randomWalks

Don’t start World War III.

originally posted by xowie

It’s Understanding Islam Week over at Dan Hartung’s Lake Effect, and I have faith that Dan will do an outstanding job of gathering and explicating links. Thanks to Follow Me Here for the pointer.

Q:What is the meaning of the suffix ‘-stan,’ found at the end of the names of so many countries?

A:The names of seven countries, all of them Asian, have either the ‘-stan’ or ‘-istan’ suffix. They are: Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

The use of these suffixes, both of which mean ‘country’ in Persian, illustrates the broad historic influence of Persian culture. These suffixes are similar to the English ‘Land,’ as in ‘Finland,’ ‘Greenland,’ ‘Iceland,’ ‘Ireland,’ ‘Poland,’ and of course, ‘Disneyland.’

graphic: Pakistan at a glance, Washington Post.

This decency and sense of fairness is America's greatest strength, but it has also been a weakness. Americans want to think of themselves as a benign nation that stands for the downtrodden against the strong, and for right against wrong. This has sometimes made it much harder to make people see the distortions that their government's policies have produced over decades in the Middle East and other parts of the world; that the America that they believe in and strive for --the America of decency and freedom -- is not the same America experienced by millions of people whose lives are ruined by US-backed dictators and despots, who see their loved ones incinerated by "smart bombs" and wasted by sanctions. People are sometimes unwilling to see an image in the mirror that they do not like. The America that wrote to reassure me and other Arab Americans that I am safe at home here is not the same America that with unconditional support sentences my cousins to a life of brutality and violence under endless Israeli occupation. But it is the America that can and must act to stop it.

Here in the UK I pray for everyone of you there. I have always loved New York so much. Its energy has always felt to me to be as much about love and ozone-positive fresh air as money and commercial dynamism. Whatever was intended in these acts of terrorism, they have created only more energy and more love. - Pete Townshend

originally posted by xowie

Alternet: alternatives to war; the racism of war fever.
NYT: a nation of checkpoints; the big terrible.
Salon: life will never be the same; rally ‘round the flag.
WP: fears for liberties; a beating and regrets.

originally posted by xowie

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.

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.

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.

originally posted by xowie

Nuclear Safety?

originally posted by xowie

graphic: Opposing Forces in Afghanistan.

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.

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.

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.

originally posted by xowie

BBC: The very latest images from space.

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.

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?"

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.

originally posted by xowie

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.

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