THE E-MAIL BAG
I've decided to post some of the e-mails I have received over here, since it was getting too big to put on this page. Keep sending those e-mails!
NOT JUST AN AMERICAN DISASTER
NOTE: this was sent to me in an e-mail; I thought it really emphasized
the point I was trying to make. Thanks and God bless to the person that
sent this to me. It was as of September 23, 2001.
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 Bangladesh 50 missing. |
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 Brazil 55 missing. |
 Cambodia 20 missing. |
 Canada three dead, 35-50 missing. |
 Chile three missing. |
 China two dead, one missing. |
 Colombia two aboard a hijacked plane, 295 missing. |
 Czech Republic 66 missing. |
 Denmark five missing. |
 Dominican Republic one dead, seven missing. |
 Ecuador seven dead, 20 missing. |
 Egypt four missing. |
 Germany 4 dead, 120-150 missing. |
 Ghana four missing. |
 Guatemala five missing. |
 Hong Kong 19 missing. |
 Honduras one dead. |
 India 91 missing. |
 Indonesia one aboard a hijacked plane, one missing. |
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 Israel two on board hijacked plane, eight missing. |
 Italy 10 missing. |
 Japan two aboard a hijacked plane, 24 missing. |
 Jordan one missing. |
 Kenya one missing. |
 Lebanon two dead, four missing. |
 Malaysia four missing. |
 Mexico 19 missing. |
 Netherlands three dead. |
 Norway one missing. |
 Pakistan one dead, 20 missing. |
 Paraguay two missing. |
 Peru one dead, five missing. |
 Phillipines two dead, 115 missing. |
 Portugal five dead. |
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 South Africa one aboard a hijacked plane, five missing. |
 South Korea 15 missing. |
 Spain eight missing. |
 Sweden one missing. |
 Switzerland two dead, two on board one of the hijacked planes, two missing. |
 Taiwan nine missing. |
 Thailand two missing. |
 Turkey 131 missing. |
 Ukraine one missing. |
 United Kingdom 100 dead, 250 missing. |
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 Venezuela three missing. |
 Zimbabwe two missing. |
WHAT CAN YOU DO TO HELP?
Listed below are charities that are doing their best to help people who
were affected by this disaster.
- NYC
Emergency Efforts - official New York City site; includes
current emergency, relief, transportation, and missing persons information.
- Red Cross - blood donation number: 1-800-448-3543. For cash contributions to the American Red Cross National Disaster Relief Fund may be made via a secure online donation form.
- NY Firefighters Fund - all proceeds go towards the NY Firefighters 9-11 Disaster Relief Fund. Contribute via a secure online donation form.
- Save The Children - 1-800-728-3843. Contribute to help strengthen counseling and crisis support services with a secure donation form.
- United Way of New York - secure online donations to the September 11th Fund for New York and D.C.
- Salvation Army - 1-800-725-2769. Contribute to the Salvation Army's disaster relief efforts using a secure online donation form.
- Cantor
Fitzgerald Relief Fund - call 1-800-446-0500, or visit the
site for details on how to donate to help the families and loved ones
of those lost in the World Trade Center disaster.
- American
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals - includes
an online donation form for those who wish to help affected animals.
- National Disaster and Search Dog Foundation - appeal for funds to buy booties for the search and rescue dogs to help them walk in the glass and rubble.
Everyone also needs to go look at these pages! They describe the activities of certain sick twisted individuals who are using this disaster as an excuse to take advantage of people. PLEASE go here before giving to any charity that you've never heard of.
- Possible Fraud Schemes - special report on solicitations of donations for victims of terrorist attacks. From the U.S. Department of Justice.
- Consumers Warned to Beware of Online Disaster-Relief Scams - tips on how to make sure your donations are used as intended. From Computerworld.
AMERICA RESPONDS!
Several people have sent me pictures of ways Americans are dealing
with the tragedy. I thought I'd like to post some of them here.
Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama
Brothers of Delta
Chapter of Alpha Phi Omega (of which I am proud to call myself
a brother), along with the SGA, BSU, IFC, NPHC, and about a dozen other
organizations, held a candlelight vigil on the steps of Samford Hall,
which was attended by over 2,000 people.
Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas
San Diego, California
Residents came together to build a "human flag."
University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska
A
Letter From Our Canadian Friends
This is a letter written in the seventies following watergate by Gordon Sinclair. It was passed around the Internet in the wake of the attack. Rock on, Canada!
"This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth. Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of these countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.
When France was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it.
When earthquakes hit distant cities, it is the United States that hurries in to help. This spring, 59 American communities were flattened by tornadoes. Nobody helped.
The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent, warmongering Americans. I'd like to see just one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplane. Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10? If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all the International lines except Russia fly American Planes? Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or woman on the moon? You talk about Japanese technocracy, and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy, and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy, and you find men on the moon -not once, but several times and safely home again.
You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everybody to look at. Even their draft-dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, and most of them, unless they are breaking Canadian laws, are getting American dollars from ma and pa at home to spend here.
When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke.
I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to the help of otherpeople in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake.
Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I'm one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them get kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of those."
A Letter From An American-Afghan
This was sent to me in an e-mail. For some reason, it resonated in me and I felt it relevant to post. The author, Tamim Ansary, as an American-Afghan who has been living here for a long time.
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?