Many messages are being circulated, with calls for healing, peace, compassion; with condolences and sympathy; with information about possible causes, reasons, etc. Many emotions are being expressed. Anger, fear, indifference, compassion, love.

I can't possibly forward all that people have asked me to forward, but I will again include a few messages below that I find to be of value.

Part of what is going on is that each of us is examining our feelings and thoughts, and we maybe re-evaluate our picture of the world, or our role in it. Maybe we re-affirm what we're here for. Regardless, it is a fairly individual and personal process, which hopefully will contribute to desirable outcomes for the whole.

Beyond the need for healing is the need to examine and remedy the root causes for how and why something like this happens. And that might be even more unpleasant and hard to face.

Terrorism and any kind of violence against innocent people is of course totally inexcusable, no matter who carries it out, no matter what motivation they have.

However, I hope you won't believe that the cause is just lacking security precautions and a small group of crazy terrorists that need to be hunted down. I don't think it will be solved with cruise missiles and wire tapping and armed guards.

There are many people in the world who are mad at the United States. That might particularly be a surprise to many Americans. The economic, social, political and military policies that have caused this situation need to be examined. Assuming that it is just a few lunatics who out of the blue are lashing out against the "freedom and democracy" in the U.S. is very misguided.

The surest way of avoiding being attacked is to not have enemies.

A way of not having enemies is to have dialogue with everybody. Listen and find out what people need and want in different parts of the world. Try to help them get what they need and want.

We all share this planet. It no longer works to just put up walls around your cities to keep the barbarians out. Particularly if you trained and funded and armed them last year because they were the enemy of your enemy. And you then stopped funding them later because your other enemy no longer was your enemy. And they're now starving, but still trained and armed.

I hope and trust that you people here are amongst those who both will be able to look more deeply and critically at what is really going on, and who also have the compassion and overview to seek peaceful harmonious solutions that will actually work for the planet.

If there is anything I can be of service with, in terms of online infrastructure - virtual workspaces, bulletin boards, mailing lists, web sites - to help any of you organize or inspire better solutions, please let me know.

- Flemming

Not vengeance, compassion, By Howard Zinn:

The images on television have been heartbreaking. People on fire leaping to their deaths from a hundred stories up. People in panic and fear racing from the scene in clouds of dust and smoke. We knew that there must be thousands of human beings buried alive, but soon dead under a mountain of debris. We can only imagine the terror among the passengers of the hijacked planes as they contemplated the crash, the fire, the end. Those scenes horrified and sickened me.

Then our political leaders came on television, and I was horrified and sickened again. They spoke of retaliation, of vengeance, of punishment. 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.

We can all feel a terrible anger at whoever, in their insane idea that this would help their cause, killed thousands of innocent people. But what do we do with that anger? Do we react with panic, strike out violently and blindly just to show how tough we are? "We shall make no distinction," the President proclaimed, "between terrorists and countries that harbor terrorists." Will we now bomb Afghanistan, and inevitably kill innocent people, because it is in the nature of bombing to be indiscriminate, to "make no distinction," as Bush said. Will we then be committing terrorism in order to "send a message" to terrorists?

We have done that before. It is the old way of thinking, the old way of acting. It has never worked. Reagan bombed Libya, and Bush made war on Iraq, and Clinton bombed Afghanistan and also a pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan, to "send a message" to terrorists. And then comes this horror in New York and Washington. Isn't it clear by now that sending a message to terrorists through violence doesn't work, only leads to more terrorism?

Haven't we learned anything from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Car bombs planted by Palestinians bring air attacks and tanks by the Israeli government. That has been going on for years. It doesn't work. And innocent people die on both sides.

Yes, it is an old way of thinking, and we need to think about the resentment all over the world felt by people who have been the victims of American military action. In Vietnam, where we carried out terrorizing bombing attacks, using napalm and cluster bombs, on peasant villages; in Latin America, where we supported dictators and death squads in Chile and El Salvador and other countries. In Iraq, where a million people have died as a result of our economic sanctions. And, perhaps most important for understanding the current situation, in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza, where a million and more Palestinians live under a cruel military occupation, while our government supplies Israel with high-tech weapons.

We need to imagine that the awful scenes of death and suffering we are now witnessing on our television screens have been going on in other parts of the world for a long time, and only now can we begin to know what people have gone through, often as a result of our policies. We need to understand how some of those people will go beyond quiet anger to acts of terrorism.

We need new ways of thinking. A $300 billion dollar military budget has not given us security. Military bases all over the world, our warships on every ocean, have not given us security. Land mines, a "missile defense shield," will not give us security. We need to rethink our position in the world. We need to stop sending weapons to countries that oppress other people or their own people. We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children. War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times.

Our security can only come by using our national wealth, not for guns, planes, bombs, but for the health and welfare of our people -- for free medical care for everyone, education and housing, guaranteed decent wages and a clean environment for all. We can not be secure by limiting our liberties, as some of our political leaders are demanding, but only by expanding them.

We should take our example not from our military and political leaders shouting "retaliate" and "war" but from the doctors and nurses and medical students and firemen and policemen who have been saving lives in the midst of mayhem, whose first thoughts are not violence, but healing, not vengeance but compassion.

Prof. Howard Zinn is author of "The People's History of the United States."

"They can't see why they are hated" - Americans cannot ignore what their government does abroad
by Seumas Milne, The Guardian

Nearly two days after the horrific suicide attacks on civilian workers in New York and Washington, it has become painfully clear that most Americans simply don't get it. From the president to passersby on the streets, the message seems to be the same: this is an inexplicable assault on freedom and democracy, which must be answered with overwhelming force - just as soon as someone can construct a credible account of who was actually responsible.

Shock, rage and grief there has been aplenty. But any glimmer of recognition of why people might have been driven to carry out such atrocities, sacrificing their own lives in the process - or why the United States is hated with such bitterness, not only in Arab and Muslim countries, but across the developing world - seems almost entirely absent. Perhaps it is too much to hope that, as rescue workers struggle to pull firefighters from the rubble, any but a small minority might make the connection between what has been visited upon them and what their government has visited upon large parts of the world. ...

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,551086,00.html">http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,551086,00.html

Robert David Steele, OSS, Inc., national security veteran:

"The U.S. Intelligence Community is a huge Cold War Frankenstein obsessed with building ever-more expensive secret
satellites that are useful only against the electronic communications of a select handful of governments. We have consistently neglected to properly fund our Department of State, our defense attaches, our Peace Corps, and
those critical parts of the U.S. Intelligence Community-the clandestine service, analysts, analytic tools, and open sources-that might have given us a better understanding of just how desperate, capable, and numerous are
those who are committed to achieving a new balance of power in which the United States is no longer allowed to ignore its obligations to foster a global environment of peace and prosperity. The reality is that both the American people and the American government have lost touch with global realities. ...."

See also: http://www.oss.net/Papers/white/TheNewCraftofIntelligence.doc">http://www.oss.net/Papers/white/TheNewCraftofIntelligence.doc

From Afghani-American writer, Tamin Ansary:

I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio today, allowed that this would mean killing innocent people, people who had nothing to do with this atrocity, but "we're at war, we have to accept collateral damage. What else can we do?" Minutes later I heard some TV pundit discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be done."

And I thought about the issues being raised especially hard because I am from Afghanistan, and even though I've lived here for 35 years I've never lost track of what's going on there. So I want to tell anyone who will listen how it all looks from where I'm standing.

I speak as one who hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. There is no doubt in my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in New York.

I agree that something must be done about those monsters.

But the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who took over Afghanistan in 1997. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a plan. When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden, think Hitler. And when you think "the people of Afghanistan" think "the Jews in the concentration camps." It's not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators.

They would exult if someone would come in there, take out the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their country.

Some say, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban? The answer is, they're starved, exhausted, hurt, incapacitated, suffering. A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food. There are millions of widows. And the Taliban has been burying these widows alive in mass graves. The soil is littered with land mines, the farms were all destroyed by the Soviets. These are a few of the reasons why the Afghan people have not overthrown the Taliban.

We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already.

Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses? Done.

Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done.

Eradicate their hospitals? Done.

Destroy their infrastructure? Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that.

New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier bombs. Would they at least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan, only the Taliban eat, only they have the means to move around. They'd slip away and hide. Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled orphans, they don't move too fast, they don't even have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and dropping bombs wouldn't really be a strike against the criminals who did this horrific thing.

Actually it would only be making common cause with the Taliban--by raping once again the people they've been raping all this time. So what else is there? What can be done, then? Let me now speak with true fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. When people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be done" they're thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed.

Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about killing innocent people.

Let's pull our heads out of the sand. What's actually on the table is americans dying. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that folks. Because to get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by?

You see where I'm going. We're flirting with a world war between Islam and the West.

And guess what: that's Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants.

That's why he did this. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there. He really believes Islam would beat the west. It might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and the West, he's got a billion soldiers. If the west wreaks a holocaust in those lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose, that's even better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably wrong, in the end the west would win, whatever that would mean, but the war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for that?

Bin Laden does. Anyone else?

The Deeper Wound, by Deepak Chopra:

As fate would have it, I was leaving New York on a jet flight that took off 45 minutes before the unthinkable happened. By the time we landed in Detroit, chaos had broken out. When I grasped the fact that American security had broken down so tragically, I couldn't respond at first. My wife and son were also in the air on separate flights, one to Los Angeles, one to San Diego. My body went absolutely rigid with fear. All I could think about was their safety, and it took several hours before I found out that their flights had been diverted and both were safe.

Strangely, when the good news came, my body still felt that it had been hit by a truck. Of its own accord it seemed to feel a far greater trauma that reached out to the thousands who would not survive and the tens of thousands who would survive only to live through months and years of hell.

And I asked myself, Why didn't I feel this way last week? Why didn't my body go stiff during the bombing of Iraq or Bosnia? Around the world my horror and worry are experienced every day. Mothers weep over horrendous loss, civilians are bombed mercilessly, refugees are ripped from any sense of home or homeland. Why did I not feel their anguish enough to call a halt to it? As we hear the calls for tightened American security and a fierce military response to terrorism, it is obvious that none of us has any answers.

However, we feel compelled to ask some questions. Everything has a cause, so we have to ask, What was the root cause of this evil? We must find out not superficially but at the deepest level. There is no doubt that such evil is alive all around the world and is even celebrated. Does this evil grow from the suffering and anguish felt by people we don't know and therefore ignore? Have they lived in this condition for a long time?

One assumes that whoever did this attack feels implacable hatred for America. Why were we selected to be the focus of suffering around the world? All this hatred and anguish seems to have religion at its basis. Isn't something terribly wrong when jihads and wars develop in the name of God? Isn't God invoked with hatred in Ireland, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Israel, Palestine, and even among the intolerant sects of America? Can any military response make the slightest difference in the underlying cause? Is there not a deep wound at the heart of humanity?

If there is a deep wound, doesn't it affect everyone? When generations of suffering respond with bombs, suicidal attacks, and biological warfare, who first developed these weapons? Who sells them? Who gave birth to the satanic technologies now being turned against us? If all of us are wounded, will revenge work? Will punishment in any form toward anyone solve the wound or aggravate it? Will an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and limb for a limb, leave us all blind, toothless and crippled?

Tribal warfare has been going on for two thousand years and has now been magnified globally. Can tribal warfare be brought to an end? Is patriotism and nationalism even relevant anymore, or is this another form of tribalism?

What are you and I as persons going to do about what is happening? Can we afford to let the deeper wound fester any longer? Everyone is calling this an attack on America, but is it not a rift in our collective soul? Isn't this an attack on civilization from without that is also from within?

When we have secured our safety once more and cared for the wounded, after the period of shock and mourning is over, it will be time for soul searching. I only hope that these questions are confronted with the deepest spiritual intent. None of us will feel safe again behind the shield of military might and stockpiled arsenals. There can be no safety until the root cause is faced. In this moment of shock I don't think anyone of us has the answers. It is imperative that we pray and offer solace and help to each other. But if you and I are having a single thought of violence or hatred against anyone in the world at this moment, we are contributing to the wounding of the world.

Tarot: The Tower, from Jennifer Zurick:

At times the Tarot offers insight.. Below is text about the card of "The Tower" which in many versions is depicted as a tower crumbling after being hit by lightening. On the card, bodies are depicted falling from it's heights.

"The Tower is a symbol of the universal principle of healing, renovation and restoration. Because this card looks so violent, it has often been misinterpreted. The tower is a symbol of the change and awakening that is required to dismantle that which is artificial...or conditioned within our natures...(it) is the spiritual fire or life force that requires that we dismantle and restructure old forms within our personality... (Through) external wake up calls, you clearly see who you are and what you want in your life regardless of family or cultural conditioning".

"Knocked from the tower by the lightening flash is the materialistic notion that matter and form are the ruling principles of existence...the false monism of the materialist, and the false interpretation of will which makes it something personal, something which may be set against the impulse originating from the cosmic Purpose".

"This picture corresponds to the stage of spiritual unfoldment, wherein a series of sudden, fitful inspirations leads to the perception that the structure of knowledge built on the foundation of the fallacy of personal separateness is a tower of false science...At this stage, the advancing seeker for wisdom suffers the destruction of his whole former philosophy. The whole structure is an elaboration of superficial observation, traditional race-thought, false reasoning and an erroneous theory of will".

Here in America we live in the Tower. We have the illusion of safety and the illusion of freedom. We protect ourselves so we do not see or feel the suffering that occurs throughout this world. We are the 5% elite...and for this we pay the price of living in our towers of illusion, of not seeing Truth, of not being connected. Our identity as "Americans" has allowed us to feel justified following our own "rights" to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, while we ignore that U.S. corporations and (yes) our government hurt so many others in the world. There might just be a reason why other people in the world hate our society; there might just be some truth (and we do not want to face this) that we are in some tiny way responsible for what happened yesterday. ....

The Logic of Power has come to an End
By Christa Zettel, Austria:

The logic of power is penalty and deterrence.

But how can you punish and deter people that give their life for their cause?

It is simply impossible to fight terrorism with terror. Terrorism and blind
hate is fed by terror. What happened in the USA today might have shown in a
dramatic and final way the limits of power and violence.

Mankind has reached the point today, where it is very obvious the fight
against terrorism has only one realistic option: to eliminate the roots of
separation and hatred instead of trying to eliminate human beings."

A Global Call for a Moral War
By John McConnell, Founder of Earth Day

With the terrorist destruction of the World Trade Center it is imperative the whole human family mobilize for a moral equivalent of World War II. The solution is not to kill the killers. The only way to avoid more acts of terror is attention and support for actions that eliminate the causes of terrorism.

Destroying a terrorist group will only increase the determination of other terrorists to have revenge.

Human greed, injustice and folly have almost ruined our planet. But with the aid of new technology a vigorous global effort can repair the damage. Until now, Earth Caretakers have been a sad minority. The most powerful institutions (global corporations and rich governments) have usually put financial profit first. The resulting social and environmental damage is disastrous. But vision and action can change that.

Now we have a chance to take the anger caused by the World Trade Center disaster, and use it to eliminate the real causes of violence, war and terrorism.

Press, Radio, TV and Internet play a vital role. Actions, good or bad, begin in the mind. Those able to command media attention have a special obligation to speak out about the crisis and its solution -- attention and headlines for
positive actions that are benefiting people and planet.

Mass media has a sacred obligation as the eyes and ears of the public to:
-- Headline cases of peaceful progress in the human adventure that replace hate, fear, greed and lust.
-- Give recognition and attention to people and projects that eliminate pollution and poverty and foster peace, justice and the care of Earth.

We can, and must, direct the anger caused by the destruction of the World Trade Center to vigorous actions for Earth's rejuvenation by friend and foe -- with peace, justice and prosperity for all.

From Barbara Marx Hubbard, the Foundation for Conscious Evolution:

As we mourn the tragic death of innocent people, contemplate the root causes of violence and hatred, and attempt to develop a wise strategy for response, a powerful realization dawns. We have reached a crisis of evolutionary proportions. We are at the threshold of a quantum jump -- either towards greater violence and destruction, or transformation through cooperation.

This crisis must serve as a call for convergence among people who are peace builders, conflict resolvers, compassionate listeners, those who search for common ground -- the healers, social innovators, communities of faith. We must develop a new social process of synergy and cocreation to bring to birth out of this pain the new world that has been struggling to be born in our midst for thousands of years.

We are the generation with the choice. What we choose now will affect the lives of generations to come, and all life on the planet.

Within every sector of society there are initiatives already active that are supporting the transformation of our current social and environmental systems, but they are not yet fully connected or communicated. We believe that by bringing about a greater synergy among these initiatives a comprehensive plan of action will be revealed. As a service to the emerging global community the Foundation for Conscious Evolution is developing the "Peace Room" on Internet. It is an operating hub to scan for, map, connect, and communicate the people and innovations now working to heal and positively evolve our world. At present we are inviting Evolutionary Colleagues from every sector of society to inform the Peace Room of the current situation and emerging initiatives in their sectors, and a proposed response to the crises and opportunities at hand.

While we pray for the thousands of people who are suffering from this tragedy, let us also actively connect and cooperate to bring about a planetary awakening in our lifetime. Together we make a difference.

http://www.consciousevolution.net">http://www.consciousevolution.net.

Victory Over Violence, by Jeanne Lanigan

As long as we
bury our dead with honor
suffer our grief together
pray for the dead, dying and suffering
help those who have lost so much
help those who have witnessed, what no one ever should
celebrate those who have fought this battle in the buildings' rubble, and the hospitals
honor our heroes, known and unknown, who have acted with courage
As long as we act out of love and unity
though our losses are large,
our attackers will not have won

As long as we
sit in silence each day to remember and send our love to those who have suffered this
find even a small way to make a positive difference in our community
remember that in every country of this world, people want peace
If we seek a fitting justice, that harms no innocents and refuses revenge though our losses are large, our attackers will not have won

But if we become the mirror of our attackers
If we act against others because of their religion, birthplace or economic position
let our fear and grief overwhelm our truth
If we abandon our hopes for a world of peace
then our attackers will have won

Yet if we take this as an opportunity to prove the depth of our truths
If we can reach out our hands in peace to those around the world who suffer as we have
know all the people of the world as our family
see their suffering with our minds eye
feel their pain with our heart's compassion
accept their love as they send it our way
act to better the human condition

If we can know that in our dark side, we are capable of acting as our attackers did
for it is only in this knowing that we can discover our true enemy
and conquer our fears
if we can see ourselves as belonging to a family that values all peoples and their basic rights
hold a vision of a world united in one community, despite their differences and seek justice within that vision
If we can see our enemies as our family, who have lost their souls to the darkness
reach out with understanding and compassion to even those, who took joy at
our suffering
Then we will have won
we will have won far more than we might imagine
for we will have won the war
for the Human Spirit,
for freedom for all
and the world peace we all wish to share.

The choice is ours, the time is now a true Victory over Violence is within our reach.

By Pennie Stasik O'Grady:

I see a world looking back on September 11, 2001 as the turning point
which transformed America and its decision making on international
policy to one of careful consideration of the needs of ALL people in
the world -- and all life on this planet. I see an America
remembering with full awareness and regret its former status as a
Most Feared Nation. And I see an America relieved and grateful for
the lessons learned and wisdom gained through this most tragic
expression of unmet needs.

May the ways of peace rain down upon us.

By Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times:

If there is to be a memorial, let it not be of stone and steel. Fly no
flag above it, for it is not the possession of a nation but a sorrow
shared with the world.

Let it be a green field, with trees and flowers. Let there be paths that
wind through the shade. Put out park benches where old people can sun in
the summertime, and a pond where children can skate in the winter.

Beneath this field will lie entombed forever some of the victims of
September 11. It is not where they thought to end their lives. Like the
sailors of the battleship Arizona, they rest where they fell.

Let this field stretch from one end of the destruction to the other. Let
this open space among the towers mark the emptiness in our hearts. But do
not make it a sad place. Give it no name. Let people think of it as the
green field. Every living thing that is planted there will show faith in
the future.

Let students take a corner of the field and plant a crop there. Perhaps
corn, our native grain. Let the harvest be shared all over the world,
with friends and enemies, because that is the teaching of our religions,
and we must show that we practice them. Let the harvest show that life
prevails over death, and let the gifts show that we love our neighbors.

Do not build again on this place. No building can stand there. No
building, no statue, no column, no arch, no symbol, no name, no date, no
statement. Just the comfort of the earth we share, to remind us that we
share it.

Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

A series of touching and inspiring pictures:
http://spot.eroded.org/thankyou/">http://spot.eroded.org/thankyou/

From Steve Sugarman:

I feel it is now very clear. All activists, all educators, all visionaries and lightworkers and change agents and cultural creatives need to come together as one. We are well past the time for unleashing a new vision for civilization. A new vision based on love and peace and harmony and joy.

We must gather to bond all humanitarian and social and ecological causes as one. For they are all one. proprietary actions will help no one, and will only fracture. We must become One Movement, and present our visions for civilization to all on the planet.

It is time. Let us gather. We need to set meeting times and places. We need to put our cards on the table. What do we want our civilization to look like? How would we like it to function? If it can be dreamed, it can be done. If not us, who? If not now, when?

This is a call to action. It is time. Let us gather.

Alternative News Sources:

http://www.alternet.org/