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SEEDS OF TERROR
Sep 21st, 2001 by Clark Humphrey

MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD WRITES at The Progressive magazine’s site:

“How many innocent people will die in this act of vengeance against thekilling of innocent people? And how many seeds of terror will the U.S. retaliation sow?”

And Howard Zinn writes on the same site:

“We are at war, they said. And I thought: They have learned nothing, absolutely nothing, from the history of the twentieth century, from a hundred years of retaliation, vengeance, war, a hundred years of terrorism and counter-terrorism, of violence met with violence in an unending cycle of stupidity.”

WAS THAT AMERICAN FLAG…
Sep 20th, 2001 by Clark Humphrey

…you just bought made in China?

PRAYING, NOT PREYING
Sep 20th, 2001 by Clark Humphrey

“Children of God Together,” Wednesday night’s peace march from St. Mark’s to St. James cathedrals, was as solemn, united, and respectful as any other of the many terror-attack memorials this past week. What made it different was its purpose. It brought thousands together, not just to remember the victims of the horror but also to try and prevent future horrors with future victims, here and/or overseas.

Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Moslems, Unitarians, a few Buddhists and Baha’is, and assorted others slowly trod the two miles between Seattle’s two most spectacular churches, holding candles and singing spirituals; while supportive bystanders all along Broadway and Madison lifted their arms or held up banners.

Their message is best expressed in this quote from one of the prayers recited by the overflow throng at St. Mark’s:

“Merciful God, we pray for our country, our city, and for Americans everywhere:

“That we may help one another heal from hurt and anger; that we may turn ot one another in love and compasison, rather than fear and misunderstanding; that we may not give in to a spirit of division and the desire to blame and to vilify; for unity and mutual love among peoples of all faith traditions; for strength and wisdom in our witness and service; that you will sustain us now and lead us through whatever lies ahead.”

For further thoughts on this topic, see ‘A religious response to terrorism.’

LIBERTY LOVE
Sep 19th, 2001 by Clark Humphrey

‘FORBES’ WRITER BRIGID MCMENAMIN asks, “Must Americans sacrifice their liberty to achieve safety?”

A FEW DAYS after you-know-what…
Sep 19th, 2001 by Clark Humphrey

…the P-I ran a long feature story on how you can preserve your newspapers for future reading and reminiscing (as if anyone really wants to remember that day). We could repeat some of those hints here, so you can keep your copies of the print edition of MISC printer-fresh, but we really don’t want to.

Here at MISC, you see, we consider the half-life of newsprint to be a vital aspect of your Total Ownership Experience, right along with the friendly ink smudges on your fingers. This publication WILL fade, yellow, and get brittle. Put it away for a while after you’ve enjoyed its contents, then retrieve it from storage weeks later. See how its natural ripening process has begun. Eventually, your MISC wil become a wrinkled but memory-filled old relic. Just like you.

WHO DO YOU HATE?
Sep 18th, 2001 by Clark Humphrey

IT’S A LONG ENTRY TODAY, and it starts with a question:

WHAT WILL BECOME of “alternative” culture? Until last Tuesday, the prospect of a recession seemed to mean we could all go back to being grumpy worrywarts, without all that new-economy exuberance getting in the way. But now along comes war-lust, and the potential revival of censorship and repression of dissent, not to mention changes in the whole social zietgeist.

Remember, WWII changed American culture even before the U.S. military got into it. In came the aggressive comedy of Abbott & Costello and Bugs Bunny. Out went the lighter antics of W.C. Fields, Laurel & Hardy, and the Marx Brothers.

Even before the hijackings, there’d been talk for a year or two among the culture pundits of a “new sincerity,” spread among (or at least corporately targeted at) a new generation grown weary of cynicism and distanced irony. Among the trend’s purported examples: Dawson’s Creek, Lilith Fair, the WTO protests, Martha Stewart, Oprah, bottled water (as an alternative to fizzy drinks), the new soft-R&B divas, and those achingly cloying boy bands. When Tablet launched, one year ago next week, it sold itself as the sincere, prosocial, community-supportive alternative to what its creators claimed was The Stranger’s arrogance and irrelevance.

Will the new social and economic shudders further this trend? Quite possibly. Even among the potential opponents of a potential new war, the schtick’s gonna have to be about working together and working hard.

And will the culture of individual excess (the rich person’s equivalent to hip irony) become seen as not merely wasteful but unpatriotic?

I’ll tell you what I don’t want to see, and that’s a “Return to the Spirit of the Sixties.” A lot of tactics simply didn’t work then and won’t work now. Counterculture separatism, square-bashing, drug-assisted pomposity, and general rudeness won’t do anything except make a few self-promoters famous.

Indeed: Separatism, the belief that one (and perhaps one’s close circle of compatriats) constitute some superior species, is one of the poisonous ideas terrorist leaders always exploit.

WHICH BRINGS US to our next sermon topic: Who do YOU hate?

No, I’m not talking about who those people out in bad old Mainstream America hate.

I’m not talking about who your parents hate.

I’m not talking about who the guy next to you hates.

I’m talking about you. Yes, you.

It’s easy for members of one or another “alternative” social niche to admit how wrong it is to hate ethnic minorities, gays, women, and the poor.

But what about your own attitudes toward those who are different from you?

Do you ever sneer with disdain at people who eat meat, or at people who don’t smoke pot?

Do you dehumanize heterosexuals, men, suburbanites, hippies, bimbos, southerners, mall shoppers, tourists, headbangers, lawyers, bureaucrats, business executives, polyester wearers, pina colada drinkers, people who listen to non-NPR radio stations, or people who shop at non-co-op grocery stores?

Then you’re just being human. You’re not a superior species to the rest of homo sapiens; nobody is. But a lot of people like to imagine they are. Some use religion, nationalism, ethnicity, or caste as their excuse. Others use fashion sense, arcane knowledge, or claims of higher “enlightenment.”

The real enlightened ones aren’t the ones who boast of their separateness from humanity, but the ones who realize their connection to humanity, to the web of life.

The illusion of separateness is especially prevalent in times of war-lust. Every warring nation propagandizes that it’s the real greatest nation on earth, and that those opposing nations are vermin needing to be eradicated or heathen needing to be “civilized.”

That’s why a Unabomber can callously take lives and then claim it’s all to make a better world. That’s why combatants in Belfast can aim guns on schoolgirls. That’s why a handful of true believers, who may or may not be connected to similar cells elsewhere in the world, can devote their lives toward a mega-scale suicide bombing.

We need no more of that.

What we need, now more than ever, is to reconnect, to touch.

Build movements. Get closer to your neighborhood, your community. Go see bands, concerts, plays—anything that’s live. Take a class. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Make love as often as possible (safely and consensually). If you’ve got kids, hug them early and often. Have a good meal, a good drink, and/or a good laugh. Get involved in something greater than mere money and power.

Call it the new sincerity if you wish. Or just call it the best way to keep our species going, by breaking down some of the barriers between people and between cultures.

9/11 PART 46 (WHERE IS THE LOVE?)
Sep 18th, 2001 by Clark Humphrey

A ‘BOULDER WEEKLY’ STORY tries to explain why much of the world often doesn’t love the U.S. the way it demands to be loved.

9/11 PART 45 (HIGH RISE HATE)
Sep 18th, 2001 by Clark Humphrey

JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER AND NIKOS A. SALINGAROS WRITE:

” We are convinced that the age of skyscrapers is at an end. It must now be considered an experimental building typology that has failed. Who will ever again feel safe and comfortable working 110 stories above the ground? Or sixty stories? Or even twenty-seven?

“We predict that no new megatowers will be built, and existing ones are destined to be dismantled. This will lead to a radical transformation of city centers–which, however, would be an immensely positive step towards improving the quality of urban life.”

9/11 PART 44 (AFTERMATH LINKS)
Sep 18th, 2001 by Clark Humphrey

RICHARD DAWKINS WRITES:

“Those people were not mindless and they were certainly not cowards. On the contrary, they had sufficiently effective minds braced with an insane courage, and it would pay us mightily to understand where that courage came from.”

ERIC S. NYGREN WRITES:

“One of the best ways Americans could express atriotism right now would be to trade in their SUVs for high-mileage hybrid cars. (Or get trade in cars

for bikes, buy a buss pass, etc.)

“There is an almost direct line of causality between America’s gluttonous reliance on foreign oil and our current woes. It’s been noted that the catalyst that started Osama bin Laden on his current path was coming home to Saudi Arabia to find a huge contingent of U.S. troops, who were there in preparation for the invasion of Iraq, which Bush pere felt we needed to invade because of… well, you get the idea. It doesn’t take much intellectual candlepower to connect the dots, but that’s apparently more than our current political leadership seems to have.

“America has been on notice since the 1973 oil crisis that we need more prudent policies to foster energy conservation, alternatives and independence. Discussion of such policies has been precisely nowhere in evidence amongst the current din and clamor, which shows just how little we’ve learned over the last 30 years.”

9/11 PART 43
Sep 18th, 2001 by Clark Humphrey

Someone at CBS and/or KIRO-TV failed to check scheduled commercials for newfound tastelessness. An ad for Realtor.com just ran during Letterman showing the shadow of what seems to be a low-flying plane soaring through a residential neighborhood and heading right at a building. The building turns out to be a house on a web-browser screen, and the “plane” turns out to be a computer-screen cursor.

9/11 PART 42 (LETTERMAN AFTER 9/11)
Sep 18th, 2001 by Clark Humphrey

THE NEWSPAPER HEADLINES and the TV special-report titles were full of gross overgeneralizations about the entire nation’s mood: “America Heals.” “A Nation Years for Normality.” “Country Demands Action.”

I’ve got a gross overgeneralization of my own to offer: America Wants an Aspirin and a Hot Water Bottle.

AUTUMNAL CLOUDS and cool temperatures arrived Sunday, and are quite welcome. Don’t like it? Go to Florida.

DAVID LETTERMAN GAVE an amazing eight-minute speech tonight, on his first new show since the attacks. It was the most consistently sincere moment of his 20-year hosting career, and may indeed have signaled the end of the Age of Irony.

Dan Rather’s on with Letterman as I write this, and he’s giving a brutally pro-war sermon, pleading with the nation to gird its collective loins and gather the “staying power” to unquestioningly support whatever follows, including ground-troop invasions in multiple countries. That, he claims, will prove the nation’s mettle. As you may have discerned, I have a slightly different belief–that following the same path and strategy for years on end, no matter the results or lack of results, is one of the the Vietnam debacle’s top contributing factors.

I’m recalling the last lines of Letterman’s opening speech, in which he said the most important thing anyone can have is courage. It’ll take courage to call for a less visceral, more thoughtful response to the terror–not because we don’t support our country but because we do, and we want it to do the right thing.

9/11 PART 37
Sep 16th, 2001 by Clark Humphrey

PHIL AGRE WRITES:

“In an infrastructural world, security cannot be a force, something exerted from the outside, a lid kept down or a shield put up.

“…The important thing is to draw a distinction between military action, as the exercise within a framework of international law of the power of a legitimate democratic state, and war, as the imposition of a total social order that is the antithesis of democracy, and that, in the current technological conditions of war, has no end in sight.”

IRA CHERNUS WRITES:

“To ask about our share of responsibility does not in any way condone the evil. It does not lessen by one whit the responsibility of those who actually did the deed. In death as in life, they remain fully responsible for their own heinous choices.

“But pacifists cast the net of responsibility more widely because that is the only way to end the cycle of violence. If we go on putting all the blame on others, and thereby justifying vengeance, we simply perpetuate the suffering and anger that led to the violence.”

NAOMI KLEIN WRITES:

“The era of the video game war in which the U.S. is always at the controls has produced a blinding rage in many parts of the world, a rage at the persistent asymmetry of suffering. This is the context in which twisted revenge seekers make no other demand than that American citizens share their pain.

“…The illusion of war without casualties has been forever shattered. A blinking message is up on our collective video game console: Game Over.”

ROBERT FISK WRITES:

“Retaliation is a trap. In a world that was supposed to have learnt that the rule of law comes above revenge, President Bush appears to be heading for the very disaster that Osama bin Laden has laid down for him.”

AND LAWRENCE FREEDMAN WRITES:

“The first step is to agree a realistic description of the objective. The eradication of terrorism as a global phenomenon does not meet this test, because not only is the definition contested in many instances but also the phenomenon’s existence is bound up with numerous conflicts, many beyond immediate resolution.”

9/11 PART 36 (REMEMBRANCE PHOTOS)
Sep 16th, 2001 by Clark Humphrey

A UGANDA-BASED relief site offers a list of “Ways to Help America.”

AN EMAIL CORRESPONDENT passed along a quotation from David Foster Wallace’s novel Infinite Jest, concerning things one can learn in rehab:

“No single moment is in and of itself unendurable.”

P-I COLUMNIST ANTHONY ROBINSON WRITES:

“In the longer term, nobility and morality shall be found in restraint rather than in simply unleashing American power and violence in retaliation or retribution.”

OFFICIAL NOTICE: As of Monday, it’s officially OK to complain about Bush again.

PHOTO-REPORTAGE DEPT.: At Friday’s bombing memorial at Westlake, a man made and brought a matchstick model of the towers…

…while a woman took a ball-point pen to the manila envelope she was holding, and made an impromptu sign reading “AN EYE FOR AN EYE WILL MAKE THE WORLD BLIND.”

Later that afternoon, a bagpiper serenaded the people placing flowers at Alki Beach’s Statue of Liberty replica…

…where someone had left a desktop-published plea to “move forward and live well.”

At the firefighters’ memorial in Pioneer Square, more flowers honor the fallen NYC firefighters.

At the memorial floral display in the Seattle Center International Fountain, where hundreds brought flowers and displays, someone placed a homemade flag with the American Airlines logo…

…while a chalk artist made a plea to move beyond calls for vengeance.

9/11 PART 35
Sep 15th, 2001 by Clark Humphrey

A Uganda-based relief site offers a list of “Ways to Help America.”

9/11 PART 34
Sep 15th, 2001 by Clark Humphrey

THe first regular network TV fare to resume airing was CBS’s Saturday-morning block of Nickelodeon reruns. Blue’s Clues can just be so soothing… at least until it’s interrupted by the abrupt resumption of blanket news coverage.

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