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..
..
|