I did not see the speech at the Islamic Center, but support what I think Bush said. Someone please tell me what the hell this means though: Both Americans and Muslim friends and citizens, tax-paying citizens, and Muslims in nations were just appalled and could not believe what we saw on our TV screens. My eyes hurt from reading that.
originally posted by xowie
The U.S. has already demanded that Pakistan terminate the food and other supplies that are keeping at least some of the starving and suffering people of Afghanistan alive. If that demand is implemented, unknown numbers of people who have not the remotest connection to terrorism will die, possibly millions. Let me repeat: the U.S. has demanded that Pakistan kill possibly millions of people who are themselves victims of the Taliban. This has nothing to do even with revenge. It is at a far lower moral level even than that.Noam Chomsky interviewed by Radio B92. Incredibly interesting.
originally posted by xowie
Criticism of this most devastating of all intelligence failures has been muted; there seems a widespread assumption that the Arabs who have been rounded up since Tuesday must all be guilty. And there is unity in vengefulness, too. According to a New York Times-CBS poll yesterday, only 6% now oppose military action and a substantial majority would support war "even if many thousands of innocent civilians are killed". That support is especially strong among those too young to remember the second world war, Korea or Vietnam.No room for dissent as spirit of flagwaving sweeps the nation.
originally posted by xowie
"The terrorist attacks will cause the widespread use of Carnivore and at the very least an acknowledgment of the Echelon system... The tragedy may soften our commitment to privacy as a public and allow for these technologies, once they are in place, to stay in place afterward. I can't think of anything that would better expedite the abuse of this technology than what has just happened." - Coralee Whitcomb, CPSR.ZDNet, Attacks silence privacy concerns.
originally posted by xowie
originally posted by xowie
As Palestinians who suffer daily from acts of Israeli aggression against our innocent people, we cannot find the words to express how shocked we were to see the horrific scenes on TV. We condemn such acts and we do not accept such horrific acts in the 3rd millennium where peace, prosperity, and freedom should cover the whole world. We reiterate our deepest condemnation of this horrible act on these innocent humans. No matter how can we express our sorrow, we can't find enough words to say how sorry we are.City of Beit Sahour, Palestine.
originally posted by xowie
Lynda Barry, with you.
originally posted by xowie
People from every corner of the world have come to our nation to enjoy the freedoms we hold so dear and to escape the hatred and persecution that exists in their homelands. Let us not stoop down to the level of our attackers and also be guilty of senseless acts of hatred against the innocent. We must rise above our circumstances and show the world our resolve and what it really means to be an American.Message to Ithaca, Hon. Alan Cohen.
originally posted by xowie
I have been thinking about the words retaliation and punishment and act of war. I have been thinking about violence, what it feels like to be nothing to someone else. What it feels like to be a consequence of someone else's disassociated rage, disconnected fury. I have been thinking about the cycle of hurt for hurt, nation against nation, tit for tat. I have been thinking about how deeply something else is required. I have been thinking about the courage it requires to think about something other than violence as a response to violence. I am thinking about the complexity of this and the loneliness of this and the helplessness and the sorrow that would be felt in the space where violence once was and the grief. I have been thinking that for those of us who are living on the planet right here, right now, we must live in this dangerous space, allowing the helplessness, the grief, the sorrow to create new wisdom that can and will and must free us from this terrible prison of violence.Eve Ensler.
originally posted by xowie
Tips for planning an anti-war action, from a group calling for student protests Thursday at noon.
originally posted by xowie
The plight of the Palestinians is the single most important issue to most Arabs. Professor Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland conducted a poll in which citizens of five nations -- Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates -- were asked how important the Palestinian issue was to them personally. In four nations, 60 percent said it was the most important. In Egypt, reviled throughout the Arab world as the state that made peace with Israel, 79 percent said it was.Gary Kamiya, The bloody Jordan river now flows through America. Also at Salon: American pacifists call for restraint.
originally posted by xowie
On a so-called Christian station, I heard a preacher tell his listeners that Islam was a cult that worshipped the moon and preached total destruction of Jews and Christians. Callers seemed baffled about which religion the terrorists might have adhered to—-"Islam or Muslim?"—-or asked which Middle Easterners they'd seen on TV celebrating the bombing: "Is it the Israelis who don't like us, or the Palestinians?"Driving back to L.A. with the radio on.
originally posted by xowie
Our leaders have described the recent atrocity with the customary cliche: mindless cowardice. "Mindless" may be a suitable word for the vandalising of a telephone box. It is not helpful for understanding what hit New York on September 11. Those people were not mindless and they were certainly not cowards. On the contrary, they had sufficiently effective minds braced with an insane courage, and it would pay us mightily to understand where that courage came from.Richard Dawkins, Religion's misguided missiles.
originally posted by xowie
I wish the flag didn't scare me. I wish that every time I saw the flag I could be secure in the assumption that the person who hung it values freedom of religion and the presumption of innocence as much as I do. I wish seeing this flag everywhere didn't make me profoundly uncomfortable whenever I leave the house. I feel like it must show, like you can see in my eyes that I don't want war the way we are being told with pictures and polls that we want war.i am about to go buy a flag to put in front of my parent's house so that you don't think that my family is anti american. we are very american, we love being here in america, we love everything american, it's people, it's land, it's culture (s), it's freedom, it's wide variety of choices for professions, everything about it. we loved it before we came here, and learned to love it more after coming here. but i am getting the flag merely to keep people wanting to hurt my family, from questioning how american they are, because they look different. having the flag does not make me love america more, it just means that i have a flag in front of my house. -- MetaFilter post
"Does anybody think that we can send the USS New Jersey to lob Volkswagon-sized shells into Lebanese villages -- Reagan, 1983 -- or loose 'smart bombs' on civilians seeking shelter in a Baghdad bunker -- Bush, 1991 -- or fire cruise missiles on a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory -- Clinton, 1999 -- and not receive, someday, our share in kind?" History did not begin on September 11.David Corn, Going to Extremes.
originally posted by xowie
The Voice is back. The “wailing wall” at the V.A. Hospital, plus flyers of missing people.
originally posted by xowie
“Responding to Terrorism”: A Compendium of Articles from the Alternative Media collected by Utne Reader Online.
Nineteen years ago today, the greatest act of terrorism — using Israel's own definition of that much misused word — in modern Middle Eastern history began. Does anyone remember the anniversary in the West? How many readers of this article will remember it?Not me. Answer: the massacres at Sabra and Shatila camps began September 16, 1982; 1,800 Palestinians were murdered. Who lit candles for them?
Powerful commentary by Robert Fisk.
originally posted by xowie
"We should be careful when we use those analogies. If I ever used war analogies, I apologize. Football is not war." - Ray Brown.SFGate: Language of sports forever changed. By the way, here's just one incredibly stupid analogy in sports reporting.
originally posted by xowie
Take a peek at photojournalist Raku Loren’s What’s Really Going On.
Statement of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)
originally posted by xowie
Our government has a bad record in its ‘wars’ against such ill-defined enemies as poverty or drugs. Terrorism in the modern world is effected across many borders and its remediation requires analogous forms of cooperation. ‘War’ may sanction actions that increase our insecurity and vulnerability. War does not easily coexist with justice despite the best efforts to elaborate just war theory. War seeks the destruction of the other rather than efforts to find the best ways in which to coexist with those who are different.John Buell, Apocalypse Now?
originally posted by xowie
Devastating hi-res photos by Sara K. Schwittek, Brooklyn, N.Y.
originally posted by xowie
