Blackbird

Actually yes, we do have a right to get upset. Personally, I was scared shitless when I found out what had happened in the US, espically since we were so incredibly close to ground zero. The fourth plane was less then 50 KM away from the Canadian border when it turned around and headed back towards Washington. It's true that we aren't the target of terroists, but the fact that we are as close as we are to the US border makes us an indirect target to checmical or biological terroist attack. All I can say is, you should be thanking god that Pakistan is siding with the US on this one, becuase if they weren't, I can almost guarantee you we would be preparing for World War III.

fLiRtZ

.. ok... i havent read all the posts, but i felt like i wanted to add my opinion, or well.. comment in here.

i have been watching the news (since its the ONLY thing on) and its starting to REALLY sink in at how many ppl have REALLY died, and i mean, the stories are HORRIBLE.. like the man who took his son to school (i JUST saw this story on tv) and his WHOLE company ( like 700 / 1000) were on the 101st floor -or sumthin, of the first tower that got hit, and they all died.. if this man didnt take his son to school that day, he would have died as well..

and another man, talks about how he was on the 91st floor (or so, ) and he saw the other building, -he was in the other tower, and he started walking down the stairs, made it to the 31st floor, called him wife - at another mans desk, and those two men walked down the rest of the way,and on their way down, they saw an overweight women, and two men helping her, UP the stairs and he said they should go down, but the women insisted they go up, because there was 'fire' downstairs, and its too hot.... and the two men that were already on their way down continued, and the two helping the women, continued helping.. -they DIED helping someone.. going the wrong way, but just being.. helpful co-workers.

THEN another story, at the pentagon, a man went to T.O (i duno where) with a flag and flowers, he said his Twin brother died in the west wing.. and it was there birthday, sept, 12th...

these are just a FEW of the many.. but i mean, its all SOO heartbreaking,
i am sure there are LOTS of stories like these.. and some probably good news stories, but, i still cant believe some people could DO something like this.. kill themselves, to kill others... it boggles my mind...

One more thing.. i dont know if this is true, but i heard that the Director from "Frasier" was on one of the planes that went into the tower.........

horrible.. just horrible......

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'it's Real and its been Fun, but was it all reaL fuN?'

cool disco ed!

SoJu- It's not just white trash that is ignorant. I'm here at university and there were other students (supposedly really smart ones) speculating about whether or not North Korea was going to take advantage of the situation by invading Alaska.

And I love people who worry about collateral damage that may occur in Canada is the U.S. is ever attacked by biological or chemical weapons. Let's take New York City for example. People get so worried that some of the chemicals might seep all the way across the border to Canada yet they don't seem to care that the population of New York would be annihalated at the same time. Selfish concerns.

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love peace and grease
ed!

Everybodies_Daddy

Everyone is jumping so quickly to paint a picture of the end of the world. This is the absolute wrong thing to do. Just go about your daily life until the powers that be decide who, and what shall be done.

NATO's unilateral anti-terrorism policy is now to punish the countries that harbour terrorists. We MAY end up involved in a multi-theatre war against a lot of very evil people.

The incredible part about all of this, it may end up doing more good than harm. Russia, China, North Korea and Cuba have all expressed their support for the NATO anti-terrorism cause... the last time that Russia, China and NATO (or the allied countries at the time) stood shoulder to shoulder against a common enemy? World War Two. Perhaps this act of hate may bring us a new era in world peace.

This world will always need "bad guys"... people who rain down hateful deeds on others for their own political purpose. The greatest advances in world history were mad when we were trying our damndest to kill one another...

With that said, let's go get some... I can live with fighting a war in the desert- no friggin' swamps to worry about.

MCED

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Dirty Little Secrets

Hot + Dirty

Blackbird

EXCUSE ME SIR?!?!?!?!??!?!??!?!?!? How the fuck is it selfish to be concerned about what might happend to my family, and friends, and everybody i've ever known in my entire fucking life if a weapon of MASS destruction was unleashed on the US, directly affecting us. As for the threat of Biological or Chemical weapons, I'm not even going to bother trying to explain to you the threat they could be, this website explains it a lot better then I could http://www.cdiss.org/bw.htm.

cool disco ed!

It's the people who worry about themselves while not giving a shit about all the Americans who would die in such an event. There have been people telling me that New York should've been expecting (and possibly deserving) it since America has treated other countries badly in the past. These people seem to forget that the THOUSANDS of Americans who died were all innocent. These same people only start condemning such attacks and only feel sorrow and fear if they believe that they, themselves, are in any sort of danger. In my opinion, that is selfish.

Blackbird

Well Then Ed, I apologize for being human.... I guess living in Israel for half my life and watching friends die makes me a little scared, and "selfish" from the threat of terroism.

Wunderbrat

hey blackbird
no one singled you out as being selfish
and if someone is more concerned about the "remote" possibility
of thier own safety being compromised
over the families of those who died in the WTC attack
imho would be labelled by most as being, if not selfish, nevertheless offensive.

Rick

"remote" - as for those living in Canada

cool disco ed!

Here are some good articles form the Globe and Mail:

The U.S. Had It Coming?

"The Americans are reaping the fruits of their crimes against humanity."

That's Saddam Hussein speaking. But you don't have to go to Baghdad to hear such views. Just hang around any college campus. Or chat with your well-heeled neighbours in downtown Toronto. Anti-American sentiment is nearly as popular among Canadians -- especially well-heeled ones -- as Starbucks lattes.

You'd think anti-Americanism would have gone discreetly underground this week. Not so. My inbox is crammed with e-mail such as the following: "The values that I venerate as a Canadian are not the same as those values venerated by Americans. Where is your indignation when NATO bombs Iraq or when the CIA perpetrates deathly intrigues worldwide every day?"

The anti-Americans, of course, don't believe that the thousands of innocent people who were blown to smithereens deserved to die. They're as horrified as anyone at the carnage. But they also believe the United States was asking for it.

One first-year student at a leading university described her political science class this week. "Everyone was saying it's a terrible thing, but America brought it on itself because it's against the other countries," she said. "The whole attitude was: America sucks." There was no other point of view expressed. The professor didn't bother to suggest there might be one.

At first, I thought these rants against America were confined to the usual anti-globalization crowd. But here's a sampling of opinion culled from lawyers, managers, teachers and various other people in Toronto:

"Isn't this really a symbol for people's discontent all over the world?"

"Well, what do they expect? They've been messing about in everyone's business. The only thing that's shocking is that it took so long."

"What goes around comes around. It's hubris."

I don't think these views represent the majority of Canadians. Certainly, the cafeteria lady, the liquor-store clerk and the guy who fixes my plumbing don't blame the victim. They're outraged. Their attitude is: "Terrorism must be stopped, so that this never happens again." They think that the United States must strike back and that Canada ought to help them.

But what do they know? Among the more sophisticated set, people say, "They should have known this was coming," and "Retaliation will make it worse." I heard well-meaning people phone in to CBC talk shows to ask just what it was America did, anyway, because they weren't exactly sure. I heard other well-meaning people describe the attack as an act of "misdirected anger," as if the suicide hijackers had been badly informed, and if only someone had sat down and explained things properly to them, they would have changed their minds.

It hadn't occurred to them that there are some people in the world who hate us and want us dead because they believe Western civilization is profoundly corrupt.

The bill of indictment against the United States is both very vague and very specific. Some people blame the gap between rich and poor, which the U.S. is either inadvertently or advertently responsible for creating. The feeling is that the poor are so desperate, so hopeless and so oppressed that it's not surprising they would lash out like this.

Other people blame the long record of alleged U.S. atrocities abroad, including its efforts to overthrow Fidel Castro, the war in Vietnam, the secret war in Cambodia, its support for various strongmen and dictators, the Persian Gulf war, the oppression of Palestinians, the deliberate starvation of Iraqi children etc. etc. They also like to argue that the CIA trained and backed Osama bin Laden in the first place, so it serves them right. (History professor John Kirton, at the University of Toronto, says the links weren't close, but a popular theory circulating on the Internet says the CIA really did it.)

Most kids have not mastered the bill of indictment in very much detail. Nonetheless, they know for a fact that America sucks, and that George W. Bush really sucks. "The kids in my school won't stop talking about how they hate the U.S.," says a young woman I know. Her Grade 12 classmates are multicultural children of the intelligentsia. "They think it's intellectually sophisticated. It means, 'I'm cynical, I'm hard.' "

Her generation has embraced anti-racism and multiculturalism. They believe in tolerance and respect for difference. But they have not been taught to believe that some values are better than others. "Sometimes, I'd like to ask them what would happen if a country like Afghanistan had the power the U.S. has," she says. "But you can't bring that up because it's perceived as racist."

Among these kids, reflexive anti-Americanism is as much a fashion statement as the jeans they wear. Their teachers haven't challenged their beliefs. Their parents haven't, either. Chances are their teachers and their parents think George Bush sucks, too. They've all been raised in a country where recreational bitching at the United States is just as much fun as going to Disney World. And they've never learned how much their lives depend on the liberal democratic values our nations share.

It's not just Muslims who are afraid of being stigmatized by mindless prejudice. So is any kid who's not entirely sure that George Bush sucks. "My American friend who's a student here has been crying all week long," says the first-year student at the first-rate university. "That's all she's heard."

It probably wouldn't do any good for these girls to remind their friends that Saddam Hussein is a warmonger who attacked four countries before the Americans moved against him, or that he's a mass murderer who did not hesitate to gas his own women and children, or that he was a hair away from being able to make a nuclear bomb and chemical weapons, which he would have been most happy to use on all the rest of us. It wouldn't help them to point out that the United States imposed a virtuous peace after the Second World War, and converted Germany and Japan into robust democracies. Or that Canada is full of countless Afghans and Pakistanis and Muslims from many nations who are here because they want what we have, not what they had in the lands they left behind.

It probably wouldn't do any good for them to remind their friends that the people who perished in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were doing work that makes it possible to go shopping at the Gap whenever we want, with money in our pockets and without fear for our personal safety. Work that makes it possible to express any political belief you want and not get locked up.

They're just kids, of course, so I guess you can forgive them for their ignorant prejudice against America. But the grownups -- the many, many grownups -- should know better.

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cool disco ed!

Stop Making Excuses for Terrorism:


Before we can fight terrorism with any success, we have to change the way we think about it.

People in the West often assume that terrorists must be driven to it by some burning grievance. If the men of the Irish Republican Army bomb a pub in Belfast, it must spring from their anger over the British occupation. If a Palestinian suicide bomber blows himself up outside an Israeli disco, it must spring from his frustration over the harsh Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

Call it the "root causes" theory. What terrorists do may be despicable, goes the argument, but they did it because their grievances had been ignored by a brutal occupier, an oppressive government or an indifferent world. It follows that the only way to end terrorism is to address the "root causes."

Serious students of terrorism rejected the "root causes" theory long ago. Terrorism does not spring spontaneously from social deprivation or political oppression. If it did, then every poor and undemocratic country would be a hive of terrorists. Soviet dissidents never resorted to murdering innocent civilians, nor did the opponents of Nazism -- though they were fighting some of the worst forms of oppression ever seen.

Terrorism is a deliberate form of political or ideological warfare waged by fanatics with a disposition for unlimited violence. In the case of extreme religious terrorists, whether Islamic or Christian or Sikh, they are engaged in a holy war, a struggle for the fate of the world that justifies any amount of bloodshed.

Addressing "root causes" will not stop people like that. Even if Israel pulled out of the West Bank tomorrow, Islamic terrorist groups would keep trying to kill Israelis. To them, it is not the Israeli occupation that rankles. It is the very existence of Israel. It is pure hatred, more than grievance, that drives them.

Yet the "root causes" notion lives on. We have seen it twice this week on these very pages. The day after Tuesday's attack, University of Toronto scholar Thomas Homer-Dixon argued that the root cause of terrorism was the growing gap between rich countries and poor ones.

"These differences breed envy and frustration and, ultimately, anger," he wrote. "The problem will never go away if we don't address the underlying disparities that help motivate such violence."

Then, in yesterday's paper, columnist Rick Salutin said that the key to defusing support for terrorism was "eliminating the worst cases of wretchedness that sustain it." His suggestion: End Western sanctions against Saddam Hussein's Iraq and get Israel to pull out of the West Bank.

No doubt both writers abhor what happened this week as much as everyone else. But by making excuses for terrorism, even qualified excuses, they give the perpetrators what they crave most: legitimacy. Worse, they acquit them of responsibility for their own actions.

If terrorism springs from their frustration over unanswered grievances, then it is not really their fault. It is merely a disease and they are simply the carriers, "rather in the way that innocent animals might be the carriers of rabies" (as the conservative U.S. author Midge Decter once put it).

That not only gives comfort to the terrorists, it hurts the effort to fight them. If terrorists are not morally responsible for their own actions, then it frees the rest of us from the burden of taking them on.

Well, that freedom just ended. We now know we must confront terrorism face to face. Before we do that, we must learn to see it as it is -- not as the product of "root causes" but as the result of a deliberate decision to kill in the name of hate.

Ford Prefect

I've tried to argue a million times this past week that the Canadian media is trying to exploit the whole tragedy in order to assert their own importance/role in the happenings. Its true that we have been influenced, but the media seems to be over-emphasizing any of our ties to the whole matter.

For example, the Toronto star was printing articles on its first few pages about the shock of bay street brokers and shit who had dealings with companies in the trade center. While I do feel for them, I must say I feel worse for the victims and their families, as well as those of other present disasters (which get crappy coverage way at the back of the paper. Funny how there are no articles concerning their Canadian acquaintances)

I'm not saying that Canada should not show concern, but we should leave it at that- concern. There is no need to embellish how we also are part of the tragedy, and therefore deserve sympathy. There are more important issues to be touched upon.

Blackbird

Do u realize how tied we are to the US? Economically, we may as well be the same country and I could go on for a while about the social and political ties with the US, but I'm sure you can find that out for yourself. As long as globalization continues to be a powerful force in North America, the United States will continue to play an important part in the lives of all Canadians, for better or for worse... You might not notice it yet, but many of the things in your life that you took for granted in the past will change in the next few years because of the events of this past week... Go down to Bloor Station, or Pearson Airport, and say hi to the Military Police armed with Machine Guns, and then tell me we aren't apart of this tragedy...

Everybodies_Daddy

Firstly, minor point... Military police don't carry machine guns. They're not qualified. They carry 9mm pistols or C7 Service rifles, which are repetition/automatic fire...

Secondly, I concur... this happened 8 hours drive from our home... how can it NOT affect us? This has changed the WORLD... never will air travel be the same...

MCED

Blackbird

Well.. I know nothing about weapons and i'm proud of that... All I know is they had big guns and they were dressed in camoflauge....

Everybodies_Daddy

Sort of like Pamela Anderson in a war movie?