[ Message Board ]
( Amon Hotep )- Sept, 12, 2001 - Our Websites, administrators and editors in no way support violence as a means to address past and present grievances. We totally condemn the attacks on America as much as we condemn American direct and indirect aggressions on other nations. We do not support further acts of revenge and feel there should be time for deep reflection and a breaking in the cycles of revenge. Nations with superior military strength can set better examples by refusing to exercise brute force and by demonstrating superior restraint.
( Jenny ) - Sept, 12, 2001 - Who in the history of this world have perpetrated more cowardly acts than the US?
I see nothing cowardly about what those people did with the planes. Americans staying thousands of miles away and raining bombs on other countries is COWARDLY!
As the Trinicenter headline says, “The US suffers surgical strikes with heavy collateral damage”. This is the language they use while killing others. The American public has not stopped their government from being the World’s bully!! MORE
Job Creation in America's War Machine
( Michel Chossudovsky ) - Sept, 12, 2001 - Does President Bush intend to jump-start confidence in the stock-market by launching a "timely" military strike? MORE
( Woizero Sera'el Tafari ) - Sept, 12, 2001 - Yesterday morning, I, like most of the world, sat and watched in awe, as the 'Great' America came under seige.
Again, I watched and listened to the responses of righteous indignation from the various leaders, governmental officials and the ordinary man on the streets of America, condeming this "cowardly act of terrorism on the strongest democratic nation in the world." That this 'evil and merciless' act, was the worst tragedy in the history of the world. BULLSHIT!!! MORE
( Akinkawon ) - Sept, 13, 2001 - For all who were not aware that America is more vulnerable than any other country in the world, the pictures tell a new story.
It is one thing to sympathize with the sufferings of some Americans but it is another thing to forget that America joined other nations in refusing to offer an unqualified apology for slavery. The American elites refuse to discuss reparations and they dictated the terms of the Racism conference.
It is not simply a case of being sorry for Blacks and others who were victims of the carnage but it is important to remember that in all struggles, even in the struggle for enlightenment, many people including Africans remain indifferent. Indifference is an enemy of us all. MORE
( Ras Forever ) - Sept, 14, 2001 - As Rastafari who have witnessed the most massive death and destruction caused by a combination of events and forces on Tuesday 11th September in the United States of America. We would firstly like to express our deepest and most sincere regrets to all those who are now experiencing pain and trauma that most would certainly have had no inputs in creating. Our sympathies and wishes is for quick and successful resolutions of all personal difficulties and negative effects of the aftermath of Tuesday's events. MORE
What courses of action are open to the US?
( Noam Chomsky ) - Sept, 14, 2001 - What courses of action are open to the US, and what are their likely consequences. There has been virtually no discussion of the option of adhering to the rule of law, as others do, for example Nicaragua, when it responded to the US terrorist assault by going to the World Court and the UN Security Council (failing, of course, but no one will bar such moves by the US); or as England did in the case of the IRA, or as the US did when it was found that the Oklahoma City bombing was domestic in origin. And innumerable other cases. Rather, there has been a fairly solid drumbeat of calls for violent reaction, with only scarce mention of the fact that this will not only visit a terrible cost on wholly innocent victims, many of them Afghan victims of the Taliban, but also that it will answer the most fervent prayers of bin Laden and his network, as the US falls into the "diabolical trap" they are laying, as the French Foreign Minister warned a few days ago, and as every knowledgeable observer has been trying to make clear.
( Ijahnya Christian ) - Sept, 14, 2001 - I am therefore responding to the media reportage that has given a particular face to the terrorist completely forgetting the unrepentant face of Timothy McVeigh at the time of his execution. The terrorist is the evil infidel who has different genes, a different religion and culture and who comes from a different part of the world. The mother of the terrorist feels no pain at his birth for she and his father are not created by the Almighty like the rest of us but by Satan.
Decent, civilized, God-fearing people like Americans do things in a brave, civilized and God-fearing way. We train soldiers and raise armies and ask God's blessings on our troops before we go off to fight other armies, trained by other nations to respond in a similar manner. We tell righteous lies to our people about how we won the war and may or may not apologise for the tremendous loss of civilian life - not just human but the evil enemy.
It is the same USA that just decided that it would not even be confronted with the demand for reparations much less issue an apology for the transatlantic slave trade as a crime against humanity. Remember, part of the rationale for our enslavement was that we were infidels, heathens who needed to be enslaved so we could be Christianised. The terrorist prays before he does the honourable thing of giving his life for his cause. Honourable? He is a coward and his god is not really God. MORE
( Noam Chomsky ) - Sept, 16, 2001 - The terrorist attacks were major atrocities. In scale they may not reach the level of many others, for example, Clinton's bombing of the Sudan with no credible pretext, destroying half its pharmaceutical supplies and killing unknown numbers of people (no one knows, because the US blocked an inquiry at the UN and no one cares to pursue it). Not to speak of much worse cases, which easily come to mind. But that this was a horrendous crime is not in doubt. The primary victims, as usual, were working people: janitors, secretaries, firemen, etc. It is likely to prove to be a crushing blow to Palestinians and other poor and oppressed people. It is also likely to lead to harsh security controls, with many possible ramifications for undermining civil liberties and internal freedom. MORE
Where do we go from here?
( Nakini Love ) - Sept, 16, 2001 - TAKE HEED PEOPLE
"Where do we go from here?"
Through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can't murder murder.
Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can't establish truth.
Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't murder hate.
Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that....
Difficult and painful as it is, we must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice - Martin Luther King.
God said vengeance is mine
( Lloyd Scott ) - Sept, 18, 2001 - It is said that what is hidden from the wise and prudent no reveals to the babes and sucklin. There was a special children programme hosted by Peter Jennings last Saturday and one kid commented on the show that America was getting a taste of it's own medicine.
Although last Tuesday's attack on the Pentagon and TWC was a sad day in the world,i am force to agree with the sentiments of that kid,as the U.S. did get a taste of it's own medicine. MORE
( D. A. ) - Sept, 19, 2001 - I was telling a friend about that biblical verse, when we take matters into our own hands it makes things worse, if the lord is not involve in something, it's useless. I do feel the pain of those families, but America is answering for a lot of wrong doings. Read your bible, it tells you everything about what just happened in Revelation chpt.17.
( Vijay Prashad ) - Sept, 19, 2001 - Indeed, five decades ago the United States assumed charge of that band of nations that stretches from Libya to Afghanistan, most of whom are oil rich and therefore immensely important for global capitalism. The civilizational mandate held by France and Britain came to a close when World War II devastated Europe, and it fell to the US to adopt the white man's burden. It did so with glee, indeed on behalf, for the most part, of the Seven Sisters, the largest oil conglomerates in the world (most of them US-based transnational corporations).
Alliances forged with right-wing forces in these regions found fellowship from the US, just as the Left fashioned relations with the USSR. The United States participated in the decimation of the Left in north Africa and west Asia, from the destruction of the Egyptian Communist Party, the largest in the region, to the rise of people like Saddam Hussein to take out the vibrant Iraqi Communist Party, and of the Saudi financier Osama bin Laden to take down the Communist Afghan regime.
We hear that 9/11 was the "worst terrorist attack in history," but this ignores the vast history of bombardment, in general, tracked by Sven Lindquist in his new book (for the New Press), and it certainly ignores the many terrorist massacres conducted in the name of the United States, for instance, such as at Hallabja in Iraq or else in South America by Operation Condor. These are just a few examples. But what is that history before 845am on 9/11, and will it show us that "retaliation" misses out the fact that the US has been at war for many decades already? MORE
( Michael Albert ) - Sept, 19, 2001 - People throughout the third world have long had their destiny held hostage by distant rulers. First world diplomats and entrepreneurs year after year pursue power and profit imposing nearly unimaginable third world calamity. Due to our distance from the victims and the endless mass media obfuscation of their plight, we first world citizens fail to realize that when a million people starve because a poor country’s energies are commandeered to benefit multinational capital, it is murder. But, it is murder, and so third world populations have long endured near total dependence on choices made by distant authoritative leaders who are callous to their futures.
The same abysmal condition has arrived, to a degree, for populations in developed countries. Those who died in today’s attacks also suffered a choice made by far away actors callous to the carnage they imposed. First world populations may henceforth share not the degrading conditions and daily poverty of the third world, but some of the fear of being held hostage by others. To try to overcome this condition, but even more to enlarge their already grotesquely bloated powers, first world leaders may in coming weeks challenge decades of gains in civil and legal rights, trying to turn back freedom's clock. MORE
( Jeff Sommers ) - Sept, 19, 2001 - The specter of US policy toward Israel continues to haunt America. Copious amounts of aid flows liberally to the Israeli government and spills out into Palestinian communities in the form of state violence. But, peace between Israel and Egypt is critical to Middle East stability. The US gets little of its oil from the Middle East, but US oil companies are present there and more importantly oil must flow freely and predictably for the smooth functioning of the global economy over which the US presides. Palestinians homes are routinely bulldozed and its people live under military occupation. When the Arabic nations try and address this matter civilly in the United Nations, as they just tried last week at the Durban conference, they are rebuffed by the US. Consequently, Palestinian children greet with delight the news of thousands of innocent people dying in the US on the 11th. This is blowback. MORE
( Raefer ) - Sept, 19, 2001 - I am a Trini who came to NY on Saturday to pursue efforts to get into school, Pace University, to be exact, just three blocks north east of the WTC. I was to meet with a professor today at 2 p.m. to discuss financing arrangements. Just yesterday, I was sitting in Park Plaza and marvelled at the towers which peeked between other buildings in the area. My subway train stop is the WTC on the ‘E’ line.
As I woke up yesterday, I turned on the TV and saw one tower in flames, thinking it was an accident. And then as they are covering the story for Tower 1, I watched this huge jet liner, bank and plunge into Tower 2. I swore it was HBO I was watching. MORE
( Davy De Verteuil ) - Sept, 22, 2001 - Strange though, Israel cries unlike any of God's creation even more than a baby in the face of hunger and normal displeasure yet at this particular incident where so many lost love ones and distant strangers Israel have step up its violent occupation and assassination without a tear drop.
Let us not forget they indeed have the capacity to mass-murder even their own much less its friend to achieve and fabricated biblical manifestation.
