{ This is an accumulating document of correspondence here 
about the WTC attack and the state of the world which 
created/promoted/allowed it. Last update: 9/15/2001 }

A friend writes about the 9/11/01 events:

  ... I wouldn't be surprised if alot of people in the
  world feel about this like I feel when the Yankees lose 
  the pennant or the series. 

My response (as of 9/12/01): 

There is something going on here which has not made the air waves. 
Beyond the factors of envy, greed, and exploitation etc., there is 
an element of future shock.  

The "developed North" (as referred to by the conference at Rio, 
being North America, Europe, Japan, maybe Russia, and I'll include 
Australia and New Zealand) is a set of secular post-industrial 
societies which are generally moving away from older cultural 
patterns which characterised pre-industrial * societies, and 
toward new ideals, new practices, and new ways of discovering 
and knowing. 

To picture what I am referring to for the North, look at some 
magazines: The New Yorker, Fast Company, Science News, Fortune.
To picture the pre-industrial society, recall the film "Brother 
Sun, Sister Moon" where the family is the corporation, and lineage 
is authority, or, look at the the Taleban.

The North is, in cultural and economic terms, exploding in 
size, speed, knowledge, and variation at a tremendous rate.
Concurrent with this post-industrial cultural explosion in the 
North is a communications explosion that makes it all inescapable 
for anyone else on the planet. 

There are many other cultures who are not ready for such a move
away from the old. They are being forced into competition with, 
essentially, a wave from a future which they desperately want 
to deny. They not ready for this future, it is not a future of 
their own devising. They don't know yet what their future would 
be if they had a chance to develop it out of their own cultural 
location. Their horror is that their future appears already to 
have been decided by others, and it is clearly counter to values 
with which they deeply identify. 

Imagine our response if an alien, but human, people from, say, 
another planet in our solar system, were to drop in on us, take 
over, say, Antarctica, transform it to habitability with some 
superior technology, and begin to export their very sexy, stylish, 
but disturbing, culture to the rest of the planet, buying up all 
the hottest properties on all continents, and telling us that 
we can participate, and compete, when we learn to support the 
"true values of Solar Culture which represent the future of 
Humankind."  They quickly dominate the planet and claim to 
define our future in ways which are a) not ours and b) counter 
to values that we currently hold dear.

Would you feel like flying one of their space ships into their 
Solar Trade Center?  I thought so.

* see "The Preindustrial City, Past and Present" by Gideon Sjoberg. 
Free Press. NYC. There are five copies at Powell's Books in Portland. 
It's out of print. 

I am not making excuses here. 5,000 murders is a hideous lot. 
I am just trying to understand where this is coming from.

*   *   *   *   *   *

September 13: 
Some responses to the above - 

Progressives have a history of being terribly late to recognize the 
crimes of their favored players on the world stage. Examples are 
American leftists' resistance to recognize Stalinist bloody purges,
or Castro's atrocious treatment of gays and other marginalized 
people in Cuba, or Arafat's lies and treachery. Much of the dialogue 
on the internet seems to be bending over backwards to identify 
with and show understanding for the bad actors on today's stage. 
This is a mistake. We should recognize that people are being 
cynically manipulated by demagogues for political purposes. 

*  *  *

A friend writes:

Rhodes,

As you know I lived in Saudi Arabia for a while working on a business
project.  I traveled in the area as we looked at other farms and looked for
skilled personnel.  There was a willingness and eagerness to incorporate
modern methods which included transportation and communication into what we
were doing.

When an old bedouin chief came in to talk to the suited Saudis there was no
snickering as the sandy man walked into the carpeted office with 3 TV sets
blaring news in English and Arabic.  He also did not take one of his 2
pistols on his belts to shoot at the TV.  He had tea, spoke, and left.  He
came to request help and advice on dealing with one of his families. The
differences between this exchange and what takes place in the hatred camps
is that there was mutual respect and an understanding of what the other
person was all about.  I am sure the bedouin reminded the modern Saudi
sheikh of the simpler life and family issues of humanity as he carved out
global business deals.

The reason such large  and populated areas can be controlled by one deranged
person is the suppression of education and open mass communication.  My
personal theory would also include the atrocious treatment of the female
population.  I believe that half of the population is not permitted to lend
its naturally more nurturing thinking into the running of the society.  It
always struck me as odd that the women would be emotionally and
educationally deadened and yet be responsible for bringing up the next
generation.

As you look into the future for your Solar scenario - look back to our
wild west.  How did they get along?  Uneducated sod farmers and the educated
elite building cities and laws to govern were able to stay quite separate
and continued to widen their gap.  Education and communication permitted
those on the farm to leave if they wanted to.  It became more of a lifestyle
choice.  Had there been no education available to the farmer and his family-
I am sure the outcome might have been different with a seething repressed
group taking orders from the citified elite.  We saw the obvious value of
farmers producing food.  What is the value of an international hatred camp
or of religious zealots without the wisdom to understand that the world has
been changing since the beginning of civilization.  Alvin Toffler believes
that many people take longer to absorb change and for some it is incredibly
painful to the point that it seems illogical that they should have to endure
such pain.  To allow all those people to form an alliance, have access to
power (money), cloak it in a religious (unassailable right) belief, and
brainwash generations is a tragedy.

*  *  *

Another friend writes:

Rhodes,
        I'm understanding of the human emotion behind our beating the war
drums, but incredibly saddened that no public leaders are asking "why" did
this happen, and instead blaming it on "evil". From simply a muslim point
of view consider:
        1) America's refusal to allow the Eastern European muslims to arm
themselves to defend against ethnic cleansing.
        2) The subsequent carpet bombing of the area.
        3) The bombing of Baghdad - a civilian capital - where the Pentagon
estimates 200,000 deaths, and the UN estimates that 500,000 children have
died since as a result of "spent uranium shells" (cancer") and total
destruction of the santitation infrastructure.
        4) Our unequivocal, uncritical support of (or silence about) 
Israel when gunships fly into cities and strafe and rocket police
stations, office buildings; when the entire Palestinian citizenry is
reduced to impoverished refugees in a country which is at least partially
theirs; where 12 year olds are being shot to death for throwing stones.

It would take a superhuman person not to be enraged; not to plan malevolent
retribution.  This awful bombing demonstrates to me that no one anywhere is
safe. That the very engines of our wealth can be turned against us, and only
honest steps taken to investigate "why people hate us so much" might be of
use. It is an ideal time. Touched by grief and real suffering, perhaps
Americans are at last ready to comprehend the levels of suffering created
in their names in: Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua, Honduras, Dominican
Republic, Vietnam, Panama, Haiti, Iraq, Bosnia, and now apparently
Afghanistan.  The people planning the retribution are the same people who've
brought us all the previous side-shows. While their response may serve to
consolidate the presidency for George II, there is no military response that
can stop small cells of five to ten people operating independently.
Rudimentary logistics and logic show that. The only option truly left is to
begin treating people as human, and attending to the legitimacy of their
needs ---- and this includes the poor bastards at airport security making
minimum wage and no benefits.

    The core common denominator is money. The airlines don't want to pay for
real security. Our government doesn't want to give up a nickel so that
Africans and Latin-Americans could rise out of poverty; the Israeli's won't
give up a penny so that the Palestinians could have running water. The
upshot? A new generation of people with nothing to lose; ready to die to
advance a cause. There's no way we can beat such people without so
fundamentally changing ourselves as to make living here unfit for people.
Only an honest redress of grievances and measures of social justice will
allow people to get on with their own constructive nation building and
closer-to-home wealth building and society building processes. I'm afraid
we're going to keep on re-creating the past. Next time, one of those people
crossing the border, might just have a bottle of Sarin or Anthrax in his
pocket. I'm afraid our leaders are not thinking empathetically and clearly.
(It was their policy institutes after all, that disparaged suicide attacks
in the United States in the belief that as soon as people left the Middle
East and got here, they would want to live! How chauvinistic is that?)  Ah
well, keep breathing.

*   *   *

Another friend writes to his sons across the country:

 hi guys:  I tried to call you Tues p.m. after the "bombing" just to talk
 but the phone connections to the East weren't working. I know you're OK
 but this is a time for fatherly wisdom, if I have any.

 A few truths you won't learn in school (unless you have a very brave
 teacher): 

 1. The worldwide media are controlled by large mega corporations. They
 let us hear/see/read the news that they want us to hear. They want us to
 believe that things are good, that anyone opposing their profit making
 ventures are bad. What makes it hard is that sometimes the media are
 right and those bad people are really bad.  In the US it's not so often
 the outright lies, but it is more often the absence of certain news or
 facts. Some news stories just never appear here. Of course its not
 better in other countries, they just get different slants on their news
 than we do. The net can be a counter tool to the control of media by the
 mega corps in the first world and by the ruling governments in the less
 developed world. The net can also be a monster source of lies and
 stupidity.

 2. When analyzing the news, look for what they are not saying. By this I
 mean when they are all talking about the donut and its shape,
 texture, flavor, etc. ask yourself why are they not talking about the
 hole?  They act like there is no hole, there is nothing to talk about,
 how can you talk about a hole?  And that hole and the reason there is a
 hole in that donut is exactly what they are not thinking about, or if
 they are thinking about it, they don't want you to think about it...

 Examples. 1:  On Tues a.m. I immediately picked up on 2 things that
 weren't being said. The first of them was about airport security (now,
 later they are starting to talk about it, but not quite with the right
 target). The security folks are all mimimum wage. They have bad working
 conditions . Would you like their job 40 hrs. a week?  How motivated can
 someone be at mimimum wage in a dead end job getting lots of disrespect
 from angry travelers?  A lot of these security folks probably can't afford
 air travel for themselves. The airlines don't employ them, the work is
 contracted out to private security agencies, often to the lowest bidder.
 So who gets shafted? The workers, who then get the lowest pay. Many of
 them are working two jobs to make ends meet. I bet they are pretty tired
 and not always alert... Or maybe some are angry.

 How hard do you think it would be to "infiltrate" an airport security
 company? CBS news said the turnover in security personnel at Logan
 Airport was 200% in one year. Probably anyone with a good attendance
 record could be a shift supervisor in 6 months.  The shift supervisor
 and a few other infiltrators working under him/her could let all sorts
 of people/weapons thru the system at the designated time...

 An important link in airport security is staffed by people whose bosses
 got the contract by paying them less money. The security companies
 profit more, so we get less security.

 Another example:  They now tell us that 3-6 people per airplane did the
 hijacking with box cutter knives. But there were 45 - 90 people on
 each airplane.  There is something the media is not asking or not
 telling us -  How do three guys with nasty but little knives "herd"
 (that's the term the media used) 40 people?  Don't you think that 10
 people (especialy using coats or jackets as shields to deflect the
 little sharp blades) could easily overwhelm one of the knife guys?  And
 not one of the 10 would be killed by those little knives. Yes, some
 nasty slashes...but 10:1 odds...

 They are not talking about that...why?  What could really have been
 going on? I don't know, but we should be asking.

 I am not saying that there is a big conscious cover up conspiracy. No
 it's more like there is nothing to say about a topic that nobody is
 saying anything about. The media are not looking (and if anybody found
 it, their bosses would kill the story). Why? Because they would not
 believe it. Like asking a blind man to differentiate between red and
 blue. Its just not there.

 Osama Bin Laden, could be. Iraq, why not? We've got to retaliate against
 somebody. We just don't know who. And the official explanation is that
 this was a very expensive and big plot that only a very wealthy and well
 organized group or nation could bring about.

 Maybe.  It's always more honorable to be beaten by a powerful adversay
 than to be beaten by a chump. If the Yankees take a series from the Ms
 we feel alot better about losing than if we get beaten by a weak team
 like the Devil Rays.

 I may well be wrong. What do I know (other than to question, disbelieve
 and look for the hole, not the donut)? But I think we were taken
 down by chumps. I think it didn't take millions of dollars and many
 hundreds of people. It did take 20-25 people who were willing to commit
 suicide.  That is impressive in its own sorry way.
 It took a few months (not many) of planning, a few jobs as security
 guards, maybe another dozen people. It did not take 4 seasoned pilots of
 large commercial jets. The hard thing about flying an airplane is take
 off and landing. Once it's in the air it takes not much knowledge to
 steer the damn thing. A couple hours on a flight simulator, or even just
 a game on a PC maybe?

 The simplicity of the plot is elegant. Bombs can blow up at the wrong
 time, but they didn't need a bomb. They had a very safe jet plane loaded
 with enough flammable fuel to fly over 3,000 miles. A much bigger bomb
 than even Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols put together in a pickup truck.
 Getting the bomb to the terror site can often be a challenge, but they
 had four seasoned airline pilots to do the hard work (take off) and then
 all they had to do was turn the plane and steer it (once they took
 over).

 The plots to kill Hitler and Castro, and who knows who else, were always
 based on the necessity for the assasins to believe that they had a
 chance of escaping. Not a problem with these guys.

 They were given the bomb, they were given the delivery system. All they
 had to plot was how to take control.  What is in the hole in that donut?
 For the rest of it, all they had to do was have someone with the
 ability to figure out airline schedules. Can you read an airline sched
 off the net? I can. They didn't have to import some master bomb maker, or
 terrorist who is wanted all over the world. They didn't have to sneak
 people or large amounts of $ for purchasing necessities or bribes into
 the US.

 Once they got the martyrs, they needed little else...just how to get the
 hijackers and their weapons on the planes. No sophisticated
 communications systems, no hi tech nothing, no overpowering guards, no
 creating diversions.

 All they needed was the martyrs and six months time. They didn't have to
 sneak in the US. They came legitimately as students, legal immigrants,
 business people, tourists.  They didn't make noise or demonstrate for
 Palestinian rights or on behalf of the wreched Iraqi victims of
 international sanctions. They just lived normal, legal lives.  They
 didn't tell their families or friends. They just knew that they were
 going to die for a cause they knew was worthwhile.

 I wish I hadn't seen the videos of the tiny little bodies floating
 slowly to the ground, people choosing to die on the pavement rather than
 in the fire.

 And the 30 plotters didn't do it for money or fame. Forget the evil bad
 guys in the movies and comix who do their deeds for the pure love of
 evil or wealth or fame. These guys were certain that they were doing
 right. That they were saying that which needed to be said. I disagree
 with them and certainly with their methods. But they suceeded in getting
 across their message. 10,000 dead? They didn't kill US soldiers or the
 heads of the big corporations or high government officials. They killed
 mostly ordinary atheists, jews, christians, moslems, hindus, santerias,
 democrats, republicans, socialists, fascists, anarchists and pacifists.

 Even if I am wrong with my analysis here, always do remember: "When they
 are talking about the donut, you start asking questions about the hole."

 your old dad

*   *   *   *   * 
  
September 15, 2001

Mr. President,
The White House
Washington DC, USA

This is the sort of speech many of us are hoping to hear from 
you now:

	We hear some Americans seeking swift, broad, and blunt 
	retaliation. They say, "If this injury is not cause for 
	immediate attack, what is?" We say to them, "The exercise 
	of restraint is noble only when the injury is great."

	The principle of revenge gave us the tragedies of 
	Ireland, Israel, Rwanda, Sarajevo, and Oklahoma City... 
	and now this attack. America is founded not on revenge, 
	but on justice for all. 

	Freedom is built on justice.  If we abandon the pursuit 
	of justice now, what is America for? The world watches 
	to see how the spirit of this great nation will respond 
	in action. 

	America, home of the freedom revolution, will show its 
	true nature. The revolution will not be terrorized!

Hope that helps. Feel free to use any of it. 

Best regards,
Rhodes Hileman

*   *   *   *   *