Environmental continued
from page 13

Afghanistan Perspective 
By Tamim Ansary forwarded from M. Adam Shecke 

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 Bin 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?
Tamim Ansary

Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2001 
From: Pamela B Berger. I'm forwarding this message I received which impacted me greatly and I feel is important to share. Please take a few minutes to see things from this perspective. It came with a request to "spread it around". Please do. P

Events Around the World
        
Tapestry of Remembrance 
For Sept 11th Victims to Be Created by Local Textile Artist

I am a textile artist in Minneapolis and my business partner and I are creating a tapestry that is made entirely of pieces of garments that belonged to the victims. We have been laying the groundwork for this project since October 12, 2001, and have established a not-for-profit organization, Towers of Peace - A Tapestry of Remembrance and Unity ^TM to handle the logistics of this project. A local bank has agreed to serve as the host account to handle donations for the project and we have secured a PO Box where the families can send the garment pieces. Our web site is almost finished. 

A  press release from January 7, 2002 is included. See 
( bottom of page 16 ).  We need to reach the families of the victims by national media before they begin to go through and dispose of the personal effects.  

I became a Reiki Master/Teacher in order to make this project truly Healing Art by channeling the energy from the victims' clothing back into the completed tapestry. This project is about healing mankind and the planet.

For Fabric Donations: Towers of Peace - 
A Tapestry of Remembrance and Unity TM 
PO Box 190, Mound, MN 55364-0190

For Financial Donations: Towers of Peace Fund 
First National Bank of the Lakes 
2445 Shadywood Road, Navarre, MN 55392 

For more information about the tapestry project, contact Mindy de Marmion at (612) 418-1627 or mmsbloom@aol.com    

8th Annual World Sacred Music
Festival & TourFez, Morocco
May 28 - June 11, 2002

We would like to bring to your attention that the 8th Annual World Sacred Music Festival will take place in the enticing city of Fez - Morocco. Over twenty different countries from diverse parts of our world will introduce the best of their sacred heritage to an audience from around the globe as well. If this is to your interest, please forward your postal address and a package will be sent to you immediately. Cordially, Rico Mernissi, Director of Communications. for more information, go to...
http://www.morocco-fezfestival.com/5thm_s99.html

 Meditation on the United Nations
From Lmurguia7@aol.com  Monday meditation on Financing for Development, practiced each Monday by a worldwide network committed to expanding the dimension of global development. The hour is optional... 

34th Pagan Gathering 
of the Tribes 2002
Etowah River Campgrounds, Dahlonega,  Georgia, USA 
September 19-22, 2002

Information about the Gathering is at: http://www.tylwythteg.com/gathering.html