Posted 17th September 2001

Politics Now Personal
Introduced by Alan Marston

T This week I felt myself and witnessed in many others a strong need to talk to family and friends, it was the most immediate response to what is burned into my mind by a gut-renching emotion as Crash Tuesday. A crash in lower Manhattan that was different to the 1929 one, but history may judge as just as significant a generator of social, political and personal change. I needed to know what was left in my world that was solid and I knew I'd only find that in friends and family, in the hardest thing to find and build, love.

It is the personal that hits home first and hardest. True, Crash Tuesday was a global event as befits a global economy in a global village, however for the first time for most in the USA and in the so-called Western World the global economy took on deeply personal significance, turning in half an hour from intellectual theory and possible money-making idea to a fear-tinged reality symbolised by the crumbling to dust of the aptly named twin tours - the World Trade Centre. Now globlisation has a new image that touches every human being's feelings who witnessed the twin-tower collapse, and billions did and will, an image that now links size with fragility and danger, the bigger something is the more dangerous it is... to me.

Below are some very personal responses to Crash Tuesday, the day politicsturned from someone else's problem to everyone's problem.

September 11, 2001, New York City resident. I am writing this from my home in Brooklyn after leaving Manhattan. I have signed up for a time slot to give blood later this evening and have a few hours available before then. After my last posting I made my way east through an urban moonscape. Everywhere there is ash, abandoned bags in the street, people looking lost. I managed to get a cell line out to Jean Michele, who is still in Seattle, and she helped me navigate with online maps as I plotted my exit strategy.

Bizarrely, I caught a taxi cross town. I was standing at a corner, I'm not even certain where, and a taxi was sitting there. A very pushy woman, whom I will always be thankful for, barged her way into the cab. In a moment, without thinking, I climbed in too. The driver, a Pakistani guy who had an improbable smile, immediately took off.

The ash blocks out the sun downtown. It's like driving in an impossible midnight, and even more impossible that I'm in a cab, with this woman who won't stop trying her cell phone and another man, my age, who looks like he's been crying. Maybe he just has ash in his eyes. I know I do. I feel like I will never see properly again, though that's probably just trauma. I don't even know where the driver is going. The crying man got someone on his cell phone, starts explaining what he's seeing out the window. It's like having a narrator traveling with us. I only notice the things that he is describing as he describes them.

God bless that taxi driver -- we never paid him. He let us all off, and I think he got out as well, near the Brooklyn Bridge. There were cops everywhere, people were herding themselves quite calmly, mutely, onto the bridge. We all walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, which was unbelievably beautiful, the wires and stone of the bridge surrounding us and the bright sun ahead, passing out of darkness.

No one was talking, but there was a sense of warmth. Everyone had their cell phones out, fishing for a clear signal. Those who catch them talk hurriedly to families, friends, people in other cities, children in their homes. It is comforting to hear their voices, telling how they are okay, shhh, it's okay, I'm okay. As we walk out into the sunlight, I am so happy to be in this company, the company of people who are all right, those who walked out.

I went into the city today to turn in some of my book. I had stayed up all night writing and was so worried. Is it ready? Have I done my work? Now these questions seem small -- not unimportant, but smaller, in a new proportion. I keep thinking of how much I have left to do in my life, so many things that are undone, people I haven't spoken to in years. It was overwhelming to feel everyone around me thinking the same thing, the restless thoughts trickling over this bridge as we walked back to Brooklyn.

>From the Promenade I stood with hundreds of others, listening to radios, watching the plumes of smoke and the empty holes in the skyline. People stood there for a long time, talking to each another in hushed tones. Someone handed out a flier for a vigil this evening, which I will go to after I give blood. What can be said? Just this: we will emphasize the horror and the evil, and that is all true, but is not the entire story. I saw an old man with breathing problems and two black kids in baggy pants and ghetto gear rubbing his back, talking to him. No one was rioting or looting. People helped each other in small and tremendous ways all day long. A family was giving away sandwiches at the Promenade. Everyone I talked to agreed to go give blood. If a draft had been held to train people to be firefighters, there would have been fights to see who got to volunteer.

No matter how wide and intricate this act of evil may be, it pales in comparison to the quiet dignity and strength of regular people. I have never been more proud of my country.

OR ARE WE GOING TO WAR?

By Tamim Ansary

I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio today, allowed that this would mean killing innocent people, people who had nothing to do with this atrocity, but "we're at war, we have to accept collateral damage. What else can we do?" Minutes later I heard some TV pundit discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be done." And I thought about the issues being raised especially hard because I am from Afghanistan, and even though I've lived here for 35 years I've never lost track of what's going on there. So I want to tell anyone who will listen how it all looks from where I'm standing.

I speak as one who hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. There is no doubt in my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in New York. I agree that something must be done about those monsters. But the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who took over Afghanistan in 1997. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a plan. When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden, think Hitler. And when you think "the people of Afghanistan" think "the Jews in the concentration camps." It's not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would exult if someone would come in there, take out the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their country.

Some say, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban? The answer is, they're starved, exhausted, hurt, incapacitated, suffering. A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food. There are millions of widows. And the Taliban has been burying these widows alive in mass graves. The soil is littered with land mines, the farms were all destroyed by the Soviets. These are a few of the reasons why the Afghan people have not overthrown the Taliban.

We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already. Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their hospitals? Done. Destroy their infrastructure? Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that. New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier bombs. Would they at least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan, only the Taliban eat, only they have the means to move around. They'd slip away and hide. Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled orphans, they don't move too fast, they don't even have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and dropping bombs wouldn't really be a strike against the criminals who did this horrific thing. Actually it would only be making common cause with the Taliban--by raping once again the people they've been raping all this time.

So what else is there? What can be done, then? Let me now speak with true fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. When people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be done" they're thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about killing innocent people. Let's pull our heads out of the sand. What's actually on the table is Americans dying. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that folks. Because to get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I'm going. We're flirting with a world war between Islam and the West.

And guess what: that's Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants. That's why he did this. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there. He really believes Islam would beat the west. It might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarise the world into Islam and the West, he's got a billion soldiers. If the west wreaks a holocaust in those lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose, that's even better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably wrong, in the end the west would win, whatever that would mean, but the war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden does. Anyone else?

7 Days Of Re-creation

At 9pm EST, 6pm USA west coast time, from September 11 to 18, simply feel the presence of millions around the world who are praying for all violence to cease. Spend ten minutes in silence each night knowing that we are creating a new world based upon the laws of compassion and peace. The events of that day cause every thinking person to stop their daily lives, whatever is going on in them, and to ponder deeply the larger questions of life. We search again for not only the meaning of life, but the purpose of our individual and collective experience as we have created it-and we look earnestly for ways in which we might recreate ourselves anew as a human species, so that we will never treat each other this way again. Join Neale Donald Walsch, Marianne Williamson, James Twyman, James Redfield and Doreen Virtue in this prayerful response to the recent terrorist attacks on the US.

The hour has come for us to demonstrate at the highest level our most extraordinary thought about Who We Really Are. There are two possible responses to what has occurred today. The first comes from love, the second from fear. If we come from fear we may panic and do things-as individuals and as nations-that could only cause further damage. If we come from love we will find refuge and strength, even as we provide it to others. This is the moment of your ministry. This is the time of teaching. What you teach at this time, through your every word and action right now, will remain as indelible lessons in the hearts and minds of those whose lives you touch, both now, and for years to come. We will set the course for tomorrow, today. At this hour. In this moment. Let us seek not to pinpoint blame, but to pinpoint cause. Unless we take this time to look at the cause of our experience, we will never remove ourselves from the experiences it creates. Instead, we will forever live in fear of retribution from those within the human family who feel aggrieved, and, likewise, seek retribution from them. To us the reasons are clear. We have not learned the most basic human lessons. We have not remembered the most basic human truths. We have not understood the most basic spiritual wisdom. In short, we have not been listening to God, and because we have not, we watch ourselves do ungodly things.

The message we hear from all sources of truth is clear: We are all one. That is a message the human race has largely ignored. Forgetting this truth is the only cause of hatred and war, and the way to remember is simple: Love, this and every moment.If we could love even those who have attacked us, and seek to understand why they have done so, what then would be our response? Yet if we meet negativity with negativity, rage with rage, attack with attack, what then will be the outcome? These are the questions that are placed before the human race today. They are questions that we have failed to answer for thousands of years. Failure to answer them now could eliminate the need to answer them at all. If we want the beauty of the world that we have co-created to be experienced by our children and our children's children, we will have to become spiritual activists right here, right now, and cause that to happen. We must choose to be at cause in the matter. And join all those people around the world who are praying right now, adding your Light to the Light that dispells all fear. That is the challenge that is placed before every thinking person today.

Today the human soul asks the question: What can I do to preserve the beauty and the wonder of our world and to eliminate the anger and hatred-and the disparity that inevitably causes it - in that part of the world which I touch? Please seek to answer that question today, with all the magnificence that is You. What can you do TODAY...this very moment? A central teaching in most spiritual traditions is: What you wish to experience, provide for another. Look to see, now, what it is you wish to experience-in your own life, and in the world. Then see if there is another for whom you may be the source of that. If you wish to experience peace, provide peace for another. If you wish to know that you are safe, cause another to know that they are safe. If you wish to better understand seemingly incomprehensible things, help another to better understand. If you wish to heal your own sadness or anger, seek to heal the sadness or anger of another. Those others are waiting for you now. They are looking to you for guidance, for help, for courage, for strength, for understanding, and for assurance at this hour. Most of all, they are looking to you for love.

After Thought... by Duncan

The time is fast approaching when the ordinary people around the world are going to have to rally together to call for a change from the spiralling policies of aggression and oppression which are spouted by so many world leaders. Here in New Zealand we have a history of broad opposition to weapons proliferation. That sentiment needs to be roused again to call for understanding in this time of international danger. We need to stand out and build links with all those who see this bombing as more than just an act of terrorist carnage, it is a callous and unforgivable attempt to be heard in a world whose governments only listen to the powerful and rich. What can New Zealand do to be heard in the world? What I do know is that if you are reading this then you are someone who I know has a commitment to seeing and sharing the broader picture. .

I see three things you can do now.

1.) Download and printout the articles from leading, respected authors Noam Chomsky, Michael Fisk and John Pilger. Send them to friends, post them on noticeboards, leave them in staffroom. Get them out to the public, don't wait for NZ's mainstream press. www.zmag.org/fiskawecalam.htm www.zmag.org/pilgercalam.htm www.zmag.org/chomnote.htm

2.) Attend the 'vigil for peace' organise by Auckland University Students, Monday 17th 8pm Albert Park Auckland. If you're not in Auckland then take the opportunity to talk to some people about the fallout from the current events.

3.) Get involved in finding ways to tell World Leaders that we do not want them dragging the world into an escalated East vs. West war. One way to do that is to join one of the lists below for discussion of organising events. If you're in Auckland come to a discussion meeting on Monday at 6pm under the glass in the Quad at Auckland University.

And join NZ response (Auck) by sending a blank email If you're outside Auckland send a and meet with others in your area. nypeople.jpg Name: nypeople.jpg Type: JPEG Image (image/jpeg) Encoding: base64.. ..