Unattended bags? Suspicious behavior?
Take notice of people in bulky or inappropriate clothing.
Report anyone tampering with video cameras or entering unauthorized areas.
If you see something, say something.
I see something.
I see a criminally insane person roaming the halls of the White House.
He believes he's the president of the United States.
And I see a rotund bastard with a heart problem hovering in the background, pulling the strings.
His crooked smile lights the way to perdition.
In the early morning chill I see the streets of New York filled with people on their way to work.
We think we're home free because John Ashcroft retired.
No more red alerts, no more terrorists disguised as tourists worming their way into town.
No more dirty bombs left in suitcases in Grand Central.
Little do we know. Little dare we surmise.
As the rotund bastard with the heart problem said the other day, "You know, it's not an accident that we haven't been hit in four years."
What's that supposed to mean? That sooner or later he'll feel threatened enough to push the hot button again?
And when he does will he be in his secret, climate-controlled tunnel half-way between D.C. and Wyoming?
Far from the narrow, dark canyons of Manhattan?
If you see something, say something.
I see something.
I see the forgotten anthrax killers whose bioweapons source was not al-Qaeda but our own American arsenals.
I see no global war declared on Fort Detrick or the Dugway Proving Grounds, no troops deployed, no actions taken.
Our attention always focused somewhere out there (Iraq, North Korea, Iran), never in here.
If you see something, say something.
I see a billion dollars a week spent on this war rather than the two billion a year needed to lock down leaking Russian nuclear facilities.
I see the US military buying anthrax in violation of treaties limiting the spread of bioweapons.
I see nanotech embraced for mirage medical cures while its use for surveillance and control is ignored.
I see all of us innoculated into a state of permanent low-level paranoia.
If you see something, say something.
I see something.
I see our Supreme Leader in the Oval Office fondling "the football," the top-secret suitcase with instructions to blow up the planet.
Sixteen years after the Berlin wall fell I see thousands of hydrogen bombs still on hair-trigger alert in Russia and the USA.
I see forty of those bombs aimed at New York City.
If you see something, say something.
I see our protective coating of ironic distance sheilding us from the truth.
Over the phone I hear "Have a nice day," and "Please speak to the system."
And in the stores, behind the Christmas carols, I hear the whine of black helicopters making the world safe for democracy.
"Freedom!" I bark, and a miniature poodle on a leash barks back at me.
I see something.
I see the US holding the world for ransom.
Again and again the same words keep surfacing: "the national interest, the national interest, the national interest."
Reptilian brains having a toxic reaction to testosterone.
Plunging us all into the icy waters of selfish calculation.
If you see something, say something.
I see this trashed-out culture of ours approaching the wall.
Plant and animal species disappearing at warp speed.
Soil turned to dust, aquifers drained dry.
And I see it's too painful to go there.
It's too painful to go there, I'm headed outside for a smoke.
It's too painful to go there, I'm busy learning Italian.
It's too painful to go there, my therapist told me to stay positive.
She said that whatever I experience is up to me, that I create my own world.
My guru said the same thing.
But it's funny, no matter what they say I keep seeing this weirdness out of the corner of my eye.
I see undercover agents on every transport platform, watching over my fellow Americans strapped into bucket seats.
I see my fellow Americans weighed down by schedules and cellphones and computers and wristwatches.
I see their children swallowing pharmaceuticals to get through the day.
While in nearby fields the birds and animals look on with infinite patience, waiting outside of clock time for us to burn out and disappear.
(The yellow-throated warbler singing, "Is that the best you can do?
Best you can do?"
"Is that the best you can do?")
I see something.
I see arbitrary national borders separating us from our humanity.
I hear the siren song of nationalism driving us onto the rocks.
9/11 and the war in Iraq no more than red herrings distracting us from this fact.
Cause Iraqis are people just like us. How can their deaths be worth less than ours?
I see it's time for us to take a look in the mirror.
Notice the frightened children in there, wondering how they got into this mess.
Realize there's no one in the whole wide world to blame.
Decide to risk everything and open our hearts.
That's the one thing against which the rotund bastard has no defense.
If you see something, say something.
I see that even though my therapist charges a hundred and seventy-five an hour and my guru has a lifetime free pass, maybe they're right.
I'm responsible for what's happening to me.
My beliefs create my experience.
Otherwise why am I swallowed up in rituals of mutual self-destruction while outside a sweet wind blows through the trees?
Cause I see two wolves fighting in my heart, one vengeful and the other compassionate.
Which one will I feed today?
Will I behave as if the god in all of life matters?
Or will I come after you, blaming and accusing?
Which one will I feed today?"
"Dear friends
First I want to say that it is rare that I am moved to send out messages to so many of my friends at once. I hope this does not offend any of you, but it is sent with heartfelt sympathy and sorrow for everyone affected by the tragedy of September 11th and its aftermath. I wrote the piece below over the past few days and decided, because of the response that I got from the people that I sent it to initially, to share it more widely. And I also wanted to preface it with some thoughts about the current situation.
These are hard times for anyone who has a larger context than what one could get from the mainstream media or official reports through which to contemplate the events of the past four weeks. Everyone I know is struggling to deal with the aftermath. Many of us are especially challenged to deal with our distrust for the current administration, their motives, underlying agenda, and the very paradigm from which they operate. Like so many others I also have felt the full range of emotions from pride and admiration for the courage, kindness, and generosity of so many people in this country (the basis for a very different kind of feeling for what is great about this country than the uncritical flag-waving, sabre-rattling variety that seems to dominate right now), to dismay, horror, and outrage at the way many of the leaders of our country have responded to the unfolding of events.
The past week or so I find myself coping with more and more sorrow and anger. Much of it relates to the outrage directed at people who are seeking and speaking the truth about our real history and the degree to which the situation in which we find ourselves today is related to long-standing policies of our own government, which often have often been lawless, violent, and anti-democratic. It would appear that the worst aspects of this country emerge along with the best at times of crisis, and so today anyone who does not stand 100% with our leaders can be called a traitor or at the very least unpatriotic and not deserving of a public voice. Nonetheless, the truth remains that the U.S. has had a huge hand in creating the world that we now must all live in - that is undeniably true. And this level of fear and vulnerability is only new to people on these shores, not to most of the world. And those who benefit from the restraint of civic discourse, freedom of information, and the militarization of the nation are scrambling to consolidiate and institutionalize their gains under the cloak of bipartisanship and the need for us to forever be a nation living in fear.
It is as though no one can speak these truths without being accused of excusing or justifying or rationalizing the horrendous crimes against humanity that were carried out on the 11th. This is an enormous and critical distortion of the truth. There are no excuses. None. Not for the acts of those who perpetrated these most recent crimes, nor for the terrorism that the U.S. and the ruthless regimes that we have supported around the world have inflicted upon the millions of innocent citizens of those other countries. And this also does not deny or excuse the atrocities carried out by some of our enemies over the years. Atrocities are atrocities regardless of the goodness of the cause for which they are committed or the self-righteousness of the people who commit them.
I find it astonishing that the same people who are now accusing those who point out the truth about U.S. foreign policy today, can't see the duplicity of their arguments as they rationalize and justify and excuse U.S.-sponsored terrorism elsewhere in the world. People who commit crimes against humanity must be brought to justice. If we are in fact a nation of laws, not of men, as we claim, we would seek no other outcome. One need only look at our new Ambassador to the UN to understand the mindset and lack of integrity of our current administration in the area of human rights abuses or acts of state sponsored terror. What is needed if we are to ever overcome the cycles of violence we seem so committed to perpetuating are strong and truly international institutions of law and justice to which every nation, no matter how weak or powerful are accountable. Acting unilaterally by declaring war against a small group of fanatics rather than dealing with this as a crime against humanity and all nations, requiring a truly international response only fertilizes the ground for the growth of future terrorism.
What I wrote, below, is just a personal outpouring of what I have been feeling and thinking over these past few weeks. And of my conviction that it is only through embracing the pain and sorrow and anger and disappointment and reality - including our own complicity in these things - that we can begin to find a way out. And also from my belief that it is gratitude, compassion, and love, not fear, greed, anger or hatred that can lead us from a place of such awesome despair and danger.
I send this with hopes for a growing movement that values all life and moves to undermine the paradigms and politics of consolidated power, wealth, and control over those of shared power, wealth, and restraint and the understanding that freedoms and rights are accompanied by responsibilities and obligations that transcend private, personal interests. We need to strongly stand up for our civil liberties, including our right to know what our government is doing in our name and with our taxes and in its international agreements. We need to make continually clear to our elected representatives that we will hold them accountable for what they do, whether committing further atrocities in other lands, giving away our rights of economic and political sovereignty to global trade and investment cartels, or taking away our rights such as freedom of speech, or assembly, or the right to dissent and protest without being labeled a terrorist (check out this FBI website to see if you might actually be a terrorist yourself by the FBI's definition: http://www.fbi.gov/congress/congress01/freeh051001.htm>http://www.fbi.gov/congress/congress01/freeh051001.htm).
A key issue that we must address, if we are not to see a spiraling increase in such violence and social chaos around the world and at home, is corporate globalization and market fundamentalism. If you don't understand what is at stake, please read False Dawn by John Gray, and start doing some research into NAFTA, WTO, FTAA, MAI and what they represent in terms of the destruction of social fabric, local economies, and political freedoms, all to be sacrificed to the idea that corporate profits and the pursuit of the highest return on investment is always the highest good. Our leaders have placed our communities, our local, regional and national economies, and all of our laws for public health, safety and welfare in absolute jeopardy out of the insane rejection of the idea of the commons - of a public good superceding private good. The people behind the "wise use" movement - who proposed that every law or regulation that restricts the rights of individuals to maximize their profits - whether potential, imagined, or real - is a governmental "taking" and therefore creates a requirement for compensation for any conceivable loss of opportunity or potential profit - these are the people who are negotiating our global trade and investment agreements. This principle was written into NAFTA and it is embedded in the paradigm of WTO and all the international agreements on free trade and investment. The lawsuits are already being filed and won in NAFTA's private tribunals. This will ultimately result in the shredding of the fabric of civil society and result in tremendous chaos here and abroad. If we think our past policies have created opportunities for terrorists to vilify the US, just wait…. We don't appear to have real leaders. Few of our politicians have clue what they have created. Those that do and still support free trade over fair trade, and property rights over life, should not be given power over anything.
We have our own fundamentalists here, but what they believe in is the market and multinational corporate power. There is much work to be done and the first step is being awake. But most important is that we understand that we are not alone and we are not powerless. Our voices need to be heard and those of us that know and understand what is being done have an obligation to become the leaders that we apparently don't have today.
I am sending this to you because I count you among my friends and deeply value that friendship and the values that we share. It is sent with my blessings and with a loving and open heart.
After Math
I'm almost embarrassed to share
This experience
Too full of emotion
Anger, hope, fear and sorrow
I felt the need to write
And somehow started thinking
About the word "Aftermath"
About the after math
The calculus after disaster
The area under the curve
Under the arc of consequences
Not at all those that we had in mind
But I felt the need to know the numbers
To be able to start to write
So I spent an hour, perhaps more
In internet info searching mode
How many dead now, which ones where?
How many missing?
By who's count?
From what countries of origin?
From what companies?
How many were firemen?
Policemen or Port Authority?
What about at the Pentagon?
Or on the plane in Pennsylvania?
And then I noticed all at once
That I had totally succumbed
To the effects of the numbers
I found I was stunningly numbed
And I thought - Did anyone get it?
When they invented this word?
Numb-er?
That that is what they so often are?
Doesn't anyone notice how effective are these symbols
At dulling the pain?
Dulling the senses?
Dulling the sense?
In my numbness I tried to write
But words and figures were just more symbols on the screen
What do these things mean?
5000, 6000, 7000 dead here, 500,000 starved children in Iraq
How many in Afganistan?
Or was that the number in Nicaragua? Why am I still feeling no pain?
And what about the first $40 billion of disaster recovery money?
To begin our journey back to September 10th
Will that not bring a lot of relief?
It's a little more than $6.50 for every human on earth
I know, it's just for us, spelled U. S.
The special four percent of the humans.
I know, actually it's only for a small percentage
Of that special four percent
But are these the only people who need relief?
But who's counting anyway?
And just what are we going to count?
Who counts?
What counts?
When did we last think
That measuring the right thing roughly is far better
Than measuring the wrong thing with great accuracy?
How do we begin when we don't have a clue
About the worth of any person?
One here is worth many there.
Because lives are obviously so much bigger
The closer they are to the observer
How can we solve for so many unknowns
When we officially don't care about
The value of each strand in the web of life?
The identity of all of our relations?
The consequences of our actions?
When we would rather ignore or suppress
The depth of our pain
The power of our love
The heat of our passion
The taste of our grief
The intensity of our despair
The value of the lives of the victims of our vengeance
The number of things left unsaid, undone
The weight of memories that are all that remain
The length of our mourning
This is not a test
This is a real emergency
Had this been a test
You would have been instructed
To return to the status quo without thinking
But this is a real emergency
And what is emerging is a calling
We are now called to show up
We are now called to do our home-work
We are now called to learn our real history
We are now called to understand
We are now called to demand to know
What our leaders do in our name
We are now called to become leaders
We are now called to wake each other up
We are now called to see ourselves
As the whole world sees us
The whole world
Not just the human beings present today
Not just human ancestors and future human beings
But all beings of every species
With whom we share this world
And we must also see
That it is in this awareness
And in our willingness to experience all these things
That we will find the only authentic power that exists
Power that is for life
We must remember
To call each other and ourselves to truth
To call each other and ourselves to compassion
To call each other and ourselves to loving kindness
And to call each other and ourselves
To keep our eyes open
To keep our hearts open
To keep our minds open
And to remember each other
And to remember as we deal with the aftermath
That gratitude is the first step
In every solution"
-David Eisenberg
