The petition appeals to world leaders to be level-headed and, wherever possible,peaceful in their response to the recent attack against the United States.
The signatures logged by the website above will be forwarded to leaders around the world. Please act quickly!
[ This Message was edited by: StevieJ on 2001-09-17 17:02 ]
thank you for posting the petition. I have signed it and also forwarded it to others who share these concerns and wish to be involved in active nonviolence.
And now I again play my whistle as a prayer.
“An eye for an eye is a terrible way to blind the world.” M. Gandhi
Peace
Namasté
jim
[ This Message was edited by: livethe question on 2001-09-17 17:25 ]
Unfortunately things like this do not do much good. I’m all for peace as well but do you think the leaders of Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. understand reason, or what is the right thing to do. Any country that can celebrate the death of 5000+ innocent people doesn’t deserve any sympathy from me. In the mind of an intelligent person we know that war is wrong, killing is wrong, but when your enemy only understands death and destruction then you have to fight fire with fire. I wish it wasn’t that way and that one day the world would be united but until then you can only do what you can for the good of the whole even if it means sacrifice for the few.
Several years ago Madeline Albright, our Secretary of State at the time, was asked by someone in the media if the death of the hundreds of thousands of children in Iraq as a result of our sanctions was worth it? She paused for a second…and answered, yes.
The grief of the last week touches a well of grief. Sadly we now share with the people of Iraq a common grief that innocents have suffered. There are other examples throughout the world. A world we are no longer isolated from.
A response directed at terrorism is one thing, a response directed at innocents is itself terrorism.
Besides retaliation, is the administration considering changes that American foreign policy needs to make so that we aren’t the target of such hate? You can wipe out the people who are now the terrorists, but can you continue to sow the seeds of what has now become our own destruction? My son, 6 months away from voting and being eligible for serving his country, wants to know.
I recently met with Cuban people in Havana who ask, why is America not on friendly terms with us? We never went to war with them. We did fight a war in Viet Nam, lost over 50000 Americans there, but are on better terms with that government than a small island 90 miles away whose leader was only interested in keeping foreign business interests from exploiting his people as the United Fruit Compnay has done throughout Latin America for decades. I didn’t have an answer.
Dont get me wrong: I love my country, but it is time for us to take a global view of how we are treating the rest of the world from not only a political but economic and social POV. Is the American way of life built on things we dont want to know?
[ This Message was edited by: StewySmoot on 2001-09-18 07:21 ]
You’re in a pub, playing in a session and minding your own business. A guy walks up and, for no reason that you can fathom, takes your whistle and stamps on it.
What do you do?
a) Hit him hard
b) Ask him for the money for a new whistle
c) Tell the landlord and see if he can be barred from the pub (and the good natured community).
If you said A)..what will you do when:
i) He hits you back
ii) his friend hits you
a)hit him back
b)Hit his friend
c) get your friend to hit his friend
if you answered a) or b) or c) what will you do when:
i) he hits you back
ii) His friend hits you or your friend
iii) His friend’s friend hits you back
a) Hit them all back harder still
b) Get your friend to hit his friends harder still
c) get more friends and hit them again
and so on…
Sadly Yours…Steve
[ This Message was edited by: StevePower on 2001-09-19 07:07 ]
I’ve nearly replied to this thread a dozen times, yet stopped again and again with the intent of not being hurtful or causing further acrimony. I am not replying to the thoughts expresssed now. I AM posing a very sincere request that this sermon/thread/lecture be taken elsewhere. It has no musical content despite the recent pub hypothetical, it is political in nature, and in my considered opinion it is being used by some folks to advance a philosophical argument with which they know some of us disagree but to which we will not respond in the interest of board equanimity.
My view is, of course, mine alone, but I’m asking that we please get back to our whistles and our music.
There are a lot of Politcal boards out there that provide forums for political discussion.
This board is about the music. I have been tempted to respond to several of the messages with which I find deep disagreement; however, I continue to come back to the purpose of this board: The Music.
I have enjoyed the many posts about how the music and whistling has been interlaced with the events of the past weeks. Music is about life and is an expression of the current state of affairs as much as it is about the traditions and historical events that have been associated with the tunes. I still want to encourage folks to make such posts about whistles and the music.
I feel part of musics healing, binding, connecting strenghths is that it builds on what folks have in common. The common feelings and emotions that permeate the lives of all mankind can be shared in music without ideologic, political, or economic pre-requists. So lets let this community be about building those strenghths, and let the political, economic, and ideolgical boards talk about how to use those stenghths outside of the music.
For me, connection is about how I enjoy my music and how you …
Chuck,perhaps the secular nature of this petition is the very thing that makes it so relevent…political?perhaps but I cant see anything sermonising about it. Mike
Well then, your “Secular Nature” argument is moot. You can’t have it both ways.
I believe one of the things Chuck is trying to get people to realize is that if we don’t turn back to the music soon, topics like this one could get really ugly, very quickly - Some of us have bitten our tongues about as long as we can stand.
Loren
P.S. This should go without saying, but knowing how things are interpreted around here sometimes I’ll say this just to be clear: The example I used to illustrate my point to Mike was simply that, an example and not my personal views on how the U.S. should respond.
[ This Message was edited by: Loren on 2001-09-19 13:08 ]
The petition is well-meant–by all means,
sign it if it speaks to you!–and it raises
a lot of difficult issues all at once (e.g.
is there a fundamental human right to live
in a world without nuclear weapons? Is a nation ever accountable for the acts of terrorists based inside it?). Consequently any discussion in terms of the petition is liable to lump several different questions together, lead to misunderstanding and not be so fruitful. (I wouldn’t smack the guy who stomped my whistle, I’d fight Hitler, I’m opposed to deliberately targeting innocent people in warfare, but willing to kill a small number of innocents as an undesired side effect of a strike on a vital military target, I’m very leery of invading Afghanistan… Complicated.) Probably it would be skillful to move on.
