world trade center!!!!!!!

Charles Davis · September 12, 2001

I hate to say it, but many of the comments on this topic lend support to elements in our country that want to completely disengage from "external affairs".

The idea is that, no matter what we do, or how noble intentions, someone will be offended and want to lash out.

I just wonder if detachment from the world stage is really what some of you want.

As for the US being the largest polluter; we are also the largest economy (2/3rds of world gross production?), so of course we produce most of the pollution, and consume a lot of energy.

Actually, the US has made tremendous strides in reducing pollution over the last 20 years. We are also reducing per capita energy consumption (California reduced consumption 12% in one year). If anything those trends will accelerate dramatically as the price of oil stays high, and as new technologies and internal political pressures force those positive changes.

Mark H · September 12, 2001

Bill · September 12, 2001

Very good point Charles.

People seem to forget that, when they say "The US is the largest producer of pollution"!

Whatever makes them feel better I guess.

All I know is that I haven't been able to get thru to my family in NY in 24 hours.

Allan Brown · September 12, 2001

bens · September 12, 2001

This is an article I saw in another news group from a Canadian newspaper, is worth sharing.

America: The Good Neighbor.

Widespread but only partial news coverage was given recently to a remarkable editorial broadcast from Toronto by Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian television commentator. What follows is the full text of his trenchant remarks as printed in the Congressional Record:

"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 a old caboose. Both are still broke.

I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people 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."

Stand proud, America!

Also my heart goes out to all Americans affected by this evil....

Ben S.

Kenneth Potter · September 12, 2001

Dave

I like that urban sight Thanks

[ 09-12-2001: Message edited by: Kenneth Potter ]

ronengineer · September 12, 2001

Charles, I believe the USA is approx. 25% of world GDP. It's good to hear of a positive attitude towards pollution.

The loss of the USA on the world stage would not be desirable as it the strength of it and it's allies that has led to so many years of world peace.

But be honest, not all external intervention can be regarded as noble (and no one is saying that you are alone on this one either).

Bill, No it does'nt make any one feel better and probably should not have been mentioned here as instead of vilifying each other we should be turning on those who conducted this foul act.

I hope you can get through to your family soon and that they are all safe and well.

Ron.

Tony · September 12, 2001

Yesterday I posted:

"As you may already be aware we are in the midst of a national tragedy. We are going to close today so we can all be with our families. Say a prayer for the victims, their families and our country".

(Our Owner)

Today I find out ...We are not to be payed for the day off!

I guess We should of asked or something.

Live and learn on that one!

Charles Davis · September 12, 2001

To have power and not exercise it with arrogance is terribly difficult, and humanity does not have a good history of this. I think we've done better than many. We've made mistakes, and we've learned from them.

I think this is a new world war, one in which all people who appreciate life and freedom have to band together to defeat unconditionally.

We had all better get our heads out of our tails, and fight and win this war, or no one in any country will be able to live or travel without fear.

[ 09-12-2001: Message edited by: Charles Davis ]

GREG · September 12, 2001

Our thoughts, sympathy , but most of all our support goes out to your nation.

Its hit home hard as our marketing managers aunty was on the plane that hit the Pentagon.

Regards

Greg Muirhead

Ferra Engineering

Brisbane

Australia

gcode · September 12, 2001

Believe it or not, my mother sent me this.

Not politically correct, but he makes some good points IMO

Subject: The Price of Pansyhood.......

A few unorganized thoughts regarding the events in New York 1) We lost. Our

moral posturing about our degradation is merely embarrassing. We have been

made fools of, expertly and calculatedly, in the greatest military defeat

the country has suffered since we fled from Viet Nam. The Moslem world is

laughing and dancing in the streets. The rest of the earth, while often

sympathetic, sees us as the weak and helpless nation that we are. The

casualty figures aren't in, but 10,000 dead seems reasonable, and we wring

our hands and speak of grief therapy. We lost.(2) We cannot stop it from

happening again. Thousands of aircraft constantly use O'Hare, a few minutes

flying time from the Sears Tower. (3) Our politicians and talking heads

speak of "a cowardly act of terrorism." It was neither cowardly nor, I

think, terrorism. Hijacking an aircraft and driving it into a building

isn't cowardly. Would you do it? It requires great courage and dedication

-- which our enemies have, and we do not. One may mince words, but to me

the attack looked like an act of war. Not having bombing craft of their

own, they used ours. When we bombed Hanoi and Hamburg, was that

terrorism?(4) The attack was beautifully conceived and executed. These guys

are good. They were clearly looking to inflict the maximum humiliation on

the United States, in the most visible way possible, and they did. The

sight of those two towers collapsing will leave nobody's mind. If we do

nothing of importance in return, and it is my guess that we won't, the

entire earth will see that we are a nation of epicenes. Silly

cruise-missile attacks on Afghanistan will just heighten the indignity.(5)

In watching the coverage, I was struck by the tone of passive acquiescence.

Not once, in hours of listening, did I hear anyone express anger. No one

said, coldly but in deadly seriousness, "People are going to die for this,

a whole lot of people." There was talk of tracking down bin Laden and

bringing him to justice. "Terrorism experts" spoke of months of

investigation to find who was responsible, which means we will do nothing.

Blonde bimbos babbled of coping strategies and counseling and how our

children needed support. There was no talk of retaliation.(6) The Israelis,

when hit, hit back. They hit back hard. But Israel is run by men. We are

run by women. Perhaps two-thirds of the newscasters were blonde drones who

spoke of the attack over and over as a tragedy, as though it had been an

unusually bad storm -- unfortunate, but inevitable, and now we must get on

with our lives. The experts and politicians, nominally male, were

effeminate and soft little things. When a feminized society runs up against

male enemies -- and bin Laden, whatever else he is, is a man -- it loses.

We have.(7) We haven't conceded that the Moslem world is our enemy, nor

that we are at war. We see each defeat and humiliation in isolation, as a

unique incident unrelated to anything else. The 241 Marines killed by the

truck bomb in Beirut, the extended humiliation of the hostages taken by

Iran, the war with Iraq, the bombing of the Cole, the destruction of the

embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the devastation of the Starke, the Saudi

barracks, the dropping of airliner after airliner -- these we see as

anecdotes, like pileups of cars on a snowy road. They see these things as

war.We face an enemy more intelligent than we are.(8) We think we are a

superpower. Actually we are not, except in the useless sense of having

nuclear weapons. We could win an air war with almost anyone, yes, or a

naval war in mid-Pacific. Few Americans realize how small our forces are

today, how demoralized and weakened by social experimentation. If we had to

fight a ground war in terrain with cover, a war in which we would take

casualties, we would lose. (9) I have heard some grrr-woofwoofery about how

we should invade Afghanistan and teach those ragheads a lesson. Has anyone

noticed where Afghanistan is? How would we get there? Across Pakistan, a

Moslem country? Or through India? Do we suppose Iran would give us

overflight rights to bomb another Moslem country? Or will our supply lines

go across Russia through Turkmenistan? Do we imagine that we have the

airlift or sealift? What effect do we think bombing might have on

Afghanistan, a country that is essentially rubble to begin with? We backed

out of Somalia, a Moslem country, when a couple of GIs got killed and

dragged through the streets on TV. Afghans are not pansies. They whipped

the Russians. Our sensitive and socially-conscious troops would curl up in

balls.(10) To win against a more powerful enemy, one forces him to fight a

kind of war for which he isn't prepared. Iraq lost the Gulf War because it

fought exactly the kind of war in which American forces are unbeatable:

Hussein played to his weaknesses and our strengths. The Vietnamese did the

opposite. They defeated us by fighting a guerrilla war that didn't give us

anything to hit. They understood us. We didn't understand them. The Moslem

world is doing the same thing. Because their troops, or terrorists as we

call them, are not sponsored by a country, we don't know who to hit. Note

that Yasser Arafat, bin Laden, and the Taliban are all denying any part in

the destruction of New York. At best, we might, with our creaky

intelligence apparatus, find Laden and kill him. It's not worth doing: Not

only would he have defeated America as nobody ever has, but he would then

be a martyr. Face it: The Arabs are smarter than we are.(11) We are

militarily weak because we have done what we usually do: If no enemy is

immediately in sight, we cut our forces to the bone, stop most R&D, and

focus chiefly on sensitivity training about homosexuals. When we need a

military, we don't have one. Then we are inutterably surprised.(12) The

only way we could save any dignity and respect in the world be to hit back

so hard as to make teeth rattle around the world. A good approach would be

to have NSA fabricate intercepts proving that Libya was responsible,

mobilize nationally, invade, and make Libya permanently a US colony. Most

Arab countries are militarily helpless, and that is the only kind our

forces could defeat. Doing this, doing anything other than whimpering,

would require that ancient military virtue known as "balls." Does Katie

Couric have them?

Rekd™ · September 12, 2001

Subject: The Price of Pansyhood.......

(Original posting is below...)

1) We lost? Losing requires us to give up or be beaten into submsision.

We have done neither. We were attacked, yes. By cowards. Think

of what this country could do if we wanted to be like that...

2) We CAN stop it from happening. But it's going to cost us, (Americans) our

freedom to move about the country as we choose. We will have locked

borders and millitant police to ensure it.

3) I don't remeber EVER reading anything in American history that shows

us, (Americans) being ruthless without warning or provocation.

We did not attack Japan, they attacked us. And the only political

presure we use is to try to give, (encourage), others the choice

to live in a democracy. These people did this to us without warning,

and without us knowing who did it. It's like robbery: If your house is

robbed, chances are you won't know who did it. Is that not cowardace

or terrorism?

4) Beautifully conceived and executed? That second plane almost missed WTC. See

the abrupt turn towars the end? We, (Americans) have technology to hit

any single office ANYWHERE on those buildings! And we wouldn't have

lost any american lives... We could very easily send stuff from here

to anywhere in the world, virtually un-detected. If we ever wanted

to be sneaky and cowardice, we could.. effectively!

-------

i'll skip to my favorites. I'm getting tired of writing already..

-------

6) The attack WAS a tragedy. Don't you think?

7) I see a glimps of a point here. We could clean out any country. We

don't because we won't hurt inocents. We, (americans) will not

shoot blindly into a crowd to kill our foes. But they, (place

terrorist group here) will gladly shoot openly into a croud

to try to kill us.

8) Useless sense of having nuclear weapons? Um, we've fought EVERY war

since WWII with conventional weopons. And the reason the US lost

in Vietnam is because it was not clasified as a war. It was more

like a police action. We, (America) did not put all out effort

into it.

Fight a ground war? We don't need to fight war that way anymore.

Ground crews will only be needed to do cleanup... Remeber those

neat little rockets we made that could hit targets as small as

an air shaft in Iraq? You should read more.

9) Who cares how far away we are. We can hit them from here.. (Reference

sectoins 4 and 8 above.)

11) We are militarily weak? Hardly. That's why these faceless (place cowardly

terrorist group here) people don't want us, (americans) to know who

they are. They'll be obliterated. Openly, Justly and Swiftly.

12) We, (America) are not the bully's on the block. We are the Remote Dentist.

We're gonna knock out the tooth without pain killer and without

touching the mouth. No need to just 'smash it in the mouth' (Reference

sections 4, 7 & 8 above.)

If whoever wrote what's below is an american, I pity you. Your feelings on life,

freedom and inocense must haunt you. This, (the USA) is STILL a free country.

(Original Posting follows...)