"Myopia, 'Tis of Thee"
3,000 Lives, 3,000 Deaths In A Global Context
Definition: "Myopia 1. Pathology. A visual defect in which distant objects appear blurred because their images are focused in front of the retina rather than on it: nearsightedness. 2. Shortsightedness or lack of discernment in thinking or planning."
From the time that American Airlines flight #11 crashed into the North Tower of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City at 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001, followed 17 minutes later by the crash of United Airlines flight #175 into the South Tower, and the crash of American Airlines flight #77 into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. 35 minutes after that, until the South Tower collapsed 21 minutes later, United Airlines flight #93 crashed 7 minutes after that 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh in a Pennsylvania field, and, finally, the North Tower collapsed 22 minutes after that, 3,053 people met sudden death in the collapse of the twin towers, the destruction from the crash at the Pentagon, and the four commercial airplanes that had been hijacked and used as populated weapons by terrorists. For those interested in reliving the particular events of that day, an extremely detailed timeline (with interesting questions) exists at: http://www.unansweredquestions.org/timeline/main/dayof911.html
During those 102 harrowing minutes between the first crash into the North Tower to the actual collapse of the North Tower, 10,348 other people also died on the planet. Of that number, 3,366 died as a result of communicable diseases, 2,142 of those deaths were children under the age of 5, while 122 women died in childbirth. 1,224 of the deaths during those 102 minutes resulted from cancer, 612 of those deaths were related to cigarette smoking, and 195 deaths were caused by malaria. I point out these statistics because far too many people are unaware of how pervasive death is and some of the reasons for these deaths, until something such as the events of 9/11 gain widespread attention by focusing upon a relatively small group of people whose demise is deemed newsworthy.
Allow me to present a few examples of "massive death overlooked" that I am aware of. A Super Cyclone slammed into Orissa State, India, in late October 1999 with top winds of 160 mph and a massive tide five feet high that moved nine miles inland with tidal waves of 10 to 15 feet, killing over 10,000 people and directly affecting 10-15 million people. Orissa state officials said between 200,000 to 300,000 houses had been damaged.
A devastating earthquake hit Gujarat State, India, in January 2001 taking nearly 30,000 lives and injuring 170,000 persons. There was widespread destruction of houses and infrastructure rendering approximately one million people homeless. The health infrastructure was severely affected with 227 health facilities being destroyed.
Floods in West Bengal (India), Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh in August-September 2000 directly affected millions of people. Go to United Nations Office For The Coordination Of Humanitarian Affairs at: http://www.reliefweb.int/ocha_ol/programs/response/ and take a look at what was happening in India in September, 2000. Millions were left homeless and over a thousand people killed with tens of millions affected by massive flooding.
On January 8, 1996, in Kinshasa Zaire an overweight Russian plane, without an authorized flight plan, crashed into an open-air market killing 297 people. Some believe that this was a terrorist attack.
If you go to: http://www.basedn.freeserve.co.uk/ you'll find a disaster database which covers all types of disasters all over the world. Some of the numbers make 9/11 pale in comparison, like 500,000 dead from a cyclone in India on June 10, 1998. Of course, it's understandable how that disaster was overlooked. After all, we were all absorbed in the furor over the latest on Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky: "Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes appeared before Independent Counsel Ken Starr's Alexandria, Va., grand jury" http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/06/10/lewinsky/ .
I know it's hard for some of my fellow Americans to understand, but there are people in other parts of the world who find America's seeming self-preoccupation with our own self-importance as "Americans," to be an extreme insult to fairness and to the reality of the experiences in the lives of others who are not fortunate enough to also be Americans. Years ago the derogatory term, "ugly American," was an expression applied to this alleged self-absorption of "some" Americans in their dealings with people from other countries. This term had nothing to do with one's physical appearance, but rather with one's attitudes and actions towards others, particularly those from other cultures, other religions, and other parts of the world. Other words that sometimes relate to extremes of this type of attitude and behavior are "prejudice" and even "bigotry." There are those who believe that the ranks of "the ugly" have grown dramatically in recent years.
Although I have only been outside the United States twice, 6 hours in Ensenada, Mexico for Cinco de Mayo in 1968, and two weeks in Italy in the fall of 1995, I have tried to cultivate a global awareness of the state and condition of my fellow human beings. I am therefore aware that as recent as 100 years ago, only 1 in 20 people on this planet (80 million out of 1.6 billion or 5%) had adequate food, clothing, and shelter (FCS). That figure rose by 1970 to 1 out of every 2 people on the planet (2.12 billion out of 4.25 billion or 50%) having adequate food, clothing, and shelter (FCS). That, in and of itself (an increase from 80 million to over 2 billion in just 70 years), is a phenomenal increase that was totally unpredicted. During those 70 years of the explosive expansion of opportunity, the quality of FCS improved exponentially, again, in ways that were totally unpredicted. At that rate, if the total population hadn't more than doubled in those same 70 years, everyone would be FCS "haves" by now. However, the explosive increase in FCS's has resulted in a rapidly widening gap between what's known as the "haves" and the "have nots" of this world.
My purpose for sharing this with you is because I feel that far too many people in our country, and particularly in our government, have taken the deaths of those killed in the infernos of 9/11 and used them to justify further slaughter. At present, there are 180 million underweight children on the planet and 273,750,000 human beings who are going hungry. Statistics have long been that 14 million children under the age of 12 die of starvation or as a direct result of malnutrition each and every year. Yet these deaths are not considered "newsworthy." It's almost as though if there is no one to threaten to kill for causing the death, then we turn our attention elsewhere. The causes of the death of 14 million children annually, essentially ignored.
That means that of the 10,348 other people who were going to die anyway during the 102 minutes of the 9/11 horror when an additional 3,053 people were dying, 2,720 of those 10,000+ "normal" deaths were children under the age of 12, dying excruciating deaths of starvation and as a direct result of malnutrition.
Because of 9/11, we have people (I can name influential talk show hosts and many other people) who say "nuke them all," about people in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and other "third world countries" (the majority of the population of Iraq is children under the age of 18). But there's no more justification in that action than there would be in the parents and other relatives of those 2,720 children saying "kill Americans," or somebody else, because of the belief that our withheld wealth could have saved their child. Killing never stops the killing; it only passes the endless cycle on to a new generation of flesh to be consumed by the monster of death.
Now the President of the United States proposes that he can bring peace to the Middle East by starting a war there that he may not be able to end. Enough of the insanity. True, war is a last resort. But, by definition, a last resort means "when all else fails." Some say that failure comes only when one quits trying. War, therefore, becomes the refuge of the quitters, those who look for an easy way out, regardless of the cost.
Many conservative voices have expressed, and continue to express, their disgust for President Clinton because of his having adult consensual sex in the privacy of his office, yet they utter not a peep when President Bush prepares to rape the future of the world in the name of a peace to be accomplished by waging massive war like none ever seen before. Seems to me that somebody has their priorities gravely askew. A complete break with civilized morality. In addition, it wasn't okay for President Clinton to keep his sex life private and secret, yet President Bush is supported in his every effort to keep his actions and those of his daddy, and their friends, secret, even though what little information does creep out casts doubt upon their altruism and instead reveals them to be just as greedy as many who brought about the scandals of Enron and other company crashes.
The March Hare has taken over and madness is now the rule. In fact, perhaps that is what is really going on. Perhaps an unidentified virus has spread throughout the world causing people to turn their backs upon morality and common sense and to instead elevate nonsense and madness to the seat of power. When I talk with many of the people who are so supportive of this "war effort," they often seem almost in a trance as they espouse their platitudes about the "justification" for this planned wholesale slaughter. This, despite the overwhelming evidence that the invasion of Iraq was planned long before the events of 9/11, and yet now the majority of those who support this war do so in the belief that it is in retaliation for 9/11. Common sense and humanity are being sacrificed for the false security of lockstep dittodom.
The lives and deaths of those 3,053 people who died unexpectedly during the 102 fiery minutes of 9/11 are not the reason for this war effort. Rather their deaths are being co-opted and used as a justification for a war that was already planned and intended long before that infamous day. I remind you again of how, shortly after the events of 9/11, President Bush announced, almost with glee, that his administration had "finally" found its purpose, its focus. It would, he implied, be an administration of retaliation. Yet, that so-called retaliation is merely his original intention cloaked in the deaths of those 3,000+ victims for justification.
If we look back at history, we see that this use of tragic events to lend credibility to deceitful intention is nothing new. It is a key manipulation of despots with greedy, self-serving motives. And it is a sad note that if I should go any further is specifically identifying events and characters who have exercised these tactics in the past that millions of my fellow Americans will condemn me and make efforts to retaliate against me. Freedom of speech is rapidly becoming co-opted by freedom only to rubberstamp those currently in power. That is not what America was created for.
The 3 billion plus people on this planet whose religious faith rests in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all trace the roots of their faith back to Abraham. Abraham was an Aramian who lived in Aram. What was then Aram is now Iraq, thanks to the political machinations of the United States, Great Britain and their allies following the end of World War I, and my country, the U.S., is on the brink of destroying that heritage with thousands of bombs. We're about to bomb, once again, the probable location of what in scriptures is referred to as the Garden of Eden. I pray that God stops us. I pray that we stop ourselves. We claimed disgust when the Taliban destroyed to Buddhist statues in Afghanistan, but those same complainers utter not a peep of complaint over the act of destroying the land of the patriarch of the religious beliefs of over half of the people of the world.
To murder additional thousands with millions of tons of explosives in the names of the victims of 9/11 is to dishonor the memory of those sacrificed lives. I do not believe that, should those people have been fortunate enough to avoid 9/11 and to continue living, that their lives would have been supportive of what is now being done by their own government in the aftermath of their tragic deaths. Without the shock of 9/11, Americans would not be so anxious to invade Iraq preemptively and to oust Saddam Hussein.
George Bush and many of his followers claim to be acting with God's blessing. This is not the God of Abraham. This is not the God of Jesus. This is not the God that the majority of the founders of this country believed in. George Bush's God is what the Old, and particularly the New, Testament would call a false God. It is a God of his own making, created in his own image and in own his likeness. This reflects badly upon his church and upon his parents, for somewhere they erred in W's upbringing and didn't help him to understand that God, rather than the President of the United States, is the supreme being.
I'm currently writing some thoughts that will be posted later about "In God We Trust." Those four words appear upon every single piece of coin and currency minted by the United States. Recently, while pondering why this country doesn't act like it believes those words, it suddenly occurred to me that I was misunderstanding their meaning. I had thought they were placed upon the currency to remind us of the spiritual and moral values of this country. But I realized that they were more accurately imprinted upon the currency because the currency, itself, the money, the greed of unbridled acquisition, is the God in whom we have come to trust. If I were God, I don't know that I would trust us any longer. I find myself agreeing with a Randy Newman song in which God says how much he loves mankind because we so entertain him with our stupidity.
Myopia, 'tis of thee
Sweet land of me, me, me
Of the world I'm king
Land full of Puritan pride
Where freedom's promise died
There's nowhere left for me to hide
God help us all.
3,000 Lives, 3,000 Deaths In A Global Context
Definition: "Myopia 1. Pathology. A visual defect in which distant objects appear blurred because their images are focused in front of the retina rather than on it: nearsightedness. 2. Shortsightedness or lack of discernment in thinking or planning."
From the time that American Airlines flight #11 crashed into the North Tower of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City at 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001, followed 17 minutes later by the crash of United Airlines flight #175 into the South Tower, and the crash of American Airlines flight #77 into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. 35 minutes after that, until the South Tower collapsed 21 minutes later, United Airlines flight #93 crashed 7 minutes after that 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh in a Pennsylvania field, and, finally, the North Tower collapsed 22 minutes after that, 3,053 people met sudden death in the collapse of the twin towers, the destruction from the crash at the Pentagon, and the four commercial airplanes that had been hijacked and used as populated weapons by terrorists. For those interested in reliving the particular events of that day, an extremely detailed timeline (with interesting questions) exists at: http://www.unansweredquestions.org/timeline/main/dayof911.html
During those 102 harrowing minutes between the first crash into the North Tower to the actual collapse of the North Tower, 10,348 other people also died on the planet. Of that number, 3,366 died as a result of communicable diseases, 2,142 of those deaths were children under the age of 5, while 122 women died in childbirth. 1,224 of the deaths during those 102 minutes resulted from cancer, 612 of those deaths were related to cigarette smoking, and 195 deaths were caused by malaria. I point out these statistics because far too many people are unaware of how pervasive death is and some of the reasons for these deaths, until something such as the events of 9/11 gain widespread attention by focusing upon a relatively small group of people whose demise is deemed newsworthy.
Allow me to present a few examples of "massive death overlooked" that I am aware of. A Super Cyclone slammed into Orissa State, India, in late October 1999 with top winds of 160 mph and a massive tide five feet high that moved nine miles inland with tidal waves of 10 to 15 feet, killing over 10,000 people and directly affecting 10-15 million people. Orissa state officials said between 200,000 to 300,000 houses had been damaged.
A devastating earthquake hit Gujarat State, India, in January 2001 taking nearly 30,000 lives and injuring 170,000 persons. There was widespread destruction of houses and infrastructure rendering approximately one million people homeless. The health infrastructure was severely affected with 227 health facilities being destroyed.
Floods in West Bengal (India), Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh in August-September 2000 directly affected millions of people. Go to United Nations Office For The Coordination Of Humanitarian Affairs at: http://www.reliefweb.int/ocha_ol/programs/response/ and take a look at what was happening in India in September, 2000. Millions were left homeless and over a thousand people killed with tens of millions affected by massive flooding.
On January 8, 1996, in Kinshasa Zaire an overweight Russian plane, without an authorized flight plan, crashed into an open-air market killing 297 people. Some believe that this was a terrorist attack.
If you go to: http://www.basedn.freeserve.co.uk/ you'll find a disaster database which covers all types of disasters all over the world. Some of the numbers make 9/11 pale in comparison, like 500,000 dead from a cyclone in India on June 10, 1998. Of course, it's understandable how that disaster was overlooked. After all, we were all absorbed in the furor over the latest on Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky: "Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes appeared before Independent Counsel Ken Starr's Alexandria, Va., grand jury" http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/06/10/lewinsky/ .
I know it's hard for some of my fellow Americans to understand, but there are people in other parts of the world who find America's seeming self-preoccupation with our own self-importance as "Americans," to be an extreme insult to fairness and to the reality of the experiences in the lives of others who are not fortunate enough to also be Americans. Years ago the derogatory term, "ugly American," was an expression applied to this alleged self-absorption of "some" Americans in their dealings with people from other countries. This term had nothing to do with one's physical appearance, but rather with one's attitudes and actions towards others, particularly those from other cultures, other religions, and other parts of the world. Other words that sometimes relate to extremes of this type of attitude and behavior are "prejudice" and even "bigotry." There are those who believe that the ranks of "the ugly" have grown dramatically in recent years.
Although I have only been outside the United States twice, 6 hours in Ensenada, Mexico for Cinco de Mayo in 1968, and two weeks in Italy in the fall of 1995, I have tried to cultivate a global awareness of the state and condition of my fellow human beings. I am therefore aware that as recent as 100 years ago, only 1 in 20 people on this planet (80 million out of 1.6 billion or 5%) had adequate food, clothing, and shelter (FCS). That figure rose by 1970 to 1 out of every 2 people on the planet (2.12 billion out of 4.25 billion or 50%) having adequate food, clothing, and shelter (FCS). That, in and of itself (an increase from 80 million to over 2 billion in just 70 years), is a phenomenal increase that was totally unpredicted. During those 70 years of the explosive expansion of opportunity, the quality of FCS improved exponentially, again, in ways that were totally unpredicted. At that rate, if the total population hadn't more than doubled in those same 70 years, everyone would be FCS "haves" by now. However, the explosive increase in FCS's has resulted in a rapidly widening gap between what's known as the "haves" and the "have nots" of this world.
My purpose for sharing this with you is because I feel that far too many people in our country, and particularly in our government, have taken the deaths of those killed in the infernos of 9/11 and used them to justify further slaughter. At present, there are 180 million underweight children on the planet and 273,750,000 human beings who are going hungry. Statistics have long been that 14 million children under the age of 12 die of starvation or as a direct result of malnutrition each and every year. Yet these deaths are not considered "newsworthy." It's almost as though if there is no one to threaten to kill for causing the death, then we turn our attention elsewhere. The causes of the death of 14 million children annually, essentially ignored.
That means that of the 10,348 other people who were going to die anyway during the 102 minutes of the 9/11 horror when an additional 3,053 people were dying, 2,720 of those 10,000+ "normal" deaths were children under the age of 12, dying excruciating deaths of starvation and as a direct result of malnutrition.
Because of 9/11, we have people (I can name influential talk show hosts and many other people) who say "nuke them all," about people in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and other "third world countries" (the majority of the population of Iraq is children under the age of 18). But there's no more justification in that action than there would be in the parents and other relatives of those 2,720 children saying "kill Americans," or somebody else, because of the belief that our withheld wealth could have saved their child. Killing never stops the killing; it only passes the endless cycle on to a new generation of flesh to be consumed by the monster of death.
Now the President of the United States proposes that he can bring peace to the Middle East by starting a war there that he may not be able to end. Enough of the insanity. True, war is a last resort. But, by definition, a last resort means "when all else fails." Some say that failure comes only when one quits trying. War, therefore, becomes the refuge of the quitters, those who look for an easy way out, regardless of the cost.
Many conservative voices have expressed, and continue to express, their disgust for President Clinton because of his having adult consensual sex in the privacy of his office, yet they utter not a peep when President Bush prepares to rape the future of the world in the name of a peace to be accomplished by waging massive war like none ever seen before. Seems to me that somebody has their priorities gravely askew. A complete break with civilized morality. In addition, it wasn't okay for President Clinton to keep his sex life private and secret, yet President Bush is supported in his every effort to keep his actions and those of his daddy, and their friends, secret, even though what little information does creep out casts doubt upon their altruism and instead reveals them to be just as greedy as many who brought about the scandals of Enron and other company crashes.
The March Hare has taken over and madness is now the rule. In fact, perhaps that is what is really going on. Perhaps an unidentified virus has spread throughout the world causing people to turn their backs upon morality and common sense and to instead elevate nonsense and madness to the seat of power. When I talk with many of the people who are so supportive of this "war effort," they often seem almost in a trance as they espouse their platitudes about the "justification" for this planned wholesale slaughter. This, despite the overwhelming evidence that the invasion of Iraq was planned long before the events of 9/11, and yet now the majority of those who support this war do so in the belief that it is in retaliation for 9/11. Common sense and humanity are being sacrificed for the false security of lockstep dittodom.
The lives and deaths of those 3,053 people who died unexpectedly during the 102 fiery minutes of 9/11 are not the reason for this war effort. Rather their deaths are being co-opted and used as a justification for a war that was already planned and intended long before that infamous day. I remind you again of how, shortly after the events of 9/11, President Bush announced, almost with glee, that his administration had "finally" found its purpose, its focus. It would, he implied, be an administration of retaliation. Yet, that so-called retaliation is merely his original intention cloaked in the deaths of those 3,000+ victims for justification.
If we look back at history, we see that this use of tragic events to lend credibility to deceitful intention is nothing new. It is a key manipulation of despots with greedy, self-serving motives. And it is a sad note that if I should go any further is specifically identifying events and characters who have exercised these tactics in the past that millions of my fellow Americans will condemn me and make efforts to retaliate against me. Freedom of speech is rapidly becoming co-opted by freedom only to rubberstamp those currently in power. That is not what America was created for.
The 3 billion plus people on this planet whose religious faith rests in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all trace the roots of their faith back to Abraham. Abraham was an Aramian who lived in Aram. What was then Aram is now Iraq, thanks to the political machinations of the United States, Great Britain and their allies following the end of World War I, and my country, the U.S., is on the brink of destroying that heritage with thousands of bombs. We're about to bomb, once again, the probable location of what in scriptures is referred to as the Garden of Eden. I pray that God stops us. I pray that we stop ourselves. We claimed disgust when the Taliban destroyed to Buddhist statues in Afghanistan, but those same complainers utter not a peep of complaint over the act of destroying the land of the patriarch of the religious beliefs of over half of the people of the world.
To murder additional thousands with millions of tons of explosives in the names of the victims of 9/11 is to dishonor the memory of those sacrificed lives. I do not believe that, should those people have been fortunate enough to avoid 9/11 and to continue living, that their lives would have been supportive of what is now being done by their own government in the aftermath of their tragic deaths. Without the shock of 9/11, Americans would not be so anxious to invade Iraq preemptively and to oust Saddam Hussein.
George Bush and many of his followers claim to be acting with God's blessing. This is not the God of Abraham. This is not the God of Jesus. This is not the God that the majority of the founders of this country believed in. George Bush's God is what the Old, and particularly the New, Testament would call a false God. It is a God of his own making, created in his own image and in own his likeness. This reflects badly upon his church and upon his parents, for somewhere they erred in W's upbringing and didn't help him to understand that God, rather than the President of the United States, is the supreme being.
I'm currently writing some thoughts that will be posted later about "In God We Trust." Those four words appear upon every single piece of coin and currency minted by the United States. Recently, while pondering why this country doesn't act like it believes those words, it suddenly occurred to me that I was misunderstanding their meaning. I had thought they were placed upon the currency to remind us of the spiritual and moral values of this country. But I realized that they were more accurately imprinted upon the currency because the currency, itself, the money, the greed of unbridled acquisition, is the God in whom we have come to trust. If I were God, I don't know that I would trust us any longer. I find myself agreeing with a Randy Newman song in which God says how much he loves mankind because we so entertain him with our stupidity.
Myopia, 'tis of thee
Sweet land of me, me, me
Of the world I'm king
Land full of Puritan pride
Where freedom's promise died
There's nowhere left for me to hide
God help us all.
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