def. of terrorism
Bin Laden just a suspect!
economic drop
USA's macho stance
IAEE - "fostering peace and prosperity worldwide"
Compaq - "inspiration technology"
Thai Airlines - "smooth as silk"
Olympics - "to be a giant, to do giant things /
celebrate humanity"
US Sec. of Defense - root of the problem = terrorists
& countries which harbor them
violence may not be the best way to answer violence
(Dalai Lama)
"the psyche dictates the economy"
consumer confidence
listen to Sudan & Pakistan - have UN react
respect (Japan)
doubts
layoffs
confidence
hasty action
moved
deeply care
attention
seriousness
hard evidence
solidarity
nuances
enthusiasm
language
civilized world
lesson
arrogant
very critical time
Arab dilemma
payback
definitive proof
scapegoat
free people
emotion
anger
calm our mind
one emotion that has always been missing for me that most everyone around me seems to have experienced, is anger. i never did get angry. maybe because i could understand why someone would want to fly planes into the towers, and so, weirdly, i felt just great sorrow not only for all the innocent people who died, but also great sorrow for the people who flew the planes into the towers because they were that much in pain, that desperate, small, and unheard, that they felt their only choice in life would be to take their own lives and the lives of others. actually, my 1st thought was that americans, themselves, had flown the planes into the towers...(which conspiracy theorists do feel it was an "inside" job) to be in that much fear, to have your life be THAT shitty, and to feel so insignificant and worthless and that pain would become a burning hate worse than hell itself that you would rather die (and take as many people with you as possible) than live in the hell you felt life was, and that it just grew and grew until that hell became hell for us all. to be that warped and twisted, and to do it in the name of ANY god. how surprised they must have been when a land of milk and plenty with rewards of whatever they thought was waiting for them on the other side was not there for them. how surprised they must have been to maybe, theoretically, see themselves on the other side with all the people they had just killed. that must have been quite an interesting conversation. secretaries and bankers who were just filling their cups with coffee to instantly find themselves inexplicably dead and standing next to some equally confused really angry souls from the other side of the world who had just been piloting a plane into a tower. i hope there were lots of spirits from the other side ready and willing to help and mediate that entire mess. i'm sure there was. it had to be far more bewildering than watching a plane melt like butter into the tallest building in the world.
it's sad we cannot see how we are all one. and god is within us all.
and that, instead of taking that as a signal and opportunity for us to listen and be compassionate to those who are being so unheard, we just made more people hate us. just killed even more, silenced more, made more people feel small and insignificant and powerless. 'caused my pain and more hell.
killed and maimed and psychologically and literally raped 10 times the amount that were innocently killed in the towers. and that pain will echo on for eons.
we could have taken the towers falling as our wake up call to become more compassionate human beings but instead their hate turned us into the monsters they were.
like being bitten by vampires. the hate and hell has spread.
i'm not saying that sitting down with many of the terrorists and giving them and hug and listening to their problems is going to solve much. many have to be taken out (along with much of our government, too...and we certainly had no right to go over and kill thousands of people and destroy 2 more countries in our quest for "the terrorists"), i suppose, as one would a serial rapist. they are so hate filled now, they are, perhaps, twisted beyond repair like a normal cell which has turned cancerous and now must be cut out from the body. but it's not to late for much of the world, i don't think. i think much of the world that our government walks all over (and this includes it's own citizens!!) would definitely would benefit greatly and be healed by being actually seen and heard and made to feel like they weren't insignificant pawns in some sort of sadist world power game.
but that this will probably never happen makes me even more sad. it is a sad sad time for this planet.
i'm bittersweetly glad i had the luxury of experiencing life in america before 9-11 (sadly, at the expense of the rest of the world, it would seem now). it's weird that there are children on this planet now who will never know what that was like. and who will hear and see the footage of the towers, but it will seem far away and removed like pearl harbour does for me.
it still freaks me out how the whole thing is summarized the "the tower" card of the tarot, down to the people falling and the fire.
+++ the tower Divinatory meaning (very very brief summary..the true meaning is actually FAR more vast, detailed, and fascinating than this...)
Upright (or using this energy/opportunity for good) - Disruption. Conflict. Change. Sudden violent loss. Overthrow of an existing way of life. Major changes. Disruption of well worn routines. Ruin and disturbance. Dramatic upheaval. change of residence or job sometimes both at once. Widespread repercussions of actions. In the end, enlightenment and freedom.
Ill Dignified or Reversed (or using this energy/opportunity for bad) - Negativity. Restriction of desires and imprisonment. Less severe forms of the above. Drastic change that may rob the individual of freedom of expression. Sometimes bankruptcy and imprisonment. more usually imprisonment within a set of circumstances which cannot currently be altered. Sudden changes out of one's control. Less severe forms of the above
Now that it's two years and change from that bygone bad day in human history, the image of apocalypse seems ever more pervasive. The US response to the sight of fire across their skies has been to react in kind, reigning down all manner of explosive fury upon modern city and impovershed village alike: dropping cluster bombs one second, a few food packages another. During the late days of the war in Afghanistan the Northen Alliance forces, supposedly under US command and control, massacred thousands of surrendered POWs, locking them in containers while they were transported across the country without food, water, and hardly any air. Scattered reports indicate that the men trapped inside became so desperate for fluids that towards the end some of them bit at each other, desparately sucking at the blood for some hope of relief. Ultimately, many of the men found their way into a mass grave in the Afghan desert, possibly even dug under the watching eyes of US soldiers. The wartorn country that was reduced to rubble long before the news media made Osama Bin Laden an international superstar, has become rubble littered with unexploded ordnance, US military forces, and warlord rule. And by comparison to Iraq, Afghanistan is talked about as the successful campaign of the Administration's War on Terrorism. In the newest untamed frontier of US power, reports of new bombings and scores of new US casualties have become an almost daily fixture in the national and international press. Not counting the tremendous numbers of soldiers killed in Iraq, reports indicate as many as nine thousand civilians may have been killed by US forces during the past few months.
And yet at the same time as the Iraq story has been unfolding in the mainstream press, in another corner of the world one casualty that went largely unnoticed, a Korean farmer by the name of Lee Kyang Hae who commited suicide during the WTO protests in Cancun, has come to personify the ongoing international catastophe brought about by the present regime of globalization, decimating agriculture in the Third world while eroding working conditions in the First. On September 20, Lee's funeral procession was confronted by police repression as farmers and mourners attempted to deliver the coffin to the office of the South Korean President and the WTO talks, during which Lee's suicide had occured, resulted in a walk-out by Third World delegates angry about the "developed" countries' refusal to grant them any significant fair trading concessions.
Just looking at the state of it all, it feels more and more like everything is either falling apart or just getting ready for something real big to happen. Everywhere the machine of capitalist world order is choking on its own gears, United States foreign policy has lost its bearings and is hurtling the globe into fire and darkness, the few remaining spaces of uncontained vibrancy and beauty are daily being attacked and destroyed: there's a growing sense that the battle lines of Armageddon are daily being drawn in sand and city streets, perhaps waiting for some unknown horrible explosion to start off the end of days...
"Terrorist Attacks on America" by Noam CHOMSKY
"Albert Interviews Chomsky..." with Noam CHOMSKY
"Chomsky Replies to Hitchens" by Noam CHOMSKY
"Reply to Casey" by Noam CHOMSKY
"Noam Chomsky Interviewed by John Campbell"
"Chatting with Chomsky" with Noam CHOMSKY
"Effects of U.S. Policy in the Middle East" by Noam CHOMSKY
"The New War Against Terror" by Noam CHOMSKY