At his request, I've been forwarding listmail to Yanni and he's slowly
working his way through it. He asked that I post the following from him.
Please direct comments to him as he requests, and please leave me out of
any off-list responses to this. Thank you.
Julia
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thu Sep 13 17:43:53 2001
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 18:27:57 -0400
From: Yanni Cooper <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Julia Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Thoughts on Tuesday (L3)
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I appreciate all the forwards and am slowly working through them.
Please pass the following on to the list.
Dear Brin-ls,
I've been away from the list for a while as I don't really have time to
particpate much less read all that goes on. I'm not sure I can get across
exactly what I want to say without it coming out wrong so I'm going to
quote a bit from Michael Moore's letter (you can get the full text at <a
href="http://www.michaelmoore.com/";>www.michaelmoore.com</a>, click on
Michaels Latest Message) too start.
"""""""Start Quote"""""""
Four teams of 3-5 people were all able to penetrate airport security on
the same morning at 3 different airports and pull off this heinous act? My
only response is ^� that^�s all?
Well, the pundits are in full diarrhea mode, gushing on about the ^�terrorist
threat^� and today^�s scariest dude on planet earth ^� Osama bin Laden. Hey,
who knows, maybe he did it. But, something just doesn^�t add up.
Am I being asked to believe that this guy who sleeps in a tent in a desert
has been training pilots to fly our most modern, sophisticated jumbo jets
with such pinpoint accuracy that they are able to hit these three targets
without anyone wondering why these planes were so far off path?
Or am I being asked to believe that there were four religious/political
fanatics who JUST HAPPENED to be skilled airline pilots who JUST HAPPENED
to want to kill themselves today?
Maybe you can find one jumbo jet pilot willing to die for the cause ^� but
FOUR? Ok, maybe you can ^� I don^�t know.
What I do know is that all day long I have heard everything about this bin
Laden guy except this one fact ^� WE created the monster known as Osama bin
Laden!
Where did he go to terrorist school? At the CIA!
Don^�t take my word for it ^� I saw a piece on MSNBC last year that laid it
all out. When the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan, the CIA trained him
and his buddies in how to commits acts of terrorism against the Soviet
forces. It worked! The Soviets turned and ran. Bin Laden was grateful for
what we taught him and thought it might be fun to use those same techniques
against us.
We abhor terrorism ^� unless we^�re the ones doing the terrorizing.
We paid and trained and armed a group of terrorists in Nicaragua in the
1980s who killed over 30,000 civilians. That was OUR work. You and me.
Thirty thousand murdered civilians and who the hell even remembers!
We fund a lot of oppressive regimes that have killed a lot of innocent
people, and we never let the human suffering THAT causes to interrupt our
day one single bit.
We have orphaned so many children, tens of thousands around the world,
with our taxpayer-funded terrorism (in Chile, in Vietnam, in Gaza, in
Salvador) that I suppose we shouldn^�t be too surprised when those orphans
grow up and are a little whacked in the head from the horror we have helped
cause.
Yet, our recent domestic terrorism bombings have not been conducted
by a guy from the desert but rather by our own citizens: a couple of
ex-military guys who hated the federal government.
>From the first minutes of today^�s events, I never heard that possibility
suggested. Why is that? Maybe it^�s because the A-rabs are much better
foils. A key ingredient in getting Americans whipped into a frenzy against
a new enemy is the all-important race card. It^�s much easier to get us to
hate when the object of our hatred doesn^�t look like us. Congressmen and
Senators spent the day calling for more money for the military; one Senator
on CNN even said he didn^�t want to hear any more talk about more money for
education or health care ^� we should have only one priority: our
self-defense. Will we ever get to the point that we realize we will be more
secure when the rest of the world isn^�t living in poverty so we can have
nice running shoes?
In just 8 months, Bush gets the whole world back to hating us again. He
withdraws from the Kyoto agreement, walks us out of the Durban conference
on racism, insists on restarting the arms race ^� you name it, and Baby Bush
has blown it all.
"""""""End Quote"""""""
Okay, now lets see how much of a mess I can make of this. Yes it is a
tragedy, though I am fortunate in that as far as I know all of my
acquaintances in NY are OK. However Michael Moore isn't the only one to
point out that maybe we are a bit more at fault then we would like to admit
(and in fact probably a lot of the evil misguided stuff our gov't has done
we don't even know about). The fact is violence won't solve anything in
this situation, if anything it will only make it worse... If you think
about it the perpetrators are beyond reach of punishment. They're already
dead. So there isn't a lot we can do to get revenge. Bombing,
assassinations, nuclear weapons... these are NOT the answer.
In fact the answer, the appropriate response is already in effect all over
the nation. Rescue workers and civilians on the scene risking thier own
lives to save others. Lines of people willing to donate blood for the
injured, and not just in NY but all over the country. Thousands of people
making donations to help those affected.
This event has brought the best in many americans, as they try to help in
any way they can, be it making check-in webpages, to calling relatives of
those who had email/web access but no phone, etc.
Sadly it has brought out the worst in americans as well. The attacks on
arabs, the declarations that we need to nuke anywhere, those looking for
someone to blame. It helps no one.
I don't know what else to say so I'll leave it at that.
If you would like to reply please CC a copy to me at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-Yanni
