Hi Everyone!
These are three letters that I have received on the World Trade Centre disaster. The second one is written by a New York journalist. I found them very well written and informative. I would like to share them with as many people as possible.
Love Melinda
LETTER 1
REST IN PEACE
> By Thich Nhat Hanh
>
> I am a World Trade Center tower, standing tall in the clear blue sky,
> feeling a violent blow in my side, and I am a towering inferno of pain and
> suffering imploding upon myself and collapsing to the ground. May I rest
> in peace.
>
> I am a terrified passenger on a hijacked airplane not knowing where we are
> going or that I am riding on fuel tanks that will be instruments of death,
> and I am a worker arriving at my office not knowing that in just a moment
> my future will be obliterated. May I rest in peace.
>
> I am a pigeon in the plaza between the two towers eating crumbs from
> someone's breakfast when fire rains down on me from the skies, and I am a
> bed of flowers admired daily by thousands of tourists now buried under
five
> stories of rubble. May I rest in peace.
>
> I am a firefighter sent into dark corridors of smoke and debris on a
> mission of mercy only to have it collapse around me, and I am a rescue
> worker risking my life to save lives who is very aware that I may not make
> it out alive. May I rest in peace.
>
> I am a survivor who has fled down the stairs and out of the building to
> safety who knows that nothing will ever be the same in my soul again, and
I
> am a doctor in a hospital treating patients burned from head to toe who
> knows that these horrible images will remain in my mind forever. May I
> know peace.
>
> I am a tourist in Times Square looking up at the giant TV screens thinking
> I'm seeing a disaster movie as I watch the Twin Towers crash to the
ground,
> and I am a New York woman sending e-mails to friends and family letting
> them know that I am safe. May I know peace.
>
> I am a piece of paper that was on someone's desk this morning and now I'm
> debris scattered by the wind across lower Manhattan, and I am a stone in
> the graveyard at Trinity Church covered with soot from the buildings that
> once stood proudly above me, death meeting death. May I rest in peace.
>
> I am a dog sniffing in the rubble for signs of life, doing my best to be
of
> service, and I am a blood donor waiting in line to make a simple but very
> needed contribution for the victims. May I know peace.
>
> I am a resident in an apartment in downtown New York who has been forced
to
> evacuate my home, and I am a resident in an apartment uptown who has
walked
> 100 blocks home in a stream of other refugees. May I know peace.
>
> I am a family member who has just learned that someone I love has died,
and
> I am a rabbi who must comfort someone who has suffered a heart-breaking
> loss. May I know peace.
>
> I am a loyal American who feels violated and vows to stand behind any
> military action it takes to wipe terrorists off the face of the earth, and
> I am a loyal American who feels violated and worries that people who look
> and sound like me are all going to be blamed for this tragedy. May I know
> peace.
>
> I am a frightened city dweller who wonders whether I'll ever feel safe in
a
> skyscraper again, and I am a pilot who wonders whether there will ever be
a
> way to make the skies truly safe. May I know peace.
>
> I am the owner of a small store with five employees that has been put out
> of business by this tragedy, and I am an executive in a multinational
> corporation who is concerned about the cost of doing business in a
> terrorized world. May I know peace.
>
> I am a visitor to New York City who purchases postcards of the World rade
> Center Twin Towers that are no more, and I am a television reporter trying
> to put into words the terrible things I have seen. May I know peace.
>
> I am a boy in New Jersey waiting for a father who will never come home,
and
> I am a boy in a faraway country rejoicing in the streets of my village
> because someone has hurt the hated Americans. May I know peace.
>
> I am a general talking into the microphones about how we must stop the
> terrorist cowards who have perpetrated this heinous crime, and I am an
> intelligence officer trying to discern how such a thing could have
happened
> on American soil, and I am a city official trying to find ways to
alleviate
> the suffering of my people. May I know peace.
>
> I am a terrorist whose hatred for America knows no limit and I am willing
> to die to prove it, and I am a terrorist sympathizer standing with all the
> enemies of American capitalism and imperialism, and I am a master
> strategist for a terrorist group who planned this abomination. My heart
is
> not yet capable of openness, tolerance, and loving. May I know peace.
>
> I am a citizen of the world glued to my television set, fighting back my
> rage and despair at these horrible events, and I am a person of faith
> struggling to forgive the unforgivable, praying for the consolation of
> those who have lost loved ones, calling upon the merciful beneficence of
> god/ Yahweh/ Allah/ Spirit/ Higher Power. May I know peace.
>
> I am a child of God who believes that we are all children of God and we
are
> all part of each other. May we all know peace.
LETTER 2
Some persoanl ravings from New York
> love
> Nick
>
>
> IS of US
>
> It's well nigh impossible to explain what's going on here. Impossible to
> paint a picture that you haven't seen already on a screen over and over
and
> developed your own considered opinions about it all, as we all haqve. Yet
> though a picture paints a thousand words, words too are symbols of the
real
> of course, only able to point toward the feelings that are actually
> experienced. Those feelings here in the streets are something I haven't
> encountered before, cloistered as I have been most of my life in
> middle-class Western surroundings. Impossible to tell those feelings well
> therefore so alien are they, or to even feel them accurately since each
> moment is wrought with a complexity that is hard to fathom, to hammer into
> knowable shape. I have never felt this way before, never felt so much pain
> so close yet so far. When I lost my baby daughter with Suzanne in 1986,
the
> tragedy was so close and personal that even though the feelings were
> complex, they were most certainly mine - ours. The orbit of them only
moved
> out so far from that little body that was Kiah. Somehow that was
> understandable and manageable and quite soon the spiritual weft the event
> had woven could be worn with graceful grief, in a simple way that allowed
us
> to move on. There was no rage or retribution required, no evil done. But
> this is so much bigger, so much more than all that has gone before, at
least
> for many people.
>
> How often I have talked about the media side-barring stories of
devastation
> in Third World countries? A cyclone, earthquake or flood, or even a
> terrorist attack between warring factions in a far away country you will
> never visit, thousand upon thousands lost, intolerable suffering, becomes
an
> all too brief column inch display, perhaps a photograph or two, then next
> day displaced by football/baseball 'heroes' or the latest indecencies of
> some public official. Certainly America when it comes to those events
> outside itself seems surrounded by mirrors, narcissistic to the max. To be
> fair, as has been pointed out, America has often given financial aid,
built
> bridges, offered expertise; after WWII whole countries rebuilt on the back
> of American prosperity. But nevertheless in the First World we have all
been
> somewhat loath to value these lives as much as our own. When it comes to
> countries of the Arab world it is not excessively hyperbolic to suggest
the
> average American hasn't cared, and worse even perhaps, hasn't known, that
> hundreds of thousands of children have died in Iraq for instance for lack
of
> clean desalinated water. American and British sanctions having severely
> hindered access to filtration technology. But many here who DO know, have
> claimed it's all Saddam's fault.
>
> Now, this attack makes our lives on par with all those elsewhere. Can we
> allow ourselves to see that our lives are no more valuable than others are
> somewhere else? That just because of our patriotism and belief systems we
> have the right to inflict further suffering on innocent people for the
sake
> of possibly bringing some justice to a few madmen. Many of the ordinary
> people in those 'terrorist' harboring countries have no idea of the true
> nature and complexity of events in which they are implicated by geography,
> race or politics. But then nor does the average American. Thus the media
is
> so complicit in this construction of American righteousness and freedom
that
> few people even bother to question the rhetoric thus evolving
> a 'potent mix of ignorance and illusion' as I read somewhere.
>
> Bush claims this war is to protect freedom, a new war says CNN, but what
was
> the old one I wonder? Daddy's Gulf War I suppose, the same one that failed
> to take out that other 'madman' Saddam, and resulted in the sanctions. And
> this great liberty to be protected exemplified in the statue across the
> water from the gaping hole where the World Trade Center stood stands for
> what exactly? Clear Channel, the huge radio conglomerate owned in Texas,
> nearly banned its 1200 stations from playing songs such as 'Imagine!' They
> had a list ready to go. Am I missing something here? A song calling for
one
> world, peacefully beyond boundaries of race and religion is somehow
what....
> Threatening? 'Un-American,' that's what it is to the powerful, people with
> friends in high places and an agenda; and that theme is rising slowly, not
> from the ashes of the towers in New York however; indeed New Yorkers seem
> pensive and more reluctant to exact revenge than the average Jo-Bob in
> Louisiana. After all this is the largest and most successful
multi-cultural
> city in the history of the world. In that sense this was an attack on the
> world. Some eighty countries are represented among the dead. What is seen
as
> un-American however is the 'left wing, sixties leftovers' as I heard one
CNN
> commentator say, people who dare to ask the question, "How are we
implicated
> in this unforgivable terror." Few want to permit the possibility that
> America's all-consuming and self-generating capitalist ideology may have
> made a few more enemies than imagined. After all it's clear living here
that
> people are sold everything possible for every need possible, and when a
need
> doesn't exist it can be created. Feed enough children enough junk food and
> eventually a whole new industry in pharmaceuticals arises to deal with new
> health and psychological symptoms. Soon 'smart drugs' will be available to
> target every modern disease known but as we interfere with environmental
> balance and produce ever more complex and affected goods, there will be
side
> effects - side effects to treat, and the cycle continues. Trawl the
ghettos
> and street-hangs of Afro-Americans here or in LA and pick up a style then
> produce cheap fashion goods in Third World countries under appalling
> conditions, and then sell them back to the same black kids at such
inflated
> prices that have at times caused people to kill for the goods. Why?
Because
> the label is marketed to the max as a symbol for the cool in culture.
> Meanwhile working class jobs disappear but the entertainment grows ever
> thicker on the ground. As a German visitor here said, "Americans are well
> entertained but they are not happy." Here in the city everyone is selling
> patriotic paraphernalia on the streets. I watch one cop abuse a guy for
> selling cheap flags (probably made in Indonesia) at exorbitant prices.
"You
> should be ashamed of yourself" he yelled roaring off down Broadway.
> Everything is a product opportunity.
>
> So in a way this machine, this 'Manifest Destiny' of America (which is
> taught in many schools still) is about an unfolding plan for domination to
> the very root of who we are in the world. There are plenty of conspiracy
> theories about but perhaps overt paranoia is not helpful. It is a 'plan'
> only in the sense that Americans 'believe' in the righteousness of their
> ways. So more to the point, up till now, this snowball of a nation has
been
> rolling blissfully down the mountain to hell, gathering all in its path,
> marketing the bejesus out of the world. But eventually the snowball will
> melt. Are we seeing the first real meltdown of our comfortable culture?
This
> is the hole in the pit of my stomach now. This strange feeling that it's
all
> wrong, the whole structure of life, and also that whatever we have
attached
> ourselves too within it is now at risk. So we are doubly threatened. And a
> lot of people are feeling that now, here, at least in New York.
>
> We cannot go on saying yes to all of this, yet we also cannot 'resist' in
> the old left-wing socialist manner, nor fight an un-winnable war. A flyer
> picked up at the Peace rally in Union Square rants against everything.
> Signed by the Communist Party I get an uneasy feeling that other
ideologies
> are simply using this to put a little fire underneath their flagging
> projects for world domination. We cannot replace one demon with another.
> This is the opportunity for a spiritual renaissance. It must be a quiet
> revolution, a 'rebellion' by stealth, by turning the other cheek, by
> focusing elsewhere, continually, unashamedly, speaking a different truth,
> standing in that truth. Saying no to the marketing of our very souls. A
> joyful mutiny against this ship of fools. When for example will we each
take
> responsibility for what we create, for the shares we own the shit we dump,
> literally and metaphorically. For the unresolved in our lives, the
lingering
> secret hates or notions of revenge for some long ago hurt. Or our
> righteousness. It's taken tragedy of immeasurable proportions (at least
for
> the West) to force people to look at each other, to talk deeper, feel
more.
>
> Now every strange sound, every second person, every package carried on the
> subway, is a potential threat. This is an awful way to live on one hand.
On
> the other hand it has pulled people's awareness into the moment more
> acutely. There is an urgency in the apprehension of the now, and an
> emergency of spirit in the genuine outpouring of caring that is
everywhere,
> though still people line up for their pedicure and shoeshine, and shop on
> Fifth Avenue while chauffeured limousines wait in the street. Wall Street
is
> guarded by military who even check the ID's of police coming through the
> barricades. There is an army camped in Battery Park and the real heroes
> (forget the Michael Jordans now,) are the fireman who return home each
night
> here next door to our apartment; having lost four brothers, their
patriotism
> and dedication is unchallengeable.
>
> How can I take in all of this and make easy sense of it? Perhaps this
> confusion is healthy; this kind of cultural instant of emotional
> non-sequitur, where the moment's music is made of the sweetest harmonies,
> combined with the most dissonant clangs and the shrill sirens of disaster.
I
> was just feeling this, but then....! A chaos too of paradigms. If the
> political is showing even more serious fault lines but the personal is
> showing signs of rejuvenation and arising heart, if good and evil are
> trotted out as the full measure of how we should respond, yet each person
is
> ever more confused of what those old polarities mean inside themselves,
> perhaps a crack is opening in the soul of humanity wide enough to let the
> light shine though.
>
> You cannot let fear get the better that is the big key. Trauma is real but
> if you allow the mind to carry you into all sorts of projections you only
> serve the darkness everywhere. There's true courage in standing where you
> are and going about your business while being aware of all that is in you
> and around you. Taking note. If something happens then you are ready to
> spring to action (or to stay perfectly still) from that certainty of being
> present, and not be carried into a mind game that reacts not creates.
> Everyone take a breath. Six billion breaths and the world shifts just a
> little.
>
> Let's pray it forward.
>
>Nick Jeanes and Rachel Zinman
> Floating Stone Media
> 413 State St. Apt. 2 Brooklyn New York 11217
> Ph: 1-718 4881883
> Cell: 1-347 432 5292
> Karma is a Boomerang
LETTER 3
> THis is a good summary of what we are really up against in the quest for
> peace.
> Nick
>
>
> Inevitable ring to the unimaginable
> By John Pilger
>
>
> If the attacks on America have their source in the Islamic world, who can
> really be surprised?
>
>
> Two days earlier, eight people were killed in southern Iraq when British
and
> American planes bombed civilian areas. To my knowledge, not a word
appeared
> in the mainstream media in Britain.
>
>
> An estimated 200,000 Iraqis, according to the Health Education Trust in
> London, died during and in the immediate aftermath of the slaughter known
as
> the Gulf War.
>
>
> This was never news that touched public consciousness in the west.
>
>
> At least a million civilians, half of them children, have since died in
Iraq
> as a result of a medieval embargo imposed by the United States and
Britain.
>
>
> In Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Mujadeen, which gave birth to the
fanatical
> Taliban, was largely the creation of the CIA.
>
>
> The terrorist training camps where Osama bin Laden, now "America's most
> wanted man", allegedly planned his attacks, were built with American money
> and backing.
>
>
> In Palestine, the enduring illegal occupation by Israel would have
collapsed
> long ago were it not for US backing.
>
>
> Far from being the terrorists of the world, the Islamic peoples have been
> its victims - principally the victims of US fundamentalism, whose power,
in
> all its forms, military, strategic and economic, is the greatest source of
> terrorism on earth.
>
>
> This fact is censored from the Western media, whose "coverage" at best
> minimises the culpability of imperial powers. Richard Falk, professor of
> international relations at Princeton, put it this way: "Western foreign
> policy is presented almost exclusively through a self-righteous, one-way
> legal/moral screen (with) positive images of Western values and innocence
> portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted political
> violence."
>
>
> That Tony Blair, whose government sells lethal weapons to Israel and has
> sprayed Iraq and Yugoslavia with cluster bombs and depleted uranium and
was
> the greatest arms supplier to the genocidists in Indonesia, can be taken
> seriously when he now speaks about the "shame" of the "new evil of mass
> terrorism" says much about the censorship of our collective sense of how
the
> world is managed.
>
>
> One of Blair's favourite words - "fatuous" - comes to mind. Alas, it is no
> comfort to the families of thousands of ordinary Americans who have died
so
> terribly that the perpetrators of their suffering may be the product of
> Western policies. Did the American establishment believe that it could
> bankroll and manipulate events in the Middle East without cost to itself,
or
> rather its own innocent people?
>
>
> The attacks on Tuesday come at the end of a long history of betrayal of
the
> Islamic and Arab peoples: the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the
foundation
> of the state of Israel, four Arab-Israeli wars and 34 years of Israel's
> brutal occupation of an Arab nation: all, it seems, obliterated within
hours
> by Tuesday's acts of awesome cruelty by those who say they represent the
> victims of the West's intervention in their homelands.
>
>
> "America, which has never known modern war, now has her own terrible
league
> table: perhaps as many as 20,000 victims."
>
>
> As Robert Fisk points out, in the Middle East, people will grieve the loss
> of innocent life, but they will ask if the newspapers and television
> networks of the west ever devoted a fraction of the present coverage to
the
> half-a-million dead children of Iraq, and the 17,500 civilians killed in
> Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. The answer is no. There are deeper
roots
> to the atrocities in the US, which made them almost inevitable.
>
>
> It is not only the rage and grievance in the Middle East and south Asia.
> Since the end of the cold war, the US and its sidekicks, principally
> Britain, have exercised, flaunted, and abused their wealth and power while
> the divisions imposed on human beings by them and their agents have grown
as
> never before.
>
>
> An elite group of less than a billion people now take more than 80 per
cent
> of the world's wealth.
>
>
> In defence of this power and privilege, known by the euphemisms "free
> market" and "free trade", the injustices are legion: from the illegal
> blockade of Cuba, to the murderous arms trade, dominated by the US, to its
> trashing of basic environmental decencies, to the assault on fragile
> economies by institutions such as the World Trade Organisation that are
> little more than agents of the US Treasury and the European central banks,
> and the demands of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in
> forcing the poorest nations to repay unrepayable debts; to a new US
> "Vietnam" in Colombia and the sabotage of peace talks between North and
> South Korea (in order to shore up North Korea's "rogue nation" status).
>
>
> Western terror is part of the recent history of imperialism, a word that
> journalists dare not speak or write.
>
>
> The expulsion of the population of Diego Darcia in the 1960s by the Wilson
> government received almost no press coverage.
>
>
> Their homeland is now an American nuclear arms dump and base from which US
> bombers patrol the Middle East.
>
>
> In Indonesia, in 1965/6, a million people were killed with the complicity
of
> the US and British governments: the Americans supplying General Suharto
with
> assassination lists, then ticking off names as people were killed.
>
>
> "Getting British companies and the World Bank back in there was part of
the
> deal", says Roland Challis, who was the BBC's south east Asia
correspondent.
>
>
> British behaviour in Malaya was no different from the American record in
> Vietnam, for which it proved inspirational: the withholding of food,
> villages turned into concentration camps and more than half a million
people
> forcibly dispossessed.
>
>
> In Vietnam, the dispossession, maiming and poisoning of an entire nation
was
> apocalyptic, yet diminished in our memory by Hollywood movies and by what
> Edward Said rightly calls cultural imperialism.
>
>
> In Operation Phoenix, in Vietnam, the CIA arranged the homicide of around
> 50,000 people. As official documents now reveal, this was the model for
the
> terror in Chile that climaxed with the murder of the democratically
elected
> leader Salvador Allende, and within 10 years, the crushing of Nicaragua.
>
>
> All of it was lawless. The list is too long for this piece.
>
>
> Now imperialism is being rehabilitated. American forces currently operate
> with impunity from bases in 50 countries.
>
>
> "Full spectrum dominance" is Washington's clearly stated aim.
>
>
> Read the documents of the US Space Command, which leaves us in no doubt.
>
>
> In this country, the eager Blair government has embarked on four violent
> adventures, in pursuit of "British interests" (dressed up as
> "peacekeeping"), and which have little or no basis in international law: a
> record matched by no other British government for half a century.
>
>
> What has this to do with this week's atrocities in America? If you travel
> among the impoverished majority of humanity, you understand that it has
> everything to do with it.
>
>
> People are neither still, nor stupid. They see their independence
> compromised, their resources and land and the lives of their children
taken
> away, and their accusing fingers increasingly point north: to the great
> enclaves of plunder and privilege. Inevitably, terror breeds terror and
more
> fanaticism.
>
>
> But how patient the oppressed have been.
>
>
> It is only a few years ago that the Islamic fundamentalist groups, willing
> to blow themselves up in Israel and New York, were formed, and only after
> Israel and the US had rejected outright the hope of a Palestinian state,
and
> justice for a people scarred by imperialism.
>
>
> Their distant voices of rage are now heard; the daily horrors in faraway
> brutalised places have at last come home.
>
>
>
>
> John Pilger is an award-winning, campaigning journalist.
>
>
> September 13, 2001
>
> Nick Jeanes and Rachel Zinman
> Floating Stone Media
> 413 State St. Apt. 2 Brooklyn New York 11217
> Ph: 1-718 4881883
> Cell: 1-347 432 5292
> Karma is a Boomerang
