| Author |
Message |
    
wendyanne gorst
| | Posted on Sunday, September 23, 2001 - 04:08 am: | |
Here is what I see in the astrological chart for the time of the first plane hitting the WTC at 8:45 am
We must look at ourselves as well as "the enemy".
for we are ALL the enemy, the enemy within us, each of us, is who we are fighting foremost here. We must see the way to go forward from here, not simply in blind retaliation which will escalate into something that cannot (must not) be escalated.
We must understand what part we in the West have played in not allowing balanced communication, and partnership dialogue (ASC Libra conjunct Mercury) instead of thinking we know best - bloodshed and brute force (T Square - Saturn/Pluto/Sun; Moon opp Mars and Chiron).
The chart for 8:45 am has Libra (balance, Love and partnership) rising. Venus ruling ASC and being in Leo, picks up Neptune, and references to Oil (and drugs?) (I don't know in detail what this connection is as I don't follow politics usually - but I do see it in the chart with Neptune quincunx Jupiter and neptune opposite venus (wide) and neptune trine asc )
The Neptunian aspects also describe the facelessness and hidden identities of the perpetrator.
Venus is opposite to Uranus, radical value system changes are required by us all.
Mercury conjunct ASC, is involved in a grand air trine to Moon/ Saturn/ Neptune Uranus, and is the only point in the grand trine without a planet to focus it. This suggests the awful vulnerability of this situation. Also - Amazing instantaneous communication, between the attackers, and then subsequently, the whole world, is described, with Uranus trine ASC and the grand trine in Air. The YOD between Jupiter Pluto and Neptune describes very well a rich business man (Bin Laden) making holy smoke in a holy war (holier than thou?)
Moon is void of course, making no major aspects, which makes for a particularly freewheeling type of atmosphere, within which the terrorists could move easily undetected, and go unnoticed, moreso than would be the usual case, when the minds of those charged with securing details are not wrapped too tightly.
This situation has been going on for some time now, all the Eclipses dating back to last December are involved in the degrees of this chart - Dec - 4  Capricorn, Jan -19 Cancer, July -13 deg Capricorn and June 21st - 0 deg. Cancer.
The symbolism is painfully exquisite, "United" planes and "American Airlines", 'apparently' fighting their own country - again we are back to the very wide neptune opposition to the ascendant ruler and trine to the ascendant.
We must look inside to our own deepest fears and angers and blocks and how we are unable to forgive, and how to release the old ways. We must do our best to understand why this terrible tragedy has happened and how to stop it ever happening again. How to unite in balanced partnership without needing to go to extremes in order to regain balance.
One path to take is suggested by the north nodes, it is one of teaching and learning how to love; it is one of mothering (not smothering) and nourishing. It is not the south node path of aggression suggested by mars conjunct to it. A balance is required, between assertion (Mars) from a very high place of wise power; respect even - Capricorn ; together with learning how to dialogue with and take care of our international relatives; and not in the very least, ourselves...
For other clues we can look back to the Saturn Pluto square of 1993 (last WTC bombing); and even farther back to the seeding of this Saturn Pluto cycle when they were conjunct in 1982 (in Libra) (Falklands War required united front with England joining USA) please do let me know if you see any parallels here with our present situation, the players may be different, but the threads seem to fit. United we stand….Except that this time we may be required to unite WITH the enemy - charging spurious alliances with unusual hope (Uranus/Neptune, Aquarius - trine Asc in Libra).
We of the world community have a lot to learn and a long way to go until the present Saturn Pluto cycle ends in 2020 . It would be nice to get it right by that time. By 2010 at the next quarter square, will we have learned enough to begin to know how to bring resolution to the terrible chaos our world finds itself with at this time. Hopefully, by 2020 we will have learned how, when the next Saturn Pluto cycle begins in the sign of Capricorn, to fully realise its full potential, with wisdom, and constructively. Does traditional authoritarian discipline have to pose the threat it suggests, or can we all become kind parents by then?
I feel for America
I am sad for the world
and I am sad for ourselves
and I have great hope that this terrible event can be used as a major opportunity for uniting the whole world in a new and global way
Wendy Gorst
Sept 11 2001 |
Myra Lewiski
| | Posted on Sunday, September 23, 2001 - 11:17 am: | |
I would like to share this letter that I received, as a member of Common Cause. I feel it is written in a thoughtful and helpful manner, and very important to consider another perspective in our present situation:
The Challenge of Terror:
A Traveling Essay
John Paul Lederach
So here I am, a week late arriving home, stuck between Colombia, Guatemala and Harrisonburg when our world changed. The images flash even in my sleep. The heart of America ripped. Though natural, the cry for revenge and the call for the unleashing of the first war of this century, prolonged or not, seems more connected to social and psychological processes of finding a way to release deep emotional anguish, a sense of powerlessness, and our collective loss than it does as a plan of action seeking to redress the injustice, promote change and prevent it from ever happening again.
I am stuck from airport to airport as I write this, the reality of a global system that has suspended even the most basic trust. My Duracell batteries and finger nail clippers were taken from me today and it gave me pause for thought. I had a lot of pauses in the last few days. Life has not been the same. I share these thoughts as an initial reaction recognizing that it is always easy to take pot-shots at our leaders from the sidelines, and to have the insights they are missing when we are not in the middle of very difficult decisions. On the other hand, having worked for nearly 20 years as a mediator and proponent of nonviolent change in situations around the globe where cycles of deep violence seem hell-bent on perpetuating themselves, and having interacted with people and movements who at the core of their identity find ways of justifying their part in the cycle, I feel responsible to try to bring ideas to the search for solutions. With this in mind I should like to pen several observations about what I have learned from my experiences and what they might suggest about the current situation. I believe this starts by naming several key challenges and then asking what is the nature of a creative response that takes these seriously in the pursuit of genuine, durable, and peaceful change.
Some Lessons about the Nature of our Challenge
1. Always seek to understand the root of the anger ? The first and most important question to pose ourselves is relatively simple though not easy to answer: How do people reach this level of anger, hatred and frustration? By my experience explanations that they are brainwashed by a perverted leader who holds some kind of magical power over them is an escapist simplification and will inevitably lead us to very wrong-headed responses. Anger of this sort, what we could call generational, identity-based anger, is constructed over time through a combination of historical events, a deep sense of threat to identify, and direct experiences of sustained exclusion. This is very important to understand, because, as I will say again and again, our response to the immediate events have everything to do with whether we reinforce and provide the soil, seeds, and nutrients for future cycles of revenge and violence. Or whether it changes. We should be careful to pursue one and only one thing as the strategic guidepost of our response: Avoid doing what they expect. What they expect from us is the lashing out of the giant against the weak, the many against the few. This will reinforce their capacity to perpetrate the myth they carefully seek to sustain: That they are under threat, fighting an irrational and mad system that has never taken them seriously and wishes to destroy them and their people. What we need to destroy is their myth not their people.
2. Always seek to understand the nature of the organization ? Over the years of working to promote durable peace in situations of deep, sustained violence I have discovered one consistent purpose about the nature of movements and organizations who use violence: Sustain thyself. This is done through a number of approaches, but generally it is through decentralization of power and structure, secrecy, autonomy of action through units, and refusal to pursue the conflict on the terms of the strength and capacities of the enemy.
One of the most intriguing metaphors I have heard used in the last few days is that this enemy of the United States will be found in their holes, smoked out, and when they run and are visible, destroyed. This may well work for groundhogs, trench and maybe even guerilla warfare, but it is not a useful metaphor for this situation. And neither is the image that we will need to destroy the village to save it, by which the population that gives refuge to our enemies is guilty by association and therefore a legitimate target. In both instances the metaphor that guides our action misleads us because it is not connected to the reality. In more specific terms, this is not a struggle to be conceived of in geographic terms, in terms of physical spaces and places, that if located can be destroyed, thereby ridding us of the problem. Quite frankly our biggest and most visible weapon systems are mostly useless.
We need a new metaphor, and though I generally do not like medical metaphors to describe conflict, the image of a virus comes to mind because of its ability to enter unperceived, flow with a system, and harm it from within. This is the genius of people like Osama Ben Laden. He understood the power of a free and open system, and has used it to his benefit. The enemy is not located in a territory. It has entered our system. And you do not fight this kind of enemy by shooting at it. You respond by strengthening the capacity of the system to prevent the virus and strengthen its immunity. It is an ironic fact that our greatest threat is not in Afghanistan, but in our own backyard. We surely are not going to bomb Travelocity, Hertz Rental Car, or an Airline training school in Florida. We must change metaphors and move beyond the reaction that we can duke it out with the bad guy, or we run the very serious risk of creating the environment that sustains and reproduces the virus we wish to prevent.
3. Always remember that realities are constructed ? Conflict is, among other things, the process of building and sustaining very different perceptions and interpretations of reality. This means that we have at the same time multiple realities defined as such by those in conflict. In the aftermath of such horrific and unmerited violence that we have just experienced this may sound esoteric. But we must remember that this fundamental process is how we end up referring to people as fanatics, madmen, and irrational. In the process of name-calling we lose the critical capacity to understand that from within the ways they construct their views, it is not mad lunacy or fanaticism. All things fall together and make sense. When this is connected to a long string of actual experiences wherein their views of the facts are reinforced (for example, years of superpower struggle that used or excluded them, encroaching Western values of what is considered immoral by their religious interpretation, or the construction of an enemy-image who is overwhelmingly powerful and uses that power in bombing campaigns and always appears to win) then it is not a difficult process to construct a rational world view of heroic struggle against evil. Just as we do it, so do they. Listen to the words we use to justify our actions and responses. And then listen to words they use. The way to break such a process is not through a frame of reference of who will win or who is stronger. In fact the inverse is true. Whoever loses, whether tactical battles or the ?war? itself, finds intrinsic in the loss the seeds that give birth to the justification for renewed battle. The way to break such a cycle of justified violence is to step outside of it. This starts with understanding that TV sound bites about madmen and evil are not good sources of policy. The most significant impact that we could make on their ability to sustain their view of us as evil is to change their perception of who we are by choosing to strategically respond in unexpected ways. This will take enormous courage and courageous leadership capable of envisioning a horizon of change.
4. Always understand the capacity for recruitment -- The greatest power that terror has is the ability to regenerate itself. What we most need to understand about the nature of this conflict and the change process toward a more peaceful world is how recruitment into these activities happens. In all my experiences in deep-rooted conflict what stands out most are the ways in which political leaders wishing to end the violence believed they could achieve it by overpowering and getting rid of the perpetrator of the violence. That may have been the lesson of multiple centuries that preceded us. But it is not the lesson from that past 30 years. The lesson is simple. When people feel a deep sense of threat, exclusion and generational experiences of direct violence, their greatest effort is placed on survival. Time and again in these movements, there has been an extraordinary capacity for the regeneration of chosen myths and renewed struggle.
One aspect of current U.S. leadership that coherently matches with the lessons of the past 30 years of protracted conflict settings is the statement that this will be a long struggle. What is missed is that the emphasis should be placed on removing the channels, justifications, and sources that attract and sustain recruitment into the activities. What I find extraordinary about the recent events is that none of the perpetrators was much older than 40 and many were half that age.
This is the reality we face: Recruitment happens on a sustained basis. It will not stop with the use of military force, in fact, open warfare will create the soils in which it is fed and grows. Military action to destroy terror, particularly as it affects significant and already vulnerable civilian populations will be like hitting a fully mature dandelion with a golf club. We will participate in making sure the myth of why we are evil is sustained and we will assure yet another generation of recruits.
5. Recognize complexity, but always understand the power of simplicity ? Finally, we must understand the principle of simplicity. I talk a lot with my students about the need to look carefully at complexity, which is equally true (and which in the earlier points I start to explore). However, the key in our current situation that we have failed to fully comprehend is simplicity. From the standpoint of the perpetrators, the effectiveness of their actions was in finding simple ways to use the system to undo it. I believe our greatest task is to find equally creative and simple tools on the other side.
Suggestions
In keeping with the last point, let me try to be simple. I believe three things are possible to do and will have a much greater impact on these challenges than seeking accountability through revenge.
1. Energetically pursue a sustainable peace process to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Do it now. The United States has much it can do to support and make this process work. It can bring the weight of persuasion, the weight of nudging people on all sides to move toward mutual recognition and stopping the recent and devastating pattern of violent escalation, and the weight of including and balancing the process to address historic fears and basic needs of those involved. If we would bring the same energy to building an international coalition for peace in this conflict that we have pursued in building international coalitions for war, particularly in the Middle East, if we lent significant financial, moral, and balanced support to all sides that we gave to the Irish conflict in earlier years, I believe the moment is right and the stage is set to take a new and qualitative step forward.
Sound like an odd diversion to our current situation of terror? I believe the opposite is true. This type of action is precisely the kind of thing needed to create whole new views of who we are and what we stand for as a nation. Rather than fighting terror with force, we enter their system and take away one of their most coveted elements: The soils of generational conflict perceived as injustice used to perpetrate hatred and recruitment. I believe that monumental times like these create conditions for monumental change. This approach would solidify our relationships with a broad array of Middle Easterners and Central Asians, allies and enemies alike, and would be a blow to the rank and file of terror. The biggest blow we can serve terror is to make it irrelevant. The worst thing we could do is to feed it unintentionally by making it and its leaders the center stage of what we do. Let?s choose democracy and reconciliation over revenge and destruction. Let?s to do exactly what they do not expect, and show them it can work.
2. Invest financially in development, education, and a broad social agenda in the countries surrounding Afghanistan rather than attempting to destroy the Taliban in a search for Ben Laden. The single greatest pressure that could ever be put on Ben Laden is to remove the source of his justifications and alliances. Countries like Pakistan, Tajikistan, and yes, Iran and Syria should be put on the radar of the West and the United States with a question of strategic importance: How can we help you meet the fundamental needs of your people? The strategic approach to changing the nature of how terror of the kind we have witnessed this week reproduces itself lies in the quality of relationships we develop with whole regions, peoples, and world views. If we strengthen the web of those relationships, we weaken and eventually eliminate the soil where terror is born. A vigorous investment, taking advantage of the current opening given the horror of this week shared by even those who we traditionally claimed as state enemies, is immediately available, possible and pregnant with historic possibilities. Let?s do the unexpected. Let?s create a new set of strategic alliances never before thought possible.
3. Pursue a quiet diplomatic but dynamic and vital support of the Arab League to begin an internal exploration of how to address the root causes of discontent in numerous regions. This should be coupled with energetic ecumenical engagement, not just of key symbolic leaders, but of a practical and direct exploration of how to create a web of ethics for a new millennium that builds from the heart and soul of all traditions but that creates a capacity for each to engage the roots of violence that are found within their own traditions. Our challenge, as I see it, is not that of convincing others that our way of life, our religion, or our structure of governance is better or closer to Truth and human dignity. It is to be honest about the sources of violence in our own house and invite others to do the same. Our global challenge is how to generate and sustain genuine engagement that encourages people from within their traditions to seek that which assures the preciousness and respect for life that every religion sees as an inherent right and gift from the Divine, and how to build organized political and social life that is responsive to fundamental human needs. Such a web cannot be created except through genuine and sustained dialogue and the building of authentic relationships, at religious and political spheres of interaction, and at all levels of society. Why not do the unexpected and show that life-giving ethics are rooted in the core of all peoples by engaging a strategy of genuine dialogue and relationship? Such a web of ethics, political and religious, will have an impact on the roots of terror far greater in the generation of our children?s children than any amount of military action can possibly muster. The current situation poses an unprecedented opportunity for this to happen, more so than we have seen at any time before in our global community.
A Call for the Unexpected
Let me conclude with simple ideas. To face the reality of well organized, decentralized, self-perpetuating sources of terror, we need to think differently about the challenges. If indeed this is a new war it will not be won with a traditional military plan. The key does not lie in finding and destroying territories, camps, and certainly not the civilian populations that supposedly house them. Paradoxically that will only feed the phenomenon and assure that it lives into a new generation. The key is to think about how a small virus in a system affects the whole and how to improve the immunity of the system. We should take extreme care not to provide the movements we deplore with gratuitous fuel for self-regeneration. Let us not fulfill their prophecy by providing them with martyrs and justifications. The power of their action is the simplicity with which they pursue the fight with global power. They have understood the power of the powerless. They have understood that melding and meshing with the enemy creates a base from within. They have not faced down the enemy with a bigger stick. They did the more powerful thing: They changed the game. They entered our lives, our homes and turned our own tools into our demise.
We will not win this struggle for justice, peace and human dignity with the traditional weapons of war. We need to change the game again.
Let us take up the practical challenges of this reality perhaps best described in the Cure of Troy an epic poem by Seamus Heaney no foreigner to grip of the cycles of terror. Let us give birth to the unexpected.
So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a farther shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.
John Paul Lederach
September 16, 2001 |
Michael Star
| | Posted on Sunday, September 23, 2001 - 04:33 pm: | |
Way to go! John Paul Lederach's approach to solving the terrorist dilemma as outlined in the Common Cause newsletter reproduced above by Myra Lewiski is exactly the way to go about it!
There is so much common sense and brilliant strategy in Lederach's letter that I salute him as one of the great thinkers of our time. This is a man I would listen to, and I hope his words will be read by many, especially the American people who could influence their leaders to avoid perpetuating the violence with a rash and ill-considered "go to war" reaction to the events of September 11th.
To attack civilians, even IF the leaders of their country have been harboring terrorists, is to act as a "terrorist" yourself. To use a military build-up and the threat of sending fighter jets and stealth bombers over a country to blast buildings that may contain innocent civilians is not that far removed from an act of terrorism itself. You are terrorizing the people of the county. The Afghan peasants are already fleeing into Pakistan since Bush made his threat.
This is not the way to go. It will probably not be very effective in capturing or killing the terrorists, and it will most definitely help create a new generation of terrorists and help recruit more terrorists who would now see the United States as a brutal aggressor who attacks innocent civilians from the safety of a high-flying airplane. And it is likely to alienate some of the people who would otherwise support a full-fledged campaign at rooting out the terrorists in every country of the world. If you want to be the world's policeman and enlist the help of the world's citizens in your efforts, you had best be seen as "a good cop" and not "a bad cop".
President Bush called the suicidal hijackers "cowards". How would he defend his own pilots of "stealth" bombers from being called exactly the same thing? Each side is justifying its aggressive and deadly actions by some self-righteous belief that says the other side is the enemy who has attacked us without justification. And that, supposedly, makes it okay to blast buildings and kill innocent people in the process.
Granted, the USA is not going to blast buildings with the intent to kill civilians, as the terrorists did - although their military jargon "acceptable collateral damage" is really just a euphemism for "we don't care if a few innocent people get killed while we are shooting at the bad guys".
This seems like a contradiction to the American philosophy of "innocent until proven guilty" in their legal system, and their policy of not allowing armed policemen to fire at escaping criminals if their gunfire might injure innocent bystanders. How do they justify "collateral damage" as "acceptable" in any situation that is not an immediate and direct threat to survival? Like taking a shot at an armed soldier who has his gun pointed right at you, and who happens to be standing beside an innocent civilian. In that kind of situation, perhaps you need to "take the shot". But nobody is going to be shooting from an Afghani building at a stealth bomber.
I am not saying the USA should not seek out and arrest any terrorists wherever they may be hiding. Let those who live by the sword die by the sword. But bombing unarmed and innocent civilians while trying to kill terrorists is also "living by the sword" and is something that will come back upon you in time, no matter what your reasons were to justify it.
This is not how the American system of Justice works in the USA. Why would it be different when applied in other countries? The only difference I can see is that it is not American citizens who would be affected by "collateral damage". And this, in effect, is saying that "I care about my own people, but I don't care if some of yours get killed while I am shooting at the bad guys."
So lets look at this situation in another scenario. I was born a Canadian, but my mother is American, and I wonder how I would feel about George Bush sending his stealth bombers over my country to seek out any suspected terrorists, even IF my country had been allowing them to operate within my country (which has happened, although not with Canadian knowledge nor approval)?
Would I find "collateral damage" as "acceptable"? Not on your life! What if an American military airplane struck at some suspected terrorists in Canada and inadvertantly killed some Canadian citizens in the process? How would I feel about America then? Think about that one, Mr. Bush.
I know that Americans are good-hearted and generous people, and that they have done many great and noble things for the world. They are always there with aid when a disaster strikes in another country, yet no one sends help when a natural disaster strikes the USA. I wonder how many other countries would defeat an aggressor nation like Germany or Japan in WWII and then, instead of taking over the defeated foe's country, turn around and give them money to rebuild their country? Now Germany is prosperous again, and is one of the first countries to unequivocally pledge both monetary and military support to the USA in their proposed attack on terrorism. Even a former enemy like Russia is willing to help the USA in some ways. The USA, for all its mistakes, must also be doing something right when two former enemies are offerring to help them.
But, I also see America as like a big brother who you love dearly, but who also has a few faults that get him into trouble from time to time. You can love your brother, but you don't have to love some of his habits or his actions. I don't love the USA acting almost like a terrorist itself if it is going to bomb Afghanistan.
If President Bush wants to get the terrorists, then send in the Marines and hunt down bin Laden wherever he may be hiding. But don't kill innocent people to get at the guilty ones. And please don't let the world see you as cowards whose preferred way of attacking the enemy is to sneak up on him from the air at night and drop bombs on him and anyone who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The only difference I see in that from what the bin Laden terrorists do with hijacked airplanes is that the USA builds its own airplanes for bombing buildings, instead of stealing them like the terrorists do. It's still a cowardly, although safe, way to wage a "war". Who will be shooting back at those stealth bombers over Afghanistan?
I love Americans, but I don't love this kind of approach to stopping terrorism. And I don't think most of the world will either. It will only breed more hatred for the USA, and provide more reasons for young men to turn to terrorism. I think that if you can catch bin Laden in some kind of man-to-man situation, even the Afghanis and any Muslims who sympathize with the terrorists will respect that, and not see the USA as the "evil aggressor" they have come to believe it is.
I'll end this rant by quoting a little poem I wrote earlier this month before the events of September 11th took place.
Most trouble in this world comes from
not what is "evil", but just dumb.
Please, President Bush, don't be dumb. Go about this in a calm and carefully-considered way. Mr. Lederach's plan might be a better one to consider.
- Michael Star 2001 SEP04 |
Barbara
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 09, 2001 - 05:32 pm: | |
Published on Sunday, September 23, 2001 in the Los Angeles Times
A Pure, High Note of Anguish
by Barbara Kingsolver
TUCSON -- I want to do something to help right now. But I can't give blood (my hematocrit always runs too low), and I'm too far way to give anybody shelter or a drink of water. I can only give words. My verbal hemoglobin never seems to wane, so words are what I'll offer up in this time that asks of us the best citizenship we've ever mustered. I don't mean to say I have a cure. Answers to the main questions of the day--Where was that fourth plane headed? How did they get knives through security?--I don't know any of that. I have some answers, but only to the questions nobody is asking right now but my 5-year old. Why did all those people die when they didn't do anything wrong? Will it happen to me? Is this the worst thing that's ever happened? Who were those children cheering that they showed for just a minute, and why were they glad? Please, will this ever, ever happen to me?
There are so many answers, and none: It is desperately painful to see people die without having done anything to deserve it, and yet this is how lives end nearly always. We get old or we don't, we get cancer, we starve, we are battered, we get on a plane thinking we're going home but never make it. There are blessings and wonders and horrific bad luck and no guarantees. We like to pretend life is different from that, more like a game we can actually win with the right strategy, but it isn't. And, yes, it's the worst thing that's happened, but only this week. Two years ago, an earthquake in Turkey killed 17,000 people in a day, babies and mothers and businessmen, and not one of them did a thing to cause it. The November before that, a hurricane hit Honduras and Nicaragua and killed even more, buried whole villages and erased family lines and even now, people wake up there empty-handed. Which end of the world shall we talk about? Sixty years ago, Japanese airplanes bombed Navy boys who were sleeping on ships in gentle Pacific waters. Three and a half years later, American planes bombed a plaza in Japan where men and women were going to work, where schoolchildren were playing, and more humans died at once than anyone thought possible. Seventy thousand in a minute. Imagine. Then twice that many more, slowly, from the inside.
There are no worst days, it seems. Ten years ago, early on a January morning, bombs rained down from the sky and caused great buildings in the city of Baghdad to fall down--hotels, hospitals, palaces, buildings with mothers and soldiers inside--and here in the place I want to love best, I had to watch people cheering about it. In Baghdad, survivors shook their fists at the sky and said the word "evil." When many lives are lost all at once, people gather together and say words like "heinous" and "honor" and "revenge," presuming to make this awful moment stand apart somehow from the ways people die a little each day from sickness or hunger. They raise up their compatriots' lives to a sacred place--we do this, all of us who are human--thinking our own citizens to be more worthy of grief and less willingly risked than lives on other soil. But broken hearts are not mended in this ceremony, because, really, every life that ends is utterly its own event--and also in some way it's the same as all others, a light going out that ached to burn longer. Even if you never had the chance to love the light that's gone, you miss it. You should. You bear this world and everything that's wrong with it by holding life still precious, each time, and starting over.
And those children dancing in the street? That is the hardest question. We would rather discuss trails of evidence and whom to stamp out, even the size and shape of the cage we might put ourselves in to stay safe, than to mention the fact that our nation is not universally beloved; we are also despised. And not just by "The Terrorist," that lone, deranged non-man in a bad photograph whose opinion we can clearly dismiss, but by ordinary people in many lands. Even by little boys--whole towns full of them it looked like--jumping for joy in school shoes and pilled woolen sweaters.
There are a hundred ways to be a good citizen, and one of them is to look finally at the things we don't want to see. In a week of terrifying events, here is one awful, true thing that hasn't much been mentioned: Some people believe our country needed to learn how to hurt in this new way. This is such a large lesson, so hatefully, wrongfully taught, but many people before us have learned honest truths from wrongful deaths. It still may be within our capacity of mercy to say this much is true: We didn't really understand how it felt when citizens were buried alive in Turkey or Nicaragua or Hiroshima. Or that night in Baghdad. And we haven't cared enough for the particular brothers and mothers taken down a limb or a life at a time, for such a span of years that those little, briefly jubilant boys have grown up with twisted hearts. How could we keep raining down bombs and selling weapons, if we had? How can our president still use that word "attack" so casually, like a move in a checker game, now that we have awakened to see that word in our own newspapers, used like this: Attack on America.
Surely, the whole world grieves for us right now. And surely it also hopes we might have learned, from the taste of our own blood, that every war is both won and lost, and that loss is a pure, high note of anguish like a mother singing to any empty bed. The mortal citizens of a planet are praying right now that we will bear in mind, better than ever before, that no kind of bomb ever built will extinguish hatred.
"Will this happen to me?" is the wrong question, I'm sad to say. It always was.
Barbara Kingsolver's most recent novel is "Prodigal Summer." |
Anonymous
| | Posted on Sunday, September 08, 2002 - 03:30 am: | |
http://www.rumormillnews.net/cgi-bin/config.pl?read=22720
AN OPEN LETTER TO DONALD RUMSFELD
Posted By: billym
Date: Wednesday, 4 September 2002, 4:09 p.m.
AN OPEN LETTER TO DONALD RUMSFELD
Dear Mr. Secretary of Defense,
I have some questions about the National Security of the People of the United States, and about the state of the Defense of the United States, which I feel are most urgent questions, and which, as Secretary of Defense, you should surely be obliged to answer. And these questions also pertain strongly to your group's desire and intention to wage war and conquer Iraq. (And perhaps other nations after that).
My first question is: Why are you not being honest with the American People about the proliferation and threat of the new Scalar Electromagnetic superweapons, the Longitudinal Wave Interferometers now possessed by at least ten nations, and also in the hands of certain "rogue groups?" As I'm sure you know these new and incredible weapons can strike at any place on earth, in an instant, and bring to bear, in the interference zone, where the scalar beams intersect, an amazing variety of powerful and destructive effects.
Since you are surely familiar with the revolutionary new physics concepts involved with these new Super-weapons and understand the devastating damage they could do to any place in United States, this action-at-a-distance, then as a citizen of this Land of the Free I must ask you: What defense do we have against all that?
I must make the assumption that you know all about these Tesla Howitzers, in the hands of the KGB, and in China's hands now too, because you are The Secretary of Defense and your purpose is to defend against all threats. So you would know all about these very real and terrifying new threats.
But it looks like you are trying to fool The People when you talk of fighting a "conventional war" against Iraq. Because as you know, all "conventional war" is now rendered completely obsolete by the existence and proliferation of these Longitudinal Wave Interferometers. These devices take the phrase "Weapons of Mass Destruction" to mind-boggling new heights. So one has to assume you have been briefed by the super-secret military Unacknowledged black-budget projects that work in this new science of Scalar Electromagnetics. The physics is arcane, but the proof is in the results: they work, and the testing of them has been witnessed all around the world.
It would be absurd to think you are uninformed in this area, or that your Security Clearance is not high enough to find out about the Scalar Weapons. I learned all about them from information on the Internet.
My next question is all-important: How do you know the Russian KGB will ALLOW you to win a war against Iraq? Because the KGB Scalar Weapons are the most advanced on earth, it is really THEY who decides who wins any conventional war. If they want to, they can throw any war against Iraq either way, right? Did you make a deal with them to allow the old-fashioned type "regular war?" And there is of course the Israeli Scalar Weapons, which they seem to itching to use. (Again?)
If the KGB should decide the United States is to be defeated in its attack on Iraq, then the United States will be defeated. I mean suppose part of your plan is to fly a lot of planes in there to drop bombs or something. And supposing the KGB just tunes their interferometers and puts up a giant Tesla Dome in the flight path of the planes. All the planes then just fall out of the sky when they hit that Electromagnetic Dome. What are your plans for action in case all THAT happens?
Or supposing you send a lot of soldiers in, lots of big groups of soldiers. I guess that might be part of a plan. And, what if, the KGB tunes the interferometers to the so-called "Mindsnapper" patterns, and just instantly kills all those soldiers over a broad swathe sweeping across the territory? You know, the soldiers' nervous systems are just destroyed in a flash. What if they, or any other possessor of the new Superweapons, do that? What are your plans of action then?
And of course tank warfare is useless if Scalar Weapons are to be brought to bear, by any of the parties or even by outside parties. The bazooka-size scalar beam weapons can destroy a tank in about four different ways at once. The munitions are ignited inside the tank, the fuel explodes, the operators are instantly dead, all the electronics becomes useless. So there is no use to tanks if Scalar Weapons are used. You are going to lose a conventional war if any party uses their Superweapons against you. Have you thought about that? What are your plans if the war "goes scalar?"
As you know, by that point, all communications will be inoperative, due to the use of the Tesla Howitzers in that other mode, where they simply destroy all electronics in The Zone, including all computers. Maybe that would be enough right there and they wouldn't have to kill anybody, just shut down all the machinery of war. I know you think you will use the so-called "EBomb" to do that to them, but you can't do it if some other scalar device hits you first. And it is said that the Russian KGB Scalar Interferometers are the finest in the world.
Another very important question The People would like answered is: What is the current state of development of American Scalar Weapons? Where are our Longitudinal Wave Interferometers? Is the Secretary of Defense of the United States able to put up a defensive electromagnetic "Tesla Dome" over the city of Washington? Will it be a triple-nested dome to protect against even radioactivity itself? Why do you not assure The People the Department of Defense can put up multiple domes over many cities? Or do we not have very many of these Interferometers? Do we have ANY? This is a serious question concerning the safety and defense of The People.
The People are learning fast about the Superweapons and naturally they are frightened, because the weapons can strike at any point on earth (from the comfort of a remote control booth). And The People want to know now "What defense do you have against these new unprecedented threats?" Because we feel like sitting ducks now. We have seen the tremendous power of the Scalar Waves in the collapse of the Twin Towers. We have been attacked now, covertly, by Scalar Weapons, and the People want to know "What is our readiness to fight a Scalar War?"
You see, it seems rather disingenuous when you pretend not to know about the Superweapons, or when you fail to warn the People that they are now fundamentally defenseless, and at the mercy of any possessor of these Interferometers. And of course you know all about them, because anyone can now find out about them, and surely you are taking into full account the possible use of Scalar Weapons in any war you might undertake against Iraq.
Because the existence of these new Superweapons is fast becoming common knowledge it would make you appear more fit for your office if you addressed all these issues and these questions, otherwise some might feel as if you should step down and be replaced by someone who is expert in this new field of Scalar Warfare.
Certainly Secretary of Defense William Cohen was far more open than you have been since he tried to warn the world openly about these scalar electromagnetic weapons. He spoke of "an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves... "
So I think if he could face these issues in a statement like that, in 1997, then why can you not be honest with the American People about this? And why do you risk such immense embarrassment by acting and speaking in a manner as if you knew nothing of such things and that such things are not an issue? They are very much an issue in the New Balance of Power. As more and more people around the world become aware of the actual state of things it might be thought that you are not effective at all in providing for the National Defense and the National Security.
At the very least you should tell the People that the balance of power in World Affairs has shifted drastically, and that the U.S. Military is probably playing catch-up ball in this field, and that, were it not for the Tesla Howitzers of "a small friendly nation," The United States of America would be standing 100% defenseless against any of a myriad of attacks, at any time, at any place.
I am hoping you will very soon face these issues publicly and try to answer the above questions for the People. Otherwise, as this knowledge grows among the People, you will begin to look very, very foolish. You are after all The Secretary of Defense. Tell the People what defense we have against the Scalar Wave Interferometers.
Yours,
Bill Morgan
P.S. In case you have "forgotten" how the new Superweapons work, you can refresh your memory here.
SCALAR WEAPONS: Briefing for Donald Rumsfeld
http://www.rumormillnews.net/cgi-bin/config.pl?read=22720
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Turn your fears into LOVE -
Affirmation of LOVE
I am the power of LOVE
I am the strength of LOVE
I give my will to spirit of LOVE
I am full of LOVE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
|
Closed: New threads not accepted on this page