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This is What Democracy Looks Like
Today's Note From a Madman
Wednesday, September 13 2006
Neighbors
Let's examine this for a moment, shall we? Iraq's
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is in Iran on a "Let's be friends" mission with
the Iranians and their leaders. After years of war between the two neighboring
nations, they are looking toward each other as bussom buddies. The removal of
Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, has led to the majority Iraqi Shi'ite population taking
control over Iraq and getting comfy with the Iranian Shi'ite led government. al-Maliki
is also looking for advice from the nation on its eastern border regarding how
to quell the violence that is manifesting itself in a bloody civil war. More
than 1500 Iraqis have lost their lives at the hands of their countrymen over the
past month and al-Qaeda has taken a stronghold in the violent and anarchic Anbar
Province.
Supreme Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei advised al-Maliki to get the US
troops to withdraw, and that will stop the violence.
We "consider it an obligation to support the Iraqi government in practical
ways,"
-Khamenei
Funny... I thought that's what we were doing. One wonders if Iran will support
Iraq in much the same way that they support Hezbollah in Lebanon. One wonders if
the Shi'ite-led government death squads aren't already getting the Iranians'
"support".
"Iraq is Iran's natural ally,"
--Ali Larijani, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, to al-Maliki
Iraq and Iran are even talking about drilling for oil in border territories
together, with the crude being processed in Iran. After all, what are neighbors
for?
So the next time a Republican friend of yours repeats the oft-mentioned GOP line
that Iran is behind the Iraqi insurgence, make sure to ask them if the
United States is better off
now, with a Shi'ite-led, Iranian-backed government in office or when Saddam
Hussein was in charge.
Iraq was a terrible place to be a citizen when Hussein ruled. Does anyone think
it's better now?
-Noah Greenberg
Two Sisters & Two Lights
My sister and I had avoided going to Ground Zero in the past for two main
reasons: (1) We didn't want to be part of a group of gawkers and (2) we didn't
feel ready to deal with the overwhelming sorrow caused by the event. However,
this year, we found ourselves there because we had an appointment to share
experiences at a Story Corps booth located in the PATH station by Ground Zero.
In the booth we shared our own experiences of 9/11. While we did not have
anywhere near the devastation experienced by the people who lost loved ones, we
did have our own feelings and, while expressing them, allowed ourselves to cry
in the booth at times as we told our stories and expressed our hopes for future
generations who will access the Story Corps archives.
When we emerged from the booth and got out to street level, well, there was
Ground Zero--there was no avoiding it. But we saw many people and we saw
flowers, signs, and many other lovely tributes. We did not see gawkers but
rather people who were passing the site quietly and respectfully. We also saw
people who wanted to promote peace and shore up support against the war in Iraq.
No-one hassled these people!!! As the sky darkened, suddenly, I noticed two
bright lights in the clouds. I looked for their source and I saw that the
beautiful blue twin lights were on. My sister took a photo of an American flag
against the lights. Both of us felt comforted by what we experienced down
there--so much so that when we hailed a cab and the passenger who was leaving it
wore a turban, we did not feel hate. Instead, we felt proud to be in New York
city with its diverse population.
This is not to say that we have not had our own moments of far and hate. We
have! But the experience of gathering together with so many people--including
some dressed in Muslim religious clothing--helped us not to feel that hate.
I enclose a picture of the lights. It's not the greatest photograph in the world
but it expresses how we two sisters were uplifted by our experience. Let these
lights be a beacon for all of us to look upward with love when we remember 9/11.
Yes we must be on guard--against both the terrorists and against the hate that
sometimes wells up from us. But most of all, let us remember to love as we try
to heal our national wound.
-Billie M. Spaight
And Another 9/11 Story
After dropping my two youngest daughters off at my older daughter's place
in NC, I was headed North for work, (electrician) for a company on the east side
of Orange County, September 10, 2001.
I planned to drive through to Orange County, from the east coast, and having my
first gander at New York City that night, but at the fork in the road, the car
went west, even though my head was going east.
Realizing I'd not taken the right road, 30 miles further, I shrugged it off,
thinking I would drive into the city another time.
By 2 am I was too tired to drive further and stopped at a motel about 60 miles
west of what would become ground zero the following morning. And slept, thinking
I would call the company I had contracted to work for, whenever I woke. They
knew I had traveled from the coast of Oregon to take the job, so timing would be
a case of whenver, within two days, the 11th and 12th.
I woke up just in time to flip on the TV and see the first tower strike and
subsequent flames. I ran outside and saw a column of smoke rising in the east,
looked back and saw the second hit.
My first thought was that someone was making a movie. Being from the west coast,
that is understandable. An instant later however, I thought 'no scraggly bunch
of terrorists could possibly have pulled this off.'
My father is retired from the FAA (GS15, accident investigation) and had been an
Air Force pilot in WWII. He knew the same thing, from an aeronautical
standpoint. I know iron, steel, melting temps, the flash point of fuel and the
nature of controlled blast technique, having worked with explosives, as well as
industrial/commercial construction.
The third building that collapsed into it's own footprint was a telling clue
that 'no bunch of foreign terrorists' had pulled this off alone.
The color of the smoke, the billions of tons of ash, the absence of file
cabinets, phones, computer cases and other such debris, and the millions of
intact papers, floating like big feathers in the winds, (which should have been
hot enough to incinerate them) indicates scalar wave weapon activity, during a
dynamite blast buried deep in the core infrastructure in both buildings, big
enough to blow the foundations.
The quick removal without scrutiny of the material, to dumps, the lack of
treatment of ground zero as a crime scene, all are indicators that 9/11 is not
what it is reported to be.
The impact on my own life was almost immediate. The job went away. All
construction contracts were delayed or canceled till further notice. My fiancé
called and gave the the only order he ever has, and that was to leave New York
immediately, even if I had to rob a bank. In actuality, I found a union co.
willing to let me run some pipe for a week. They were happy to pay me enough
cash for that to leave town.
My fiancé was called up to active duty within two weeks and within two weeks
after that, was put on stop loss, dead drops arranged for mail, and given leave
to classified locations only, since.
As I headed west, after picking up my daughters, construction folded behind me
in another blast. This was the one that rippled through the construction
industry as financing gave way. I was able to work for about eight weeks in AZ,
and then it hit here.
By the time work was opening up again, illegals from Mexico had flooded the job
market in AZ. After the 30 days of dead silence on the border after 9/11, they
realized the Americans were not going to start shooting foreigners on site, and
they literally invaded by the millions.
Many of the men bullied their way into construction with minority status and the
fact that they would work for almost nothing. Contractors quickly adapted
building schedules around them, utilitizing one bilingual foreman, with a cell
phone, who would run hordes of them on crews. They organized very small teams of
two or three skilled persons to fix whatever they messed up and left the rest.
The quality of work suffered, and still suffers, and some contractors have
learned that skilled employees at higher pay are actually a better deal than
illegals, but wages have been depressed by about 40% overall, by this huge ball
that was dropped, border security, in the aftermath of 9/11.
I have not seen my fiancé since. He was ordered to report to Rumsfeld, and,
because of his special ops/bilingual status and experience with seven other
foreign missions, was enslaved in what Rummy likes to call 'continual
deployment.'
Our fifth anniversary of his high-jacked status is coming up. I wonder how to
celebrate/mourn/grieve/or plot revenge depending on the mood of the day, which
can be anything from murderous, to resigned, to hopeful. There are less and less
hopeful days, and more and more murderous ones, the longer he is gone.
I'm sure other women in my situation know exactly what I am talking about when I
say murderous. There are plenty, and know this, the US has been more
destablilized by the Bush/Cheney reaction to 9/11 and enactment of subsequent
policies, than it ever was by the tragedy of 9/11 itself.
Personally, I had to start from scratch. Stay with a relative till I made enough
for rent, rent a condo with two paychecks, ride a bike or take cabs till I got a
car, (fiance got a car to me but it took him four months, as he was not supposed
to exist in Rummy's very secret cadre). The first month in our condo, we sat on
blow-up fishing chairs, and slept for over a year on blow up mattresses.
The hired hands that blew the foundations out from under the towers and struck
the pentagon, are now trying to blow the foundatoins out from under the United
States, with the silent weapons available to the world bank, a partner, the
senseless deployment and deaths in the military, hapless in the face of the Bush
administration, and blow the body of laws called the Constitution away in the
winds. Who called it just a piece of paper? Who said 'this would be a lot easier
if I were a dictator'
I would sign off with my name, but tonight, am not sure who I am.
It happens.
God, )expletive deleted) Rummy, please.
Will I go to hell for praying in this manner?
'. . . . . that when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing the same
object, shall reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is
their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide them all, for their
future security. . . . .Bill of Rights
-Rhian
In response to, "This is a first for me. The White
House actually admitting that they used 9/11 for political purposes. I guess
they really do need to 'catapult the propaganda' as GW has urged all of his
minions to do," David W. writes:
But never forget that the legions of slack jawed, mouth breathing, Monkey
supporters will still read this and have no problem whatsoever continuing to
support Der Monkey.
Makes you wonder about that hard core 33% that will support the Smirking Chimp
no matter what... It's enough to give the children of first-cousins-who-marry a
bad name.
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-Noah Greenberg