From:
                                                                     7:54 PM
Subject: More about who we are -- and could be -- in this
crisisTo: cii@igc.org (undisclosed list)

Dear friends,

There are more remarkable and clarifying things being said about this
crisis, and I've included a small sample below.  However, I also want to
say that I'm growing increasingly aware that we may be being prepared for
some constrictions of our democracy which may seem reasonable in the face
of terrorist dangers, but which could be easily misused against other
dissidents -- including many of "us" as well as "them" -- and, therefore,
might become very hard to reverse (since people who tried to reverse them
might be viewed as trackable traitors).  As democracy erodes, the potential
for monstrous collective behavior expands.  I will try to write more about
that soon, but I wanted to give you a "heads up" on the evolution of my own
concerns.

I hope you are well and engaged.

Coheartedly,
Tom

_ _ _ __

Sharon Abercrombie writes:

I am a Chisti Sufi (Sufis who believe that the Divine can best be reached
through music, dance and poetry.)

Thanks for your essay on Rumi! Yes, Bush and bin laden both need to take
time out, read this marvelous writer's words and absorb them into their
hearts. What makes your essay even more synchronistic, is that Rumi was
actually born in Afghanistan, and that, as a young boy,  he fled to Koyna,
Turkey, with his family, ahead of some invading army or another. (isn't
there always one???sigh.)
_ _ _ _ __

This letter to the NYT from Susan Strong, takes a very unique approach:

America needs smart, practical game plans, to counter terrorism. Full-scale
war on an already destitute, landlocked Central Asian people is not a smart
game plan. Labelling this proposal "Infinite Justice" won't work.  By its
very nature, modern warfare, with its enormous "collateral damage," cannot
be just. And unjust war just breeds more terrorists.

Anger, like grief, has its stages.  Let's stop now and think twice before we
set the Earth on fire. Given our history and taste for "shoot to solve it"
plots, it's natural that America's first reaction was a demand for military
action.  As time goes on though, that will change. Americans are an
innovative people who expect success.  We have just been radically
outsmarted, as well as attacked, and we know it.  Repeating the Vietnam
failure in Afghanistan will only play right into the terrorists' hands. And
we'll lose all the global sympathy and goodwill we now have. As a people and
a government, we must count to 10 or whatever it takes, reengage our brains,
and start coming up with better ideas.

_ __ _ _ _ _

Thanks to Rosa Zubizarreta for the following two articles.

From: "Michael Albert" <sysop@zmag.org
Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2001 14:39:18 -0400

The Theatre of Good and Evil
By Eduardo Galeano from La Jornada
September 21, 2001
Translated by Justin Podur

In the struggle of Good against Evil,
it's always the people who get killed.

The terrorists killed workers of 50 countries in NYC and DC, in the name of
Good against Evil. And in the name of Good against Evil President Bush has
promised vengeance: "We will eliminate Evil from the world", he announced.

Eliminate Evil? What would Good be without Evil? It's not just religious
fanatics who need enemies to justify their insanity. The arms industry and
the gigantic war machine of the US also needs enemies to justify its
existence. Good and evil, evil and good: the actors change masks, the
heroes become monsters and the monsters heroes, in accord with the demands
of the theatre's playwrights.

This is nothing new. The German scientist Werner von Braun was evil when he
invented the V-2 bombers that Hitler used against London, but became good
when he used his talents in the service of the US. Stalin was good during
World War Two and evil afterwards, when he became the leader of the Evil
Empire. In the cold war years John Steinbeck wrote: "Maybe the whole world
needs Russians. I suppose that even in Russia they need Russians. Maybe
Russia's Russians are called Americans." Even the Russians became good
afterwards. Today, Putin can add his voice to say: "Evil must be punished."

Saddam Hussein was good, and so were the chemical weapons he used against
the Iranians and the Kurds. Afterwards, he became evil. They were calling
him Satan Hussein when the US finished up their invasion of Panama to
invade Iraq because Iraq invaded Kuwait. Father Bush that particular war
against Evil upon himself. With the humanitarian and compassionate spirit
that characterizes his family, he killed more than 100 000 Iraqis, the vast
majority of them civilians.

Satan Hussein stayed where he was, but this number one enemy of humanity
had to step aside and accept becoming number two enemy of humanity. The
bane of the world is now called Osama bin Laden. The CIA taught him
everything he knows about terrorism: bin Laden, loved and armed by the US
government, was one of the principal 'freedom fighters' against Communism
in Afghanistan. Father Bush occupied the Vice Presidency when President
Reagan called these heroes 'the moral equivalents of the Founding Fathers.'
Hollywood agreed. They filmed Rambo 3: Afghani Muslims were the good guys.
Now, 13 years later, in the time of Son Bush, they are the worst of the bad
guys.

Henry Kissinger was one of the first to react to the recent tragedy. "Those
who provide support, financing, and inspiration to terrorists are as guilty
as the terrorists themselves," he intoned, words that Son Bush would repeat
hours later.

If that's how it is, the urgent need right now is to bomb Kissinger. He is
guilty of many more crimes than bin Laden or any terrorist in the world.
And in many more countries. He provided 'support, financing, and
inspiration" to state terror in Indonesia, Cambodia, Iran, South Africa,
Bangladesh, and all the South American countries that suffered the dirty
war of Plan Condor.

On September 11 1973, exactly 28 years before the fires of last week, the
Presidential Palace in Chile was stormed. Kissinger had written the epitaph
of Allende and Chilean democracy long before when he commented on the
results of the elections: "I don't see why we have to stand by and watch a
country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people."

A contempt for the people is one of many things shared by state and private
terror. For example, the ETA, an organization that kills people in the name
of independence in Basque Country, says through one of its spokespeople:
'Rights have nothing to do with majorities or minorities.'

There is much common ground between low- and high- tech terrorism, between
the terrorism of religious fanatics and that of market fanatics, that of
the hopeless and that of the powerful, that of the psychopath on the loose
and that of the cold-blooded uniformed professional. They all share the
disrespect for human life: the killers of the 5500 citizens under the Twin
Towers that fell like castles of dry sand-- and the killers of 200 000
Guatemalans, the majority of whom were indigenous, exterminated without
television or the newspapers of the world paying any attention. Those
Guatemalans were not sacrificed by any Muslim fanatic, but by terrorist
squads who received 'support, financing, and inspiration' from successive
US governments.

All these worshipers of death are in agreement as well on the need to
reduce social, cultural, and national differences to military terms. In the
name of Good against Evil, in the name of the One Truth, they resolve
everything by killing first and asking questions later. And by this method,
they strengthen the enemy they fight. It was the atrocities of the Sendero
Luminoso that gave President Fujimori the popular support he sought to
unleash a regime of terror and sell Peru for the price of a banana. It was
the atrocities of the US in the Middle East that prepared the ground for
the holy war of terrorism of Allah.

Although the leader of the Civilized World is pushing a new Crusade, Allah
is innocent of the crimes committed in his name. At the end of the day, God
did not order the Holocaust against the followers of Jehovah, nor did
Jehovah order the massacres of Sabrah and Shatila or the expulsion of
Palestinians from their land. Aren't Allah, God and Jehovah are, after all,
three names for the same divinity?

A tragedy of errors: nobody knows any more who is who. The smoke of the
explosions forms part of the much larger curtain of smoke that prevents all
of us from seeing clearly. From revenge to revenge, terrorism obliges us to
walk to our graves. I saw a photo, recently published, of graffiti on a
wall in NYC: "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."

The spiral of violence creates violence and also confusion: pain, fear,
intolerance, hatred, insanity. In Porto Alegre, at the beginning of this
year, Ahmed Ben Bella warned: 'This system, that has already made mad cows,
is making mad people too." And these mad people, mad from hate, act as the
power that created them.

A three year old child, named Luca, told me: "The world doesn't know where
its house is." He was looking at a map. He could have been looking at a
reporter.

________________________________________

Peace Movement Prospects By Michael Albert

September 11 went well beyond tragic. Worse is possible. Much better is
also possible. And to achieve better is why activists need to not only
mourn, but also to educate and organize. But many people I encounter doubt
peace movement prospects. I find this wrong for two reasons.

One, doubting prospects wastes time. Even when prospects of change are dim,
to work for better outcomes is always better then to bemoan difficulties.

Two, contrary to despondency, current circumstances auger hope. "Are you
crazy?" some people will ask. It is one thing to urge action, but it is
another thing to surrender reason to desire. However, it is not desire that
gives me hope, but evidence.

Last night there was a two hour marathon Hollywood extravaganza broadcast
by all major networks and watched by millions. Elites are urging lock-step
obedience. Johnny and Jill are supposed to be donning marching boots. Yet
this was no pep rally for war. There was nearly courage of those who worked
to save lives, often giving their own. The evening's songs sought restraint
and understanding and explicitly rejected cycles of retribution and hate.
Don't get me wrong. The evening wasn't ZNet set to music. But nor did it
support piling terror on top of terror. If the right-wing were actually as
ascendant as so many fear, we would have had the Bob Hope and Charlton
Heston Hour. We didn't.

More, in the last few days there have been scores of small and also some
quite large demonstrations and gatherings. Reports indicate there are 105
scheduled today, Saturday. There is no war yet. But there is resistance,
and it is growing rapidly.

Just two days ago I was asked to be on a national radio call-in show with a
listenership of roughly two million from all over the country. The host, a
Republican, thought there would be division emerging about any war plans
and he wanted to offer diverse voices (which is itself a good sign). He
told me I'd be on for fifteen minutes. The time came, they called, I was
asked how I differed from Bush. I answered, and the discussion continued
for two hours. The host eventually left hostility behind, becoming more and
more curious. Many callers were hostile, sure, but they were also open to
cogent commentary. The simple formulation that attacking civilians is
terrorism, that terrorism is horrible, and that therefore we should not
attack civilians, was irrefutable. More interesting, no one even tried to
rebut contextual argument and evidence. They made clear they knew my claims
about U.S. policies in Iraq and elsewhere were true and they would with a
few exceptions even grudgingly assent to them, so the remaining issue was
whether the U.S. should be bound by the same morals that we hope others
will be bound by, a dispute that is easy to win with anyone but a fanatic.
I won't proceed with details. The point is, even in a right-wing forum,
many people will hear our views, understand them, and even change their
minds.

U.S. elites like war. War sends the message that laws do not bind U.S.
elites, that morality does not bind U.S. elites, that nothing binds U.S.
elites but their estimates of their own interests. It trumpets that
everybody else better ratify our plans, or at least get out of the way.
Likewise, for U.S. elites, war preparedness is good economics. Military
spending primes the capitalist pump and spurs its engines, but crucially
military spending doesn't give those in the middle and at the bottom better
conditions or better housing or more education or better health care or
anything else that will make people less afraid, more knowledgeable, more
secure, and particularly more able to develop and pursue their own agendas
regarding economic distribution. War empowers the rich and powerful, but
its real virtue is that it disempowers working people and the
disenfranchised poor. War annihilates deliberation. It elevates mainstream
media to dominate communication even more than in peacetime. War abets
repression by demanding obedience. It labels dissent treason, or in this
case, incipient terrorism. Elites like all this, not surprisingly. So while
elites gravitate toward a war on terrorism for these reasons, what, if
anything, might obstruct their plans?

When Bush says that attacking civilians for political purposes is wrong and
urges that we must find ways to eliminate such terrorism - he is very
compelling to almost everyone. But when in the very next breath Bush urges
as the method of doing so diverse military attacks on civilians (or
starving them), his hypocrisy begs critique. As a solution to the danger of
terrorism, committing more terrorism that in turn breeds still more, will
not sustain support. Likewise, to fight fundamentalism with assertions that
God is on our side, will also prove uninspiring. Five-year-olds can and
will dissent. And so will adults.

So what obstructs war? People do. It's that simple. People who first doubt
the efficacy and morality of piling terror on top of terror. People who
slowly move from quiet dissent to active opposition. People who move from
opposing the violence of war and barbarity of starvation to challenging the
basic institutions that breed war and starvation. If elites choose war as a
national program they will do so in hopes that it can defend and even
enlarge their advantages. If we act so that war instead spurs public
understanding, and opposition not only to war, but in time even to elite
rule - then elites will reconsider their agenda. Indeed, I bet many are
already having grave doubts.

So how hard is our task? What do most people think about this situation,
before activism has countered media madness? Well, it certainly isn't
definitive, but Gallup polls give us more reason for hope.

First question: "Once the identity of the terrorists known, should the
American government launch a military attack on the country or countries
where the terrorists are based or should the American government seek to
extradite the terrorists to stand trial?" In Austria 10% said we should
attack. In Denmark 20%, Finland 14%, France 29%, Germany 17%, Greece 6%,
Italy 21%, Bosnia 14%, Bulgaria 19%, Czechoslavakia 22%, Croatia 8%,
Estonia 10%, Latvia 21%, Lithuania 15% Romania 18%, Argentina 8%, Colombia
11%, Ecuador 10%, Mexico 2%, Panama 16%, Peru 8%, Venezuela 11%, and even
in the U.S. only 54% favor attacking. Gallup didn't get numbers for China,
for the mideast countries, etc.

Gallup next asks: "If the United States decides to launch an attack, should
the U.S. attack military targets only, or both military and civilian
targets?" In Austria 82% said only military targets. In Denmark 84%,
Finland 76%, France 84%, Germany 84%, Greece 82%, Italy 86%, Bosnia 72%,
Bulgaria 71%, Czechoslavakia 75%, Estonia 88%, Latvia 82%, Lithuania 73%
Romania 85%, Argentina 70%, Colombia 71%, Ecuador 74%, Mexico 73%, Panama
62%, Peru 66%, Venezuela 81%, and even in the U.S. 56% favor attacking only
military targets, 28% attacking both military and civilian, and 16% gave no
answer.

It seems clear that we do not inhabit a world lined up for protracted war.
We live, instead, in a world that is prepared for arguments against war,
for opposition to war, and even, in time, for addressing the basic
structural causes that produce war. Humanity does not lack scruples or
logic, but only information and knowledge. If people have information and
if they can escape media manipulation and conformity, they will draw worthy
conclusions. Our task is to provide information and help break conformity.

Finally, regarding the issues at hand.how hard is it to understand the
obvious? The U.S. postal system is not run by exemplary humanitarians or
geniuses, much less by radicals. Yet in response to workers killing others
on the job--which is called "going postal"--the postal service did not
decide to determine where the offending parties lived and attack those
neighborhoods for harboring terrorists. They also did not say that the
stress of postal work justifies serial homicide in the workplace, of
course. They instead legally prosecuted, on the one hand, and also realized
that stress was a powerful contributing factor and so worked to reduce
stress to in turn diminish the likelihood of people going postal. Anyone
can extend this analogy. It isn't complicated.

For that matter, the U.S. government, which is certainly not a repository
of wisdom or moral leadership, doesn't generally decide about terrorism to
hold whole populations accountable. When Timothy McVeigh bombed innocents,
the Federal government called it horrific, accurately, but did not declare
war on Idaho and Montana for harboring cells of the groups McVeigh was
associated with -- much less on all people sharing McVeigh's race or
religion. The government opted to prove McVeigh's culpability and to employ
legal means to restrain him and try the case. What makes September 11
different regarding our government's agenda is not so much the larger scale
of the horror, but instead its utility to the government's reactionary
programs. In the case of McVeigh, bombing Montana wouldn't benefit elites.
In the case of September 11, elites think bombing diverse targets will
benefit their capitalist profit-making and geopolitical interests. That's
harsh. That's about the harshest thing one could say, I guess, in some
sense, in this situation. It is devilish opportunism. Yet, I honestly think
that at some level everyone knows it's true. It has gotten to that point in
this country. They play with our lives like we are their little toys.and we
know it, and we have to put a stop to it, a step at a time.

_ _ _ _ _ _

Thanks for Lynn Nadeau for this

Saying it like it is:  What we have to change about our country

"We have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its
population.... In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy
and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern
of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of
disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so,
we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our
attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate
national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford
today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction... We should cease to
talk about vague and--for the Far East--unreal objectives such as human
rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day
is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power
concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the
better."

-- George Kennan, the head of the State Department's Planning Office, in a
now declassified 1948 secret memo, "Policy Planning Study 23."  (Quoted
many places on the web, such as the UN's
http://www.global-vision.org/manuendX.html )

_ _ _ _ _ _

Thanks to Larry Shook, journalist and combat veteran

Subject: Terrorism and poverty

Warning: The following email contains graphic and depressing information. It
is not meant to diminish the deaths and horror of the terrorist acts of
September 11, 2001 but rather to broaden the understanding of poverty,
injustice and denial in the world. If you would rather not read this kind of
information at this time,  please delete now.

"Open our eyes that we may see."

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO),
about 35,615 children died from conditions  of starvation on September 11,
2001

RELEVANT STATISTICS

* Victims: 35,615 children (source: FAO)
* Where: poor countries
* Special tv programs: none
* Newspaper articles: none
* Messages from the president: none
* Solidarity acts: none
* Minutes of silence: none
* Victims mournings: none
* Organized forums: none
* Pope messages: none
* Alert level: zero
* Army mobilization: none

This information is from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
www.fao.org. FAO estimates ~12,000,000 hunger and hunger-related disease
deaths per year, worldwide.

One source of this stat on the internet:
http://library.thinkquest.org/25009/results/results.malnutrition.html

_ _ _ _ _

"We are not worth more.  They are not worth less."
-- Veteran Brian Willson, whose legs were cut off when a train ran over him
while he protested shipments of arms from Concord Naval Weapons Station in
California to the Contras in Nicaragua, speaking of the Nicaraguan children
whose legs had been blown off by landmines.  He has an article by that
title, about the 911 attacks, at
http://www.brianwillson.com/awolwakeup.html .

_ _ _ _

My brother Dick forwarded this to me.

The Unintended Gift of Timothy McVeigh

My son, an 11 year old wannabe in his last 24 hours of his tenth year, and
I, walked into our local grocery store to buy ice cream for his class early
yesterday morning so he could celebrate his birthday at school, the single
most important day of the year for him. A wonderful event in a devastating
week.  As we waited in line, our arms chilled by the 7 sleeves of ice cream
sundaes we were juggling, I came face to face with the reality of what has
happened to us.  I put a face to it.

It was so simple.  I know what to fight now.

The cashier was making some comment to the customers ahead of us about the
apparent evidence concerning the Middle Eastern force behind this
unspeakable act of terrorism.  'Well," she said blithely, shoving items into
bags, "I've had some of "those people" in my line before, and I always
thought they looked nice....you know...normal.  But now I don't know what to
think!"  The young guy with the bottle of Coke and the pack of cigarettes
said "Yeah, they're all fucking bastards."

My heart stopped.  Okay, breathe.  Just remember to breathe. What are you
going to do?  Your son is listening.

I moved up the line a bit and looked at them as they finished the
transaction and knew I had to act.

So, I got in on this conversation.

I addressed the young guy.  I said, "So, are you a terrorist?"

"What??" he said  "Fuck, no!"

"Oh," I said innocently.  "Well, you kind of remind me of Tim McVeigh. You
remember him, don't you?  He was a white American terrorist who blew up the
federal building in Oklahoma City a few years ago. He murdered several
hundred people with one bomb.  Since you look like him, I thought maybe you
must be like him and be a murderer."

His eyes widened in disbelief and his mouth opened, but before he could
speak, I said..."Well, I'm sure you are not a terrorist, just because you
look like one, and either are millions of the people who live in this
country and around the world who are Middle Eastern or Muslims. This act of
hate came from the evil minds of very few people with lots of money and lots
of time to plan.  Just because you look like Tim McVeigh doesn't mean you
are like him.  So, don't assume anyone else is problematic because of their
faith or their appearance."

We stared at each other for just a moment and I remember the store was
entirely quiet, except for the beating of my heart.  The young man looked me
in the eye and gave me an imperceptible nod, picked up his smokes and his
Coke and left.

The cashier just looked at me in silence.  I handed her my money for the
birthday ice creams, took my change and my beloved son by the hand and left
that store, knowing now what the real enemy is to face.  Yes, it is a war on
terrorism, but in the face of all this unity that seems to be rallying in
support against this crime, we have a grass roots battle against hate in our
very own neighborhoods and in our homes.

No Muslim child should be afraid.  No Muslim parent should have to worry for
themselves or their children because of what a few have done. Like every
innocent American, there are equal numbers of innocent citizens of the world
who just want to live life in peace, raise their children, celebrate their
birthdays, go to school, fall in love, practice their religion and die in
peace when their time comes.  We must not allow ourselves to condemn those
whom we do not understand under the guise of justice and fair punishment.

This has been bad enough.  Americans have died and will continue to die.
Families mourn.  Let's not add to the casualty list by poisoning the air we
breathe with words that we can't take back but which stay out there in the
atmosphere to be slung around to untold amounts of people, painting our
hearts with hate.

Please, do your part to stop the spread of evil in terms of your words, your
discussions, your prejudices, your fears and your desire for justice at the
expense of innocence. Don't contaminate your children with your fear.
Justice will prevail, but not at the expense of our neighbors, our
customers, our fellow citizens, many of whom chose this country because of
the very freedom of religion the American Constitution defends....the same
protection you enjoy every day, whether you choose to believe or not.

If hate wins, evil wins.  Which means, whoever did this wins.

I say no.

Go in Peace.

Catherine Butler,
San Diego, CA