their website is;

(1) Do you have links to those articles you posted here?

(2) If so, will you please post them?

Thanks.

On another note, can anyone think of any legitimate reason why anyone would think that it is "important for the country" to go ahead and hold the Miss America pageant? I'm not saying that they should cancel it either, but they are surely overstating the importance of what amounts to material that helps some people perform certain solitary activities. Just thought I'd ask.

In the struggle of Good against Evil, it's always the people who get killed.

The terrorists killed workers of 50 countries in NYC and DC, in the name of Good against Evil. And in the name of Good against Evil President Bush has promised vengeance: "We will eliminate Evil from the world", he announced.

Eliminate Evil? What would Good be without Evil? It's not just religious fanatics who need enemies to justify their insanity. The arms industry and the gigantic war machine of the US also needs enemies to justify its existence. Good and evil, evil and good: the actors change masks, the heroes become monsters and the monsters heroes, in accord with the demands of the theatre's playwrights.

This is nothing new. The German scientist Werner von Braun was evil when he invented the V-2 bombers that Hitler used against London, but became good when he used his talents in the service of the US. Stalin was good during World War Two and evil afterwards, when he became the leader of the Evil Empire. In the cold war years John Steinbeck wrote: "Maybe the whole world needs Russians. I suppose that even in Russia they need Russians. Maybe Russia's Russians are called Americans." Even the Russians became good afterwards. Today, Putin can add his voice to say: "Evil must be punished."

Saddam Hussein was good, and so were the chemical weapons he used against the Iranians and the Kurds. Afterwards, he became evil. They were calling him Satan Hussein when the US finished up their invasion of Panama to invade Iraq because Iraq invaded Kuwait. Father Bush that particular war against Evil upon himself. With the humanitarian and compassionate spirit that characterizes his family, he killed more than 100 000 Iraqis, the vast majority of them civilians.

Satan Hussein stayed where he was, but this number one enemy of humanity had to step aside and accept becoming number two enemy of humanity. The bane of the world is now called Osama bin Laden. The CIA taught him everything he knows about terrorism: bin Laden, loved and armed by the US government, was one of the principal 'freedom fighters' against Communism in Afghanistan. Father Bush occupied the Vice Presidency when President Reagan called these heroes 'the moral equivalents of the Founding Fathers.' Hollywood agreed. They filmed Rambo 3: Afghani Muslims were the good guys. Now, 13 years later, in the time of Son Bush, they are the worst of the bad guys.

Henry Kissinger was one of the first to react to the recent tragedy. "Those who provide support, financing, and inspiration to terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves," he intoned, words that Son Bush would repeat hours later.

If that's how it is, the urgent need right now is to bomb Kissinger. He is guilty of many more crimes than bin Laden or any terrorist in the world. And in many more countries. He provided 'support, financing, and inspiration" to state terror in Indonesia, Cambodia, Iran, South Africa, Bangladesh, and all the South American countries that suffered the dirty war of Plan Condor.

On September 11 1973, exactly 28 years before the fires of last week, the Presidential Palace in Chile was stormed. Kissinger had written the epitaph of Allende and Chilean democracy long before when he commented on the results of the elections: "I don't see why we have to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people."

A contempt for the people is one of many things shared by state and private terror. For example, the ETA, an organization that kills people in the name of independence in Basque Country, says through one of its spokespeople: 'Rights have nothing to do with majorities or minorities.'

There is much common ground between low- and high- tech terrorism, between the terrorism of religious fanatics and that of market fanatics, that of the hopeless and that of the powerful, that of the psychopath on the loose and that of the cold-blooded uniformed professional. They all share the disrespect for human life: the killers of the 5500 citizens under the Twin Towers that fell like castles of dry sand-- and the killers of 200 000 Guatemalans, the majority of whom were indigenous, exterminated without television or the newspapers of the world paying any attention. Those Guatemalans were not sacrificed by any Muslim fanatic, but by terrorist squads who received 'support, financing, and inspiration' from successive US governments.

All these worshipers of death are in agreement as well on the need to reduce social, cultural, and national differences to military terms. In the name of Good against Evil, in the name of the One Truth, they resolve everything by killing first and asking questions later. And by this method, they strengthen the enemy they fight. It was the atrocities of the Sendero Luminoso that gave President Fujimori the popular support he sought to unleash a regime of terror and sell Peru for the price of a banana. It was the atrocities of the US in the Middle East that prepared the ground for the holy war of terrorism of Allah.

Although the leader of the Civilized World is pushing a new Crusade, Allah is innocent of the crimes committed in his name. At the end of the day, God did not order the Holocaust against the followers of Jehovah, nor did Jehovah order the massacres of Sabrah and Shatila or the expulsion of Palestinians from their land. Aren't Allah, God and Jehovah are, after all, three names for the same divinity?

A tragedy of errors: nobody knows any more who is who. The smoke of the explosions forms part of the much larger curtain of smoke that prevents all of us from seeing clearly. From revenge to revenge, terrorism obliges us to walk to our graves. I saw a photo, recently published, of graffiti on a wall in NYC: "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."

The spiral of violence creates violence and also confusion: pain, fear, intolerance, hatred, insanity. In Porto Alegre, at the beginning of this year, Ahmed Ben Bella warned: 'This system, that has already made mad cows, is making mad people too." And these mad people, mad from hate, act as the power that created them.

A three year old child, named Luca, told me: "The world doesn't know where its house is." He was looking at a map. He could have been looking at a reporter.

First question: "Once the identity of the terrorists known, should the American government launch a military attack on the country or countries where the terrorists are based or should the American government seek to extradite the terrorists to stand trial?" In Austria 10% said we should attack. In Denmark 20%, Finland 14%, France 29%, Germany 17%, Greece 6%, Italy 21%, Bosnia 14%, Bulgaria 19%, Czechoslavakia 22%, Croatia 8%, Estonia 10%, Latvia 21%, Lithuania 15% Romania 18%, Argentina 8%, Colombia 11%, Ecuador 10%, Mexico 2%, Panama 16%, Peru 8%, Venezuela 11%, and even in the U.S. only 54% favor attacking. Gallup didn't get numbers for China, for the mideast countries, etc.

Gallup next asks: "If the United States decides to launch an attack, should the U.S. attack military targets only, or both military and civilian targets?" In Austria 82% said only military targets. In Denmark 84%, Finland 76%, France 84%, Germany 84%, Greece 82%, Italy 86%, Bosnia 72%, Bulgaria 71%, Czechoslavakia 75%, Estonia 88%, Latvia 82%, Lithuania 73% Romania 85%, Argentina 70%, Colombia 71%, Ecuador 74%, Mexico 73%, Panama 62%, Peru 66%, Venezuela 81%, and even in the U.S. 56% favor attacking only military targets, 28% attacking both military and civilian, and 16% gave no answer.

It seems clear that we do not inhabit a world lined up for protracted war. We live, instead, in a world that is prepared for arguments against war, for opposition to war, and even, in time, for addressing the basic structural causes that produce war. Humanity does not lack scruples or logic, but only information and knowledge. If people have information and if they can escape media manipulation and conformity, they will draw worthy conclusions. Our task is to provide information and help break conformity.

Finally, regarding the issues at hand.how hard is it to understand the obvious? The U.S. postal system is not run by exemplary humanitarians or geniuses, much less by radicals. Yet in response to workers killing others on the job--which is called "going postal"--the postal service did not decide to determine where the offending parties lived and attack those neighborhoods for harboring terrorists. They also did not say that the stress of postal work justifies serial homicide in the workplace, of course. They instead legally prosecuted, on the one hand, and also realized that stress was a powerful contributing factor and so worked to reduce stress to in turn diminish the likelihood of people going postal. Anyone can extend this analogy. It isn't complicated.

September 11 went well beyond tragic. Worse is possible. Much better is also possible. And to achieve better is why activists need to not only mourn, but also to educate and organize. But many people I encounter doubt peace movement prospects. I find this wrong for two reasons.

One, doubting prospects wastes time. Even when prospects of change are dim, to work for better outcomes is always better then to bemoan difficulties.

Two, contrary to despondency, current circumstances auger hope. "Are you crazy?" some people will ask. It is one thing to urge action, but it is another thing to surrender reason to desire. However, it is not desire that gives me hope, but evidence.

Last night there was a two hour marathon Hollywood extravaganza broadcast by all major networks and watched by millions. Elites are urging lock-step obedience. Johnny and Jill are supposed to be donning marching boots. Yet this was no pep rally for war. There was nearly courage of those who worked to save lives, often giving their own. The evening's songs sought restraint and understanding and explicitly rejected cycles of retribution and hate. Don't get me wrong. The evening wasn't ZNet set to music. But nor did it support piling terror on top of terror. If the right-wing were actually as ascendant as so many fear, we would have had the Bob Hope and Charlton Heston Hour. We didn't.

More, in the last few days there have been scores of small and also some quite large demonstrations and gatherings. Reports indicate there are 105 scheduled today, Saturday. There is no war yet. But there is resistance, and it is growing rapidly.

Just two days ago I was asked to be on a national radio call-in show with a listenership of roughly two million from all over the country. The host, a Republican, thought there would be division emerging about any war plans and he wanted to offer diverse voices (which is itself a good sign). He told me I'd be on for fifteen minutes. The time came, they called, I was asked how I differed from Bush. I answered, and the discussion continued for two hours. The host eventually left hostility behind, becoming more and more curious. Many callers were hostile, sure, but they were also open to cogent commentary. The simple formulation that attacking civilians is terrorism, that terrorism is horrible, and that therefore we should not attack civilians, was irrefutable. More interesting, no one even tried to rebut contextual argument and evidence. They made clear they knew my claims about U.S. policies in Iraq and elsewhere were true and they would with a few exceptions even grudgingly assent to them, so the remaining issue was whether the U.S. should be bound by the same morals that we hope others will be bound by, a dispute that is easy to win with anyone but a fanatic. I won't proceed with details. The point is, even in a right-wing forum, many people will hear our views, understand them, and even change their minds.

U.S. elites like war. War sends the message that laws do not bind U.S. elites, that morality does not bind U.S. elites, that nothing binds U.S. elites but their estimates of their own interests. It trumpets that everybody else better ratify our plans, or at least get out of the way. Likewise, for U.S. elites, war preparedness is good economics. Military spending primes the capitalist pump and spurs its engines, but crucially military spending doesn't give those in the middle and at the bottom better conditions or better housing or more education or better health care or anything else that will make people less afraid, more knowledgeable, more secure, and particularly more able to develop and pursue their own agendas regarding economic distribution. War empowers the rich and powerful, but its real virtue is that it disempowers working people and the disenfranchised poor. War annihilates deliberation. It elevates mainstream media to dominate communication even more than in peacetime. War abets repression by demanding obedience. It labels dissent treason, or in this case, incipient terrorism. Elites like all this, not surprisingly. So while elites gravitate toward a war on terrorism for these reasons, what, if anything, might obstruct their plans?

When Bush says that attacking civilians for political purposes is wrong and urges that we must find ways to eliminate such terrorism - he is very compelling to almost everyone. But when in the very next breath Bush urges as the method of doing so diverse military attacks on civilians (or starving them), his hypocrisy begs critique. As a solution to the danger of terrorism, committing more terrorism that in turn breeds still more, will not sustain support. Likewise, to fight fundamentalism with assertions that God is on our side, will also prove uninspiring. Five-year-olds can and will dissent. And so will adults.

So what obstructs war? People do. It's that simple. People who first doubt the efficacy and morality of piling terror on top of terror. People who slowly move from quiet dissent to active opposition. People who move from opposing the violence of war and barbarity of starvation to challenging the basic institutions that breed war and starvation. If elites choose war as a national program they will do so in hopes that it can defend and even enlarge their advantages. If we act so that war instead spurs public understanding, and opposition not only to war, but in time even to elite rule - then elites will reconsider their agenda. Indeed, I bet many are already having grave doubts.

Obviously, if you read the rest of my writings there, I am struggling with even my own arguments. However, I can't shake this nagging thought that violence is *never* the answer.

Making the choice to focus one's mind and to actually think is the essence of being true to our human nature. Thank you Dan, and the rest of this community, for living lives that exemplify this concept.

Granted, the sting of being hit right in the homeland has hurt, among other things, our pride - but, personally, I'm getting tired of the sanitized, homogenous, sanctimonious reporting on every channel and radio station. Even the leggy anchors of Fox News aren't distraction enough to have to watch the content of their news. Worst of all, in my opinion, are those two male morons on Fox and Friends; more transparent kiss-asses I have yet to see.

Well...I know this has nothing to do with what you've been talking about, dddd, bit I just had to vent.

As always, thanks FoM, for this wonderful, wonderful forum.

...But I think it's OK,if "feeling passionately about things", is what puts the steam into our self esteem,then going a bit out of bounds in blind fervor,is excusable,and perhaps benificial,,,and recommended.

I think, though, that most people here realize we don't mean any harm by aggressive and confrontational comments. People likely understand that these comments are more the by-product of feeling passionately about things than of unjustified anger.

But maybe we should end this here. Otherwise, we'll make everyone else sick with back-and-forth compliments for the next twenty-odd posts. :O)

I don't always agree with everything you say (I sure you would be appalled if I did), but I always find your comments enlightening and thought provoking. Thanks for staying the course.

You bring up a very good point about 'whos' life is worth how much',,,and I think this is an extremely important point....What sort or distorted logic is used,to justify the deaths of innocents,in an attempt to kill terrorists in other parts of the world?Are these humans,that had nothing to do with the attack,,and are somehow justified as necessary collateral civilian casualties,,,what makes their lives any less significant than a stockbroker who bit the big one in the WTC?....In my opinion,,,there is no difference between the value of lives...the murder of an executive,father of three,in the attack on the WTC,is no less significant than the murder of Akmed,the Afghani peasant,father of three.Money or nationality has nothing to do with innocence,or the value of life,,and I think that is one thing that really bothers me about the talk of ruthless retaliation on any,and all who are seen to have any connection with "terrorism".It's the equivilent of trying to play God.....consider the closing words of yesterdays speech

"The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.

Fellow citizens, we will meet violence with patient justice, assured of the rightness of our cause, and confident of the victories to come."

"In other words,he is demanding that Afghanistans rulers,whoever they may be,must somehow,immediatly become an absolute,totalitarian police state,and betray any and all of its citizens,and allow the US to occupy their nation,or we will kill them all."

All of the above, with the exception of US occupation, has already taken place. Thanks to the Taliban, Afghanistan is an absolute, totalitarian police state, and the Taliban has betrayed all of Afghanistan's citizens. In fairness (and I really don't mean this as an attack, so much as what I hope to be constructive criticism), Part 2 of your statement reads as follows:

"I guess if we killed everyone in Afghanistan,then we could mark them off the list of terrorist countries,and move on to another country.

It does sound like that's what Bush II is planning, doesn't it? I would agree with taking action if it meant strategic attacks by special forces on specific terrorist, Taliban government, and Taliban military targets, but I don't see that happening. Powell has a say in the matter, as does (whether we like it or not--I don't) Bush Sr. These two and others will make sure that many more than 7,000 civilians are killed during this "war on terrorism."

Which leads me to a completely out-of-the-blue (although not off-topic) point: why is it that our civilians are more worthy of life than theirs? What makes us so special that we are willing to murder many thousands of people in other countries to avenge the murders of our own people? I'm not making light of the deaths of 7,000 Americans; I am asking why so many now feel justified in making light of murdering thousands of other countries' civilians.

Yet another side note: students at the university where I work seem largely galvanized against those who dare suggest that America can do and has done wrong. I am amazed at the amount of opposition to the idea that perhaps our policies are partly to blame for the attacks.

Tdm, I hope you don't mind, but I am using your article to teach my composition students how to read an argumentative essay (the one on your web page regarding the Sept. 11 attacks). I am basically making them read it aloud in class for content, taking pains to understand not only what each section says, but what its function is in your overall argument. I have been telling them that it is okay to disagree with what an article says, but that they should still read it objectively in order to achieve an understanding of the writer's position.

My hope is that the article tdm wrote will at least make them think--make them consider an opinion on this matter that is vastly different from what they are hearing on TV.

At any rate, those are my thoughts for right now. Take them or leave them (or tear them apart--that's your right, as much as it is my right to clarify my comments, justify my comments, or change my mind in response).

Take care, everyone.

" - Deliver to United States authorities all the leaders of al-Qaida who hide in your land.

- Release all foreign nationals, including American citizens, you have unjustly imprisoned, and protect foreign journalists, diplomats, and aid workers in your country.

- Close immediately and permanently every terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and hand over every terrorist, and every person in their support structure, to appropriate authorities.

- Give the United States full access to terrorist training camps, so we can make sure they are no longer operating.

These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion. The Taliban must act and act immediately. They will hand over the terrorists, or they will share in their fate."

In other words,he is demanding that Afghanistans rulers,whoever they may be,must somehow,immediatly become an absolute,totalitarian police state,and betray any and all of its citizens,and allow the US to occupy their nation,or we will kill them all.I guess if we killed everyone in Afghanistan,then we could mark them off the list of terrorist countries,and move on to another country.He goes on to talk about freedom.....

" Americans are asking: Why do they hate us?

They hate what we see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other."

...__________________________(fill in your own comment)........

" Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have seen.

It may include dramatic strikes, visible on television, and covert operations, secret even in success."

...So,,much like the war on drugs,,it will last as long as they say it should,,,and the public will not be allowed to know what's going on.........and supposedly,this is just fine with everyone in the US???I for one find this type of talk to be CRAZY,,and most disturbing.

dddd

This is a big Salon article that might shed some like on how big a war.

And there we have it, folks. Have y'all heard the buzzwords of the past week-and-a-half? "Unified". "Broad". "Infinite Justice". It's like if they shove enough flags, "God Bless amerika", and buzzwords down our collective throat, we'll all bleat on command and die for for the corporations. Garbage.

I want to know the five Ws. Who, exactly, are we going after? Bin Laden is just another "kingpin" (like the WOsD). What happens if we cannot "get" him? Do we slaughter people in frustration?

What, exactly, are our objectives? Like the WOsD, it seems that this is just for "fighting the good fight" with no real ending. "We're on the side of 'gawd', ya know?"

Where are we going to fight? Afghanistan seems to be in the forefront, but who knows? As an ironic aside, i was playing Risk with my bros the other night and i was dealt Afghanistan. The ONE army i kept there fought off the entire middle east before India overpowered me. Prophecy perhaps? :)

When are we going to do whatever it is we're going to do? And furthermore, how the hell long is it going to last? "An extended campaign" is hardly good enough for me. Jeez, just ballpark that sucker.

I am not surprised at the appearence of many 50+ year olds who are all for the war; if you consider that many of them either sat out Viet Nam via college deferrments or joined the National Guard as Mr. AWOL-for-a-year-Bush did, then the hypocrisy of it all stands out in sharp contrast.