the Net in gross breach of
copyright

Having had a look at the Copyright notices of both publications, it seems
you are (technically) right here. Morally, I would contend that crediting
online sources you have lifted text from for a non-profit purpose such as
this, is sufficient. Certainly it's a very common practice.

This is true of lots of antisocial activities.

After all,
anybody who wants to can read it online in the original.

I disagree. Posting a paragraph or precis and refering to the whole
article is acceptable. Shoveling entire articles into discussion
groups is not.


--
A: top posting

Q: what's the most annoying thing about Usenet?

Some knowledgeable common sense on the subject:

A Funny Sort of Empire
Are Americans really so imperial?

By Victor David Hansen

It is popular now to talk of the American "empire." In Europe particularly
there are comparisons of Mr. Bush to Caesar — and worse — and invocations
all sorts of pretentious poli-sci jargon like "hegemon," "imperium," and
"subject states," along with neologisms like "hyperpower" and "overdogs." But
if we really are imperial, we rule over a very funny sort of empire.

We do not send out proconsuls to reside over client states, which in turn
impose taxes on coerced subjects to pay for the legions. Instead, American
bases are predicated on contractual obligations — costly to us and profitable
to their hosts. We do not see any profits in Korea, but instead accept the risk
of losing almost 40,000 of our youth to ensure that Kias can flood our shores
and that shaggy students can protest outside our embassy in Seoul.

Athenians, Romans, Ottomans, and the British wanted land and treasure and
grabbed all they could get when they could. The United States hasn't annexed
anyone's soil since the Spanish-American War — a checkered period in American
history that still makes us, not them, out as villains in our own history
books. Most Americans are far more interested in carving up the Nevada desert
for monster homes than in getting their hands on Karachi or the Amazon basin.
Puerto Ricans are free to vote themselves independence anytime they wish.

Imperial powers order and subjects obey. But in our case, we offer the Turks
strategic guarantees, political support — and money — for their allegiance.
France and Russia go along in the U.N. — but only after we ensure them the
traffic of oil and security for outstanding accounts. Pakistan gets debt relief
that ruined dot-coms could only dream of; Jordan reels in more aid than our own
bankrupt municipalities.

If acrimony and invective arise, it's usually one-way: the Europeans, the
Arabs, and the South Americans all say worse things about us than we do about
them, not privately and in hurt, but publicly and proudly. Boasting that you
hate Americans — or calling our supposed imperator "moron" or "Hitler" —
won't get you censured by our Senate or earn a tongue-lashing from our
president, but is more likely to get you ten minutes on CNN. We are considered
haughty by Berlin not because we send a Germanicus with four legions across the
Rhine, but because Mr. Bush snubs Mr. Schroeder by not phoning him as
frequently as the German press would like.

Empires usually have contenders that check their power and through rivalry
drive their ambitions. Athens worried about Sparta and Persia. Rome found its
limits when it butted up against Germany and Parthia. The Ottomans never could
bully too well the Venetians or the Spanish. Britain worried about France and
Spain at sea and the Germanic peoples by land. In contrast, the restraint on
American power is not China, Russia, or the European Union, but rather the
American electorate itself — whose reluctant worries are chronicled weekly by
polls that are eyed with fear by our politicians. We, not them, stop us from
becoming what we could.

The Athenian ekklesia, the Roman senate, and the British Parliament alike were
eager for empire and reflected the energy of their people. In contrast, America
went to war late and reluctantly in World Wars I and II, and never finished the
job in either Korea or Vietnam. We were likely to sigh in relief when we were
kicked out of the Philippines, and really have no desire to return. Should the
Greeks tell us to leave Crete — promises, promises — we would be more
likely to count the money saved than the influence lost. Take away all our
troops from Germany and polls would show relief, not anger, among Americans.
Isolationism, parochialism, and self-absorption are far stronger in the
American character than desire for overseas adventurism. Our critics may slur
us for "overreaching," but our elites in the military and government worry that
they have to coax a reluctant populace, not constrain a blood-drunk rabble.

The desire of a young Roman quaestor or the British Victorians was to go
abroad, shine in battle, and come home laden with spoils. They wanted to be
feared, not liked. American suburbanites, inner-city residents, and rural
townspeople all will fret because a French opportunist or a Saudi autocrat says
that we are acting inappropriately. Roman imperialists had names like Magnus
and Africanus; the British anointed their returning proconsuls as Rangers,
Masters, Governors, Grandees, Sirs, and Lords. In contrast, retired American
diplomats, CIA operatives, or generals are lucky if they can melt away in
anonymity to the Virginia suburbs without a subpoena, media exposé, or
lawsuit. Proconsuls were given entire provinces; our ex-president Carter from
his peace center advises us to disarm.

Most empires chafe at the cost of their rule and complain that the expense is
near-suicidal. Athens raised the Aegean tribute often, and found itself nearly
broke after only the fifth year of the Peloponnesian War. The story of the
Roman Empire is one of shrinking legions, a debased currency, and a chronically
bankrupt imperial treasury. Even before World War I, the Raj had drained
England. In contrast, America spends less of its GNP on defense than it did
during the last five decades. And most of our military outlays go to training,
salaries, and retirements — moneys that support, educate, and help people
rather than simply stockpile weapons and hone killers. The eerie thing is not
that we have 13 massive $5 billion carriers, but that we could easily produce
and maintain 20 more.

Empires create a culture of pride and pomp, and foster a rhetoric of
superiority. Pericles, Virgil, and Kipling all talked and wrote of the grandeur
of imperial domain. How odd then that what America's literary pantheon —
Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, Susan Sontag, and Alice Walker — said about 9/11
would either nauseate or bewilder most Americans.

Pericles could showcase his Parthenon from the tribute of empire; Rome wanted
the prestige of Pax Romana and Mare Nostrum; the Sultan thought Europe should
submit to Allah; and the Queen could boast that the sun never set on British
shores. Our imperial aims? We are happy enough if the Japanese can get their
oil from Libya safely and their Toyotas to Los Angeles without fear; or if
China can be coaxed into sending us more cheap Reeboks and in turn fewer
pirated CDs.

Our bases dot the globe to keep the sea-lanes open, thugs and murderers under
wraps, and terrorists away from European, Japanese, and American globalists who
profit mightily by blanketing the world with everything from antibiotics and
contact lenses to BMWs and Jennifer Lopez — in other words, to keep the world
safe and prosperous enough for Michael Moore to rant on spec, for Noam Chomsky
to garner a lot of money and tenure from a defense-contracting MIT, for Barbra
Streisand to make millions, for Edward Said's endowed chair to withstand Wall
Street downturns, for Jesse Jackson to take off safely on his jet-powered,
tax-free junkets.

Why then does the world hate a country that uses it power to keep the peace
rather than rule? Resentment, jealousy, and envy of the proud and powerful are
often cited as the very human and age-old motives that prompt states
irrationally to slur and libel — just as people do against their betters. No
doubt Thucydides would agree. But there are other more subtle factors involved
that explain the peculiar present angst against America — and why the French
or Germans say worse things about free Americans who saved them than they did
about Soviets who wanted to kill them.

Observers like to see an empire suffer and pay a price for its influence. That
way they think imperial sway is at least earned. Athenians died all over the
Mediterranean, from Egypt to Sicily; their annual burial ceremony was the
occasion for the best of Hellenic panegyric. The list of British disasters from
the Crimea and Afghanistan to Zululand and Khartoum was the stuff of Victorian
poetry. But since Vietnam Americans have done pretty much what they wanted to
in the Gulf, Panama, Haiti, Grenada, Serbia, and Afghanistan, with less than an
aggregate of a few hundred lost to enemy fire — a combat imbalance never seen
in the annals of warfare. So not only can Americans defeat their adversaries,
but they don't even die doing it. Shouldn't — our critics insist — we at
least have some body bags?

Intervention is supposed to be synonymous with exploitation; thus the Athenians
killed, enslaved, exacted, and robbed on Samos and Melos. No one thought Rome
was going into Numidia or Gaul — one million killed, another million enslaved
— to implant local democracy. Nor did the British decide that at last
17th-century India needed indigenous elections. But Americans have overthrown
Noriega, Milosevic, and Mullah Omar and to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein, to put
in their places elected leaders, not legates or local client kings. Instead of
the much-rumored "pipeline" that we supposedly coveted in Afghanistan, we are
paying tens of millions to build a road and bridges so that Afghan truckers and
traders won't break their axles.

In that regard, America is also a revolutionary, rather than a stuffy imperial
society. Its crass culture abroad — rap music, Big Macs, Star Wars, Pepsi,
and Beverly Hillbillies reruns — does not reflect the tastes and values of
either an Oxbridge elite or a landed Roman aristocracy. That explains why Le
Monde or a Spanish deputy minister may libel us, even as millions of
semi-literate Mexicans, unfree Arabs, and oppressed southeast Asians are dying
to get here. It is one thing to mobilize against grasping, wealthy white people
who want your copper, bananas, or rubber — quite another when your own youth
want what black, brown, yellow, and white middle-class Americans alike have to
offer. We so-called imperialists don't wear pith helmets, but rather baggy
jeans and backwards baseball caps. Thus far the rest of the globe — whether
Islamic fundamentalists, European socialists, or Chinese Communists — has not
yet formulated an ideology antithetical to the kinetic American strain of
Western culture.

Much, then, of what we read about the evil of American imperialism is written
by post-heroic and bored elites, intellectuals, and coffeehouse hacks, whose
freedom and security are a given, but whose rarified tastes are apparently
unshared and endangered. In contrast, the poorer want freedom and material
things first — and cynicism, skepticism, irony, and nihilism second. So we
should not listen to what a few say, but rather look at what many do.

Critiques of the United States based on class, race, nationality, or taste have
all failed to explicate, much less stop, the American cultural juggernaut.
Forecasts of bankrupting defense expenditures and imperial overstretch are the
stuff of the faculty lounge. Neither Freud nor Marx is of much help. And real
knowledge of past empires that might allow judicious analogies is beyond the
grasp of popular pundits.

Add that all up, and our exasperated critics are left with the same old empty
jargon of legions and gunboats.


Chris Mark

Cub Driver wrote:


what are we fighting for i dont give a damn cause george bush sent us to
die in vietnam

Isn't that amazing? A product of which demented school system? He
can't spell, can't punctuate, and thinks George Bush was prezdint
during the Vietnam War!

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: www.danford.net/letters.htm#9

And, doesn't quote the song correctly either.

"And it's one, two, three, what are we fightin' for?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn.
Next stop is Vietnam.
And it's five, six, seven, open up the pearly gates.
Well, there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopie! We're all gonna die!"

Also it seems our incendiary Aussie friend can't tell the difference
between ten years of war and five months; can't tell the difference
between 58,000 dead and less than 200; can't tell the difference
between an occupied country and an ongoing Communist insurgency.

Probably thinks a quagmire is related to a quahog.



Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (ret)
***"When Thunder Rolled:
*** An F-105 Pilot Over N. Vietnam"
*** from Smithsonian Books
ISBN: 1588341038

Like we have ever really had it? In this world a nation has occasional
allies; It NEVER has "friends"!
As for sympathy, especially that ersatz European variety, let them put it
where the sun never shines.

WDA

end

"John Mullen" wrote in message
...
Richard Bernstein, NYT
Reprinted in the International Herald Tribune.

U.S. is losing the sympathy of the world

BERLIN In the two years since Sept. 11, 2001, the view of the United
States as a victim of terrorism that deserved the world's sympathy and
support has given way in the months after the war in Iraq to a
widespread vision of America as an imperial power that has defied
world public opinion in an unjustified and unilateral use of military
force.
.
"A lot of people had sympathy for Americans around the time of 9/11,
but that's changed," said Cathy Hearn, 31, a flight attendant from
South Africa, expressing a view commonly heard in many countries.
"They act like the big guy riding roughshod over everyone else."
.
Across the globe, from Africa to Europe, South America to Southeast
Asia, the war in Iraq has had a major impact on a public opinion that
has moved generally from post-Sept. 11 sympathy to post-Iraq-war
antipathy, or, at least to disappointment over what is seen as the
sole remaining superpower's inclination to act pre-emptively with
neither persuasive reasons nor United Nations approval.
.
To some degree, the resentment is centered on the person of President
George W. Bush, who is seen by many as, at best, an ineffective
spokesman for American interests and, at worst, a gunslinging cowboy
knocking over international treaties and bent on controlling the
world's oil supplies, if not the entire world. Foreign policy experts
point to slowly developing fissures born with the end of the cold war
that emerged only in the debate leading up to the Iraq war.
.
"I think the turnaround was last summer when American policy moved
ever more decisively toward war against Iraq," Joseph Joffe, co-editor
of the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit, said. "That's what triggered
the counter alliance of France and Germany and the enormous wave of
hatred against the United States."
.
The subject of America in the world is, of course, complicated, and
the nation's ebbing international image could rise quickly in response
to events. The Bush administration's recent turn to the United Nations
for help in postwar Iraq may, by stepping away from unilateralism,
represents such an event. Even at this low point, millions of people
still see the United States as a beacon and support its policies,
including the war in Iraq, and would, if given the chance, be happy to
become Americans themselves.
.
Some regions, especially Europe, are split in their view of America's
role, with the governments, and, to a lesser extent, the people, of
the former Soviet Bloc countries much more favorably disposed to
American power than the governments and people of American allies in
Europe, most notably France and Germany.
.
In a strongly allied country like Japan, insecure in the face of a
hostile, nuclear-armed North Korea a short missile distance away,
there may be doubts about the wisdom of the American war on Iraq. But
there seem to be far fewer doubts about the importance of American
power generally to global stability.
.
In China, while many ordinary people express doubts about America's
war in Iraq, anti-American feeling has diminished since Sept. 11, and
there seems to be greater understanding and less instinctive criticism
of the United States by government officials and intellectuals. The
Chinese authorities have largely embraced America's "war on terror."
.
Still, a widespread and fashionable view is that the United States is
a classically imperialist power bent on controlling global oil
supplies and on military domination.
.
The prevailing global mood has been expressed in different ways by
many different people, from the hockey fans in Montreal who booed the
American national anthem to the high school students in Switzerland
who don't want to go to the United States as exchange students because
America isn't "in."
.
But even among people who do not believe the various conspiracy
theories that are being bandied about, it is not difficult to hear
very strong denunciations of American policy and a deep questioning of
American motives.
.
"America has taken power over the world," said Dmitri Ostalsky, 25, a
literary critic and writer in Moscow. "It's a wonderful country, but
it seized power. It's ruling the world. America's attempts to rebuild
all the world in the image of liberalism and capitalism are fraught
with the same dangers as the Nazis taking over the world."
.
A Frenchman, Jean-Charles Pogram, 45, a computer technician, said
this: "Everyone agrees on the principles of democracy and freedom, but
the problem is that we don't agree with the means to achieve those
ends.
.
"The United States can't see beyond the axiom that force can solve
everything but Europe, because of two world wars, knows the price of
blood," he said.
.
Lydia Adhiamba, a 20-year-old student at the Institute of Advanced
Technology in Nairobi, said that the United States "wants to rule the
whole world, and that's why there's so much animosity to the U.S."
.
This week, the major English language daily newspaper in Indonesia,
The Jakarta Post, ran a prominent article entitled "Why moderate
Muslims are annoyed with America," by Sayidiman Suryohadiprojo.
.
"If America wants to become a hegemonic power it is rather difficult
for other nations to prevent that," he wrote. "However, if America
wants to be a hegemonic power that has the respect and trust of other
nations, it must be a benign one and not one that causes a reaction of
hate or fear among other nations."
.
Crucial to global public opinion has been the failure of the Bush
administration to persuade large segments of public opinion of its
justification for going to war in Iraq.
.
In striking contrast to public opinion in the United States, where
polls show a majority believing that there was a connection between
Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the Al Qaeda terrorists who carried
out the Sept. 11 attacks, the rest of the world does not believe that
argument because, most people say, the evidence has not been produced.
.
This explains the enormous difference in international opinion between
American military action in Afghanistan in the months after Sept. 11,
which seemed to have tacit approval around the world as a legitimate
act of self-defense, and the view of American military action in Iraq,
which is commonly seen as the arbitrary act of an overbearing power.
.
Perhaps the strongest effect on public opinion has been in Arab and
Muslim countries.
.
Even in relatively moderate Muslim countries like Indonesia and
Turkey, or countries with large Muslim populations, like Nigeria,
polls and interviews show sharp drops in public approval of the United
States over the past year.
.
In unabashedly pro-American countries like Poland, perhaps the most
important America ally on Iraq after Britain, polls show 60 percent of
the public opposed to the Polish government's decision to send 2,500
troops in Iraq under overall American command.
.
For many people, the issue is not so much the United States as it is
the Bush administration, and what is seen as its arrogance. In this
view, a different set of policies and a different set of public
statements from Washington would have resulted in a different set of
attitudes toward the United States.
.
"The point I would make is that with the best will in the world,
President Bush is a very poor salesman for the United States, and I
say that as someone who has no animus against him or the United
States," said Philip Gawaith, a financial communications consultant in
London. "Whether it's Al Qaeda or Afghanistan, people have just felt
that he's a silly man and therefore they are not obliged to think any
harder about his position."
.
But while the public statements of the Bush administration have not
played well in much of the world, many analysts see deeper causes for
the rift that has opened between the United States and even many of
its closest former allies.
.
In their view, the Iraq war has not so much caused a new divergence
but highlighted and widened one that has existed at least since the
end of the cold war. Put bluntly, Europe needs America less now that
it feels less threatened.
.
Indeed, while the United States probably feels more threatened now
than in 1989, when the cold war ended, Europe is broadly unconvinced
of any imminent threat As a result, America and Europe tend to view
the world differently.
.
"There were deep structural forces before 9/11 that were pushing us
apart," said John Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the
University of Chicago and the author of "The Tragedy of Great Power
Politics."
.
He added: "In the absence of the Soviet threat or of an equivalent
threat, there was no way that ties between U.S. and Europe wouldn't be
loosened.
.
"So, when the Bush administration came to power, the question was
whether it would make things better or worse, and I'd argue that it
made them worse.
.
"In the war, you could argue that American unilateralism had no cost,"
Mearsheimer continued. "But, as we're finding out with regard to Iraq,
Iran and North Korea, we need the Europeans and we need institutions
like the UN. The fact is that the United States can't run the world by
itself, and the problem is we've done a lot of damage in our relations
with allies, and people are not terribly enthusiastic about helping us
now."
.
Recent findings of international surveys have given a mathematical
expression to these differences. A poll of 8,000 people in Europe and
the United States conducted by the German Marshall Fund of the United
States and the Compagnia di Sao Paolo of Italy, found Americans and
Europeans agreeing on the nature of global threats, but disagreeing
sharply on how they should be dealt with.
.
Most striking was a difference over the use of military force, with 84
percent of Americans and 48 percent of Europeans supporting force as a
means of imposing international justice.
.
In Europe overall, the number of people who want the United States to
maintain a strong global presence went down 19 percentage points since
a similar poll last year, from 64 percent to 45 percent, while 50
percent of respondents in Germany, France and Italy express opposition
to American international leadership.
.
Many of the difficulties predated Sept. 11, of course. Eberhard
Sandschneider, director of the German Council on Foreign Relations,
has listed some in a recent paper: "Economic disputes relating to
steel and farm subsidies; limits on legal cooperation because of the
death penalty in the United States; repeated charges of U.S.
'unilateralism' over actions in Afghanistan; and the U.S. decisions on
the ABM Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, the International Criminal Court,
and the Biological Weapons Protocol."
.
"One could conclude that there is today a serious question as to
whether Europe and the United States are parting ways," Sandschneider
writes.
.
From this point of view, as Sandschneider and others have said, the
divergence between the United States and many other countries will not
be a temporary phenomenon stemming from the Iraqi war, but a permanent
aspect of the international scene.
.
A recent survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project showed a growth of
anti-American sentiment in many non-European parts of the world. It
found, for example that only 15 percent of Indonesians now have a
favorable impression of the United States, down from 60 percent a year
ago.
.
Indonesia may be an especially troubling case to American policymakers
who have hoped that Indonesia, a moderate country with a relatively
easy-going attitude toward religion, would emerge as a kind of
pro-American Islamic model.
.
But since Sept. 11, a group of extremists known as Jemaah Islamiyah
has gained strength, hitting targets in Bali and Jakarta and making
the country so insecure that Bush may not be able to stop off there
during an Asia trip planned for next month.
.
One well-known mainstream Muslim leader, Din Syamsuddin, the
American-educated vice president of a 30 million-strong Islamic
organization, called the United States the "king of the terrorists"
and referred to Bush as "drunken horse."
.
This turn for the worse has occurred despite a $10 million program by
the State Department called the Shared Values Campaign in which
speakers and short films showing Muslim life in the United States were
sent last fall to Muslim countries, like Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia
and Kuwait.

Aerophotos wrote in message ...
hey sonny

youve never heard of the famous anti vietnam war protest song in the 60s
obviously..

that send up was quite famous, obviously your so PTSD wound up you cant
remeber it...

and obviosuly sonny aka skip cant understand the relation between
vietnam and iraq... both were quagmires started by the us foreign
policies which are in no way useful to the worlds health

JGG, have you *really* been accepted into the RAAF? I would have
thought that their requirements would have included some rudimentary
written communications skills...which you have yet to demonstrate. And
BTW; GWB did not send us to Vietnam.

Brooks




Sunny wrote:

"Aerophotos" wrote in message
...
snip crap
what are we fighting for i dont give a damn cause george bush sent us to
die in vietnam
snip more crap
**** your a dork JGG. (get someone to read your **** out loud to
you...slowly)

--

On Fri, 12 Sep 2003 10:49:27 +0100, Alan Lothian
wrote:

In article , John
Mullen wrote:

Richard Bernstein, NYT
Reprinted in the International Herald Tribune.

U.S. is losing the sympathy of the world

snip of loads of stuff distributed around the Net in gross breach of
copyright

The sympathy of the world (whatever the hell "world" means in that
context) plus two euros will buy you a cup of coffee in some capital
cities.


Add a couple more euros and you can get a nice cappucino.

On Fri, 12 Sep 2003 13:34:57 +0100, "John Mullen" wrote:

"Alan Lothian" wrote in message
...
In article , John
Mullen wrote:

Richard Bernstein, NYT
Reprinted in the International Herald Tribune.

U.S. is losing the sympathy of the world

snip of loads of stuff distributed around the Net in gross breach of
copyright

Having had a look at the Copyright notices of both publications, it seems
you are (technically) right here. Morally, I would contend that crediting
online sources you have lifted text from for a non-profit purpose such as
this, is sufficient. Certainly it's a very common practice. After all,
anybody who wants to can read it online in the original.


Ever heard of fair use, or the newswothiness exception?

Do you think "copyright notices" fully and fairly inform you of the
law? Which of course varies in different jurisdictions.

Coudn't hack basic training eh, or did you even go ??????????????????

On 12 Sep 2003 16:52:18 GMT, ost (Chris Mark) wrote:

Some knowledgeable common sense on the subject:

A Funny Sort of Empire
Are Americans really so imperial?

By Victor David Hansen

It is popular now to talk of the American "empire." In Europe particularly
there are comparisons of Mr. Bush to Caesar — and worse — and invocations
all sorts of pretentious poli-sci jargon like "hegemon," "imperium," and
"subject states," along with neologisms like "hyperpower" and "overdogs." But
if we really are imperial, we rule over a very funny sort of empire.

******
snip

******
Add that all up, and our exasperated critics are left with the same old empty
jargon of legions and gunboats.


Chris Mark

You don't think all this new found hatred of the "American Empire"
will encourage a bit of defense spending in Europe do you? Nah, doubt
they would do anything that would hurt their pensions.

What a pity.

How can the US respect a world power who won't stand up against a
bully like us?

On Fri, 12 Sep 2003 21:26:18 +1000, Aerophotos
wrote:


hey sonny

youve never heard of the famous anti vietnam war protest song in the 60s
obviously..

that send up was quite famous, obviously your so PTSD wound up you cant
remeber it...

and obviosuly sonny aka skip cant understand the relation between
vietnam and iraq... both were quagmires started by the us foreign
policies which are in no way useful to the worlds health




Can somebody please supply with the "moron" cipher key so I can
decrypt this message?