This article was forwarded to me some time ago. I still find it to be relevant, and imperative reading. It is long. Take it in small doses if you must. Special thanks to Dr. Mayur for contributing:

CREATING A WORLD BEYOND TERRORISM

by Rashmi Mayur, Ph.D.
Director International Institute for Sustainable Future
73A Mittal Tower Nariman Point Mumbai 400 021
Tel: 204 5758 Fax: 287 1250
E-mail: rashmimayur@hotmail.com

2 November 2001

September 11, 2001, has become a metaphor for our age. According to The Economist, that was the day "when the world changed." The Buddha has told us: "Everything in the world changes eternally." Then, what was so special about Tuesday, September 11, 2001? In reporting the incident, a TV journalist announced: "It was an event incomparable with any in the recent era." That summarizes the whole thing -- its details, its impact and its unprecedented consequences. As one of the leaders of the NGO movement at the United Nations put it: "The world will never be the same again.

 "Yes, it was a shattering event, a spectacular act of violence. The two World Trade Center towers in New York City and part of the Pentagon building in Washington D.C. were destroyed when, hijacked planes crashed into it in a barbaric act of terrorism, killing nearly 7,000 people. Of course, such events of devastation are not new to humanity. Several hundred buildings have been destroyed in Iraq during the last 10 years of bombings by the United States, and more than half a million people have died there due to economic sanctions. What is important about New York and Washington D.C. was that it happened in the United States: the richest, the most powerful and the most well armed country in the world - in short, the most impregnable. "How can anyone ever commit terrorism against the United States? "was the question asked by a diplomat at the UN during a meeting on terrorism. Something that had been considered impossible had occurred. It was totally unthinkable, unimaginable. It is this element of surprise, of the unexpected happening, which makes terrorism poignant.

Simultaneously, unknown and unrecognized by a majority of people, another event was playing out: media terrorism. Within moments, the September 11 assault burgeoned into a journalistic supernova. Playing on the two tall buildings and their collapse repeated incessantly for four days, embellished with the apocalyptic language of Armageddon, the episode was a global melodrama that reached more than half the population of the world, unto its very farthest corners. Everyone suffered (when America suffers, the world must suffer). Meanwhile, on January 26 of this year, in an earthquake in Gujarat, more than 50,000 people were killed and several thousand buildings were reduced to rubble. Much of the world is unaware of the event. The rest seem to have forgotten. It happened in India. And India, as we know, is poor.

On October 1, a special meeting on terrorism was called by the General Assembly of the United Nations to find a global solution to the problem of terrorism. The meeting ended on October 5 with an international consensus on fighting terrorism, agreed upon by more than 160 countries. Neither the General Assembly nor the Security Council of the United

Nations called a meeting on terrorism when, on March 13, 1993, 12 bombs exploded in different parts of Mumbai, destroying property and maiming or killing several hundred people. Or when Cuba urged the Security Council to act when a Cubana aircraft was blown up in flight by terrorists, killing 73 people on board in 1976. Why is there no mention anywhere of the Resolution against Terrorism which the United Nations passed in December 1987 and which was opposed by only 2 countries - the United States and Israel?

On October 7, the United States, along with UK and other members of the supporting coalition, unilaterally commenced their barbaric assault on Afghanistan, proclaiming it as a 'war' against terrorism. For the first time, the world was challenged by the superpower, as US President, George W. Bush cautioned: "Every nation in every region now has a decision to make. Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists."

Who has given permission to the United States and England to bomb Afghanistan? On what basis can the Security Council validate the attacks by a country or group of countries to retaliate against an unknown assailant by attacking and bombing innocent and vulnerable people, already reduced to living in a virtual Stone Age? In what way can it be called self-defense for the United States to attack Afghanistan, as was claimed by the newly-appointed US ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte, that the assault was in keeping with Article 51 of the UN Charter, when in fact the Charter does not allude at all to a unilateral attack by one nation on another in 'retaliation ' or 'self-defense'.

All the claims by Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, and Pervez Musharraf, the Taliban-supporting turncoat, of having proof of Osama Bin Laden's involvement in the terrorist attacks in the US, are baseless, unproven: total lies. The premise is more than questionable. There are many groups, in the Middle East and elsewhere, prepared to go to any lengths for retribution for the inequities and oppression suffered by their people; for revenge, for justice. These groups exist in great numbers in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Sudan and elsewhere.

Has anyone ever asked a fundamental question: How many wars, conflicts, invasions and conquests the United States has been engaged in during the last 55 years? What does these cycles of violences imply to the humanity in terms of financial losses, destructions, devastations, deaths, mutilations and the suffering. Where does it all lead the humanity to? What is this arrogance of military might and the control of such vast wealth by 285 million people in the sea of global poverty. Ultimately, the question is not only Afghanistan or Grenada or Chile or Vietnam. The question at a fundamental level is the future of humanity in the violent world perpetrated by one superpower.

One must recognize the irony of the age of globalization and its inherent duplicity. We find here a marked double standard by which human lives are valued. A week ago, four UN workers engaged in deactivating and removing old but still-lethal landmines became victims of badly-aimed bombs in civilian areas of Kabul. Two days later we saw another village mistakenly hit. Four children perished. The survivors in the family had to abandon their home and become refugees. And bombing continues indefinitely, night after night and during the sunlit day, with several hundred defenseless people paying a cruel price for no crimes of their own.

Whether he is guilty or not, no one knows where Bin Laden is. For all we know, he may even be in New York. No one has been able to prove that he masterminded the suicide attacks of September 11. What is clear, however is that most of the infrastructure in Afghanistan is now reduced to dust. Only 6% of the people had access to electricity. Now they too are in darkness. This is a cyber war in which the enemy cannot be found. Where are the members of the Taliban? With B-12 bombers, stealth fighters and hundreds of spy satellites circling the earth, the Americans cannot find them! Nor do the Americans recognize that the Al-Qaida network (one of many) does not exist only in Afghanistan, a country that most people in the world did not know existed until 1975, when it was dragged into the Cold War.

For the United States, terrorism elsewhere does not count. There are hundreds of terrorist camps in Pakistan, harboring training groups in the name of religion, for attacks against India in Kashmir. Yet Pakistan is an ally against terrorism for the US. The governments of both India and Pakistan, in cowardly and self-serving fashion, have bowed. They have submitted to the United States: India, so that its sanctions may be lifted, and Pakistan, also for removal of its sanctions as well as for other financial benefits.

All this may sound insane, Machiavellian and hellishly corrupt, but such is the world. Unless people everywhere recognize that what happened in America is only a beginning, violence, throughout this new century, will grow exponentially, and its manifestations will be increasingly, and subtly, refined. One day, several million will have to die if biological, chemical and nuclear terrorism is unleashed. No matter how much money Americans spend, there is no security against this most insidious and vicious terrorism. Otherwise, the CIA, with its expenditures of more than $30 billion each year, would have had the power to head off the dastardly acts of September 11, carried out with remarkably sophisticated coordination and the simplest of technologies.

For the world's people, especially those living, impoverished and powerless, in the former European colonies of Asia, Latin America and Africa, the future is no less dark and grim than it has been for the last 500 years. The plans to eliminate them, set into motion half a millennium ago, are no less alive in 2001. In many of these former colonies, war is the norm, and the buying of arms - $30 billion worth in 1999 (50% from the US) - is the prize. Afghanistan was the most unexpected victim of the Cold War.

There is another story to the assault on Afghanistan - the old story of controlling the earth's fast depleting resources. It is clear that the bombing of Afghanistan is part of the American strategy to complete what Ahmed Rashid, in his book, Taliban, describes as the 'New Great Game; of getting the control over US $ 1 trillion worth of oil & 300 trillion cubic feet of gas in Central Asia. The US Republican government, which received $ 26 million from the oil industry, (of which $ 1.8 million went to George W. Bush's Presidential election) is possibly clearing the way for US oil giant, Unocal,to build a pipeline from the oil-rich Central Asian republic of Turkmenistan (with an estimated six billion barrels of oil reserves) to the Pakistani port of Gwadar, via Afghanistan -- to be sold to the emerging economies in South and South East Asia, where a runaway demand is burgeoning.

But, even as the United Nations, the US and its partners in the 'war against terrorism' are looking for a future broad-based government in Afghanistan, almost none have envisioned any role for women, who have gone through the most horrendous atrocities under the various power-hungry fundamentalist regimes. All the idealistic talk by the UN, of toppling the demonic Taliban regime, will have no value, if another extremist group takes over and women, after being used as a gimmick, are relegated back to the their prisons of veil.
 
September 11 heralds three momentous changes for this century:

- The events of the last five years suggest that the United Nations may become a subsidiary of the State Department of the United States.

- The United States will assume legitimate authority to use its military power in order to establish a global hegemony, which means most of the world's nations will become vassal states; and

- NATO, consisting of 19 Euro-American countries, will become a global army (as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, announced on October 9, "NATO countries will provide an allied military presence in the eastern Mediterranean and demonstrate our resolve").

Beyond that, governments around the world will increase their powers over their citizens as George Orwell prophesied in his book '1984', through the "thought police" - surveillance, wiretapping and other insidious methods of intrusion into citizens' personal lives. As one Genovese Carabiniero boasted, "Civil liberties will be an issue of the past".

The only recourse for citizens of the world is to deflate these extraordinary powers of their governments, most of which are controlled by the armament industry, whose only goal is to manufacture and push arms by creating global fear, insecurity and paranoia. Ultimately, our cause is to create a sane and secure world. And so, as the Malaysian Ambassador said in the General Assembly meeting, "We must fight against all forms of terrorism" - social terrorism (a UN report says that 9,000 women were murdered under the dictates of the dowry custom in India in 1999); religious terrorism (all through the centuries, millions of people have been butchered by racists, bigots and religious fanatics); state terrorism (where was the United Nations when the US walked into Panama and Grenada in the 1980's? What about the US bombing of Sudan in 1998?) and corporate terrorism, which traditionally has most cruelly ground down the poor.

The purpose of the analysis in this article is not to express prejudices or criticisms against a specific society-in this case, America. It is simply to enlighten people about how the arrogance of wealth and power destroys the sanity and drives them to madness, and distorts their perception about themselves and others. And nowhere, we imply here that the terrorists, whether in New York and Washington or anywhere else , should not be brought to justice and punished. They must be penalized. In this context, it is important to define 'terrorism' as a specific kind of violence committed by an individual or group of individuals on a society in order to achieve some political purpose by means of intimidation, coercion or instilling tear. And this should not be equated with, as the December 1987 Resolution of the United Nations clearly states, "The rights of people struggling against racist and colonialist regimes of foreign military occupation in their just cause for liberation."

In this century, considering what lies ahead, it is imperative that all people relentlessly and courageously struggle against all forms of injustices. In the process, many thousands, even millions, may die. But there is no choice. The agents of real terrorism - corporations, imperialistic governments and the media that serve them - control all the known weapons of terrorism. If we value our lives and those of our children, we must work towards building a world without artificial borders. A world where the rule of law established by the UN as a world institution, that is the World Government, will work for six billion people in order that one day we shall all have freedom, equality, justice and sustainability. Our world will be peaceful. Our Earth will regain its beauty. Our children will grow in love - not, as now, in fear.

Listen to Dr. Mayur weekdays, 2-3pm on WBAI (99.5FM New York)

An Internet Joke: Mating

A man takes his wife to a livestock show.  They start walking down an aisle where  several prize-winning bulls are stalled. A sign on the first bull's stall reads: "This bull mated 50 times last year." The wife turns to her husband and says, "He mated 50 times in a year.  That's nearly once a week.  Isn't that nice!." They proceed to the next bull whose sign states: "This bull mated 65 times last year." The wife turns to her husband and says, "This one mated 65 times last year.  That's over 5 times a month.  You could learn from this one!" They went to the last bull whose stall has a sign saying: "This bull mated 365 times last year." The wife's mouth drops open and she says, "WOW!  He mated 365 times last year.  That is ONCE A DAY!!!  You could REALLY learn from this one." The man, finally fed up, turns to his wife and says, "Go up and ask if he had the same cow every day."  :) :) :)

You know what? I lied. That really wasn’t short at all, was it? I guess I just had a lot to say – one of the consequences of keeping quiet for too long. Anyway, thank you for hanging out with me. I hope you learned something, felt something, or were otherwise….well, not put to sleep! . If you liked THE OMO MISHA TIMES pass it on. Or, better yet – ADVERTISE!!! My rates are the cheapest in town.!

A special thanks goes out to my unofficial staff: Florence Tate, Jeannette Mobley, Dino @ Virtual Concepts LLC, and Daniel Pelavin, - these are the people who keep me informed and/or pick up where my limited graphic and computer skills leave me hanging!!!
 
Til next time……
Misha
omomisha@bigplanet.com
www.omomisha.com
 
212.969.0106

volume III: page 1 • page 2 • page 3 • page 4 • page 5