Timothy Wilken
Another Response
In the chess game we’ve been engaged in the Middle East, it should be obvious that we have lost and we should turn our king on its side and leave the table.
In my view, it has been our support of Israel in the Palestinian-Israel dispute which resulted finally in a terrorist action which we cannot counter or even accommodate to. All we can do is step away from the dispute and our support of Israel, rein in our threat of force we use the world over—which will be a blessing to ourselves and the other nations so involved—and try to go back to normal times and the pursuit of our own business. Ranting and raving about “getting even with the perpetrators” or immersing ourselves even further in other people’s lives and/or their politics is suicidal, as we have seen. We have always had this vulnerability and this paradox in our use of power, and now we have paid the price in the loss of our nation’s tranquility. It promises to be a permanent loss.
Marvin Gregory
Some Early Responses
This morning I wrote: As an American whose father was decorated for his service in WWII and whose brother was decorated for service in Viet Nam, I understand the urge to pick up a large weapon and strike back at whoever has chosen to injure my country today. But I think that urge may not be compatible with the long term future of my country and my species…
Timothy
Dear Timothy,
Yes, you are correct Timothy and our work is even more urgent. Things will get a lot worse in breakpoint if we cannot help make this shift.
As we transition from the Industrial Age Terrorism, war, violence and death has the potential to increase exponentially. The acts of violence of Sept 11, 2001 as well as the acts of the past 20, years are just the beginning of what can become a hellish road warrior era that could kill hundreds of millions and billions. We have lived in a win/lose era for all of the Industrial Age, however, technology today gives small numbers of individuals, on the losing end of win/lose great power to kill millions of people and bring our civilization to an end.
Dear Timothy,
I believe that you are quite right about measuring our response to the events of today. There’s going to be a lot of reactionary rhetoric. President Bush’s first words, (after, “I have spoken with the Vice-President…) were, “This will not stand,” which was the Gulf War refrain. Tom Brokaw, on NBC News, said that terrorists have issued a declaration of war against the United States. The fact is, problems that give rise to terrorism must solved first and before the fact, not by lashing out irrationally afterward.
Yours truly,
Ross M. Donald
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COUNTDOWN TO DISASTER
| TERROR IN AMERICA |
BY JACQUI SWIFT of the Online SUN in London
HERE is the full shocking rundown of one of the world’s worst terrorist attacks.
Terror over Manhattan Island
8.55am/1.55pm (New York time/BST) Plane crashes into one tower of World Trade Center in Manhattan, New York.
9.05am/2.05pm Plane crashes into other tower of Trade Center live on television.
9.13am/2.13pm Reports filter through of plane hijacking before attacks occur.
9.23am/2.23pm US official claims it is terrorist-related.
9.32am/2.32pm President Bush in Florida admits it is an “apparent terrorist attack” and pledges to “hunt down” those responsible.
9.43am/2.43pm The Pentagon, Washington DC, is evacuated.
9.44am/2.44pm Plane crashes into The Pentagon.
9.45am/2.45pm West Wing of White House, Washington DC, is evacuated.
9.52am/2.52pm Two further explosions rock The Pentagon.
9.52am/2.52pm State Department, Washington DC, is evacuated.
9.52am/2.52pm All aircraft grounded across the US.
10.00am/3.00pm Staff at UN headquarters evacuated to the basement.
10.01am/3.01pm Reports tell of another explosion which has hit a building near World Trade Center.
10.02am/3.02pm Southern Tower of World Trade Center collapses.
10.11am/3.11pm Two explosions hit The Pentagon.
10.17am/3.17pm Prime Minister Tony Blair breaks off from address to TUC conference to announce he is “terribly shocked”.
10.18am/3.18pm French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin says he is “horrified”.
10.23am/3.23pm Russian President Vladimir Putin calls the attacks “terrible tragedies”.
10.26am/3.26pm Israel offers aid to US.
10.30am/3.30pm Northern Tower of Trade Center collapses.
10.39am/3.39pm Large plane crashes in western Pennsylvania.
10.39am/3.39pm Israel prepares to evacuate staff from US.
10.46am/3.46pm Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat condemns the attacks.
10.47am/3.47pm Reports tell of another aircraft heading towards Washington.
10.50am/3.50pm London Stock Exchange evacuates.
11.13am/4.13pm Fire reported near White House.
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America at War
10:21 a ET Two planes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, causing one of two towers to collapse, and another aircraft hit the Pentagon in the worst terrorist attack in the nation’s history.
As an American whose father was decorated for his service in WWII and whose brother was decorated for service in Viet Nam, I understand the urge to pick up a large weapon and strike back at whoever has chosen to injure my country today. But I think that urge may not be compatible with the long term future of my country and my species…
Timothy
Facing the Truth
Progress + warfare = human extinction.
“No man can regard the way of war as good. It has simply been our way. No man can evaluate the eternal contest of weapons as anything but the sheerest waste and the sheerest folly. It has been simply our only means of final arbitration“—Robert Ardrey
Commitment to the adversary way —
We humans are a life form. We must avoid losing at all costs. Most of us embrace human neutrality to avoid losing. But, if our human neutrality fails to protect us from losing, then we will fight. We will fight to survive. We do not go quietly into that dark night. We will kill to remain alive.
As Time-binding has made human technology evermore powerful, it has made human warfare evermore dangerous. Our species has the deepest of commitments to the adversary way. We humans can choose to change our ways, but do so will require us to examine our past and to understand how we arrived at this crossroad. The human species evolved from the world of animals. Our mother was a space-binder and she embraced the adversary way. Robert Ardrey explains:
“Not in innocence, and not in Asia was mankind born. The home of our fathers was that African highland reaching north form the cape to the Lakes of the Nile. Here we came about slowly—slowly, ever so slowly—on a sky-swept Savannah glowing with menace.
“In neither bankruptcy nor bastardy did we face our long beginnings. Man’s line is legitimate. Our ancestry is firmly rooted in the animal world, and to its subtle, antique ways our hearts are yet pledged. Children of all animal kind, we inherited many a social nicety as well as the predator’s way. But most significant of all our gifts, as things turned out, was the legacy bequeathed us by those killer apes, our immediate fore bearers. Even in the first long days of our beginnings we held in our hands the weapon, an instrument somewhat older than ourselves.”
You can read the full story starting on page 87 of: Crisis: Danger & Opportunity—A Synergic Analysis of the Present