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9.11 Actions and Re-Actions
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people have visited this Site.
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What you can do
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Stories Told
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Buy a share of stock in your favorite company
Liberty Unites
Online donations, blood bank locations and other help sources
How can YOU help?
Emergency and relief sources
Make a donation
choose which organization at Helping.org
Form a Community LAP
an exercise for healing and trust building
Parks and Recreation supporting our local communities
contact your local P&R Dept
The Net Response
Steven Clift shares how to use the internet during this crisis
IAF Manuals for Disaster Intervention
great manuals for disaster and trauma victims and children
NY Times Resources for grades 6-12 teachers
Lesson Plans for Healing
Managing your companies communications
Leading PR guru shares tips for what your company can do.
A Directory of Free Net Tools
Resources to “connect” in community with others
911Network.org germinates
Ability Foundation, NRPA, LAP and ThinkQuest engage healing
Light a candle Online
A Danish site expressing solidarity
Order your Global Flag
Buy an Earth Flag of humanity
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President Bush Speaks to America, 9/20/01
Freedom against Fear
The New America is Pissed Off
time to get real
Action without borders
people share stories from around the world
Bob Stilger’s “New Stories 9.11”
a collection of shared stories
Letter
to George W. Bush from the Dalai Lama
Letter from Deepak Chopra
The deeper wound
Canadian Love
sharing in our grief from Niagara College
An Afghanistan Perspective
The Belly to do what needs to be done. By Tamim Ansary
God Bless the USA
worth seeing but takes a bit to download
Images of global solidarity
moving display if you have the patience for download time
World Islamic Front Statement
1998 Letter representing the darkest of views!
An idea for rebuilding the Towers (funny!)
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Friends,
Can we achieve community from this crisis? Perhaps it's in us all to embrace...
These reflections, most capturing my own feelings, hopes and aspirations while others
reflecting the opposite...illustrate the range of our humanity... and the depth of our cultural differences. I can only
thank each for being expressed in the open. What we now choose to do with them is... well... up to us. The responsibility falls in ALL of our laps.
In Community,
Casey Hughes
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A Useful Exercise
Running LAP’s in every community can be a path towards healing. By forming a LAP Circle around the common good, we can all build upon trust and enduring human relation-ships.
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Our Local Parks and Recreation friends respond...
(visit the National Recreation and Park Association)
Dr. Ham and fellow professionals--Thank you for your concern. Our town is 20 miles north of New York City, and the effect is staggering on
our community and many others outside of New York, including those in southern Connecticut and northern New Jersey, where many World Trade Center employees and Emergency services workers lived. However, the personal
tragedy stretches to every town where an airline passenger resided, or a Pentagon employee lived..
The past couple of days have reaffirmed for me our importance as a profession in general, and the importance of our services in my community
specifically, at a time when we provide a wonderful forum for community gathering. Good luck to all my colleagues in the Tri-State area, and throughout the country during this extraordinarily difficult time! You are
in my thoughts and prayers!
Richard L. Rose, Jr., Orangetown, NY Parks and Rec.
Our golf professionals (Quincy (IL) Park District are volunteering their time to teach chipping and putting to anyone who donates the lesson
fee to the American Red Cross with the proceeds directed to relief efforts in New York City. Two radio stations will broadcast live at the golf course during
the designated hours (1-3 pm) on Saturday afternoon, September 15 and 22nd.
Be advised that the Milford Recreation Department in Milford, Connecticut has designated our Annual Citywide Adult Tennis Tournament
as a donation site for the American Red Cross on Friday and Saturday, September 21, 22. The two sites are the Leroy Doolittle Tennis Courts at Eisenhower Park, and the Fowler Tennis Courts.
Chuck Schneider, Director
As everyone else, our thoughts and prayers are with all the people
affected by this terrible tragedy!!! As a Recreation District, we wanted to be able to help in some way. I contacted the Red Cross and this Saturday, we will be sponsoring a collection site for the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund in our Park. The Red Cross will have a vehicle and two volunteers here and we will have Park Volunteers on the entrance road accepting donations from people from 8am -5pm for the Red Cross. We originally thought we would have another group co-sponsor the event with us, like a local bank, to help provide volunteers but found our staff so eager to volunteer that we prpbably won't need additional volunteers from the Bank. We will have over 3,000 children that will be playing a game this Saturday at our Park.
Hopefully,
by hosting this contribution site, it will give the children and their families a chance to contribute, be involved and make a difference. This might be an idea that other communities might want to try.
Kathy Foley, Director, Recreation District #1/Pelican Park, Mandeville, Louisiana
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In spite of everything, I am fully present to the astounding capacity of human beings to do good, to protect and create life,
beauty, compassion, good will. Human genius -- even compassion and emotional genius -- far outweighs our capacity for evil.
I went to church last night and the minister led the
congregation in blessing and praying for all the people, all of our human brothers and sisters. Every kind of person was there: black, white, asian, tall, short, Jewish, Arab, Christian, young, old, blonde, brown, fat, thin. EVERY kind of person was there.
The huge, huge room was packed with loving people. All around, these
people were compelled to hug strangers, and I'm not exaggerating when I say the sensation of love and forgiveness for all human beings, among all types of human beings brought many of us to tears. There was enormous will to change the way the world thinks forever. A belief that this was not an ending, not a reason to go to war, not a time to continue life as usual, but the beginning of the new opportunity to live in a transformed, loving, compassionate world for eternity.
I pray the leaders of this
country hear this prayer as well. More fighting would be insanity. Peace is the only alternative. Millions of Americans know that, and have for a very long time. Even if we cannot bring back every single life, and provide comfort for every instance of suffering, I believe we can prove not a single death, not a single drop of blood, not a single tear was in vain -- here in the U.S. or anywhere in the world. The more we talk about and imagine war, the more likely it is. If what's on our minds is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness -- lived now, not just the future -- then that is precisely what people will create.
I've often wondered why it appears to be so much
easier to lead people to war than to peace. I guess some people would say it's thinking about, and making decisions on the basis of, the past. What so many people have been saying for thousands of years is that, to wage peace, you turn your back on the past; flood your thoughts with, and base your decisions on, a vision for the future; and get busy creating it in the present. A pretty universal Rx. (How many human creations came to being by this means?).
Andrea Sharp
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A vision of people creating wealth
and prosperity
for everybody,
together,
forever.
Do we have the means to talk about that and teach it? Yes, of course. Technology is everywhere. Do we have any selfish reasons to do
so, and to take a proactive stand against violence? Yes. Probably even more reasons than means. Do we have an extraordinary responsibility to do so? Yes, just as much as Adolf Eichman did.
Listen, now, to the men who had these things to say:
"If someone with courage and vision can rise to lead in nonviolent
action, the winter of despair can, in the twinkling of an eye, be turned into the summer of hope.
It is possible to live in peace.
Nonviolence is not a garment to put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being.
It is possible to live in peace.
If a single person achieves the highest kind of love, it will be sufficient to neutralize the hate of millions.
It is possible to live in peace.
If we are to reach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.
It is possible to live in peace.
The future depends on what we do in the present.
It is possible to live in peace."
--Mohandas K. Gandhi
Martin Luther King, Jr.: "It is not enough to say, 'We must not wage war.' It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We
must concentrate not merely on the eradication of war but on the affirmation of peace." "Anybody can be great. Because anybody can serve."
"...The journey of love is a very long journey, But sometimes with a sigh you can
cross that vast desert. Search and search again without losing hope; You may find sometime a treasure on your way. My heart and my eyes are all devoted to the vision."
--Mohammed Iqbal
Passover prayer: "What sacrifices would we
make for freedom today? What would we leave? How far would we go? How deeply would we look within ourselves? Our ancestors had no time to await the rising of the bread. Yet we, who have that time, what do we do to be worthy of our previous inheritance? We were slaves in Egypt... but now we are free. How easy it is for us to relive the days of our bondage as we sit in the warmth and comfort of our seder. How much harder to relieve the pain of those who live in the bitterness of slavery today."
"May every creature abound in well-being and peace. May every living being, weak or
strong, the long and the small, the short and the medium-sized, the mean and the great. May every living
being, seen or unseen, those dwelling far off, those living near by, those already born, those waiting to be born. May all attain inward peace. Let not one deceive another. Let no one despise another in any situation. Let no one, from antipathy or hatred, wish evil to anyone at all. Just as a mother, with her own life, protects her only child from hurt, so within yourself foster a limitless concern for every living creature. Then as you stand or walk, sit or lie, until overcome by drowsiness, devote your mind entirely to this: It is known as living the life divine.
--Buddhist
Anybody can be a stand for peace.
Connected we all share in community.
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The New America is Pissed-Off
A TV network interviewed private school kids and one explained that we have to try to find out what we did to the terrorists to
make them kill us, and make it up
to them. Another woman on TV ranted at us that every starving Egyptian baby is America’s fault. We are seeing more and more apologists, who say we should be sorry for somehow causing all the world’s problems, and the America-haters, who simply hate everything American.
This is the real war that is being fought right now, right here all over America, and we are all on the frontline. It is
the war between Americans on one side, and the apologists [motto:No hate] and America-haters on the other side [motto: Death to America]. America’s enemies are winning so far. By achieving that any citizen’s hostility towards America’s enemies are ˜hate crimes”, they become virtually immune to attack, and further divide America’s law enforcers who are forced to prosecute citizens instead of enemies. Once their defenses are in place, they will increase their attacks, with propaganda that the government is doing a bad job and is being unfair towards those minorities with a statistically higher percentage of terrorist sympathizers. The purpose of these attacks will be to re-establish the crippling handicaps, primarily on the methods and deadliness of the CIA, FBI and Special Forces, that have brought America to her knees in the past.
This is a war of ideas, the old and the new. The apologists’ old ideas of being nice to everyone in the hope that they
will stop hating us has a lot of momentum. A lot
of overeducated, naive apologists have believed that obvious nonsense for a generation and spouted that line at us so many times that our politicians think we believe it and act accordingly. The new idea is simply Do What Works to Make America Safe, and if you are not 100% behind this solution, then you are part of the problem, and America needs to figure out what to do about you. We know what to do. Israel has the blueprints for making a country terror-resistant and we can develop the strength to accept what casualties we do take in this war and channel our anger into gutting our enemies strongholds and leaders. America has the military power to win every war terrorist-harboring countries declare on her. America can set up a fortress in Afghanistan or wherever and send out Special Forces and special weapon missions to hunt down and destroy terrorist nests for years so that for young men thinking of joining a terrorist cell, the decision will not be whether to join a glorious cause, see the world,and prove your manhood, but whether to become a slinking, starving fugitive for a few weeks before a bullet out of nowhere goes through your neck. And you know, we don’t actually need to worry about collateral damage: They started this war, not us, so the damage is theirs not ours, and not killing them will obviously cause a lot more “collateral damage” in the form other terrorist strikes.
America’s enemies hate us because we are better than them. There,
we said it. We are smarter, stronger, healthier, have a lot less psychological problems, are tolerant of other religions (which means we are not threatened by theirs, but they are of ours),and are generally happier too. They are the barbarians looking at civilization and wanting to destroy it. Now we could spend a few more decades trying to civilize them, but that would be stupid.
So what can you, personally and specifically, do that will help a lot and is not illegal? Five things:
1. Send a copy of this email to as many people as you know.
2. Confront America’s enemies wherever you can. Just tell the apologists their misguided attempts to weaken America
are offensive and subversive and they should shut up. When you see apologizers on TV, change the channel. The networks will soon follow their ratings and keep
the apologizers off the air. And when you confront America-haters, just hate them back, but do it legally. They protest, you protest. They shout, you shout back. 100 of them march, 10,000 of us march. Especially important: Correct your friends and family when they get confused on the nature of this war.
3. Keep up the mail to the politicians. Put up a scorecard with every political office you vote for, from Senator down to
local schoolboard, and add a
plus or minus to each name running for that office every time you hear them do something. Email your yeahs or boos to your representatives. The power to vote is the most powerful thing in this country. You really do control what America does, if you know how. Tell your civil servants exactly what you want, and prove to them that you are watching.
4. Display the flag everywhere. Go overboard on this. Suddenly you will realize that hundreds of millions of
Americans think just like you do and you will not be intimidated by the apologists and the America-haters. They will be intimidated, and their attacks will lack force.
5. Never forgive, never forget. Even if we started
winning this war of ideas, and we are losing it right now, Americans are famous for moving on to new issues quickly. Well, there are no new issues if our children are not safe from terrorism. Bomb-proofing America and adopting a foreign policy of utterly and always burning out terrorist nests, including their infrastructure and supporters, have to be forever. Instead America will quickly get used to the new, strong and high-tech America, and be very happy to again have the highest security and standards of living in the world. So promise yourself to do these five things for your entire life, and explain them to your children when they grow up.
America got a little complacent, a little flaky. We thought we had the luxury of letting anti-American propaganda
influence our security and foreign policy. Well, we sure got a wake-up call. Some people are trying to get us to crawl into bed again and go back to
sleep. You better not. Next time, maybe your kids will be blown up, and a bunch of scumbags will be celebrating the destruction of your life.
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A MESSAGE FROM RICHARD EDELMAN
September 13, 2001
The last few days have been unlike anything most
of us have ever experienced. The country, our colleagues and the media are operating in the most stressful circumstances. Companies are making difficult decisions about appropriate courses of action to help employees and their communities while striving to return their businesses to normalcy as quickly as possible.
Against this backdrop, we offer some suggestions for managing public
relations planning over the next weeks and months. While recognizing that every company is facing a different challenge and that questions, confusion and uncertainty will likely linger, we believe some insight is broadly applicable.
In the short term:
1.Focus on internal audiences first: This is the time to provide ongoing communications that helps employees understand
the state of the company and the actions the company is taking. Providing employees with special services, from grief counseling to
connecting with friends and relatives, might be an essential step to restoring normalcy. Daily updates, messages from the CEO reassure employees. Remember to include your non-U.S. employees in your outreach. Recognize that other stakeholders (Wall Street, customers) will need to see the CEO as well.
2. Extend help to the community as appropriate, from corporate outreach to helping employees find ways of expressing their
concern and of
assisting non-profit groups. Organize volunteers in the company, provide links to charitable groups, utilize company websites to guide people to productive ways of helping the community and the country. Financial assistance should be offered in a low-key way.
3.Differentiate between activities that truly seek
to help people and communities, and activities that are opportunistic and exploitative. In other words, this is the time to do good deeds to be good, not to attract media and public attention. Seeking coverage of "good deeds" is not appropriate. If you are donating goods, let the Red Cross know and they will tell the world.
4. Recognize that there is one national story that is consuming the attention of the public and the media. Other messages will not be
heard by either the public or the media unless they have direct relevance. Call journalists over the next several days only with stories that are fundamental to tell and know that for most, there is only a
single story. These would include updates on opening of facilities, safety of employees and suppliers.
5. Reconsider all media events scheduled
for the next 30 days. Consumer events and stunts should be postponed. Media coverage is unlikely, with entertainment shows postponed, network resources being pooled and journalists reassigned from traditional beats to cover the major story. In addition, logistics are difficult and the public mood is not receptive. Guerilla tactics, street marketing can be perceived as not only offensive but alarming.
6. For time sensitive stories that must be released in the next several days, plan for a second
wave of activity at a later date to increase chances of coverage and public awareness. Consider alternative ways of reaching people with news and information, including more aggressive use of web sites, news groups, etc.
7. Edit all materials for language that was appropriate a few days ago but that now seems
insensitive (e.g." assault," "target," "hijack"). Look at entertainment programs you are now involved in as they may now not be acceptable. Review product lines with violent content as they could become targets for the media.
8. Don't use the
media preoccupation as an opportunity to release and "hide" bad news. What you gain over the short run may have longer term ramifications for trust and credibility with the media and the public.
9.Reconsider spokespeople used for PR programs. Real experts are preferred over celebrities.
In the mid-term:
1. Do not cancel events and activities scheduled for
NYC and DC that are scheduled for October and November. Both cities as well as the country will want to return to normalcy as quickly as possible. Activities that promote a sense of business as usual, a sense of confidence, will be welcome. But...
Monitor the mood of the media and the public to assess the
appropriate time to resume activities. Continue to be sensitive to language, degree of celebration and/or type of humor in events. Have back-up plans for locations other than NYC or DC if those cities are still reacting and responding to the crisis
2. Do not build plans/programs around a single day. We need to recognize that major news around the week's event could
reemerge at any time over the next few months as the story unfolds and as the government takes action. Programs should have an extended shelf life to insure that
being eclipsed on a single day does not destroy the entire program.
3. Continue to utilize multiple ways of communicating with select audiences and the general public beyond the media. Web sites,
online media will insure that relationships between a company and its audiences is maintained.
4. Reengineer programs planned for next year to consider corporate social responsibility or cause related marketing.
5. Distinguish between types of mediums.
Work with long lead media in a normal way starting in 10 days. Newspapers, TV and weekly magazines won't be back to normal for three weeks.
Because the environment is volatile and because it is impossible for any of us to predict future coverage and how it might affect
communications plans, we will issue ongoing updates in the weeks ahead.
We hope this is helpful and we hope, too, that you will share your experiences and insights with us.
Robert J. Ambrose
Group Vice President
Assistant to the President & CEO
Tel: 212-704-8121
E-mail: robert.ambrose@edelman.com
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Letter from Deepak Chopra
Wednesday, September 12, 2001 1:24 PM
The Deeper Wound
As fate would have it, I was leaving New York on a jet flight that took off 45 minutes before
the unthinkable happened. By the time we landed in Detroit, chaos had broken out. When I grasped the fact that American security had broken down so tragically, I couldn't respond at first.
My wife and son were also in
the air on separate flights, one to Los Angeles, one to San Diego. My body went absolutely rigid with fear. All I could think about was their safety, and it took several hours before I found out that their flights had been diverted and both were safe.
Strangely, when the good news came, my body still felt
that it had been hit by a truck. Of its own accord it seemed to feel a far greater trauma that reached out to the thousands who would not survive and the tens of thousands who would survive only to live through months and years of hell. And I asked myself, Why didn't I feel this way last week?
Why didn't my body go stiff during the bombing of Iraq or Bosnia? Around the world my horror and worry are experienced every
day. Mothers weep over horrendous loss, civilians are bombed mercilessly, refugees are ripped from any sense of home or homeland. Why did I not feel their anguish enough to call a halt to it?
As we hear the calls for tightened American security and a
fierce military response to terrorism, it is obvious that none of us has any answers. However, we feel compelled to ask some questions. Everything has a cause, so we have to ask, What was the root cause of this evil? We must find out not superficially but at the deepest level. There is no doubt that such evil is alive all around the world and is even celebrated. Does this evil grow from the suffering and anguish felt by people we don't know and therefore ignore? Have they lived in this condition for a long time?
One assumes that
whoever did this attack feels implacable hatred for America. Why were we selected to be the focus of suffering around the world? All this hatred and anguish seems to have religion at its basis. Isn't something terribly wrong when jihads and wars develop in the name of God? Isn't God invoked with hatred in Ireland, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Israel, Palestine, and even among the intolerant sects of America?
Can any military response make the slightest
difference in the underlying cause? Is there not a deep wound at the heart of humanity? If there is a deep wound, doesn't it affect everyone? When generations of suffering respond with bombs, suicidal attacks, and biological warfare, who first developed these weapons? Who sells them? Who gave birth to the satanic technologies now being turned against us? If all of us are wounded, will revenge work? Will punishment in any form toward anyone salve the wound or aggravate it? Will an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and limb for a limb, leave us all blind, toothless and crippled?
Tribal warfare has been going on for two thousand years and has now been magnified globally. Can tribal
warfare be brought to an end? Is patriotism and nationalism even relevant anymore, or is this another form of tribalism?
What are you and I as persons going to do about what is happening? Can we afford to let the deeper wound fester any longer?
Everyone is calling this an attack on America, but is it not a rift in our collective soul? Isn't this an attack on civilization from without that is also from within?
When we have secured our safety once
more and cared for the wounded, after the period of shock and mourning is over, it will be time for soul searching. I only hope that these questions are confronted with the deepest spiritual intent. None of us will feel safe again behind the shield of military might and stockpiled arsenals. There can be no safety until the root cause is faced. In this moment of shock I don't think anyone of us has the answers. It is imperative that we pray and offer solace and help to each other.
But if you and I are having a single thought of violence or hatred against anyone in the world at this moment, we are
contributing to the wounding of the world.
Love,
Deepak
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Dear Friends,
Was Tuesday morning really only two and a half days ago? So many words and images, fields of hate and hopes for peace.
I’ve received well over a hundred stories and thoughts and prayers in that time. Today, while reading them, I’ve compiled them
for your reference as well.They reflect a sense of hope and resilience.
You’ll find them at http://www.newstories.org/911
Frankly, I’m pretty numb. I notice that I am trying not to think too
much; or, perhaps, trying not to judge. I find myself taking it all in, and waiting for both deeper questions and deeper clarity to emerge.
I don’t encourage you to thoroughly read all the material on the 911 New Stories site, but you may want to skip and
delve into anything that catches your eye.
Together with you in prayer and hope,
Bob
New Stories
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Chet Cooper" <nonprofit@abilitymagazine.com>
To: "Casey Hughes" <casey@kmunity.net>
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2001 10:10 PM
Subject: 911 Network
Let me know what you think... http://www.911network.org
Chet,
Great idea... count me in! Love to chat tomorrow and brainstorm thoughts. NRPA could help coordinate Human Services available at
National/State and Local P& R facilities... like partnering with Red
Cross (Blood drives), Salvation Army (clothing, counseling) and others (Healing, Family Services). Could form Community LAP Circle Gatherings to "Share Feelings and Stories". Lastly some grassroots advocacy drives to "Get America's Voice Heard" -- a cross cultural plea for humanitarianism sent around the world.
I'm so stunned at what I *hear* from our government (retaliation, retribution and "finger pointing" at the breach of
our intelligence gathering and security). Does all this really have to imply a further erosion of our civil liberties?
Casey
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To All My Good American Friends and Colleagues:
I hope you may find some
comfort in knowing that all Canadians share your grief and are mourning with you. Here at Niagara College all staff and students paused at 10:00 am this morning for a moment of silence...there were many tears. Our local newpapers have printed full page American flags which are posted everywhere...our own office door has one prominently displayed. This morning our staff found bolts of red, white and blue ribbons and have fashioned ribbons of support that are being worn on every lapel in honour of the lives lost. Many are donating blood and dollars, thousands of emails of support are being circulated, and many homes have American flags and banners flying as a show of support. We are all following the media coverage and watch with pride the collective American response to such a horrendous tragedy. As Casey so aptly stated, crisis builds community, and we're hanging onto that as the one good thing we see coming from this tragedy. The thoughts and prayers of Canadians are with you.
Brenda Herchmer
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The Net Response
By Steven Clift
http://www.publicus.net
Future updates
During this time of great tragedy now is the time to use all the tools we have available to help the families of the missing, the dead and injured survivors. We need to come together as communities within our nation and nations around the world as we respond and care for one another.
You can do something right now via the Internet from your home and place of work as well as donate blood, money, and time to
relief efforts. Use the Internet
as a simple communication tool to provide mutual benefit and support to others in this crisis and help build the bonds required to deal with what comes next. Bringing people together and strengthening the bonds of family, friendship, and neighbors is step one, online and in-person.
Step two is to use the Internet to gain insight and understanding on a global basis so we can more effectively respond and
change the environment that motivates terrorism.While our governments, intelligence operations, and armies will respond with great force, we as humans can do our part one person at a time.
The cornerstone of your action is the creation of different kinds of e-mail group lists. You can create a free e-mail lists in
minutes from websites like YahooGroups , Topica , and others. An e-mail list allows you to exchange messages through one e-mail address (i.e. myfamily@yahoogroups.com) among a group of members subscribed to the list. E-mail can be private or public and lists may be set-up to deliver one-way announcements or allow open discussion. If you create a public e-mail list, send me an announcement netresponse@publicus.net that I can share with others.
Take action now by creating an e-mail list for:
1. Your Family - Create an e-mail group list for your
extended family. E-mail lists will help you communicate as a family group in an easy and convenient manner. Step one is to collect all of your family member addresses. You should do this whether this directly affected your family or not.
2. Friends - Create an e-mail list for friends who want to provide mutual support to each other and families of
those who are missing, confirmed dead, or survivors who need assistance. Of course, any group of friends can create a list to support the needs of any shared friend in any difficult life situation or simply to make group contact easy across the country, town, or world.
3. Neighbors -
Whether for the people who live on your block, your larger neighborhood or entire town, e-mail forums you should build an e-mail list in the common interest for community conversation. These forums are technically like all those global special interest discussion forums, but instead are local and general in nature. When a community is in crisis, it needs a forum that people can turn to for immediate many-to-many communication. At the very local level we need the protection of neighbors who communicate with one another and the Internet can help break that ice required to rebuild the in-person connections required to survive. I run an e-mail list for my neighborhood, so can you. If we see suspicious activity in our neighborhoods, we need the bonds to discover and report such activity to the appropriate authorities. Building trust among neighbors is a key building block for local safety and security. See my related article on Building the Online Commons for more advice.
4. Area Response to Attacks - One way to help coordinate tributes and the response in your country (many of those missing
are citizens of many countries), state, or city, is to create special e-mail lists for communication among those seeking to aid the
recovery or those who want to respond. Such forums can be created to deal with local issues such as helping traumatized children, organizing rallies and memorial services, or dealing with local discrimination and acts not in the spirit of domestic tolerance.
5. Share News, Information and Views - Through e-mail lists like the Sept11info@yahoogroups.com set up voluntarily by Andy Carvin thousands of people are sharing breaking news and in-depth resources that allow us to gain deeper insights into what is happening. My own site provides quick links to additional web-based political discussion forums and to government and media sources around the world. As the United States and its allies develop their response, the Internet will be used on a global basis to share news and information unlike never before. This and e-mail lists that you create will allow people to communicate directly and unmediated around the world. We will be able to interact directly with those in the Middle East and read their news just as they can watch and read ours. Nothing will break down the highly propagandistic mass media in some countries or even our own as military action is taken. That is not that point. The challenge for us is to use the Internet to build direct human connection among the vast majority of moderate and reasonable individuals in all countries so we can learn as much as we can about the motivations of terrorists and how to most effectively attack and cut off the support for those organizations and ideologies. However you respond to recent events, the Internet can play a useful and practical role. That said, the Internet is only a small part of what we all can and should do. Events like these help us appreciate our families and friends and what really matters in this world. By organizing online we can more quickly respond to what is next and hopefully help control our own destiny.
Finally, if you are interested in ways
we can use the Internet to deal with this situation, join my low volume NetResponse e-mail list and stay tuned for future updates. To subscribe send a message to <netresponse-subscribe@yahoogroups.com>. If you are technically involved in any existing relief, response, or media efforts or if you want to contribute your ideas, advanced technical and programming skills, or your technical infrastructure, join the NetResponse Technical working group by sending an e-mail to netresponse-tech-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
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Korf--
There ARE more questions than answers I'm afraid. Our genes have
embedded a code of self replication, yet our cultures have instilled an environment of distrust and factionalism. Too bad evolution is so out of balance.Yet we all seek to live.... to be joyful... to have fun. Can we really love and BE LOVED? IS there a universal notion of BE-ing that transcends yet enfolds our differences (diversity)? Will it be expressed before we annihilate each other? Certainly won't evolve out of yet another "brand"...of religious, government, or any other institutional structures.
What can we do?
My instinct (self preservation and
patterns of my past) drives me to anger. Last nite I envisioned Bin Laden in the headlights of my car as it accelerated towards his annihilation. Yet I KNOW it wouldn't end there.Would probably accelerate the divisive factions to ever increasing heights of hatred and violence. Yet this is the "reaction" I "see" currently unfolding around us. My own paradox allows me to see both sides of my own psychic coin... love/hate, active violence/passive resistence... DO SOMETHING/do nothing. It's enough to drive one to insanity. Or maybe in sanity? So goes the world. And so I sat in my car last nite... and breathed a collective breath. Allowing myself the thought without admonishon... it's what I DID with the notion that counted.
To what standard are we as human BE-ings to hold ourselves and each other? To what PURPOSE and guided by what (whose?)
PRINCIPLES? I *see* the answers everywhere within the patterns of all natural systems. Nature has
certainly demonstrated a pattern for competition and cooperation. The oak trees can certainly co-exist with the Eucalyptus, in spite of their own toxicity (even grass won't grow around the foot of the euc's...). Couldn't imagine the oak saying to the euc, "you need to BE like me... or else!". And each wave I surf (in the ocean of the blue pacific AND life) teaches me... connects me... to everything... to everyone.
The image of the Palestinians dancing at our pain and suffering still sits in my acheing stomach. Are they really that naive? Am I?
Even in war, respect for the
"other side" seemed to provide a balance... did we ever dance at the deaths of thousands resulting from our "victories"? I certainly didn't.
Still we held each other accountable for our actions. Even in war, criminals we
brought to "justice"... not simply out of the court of a country or culture... but through the court of humanity.
Until we can agree to a universal set of truths... a common Purpose guided through common
Principles... the chasm of our differences will surely continue to expand. And we stand a great chance of someday falling into it.
My heart leads me to embracing my own responsibilities... I start with the "self"... my
cells... and seek new patterns of connecting into organs and systems. My guide being nature.
Love ya, Casey
From: "Jonathan Korfhage" <JKORFHAG@fostercity.org>
To: "Casey Hughes (E-mail)" <casey@kmunity.net>
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2001 9:21 AM
Casey - we need to talk about peace - right after we talk to the guy who wrote this:
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Dear friends,
Over 1,000 people from all over the world have responded
to the short message we sent you on Tuesday night. Right now we can't get back to each of you, but your messages were so moving that we wanted to share some of them with all of you. You'll find them at http://www.idealist.org/response.html
In addition, I wanted to take a moment to share a personal story with you.
Twenty years ago, as a young paratrooper in the Israeli army, I spent a long time on the Lebanese and Syrian borders, watching the
Arab soldiers watching me over the barbed wire.
As I looked at them day after day, it occurred to me that just as every unit in the Israeli army has 'good guys' who will give
you their last pair of dry socks if you need it, and others who might steal yours if they can, so every unit on the Arab side must also have its share of people you would want to be with, and those
you would rather avoid. I was only 19 then, with lots of time on my
hands, so once this thought hit me I couldn't help taking it a step further and thinking, "If we HAVE to fight, wouldn't it make more sense for the good guys on both sides to get together against the others...?"
Which didn't happen, of course. Instead, I spent
five months in and around Beirut during the war of 1982, seeing what human beings can do to one another when they set their minds to it, and realizing that the line between good and bad runs and zigzags through each of us.
Still, this impulse to reach out across borders stayed with me, and years later it led to the creation of Idealist.org, where every
day makes me more hopeful about what all of us can do together.
This is just one person's story, but so many of us have been brought up to see other people as 'them' first, and as human beings
only later, if at all, that this seemed like a good time to tell it.
Regardless of what each of us thinks should happen now, there is little doubt that in the next few weeks we'll see more
violence. The challenge will be to not let this paralyze us, and to continue believing and doing what we do every day, only more so.
For information about how you can help the victims of Tuesday's attack, please see http://www.helping.org
Thanks again for your support this week, and please take a moment to visit http://www.idealist.org/response.html
All the best to you and yours,
Ami Dar
Action Without Borders
http://www.idealist.org
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What bothers me about the 11th, is not especially what happened(although I
feel a great deal of compassion for those in pain and for those whose dreams are now lost) but why it happended and worse, what will happen now. We most certainly will kill Bin Laden and many others, but their systems are so extensive that won't be the end of it. The new game has begun for America. And so from now on we will all fly with a low-grade fear and a scrutiny of our fellow passingers; we will never fully trust those who look like Afghans or Middle Easteners; we will now suffer greater prejudices throughout the world; and, for years we will be angry and afraid. BUT
There is the
question of the human spirit. Many Americans are compassionate, but there are also many who are ready to "kick the ass" of anybody that bugs them - I can see it especially in the young adults who have not matured All Americans are struggling as is our President - we can see the tears in his eyes. Yes, Americans have danced the dance of death - we are all the same - we just don't like to see others dancing at our expense.
And so the answer seems to be clear to me. I know about the values of the human spirit. I
understand the standards for behavior. It is fact that most of the people on this planet resent being poor while the American media and technology flaunts it in their starving faces. We have a responsibility to continue to educate, share, help, reach out, and bring other peoples quality of life to a higher standard - the rising tide lifts all boats. BUT
In the meantime, we as
the world's strongest, must make an example of those who crossed the line of acceptable human behavior. They won't be happy about it, and so there may be more unhappiness. No easy answer except you and I must do our part. The stuggle continues..............
Jonathan Korfage
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The Belly to do what needs to be done
By Tamim Ansary
I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age." Ronn
Owens, on KGO Talk Radio today, allowed that this would mean killing innocent people, people who had nothing to do with this atrocity, but "we're at war, we have to accept collateral damage. What else can we do?" Minutes later I heard some TV pundit discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be done."
And I thought about the issues being raised especially hard because I am from Afghanistan, and even though I've lived here for 35
years I've never lost track of what's going on there. So I want to tell anyone who will listen how it all looks from where I'm standing.
I speak as
one who hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. There is no doubt in my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in New York. I agree that something must be done about those monsters. But the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who took over Afghanistan in 1997. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a plan. When you think Taliban,think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden, think Hitler. And when you think "the people of Afghanistan" think "the Jews in the concentration camps." It's not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would exult if someone would come in there, take out the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their country.
Some say, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban? The answer is, they're
starved, exhausted, hurt, incapacitated, suffering. A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food. There are millions of widows. And the Taliban has been burying these widows alive in mass graves. The soil is littered with land mines, the farms were all destroyed by the Soviets. These are a few of the reasons why the Afghan people have not overthrown the Taliban.
We come now to the question of bombing
Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already. Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their hospitals? Done. Destroy their infrastructure? Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that.
New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier bombs. Would they at least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan,
only the Taliban eat, only they have the means to move around. They'd slip away and hide. Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled orphans, they don't move too fast, they don't even have
wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and dropping bombs wouldn't really be a strike against
the criminals who did this horrific thing. Actually it would only be making common cause with the Taliban--by raping once again the people they've been raping all this time.
So what else is there? What can be
done, then? Let me now speak with true fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. When people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be done" they're thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about killing innocent people. Let's pull our heads out of the sand. What's actually on the table is Americans dying. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that folks. Because to get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I'm going. We're flirting with a world war between Islam and the West. And guess what: that's Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants. That's why he did this. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there. He really believes Islam would beat the west. It might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and the West, he's got a billion soldiers. If the west wreaks a holocaust in those lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose, that's even better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably wrong, in the end the west would win, whatever that would mean, but the war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but ours.
Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden does. Anyone else?
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Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders
World Islamic Front Statement
23 February 1998
Shaykh Usamah Bin-Muhammad Bin-Ladin
Ayman al-Zawahiri, amir of the Jihad Group in Egypt
Abu-Yasir Rifa'i Ahmad Taha, Egyptian Islamic Group
Shaykh Mir Hamzah, secretary of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Pakistan
Fazlul Rahman, amir of the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh
Praise be to God, who revealed the Book, controls the clouds, defeats factionalism, and says in His Book: "But when the forbidden
months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)"; and
peace be upon our Prophet, Muhammad
Bin-'Abdallah, who said: I have been sent with the sword between my hands to ensure that no one but God
is worshipped, God who put my livelihood under the shadow of my spear and who inflicts humiliation and scorn on those who disobey my orders.
The Arabian Peninsula has never -- since God made it flat, created its desert, and encircled it with seas -- been stormed by any
forces like the crusader
armies spreading in it like locusts, eating its riches and wiping out its plantations. All this is happening at a time in which nations are attacking Muslims like people fighting over a plate of food. In the light of the grave situation and the lack of support, we and you are obliged to discuss current events, and we should all agree on how to settle the matter. No one argues today about three facts that are known to everyone; we will list them, in order to remind everyone:
First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the
Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples. If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.
Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the
Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation. So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.
Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert
attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.
All these crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on God, his messenger, and Muslims. And
ulema have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys
the Muslim countries. This was revealed by Imam Bin-Qadamah in "Al- Mughni," Imam al-Kisa'i in "Al-Bada'i," al-Qurtubi in his interpretation, and the shaykh of al-Islam in his books, where he said: "As for the fighting to repulse [an enemy], it is aimed at defending sanctity and religion, and it is a duty as agreed [by the ulema]. nothing is more sacred than belief except repulsing an enemy who is attacking religion and life."
On that basis, and in compliance with God's order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims:
The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians
and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it [EMPHASIS ADDED], in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty God, "and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together," and "fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in God."
This is in addition to the
words of Almighty God: "And why should ye not fight in the cause of God and of those who, being weak, are ill-treated (and oppressed)? -- women and children, whose cry is: 'Our Lord, rescue us from this town, whose people are oppressors; and raise for us from thee one who will help!'"
We -- with
God's help -- call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan's U.S. troops and the devil's supporters allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson.
Almighty God said: "O ye who
believe, give your response to God and His Apostle, when He calleth you to that which will give you life. And know that God cometh between a man and his heart, and that it is He to whom ye shall all be gathered."
Almighty God
also says: "O ye who believe, what is the matter with you, that when ye are asked to go forth in the cause of God, ye cling so heavily to the earth! Do ye prefer the life of this world to the hereafter? But little is the comfort of this life, as compared with the hereafter.Unless ye go forth, He will punish you with a grievous penalty, and putothers in your place; but Him ye would not harm in the least. For God hathpower over all things." Almighty God also says: "So lose no heart, nor fall into despair.For ye must gain mastery if ye are true in faith."
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