This week has been a doozy. First, I'd like to say thank-you to Nordine who has been such a boost to TIG Toronto since May 1st when she started working with us full-time. Today was her last day... not because she doesn't love us, but because she's a musician and that's what she loves and *must* do. That's what she's *supposed* to do in life, and she is, so that's awesome :) Anyway, while working with us, she became known as "Nordine the Machine" because she was lightning fast and super-organized and hyped up about being our information services person. She found and put all the organizations in our database. She set-up our co-branded sites. She was the hardcore person :) Ever-quiet in the office... subtle humour... but she always wore a smile and laughed at things... and outside the office she wasn't so quiet... On stage her name is Storm.... so watch out... she'll be blowing through your town sometime soon... Best of luck Nordine :) Please visit us!

Also, this week we had to move to a new office, which for a variety of reasons was left until friday, at which point, it turned out, we were locked out of our offices for various other reasons. Ended up that we had *2* hours to disassemble and move our entire office. Like, 6 desks, 2 bookshelves, many computers... tonnes of files and paper... it was insane, but we got it done. The power of youth :P

And finally we had to finalize the flight and funding information for a conference Martin, Vanessa, Maria, and I are attending in Slovakia. I had to get a passport in 4 days! Insane. But it all turned out well, regardless of the fact that we'd initially booked our tickets to the wrong *country* which we would need visas to enter. We got it all fixed anyway.

Can't wait to meet the new TIG Slovakia Team tomorrow. It's going to be a great trip. I'll keep you posted....

d

From today's Globe and Mail newspaper... keep in mind that Canada is as big or bigger than the USA, and that the USA has somewhere around or more than 1,000,000 infantry soldiers (looked for stats but couldn't find them), and innumerable weapons of mass destruction/protection.

Canadian Military Facts:

Strategic lift capability (ability to fly tanks, troops etc to foreign locations): zero
Total number of fighter planes (CF-18): 60
Total number of new fighter planes: 0
Bombers? Forget about it.
Total number of new submarines: 0 (have a few oldies)
Total number of new battle ships: 0 (few oldies)
We also have 12 operational anti-sub ships (not new)

***Here's the kicker!!!***

Total Infantry (soldiers): 3,000

Yes, that's right. Less than the population of my hometown (Petrolia) is responsible for defending all 30,000,000 of us. Wheeeeeeeeeee!

Now you know why Canada has a peaceful reputation. Apparently we had more troops etc during the gulf war, but many have since been decommissioned (equipment) or retired/quit (troops).

If we learn anything from the tragedy in New York, I hope it’s the understanding that we are not alone.

We have to work together from now on in order to achieve anything. Without a global democracy striving for concensus, people will be upset, and rebellion & terrorism will result.

Without working together, the good acts of one nation will be counter-acted by measures not taken by others. North America is implementing anti-pollution policies, but are others? Some countries are dis-arming their nuclear weapons, but until all countries do so, the threat of a nuclear disaster looms.

Hatreful acts by one results in retaliation by another. Indeed, the hateful acts may be seen as justified in the eyes of the beholder, and the retaliations as terroristic. Without discussing things and taking a more wholistic perspective on everything, we are destined to fail.

The internet is here. Many of us are already using it as our own global meeting place and news center. This is because we cannot afford the time or money to *actually* meet and chat with people all around the globe. National leaders on the other hand, do have the budget to do so, and should strive to use that money to strive for increasingly ethical and mutually beneficial solutions to all manner of problems.

We are also “not alone” in the sense that when the US was attacked, most countries around the world offered their condolences, and even dedicated days of mourning and moments of silence to those suffering in New York. Everyone felt emotional about what happened. It hit too close to home for most of us.

For that day, and into the ensuing week, we were finally part of 1 global family. We need to find a way to continue that familial bond. We need to continue caring for one another. We are all connected simply by our humanity, our emotions, and the powers of the soul.

Mark Tweksbury said “We are going to war to defend a way of life. To stand for our values. I want to do this in my own way. From this day forward I will strive to use my life as a positive force.” Indeed, this would be a good move for everyone to make. Regardless of nationality, religion, or skin colour, no one wants to be hurt; No one wants to lose loved ones; No one wants to wake up and find that we’ve destroyed the only world we have; No one wants to sacrifice the beautiful future of the world for an ugly present.

That’s all good and well, but how can we begin this process? To start, simply be kind. Smile when people look your way. You’ll find that it makes the subway trip much more pleasant. Sharing your knowledge with others who would like to learn is another good thing to try. Giving selflessly brings the greatest rewards. Indulge in the activities and experiences that you love. When you are happier, that vibe rubs off on others. Create. Art and structures and designs and music are things that all cultures possess. It is what makes each of us unique, yet the fact that we all have them shows our similarities. We are only superficially different.

If there was only 1 document historically proven to be from a “higher power”, how much easier would people throughout the ages lives’ have been? This is an ideology, not a fundamental difference in our “human-ness”. People of different ideologies have the same neuronal patterns as you and I. They feel. They bleed. They laugh with joy. They cry with loss. They love. Relate to everyone as a brother or sister. Cherish them all as you would your mother or father. They are all as great as you or I.

Here's the hugest one I've come across... Very sickening, so be forewarned.

US wanted to finish off the Middle East to prevent any future Gulf War style stuff, but they can't just march in guns blazing. They needed a reason. So, how can they make a reason. What possible reason could they manufacture so that the whole world would let them march right in and blow them bad guys up? An attack on freedom. That's right. So, how do they do this? Attack themselves... but to warrant being able to wage war on all countries harbouring *any* terrorists, it'd have to be big damage... to civilians and symbols of freedom & democrazy (the white house would have been too much, but the pentagon and trade towers would do). Now, they want it to look like someone from outside the US, so they use airplanes on international flights and immediately focus a LOT of media on border closings and beefing up airport security. They also pick a random person in the world who has a lot of military training and blame a lot of it on him (Bin Laden) who they have also been blaming other littler things on for a couple of years. Might they have created that monster through media? Might he be innocent? Maybe, but we wouldn't know because we only know about him what the media reports. And media can be censored by government. So, they injure themselves and get the okay to sweep the world of anyone the US deems to be a terrorist. Might Hussein get a smack from this? Possibly. Anyone who opposes the US on this will definitely get beat up. What's a couple thousand innocent lives wiped out if it lets a country destroy *all* of its enemies and gain full control of the world? As a bonus, George W instantly lives up to his dad's reputation and wins respect from the "oh so many" who thought he was a goof. Hmmmm.... very interesting....

Where'd I come across this? It was a lil' brainstorm session I had with my friend Mark this morning in the grocery store of all places.

BY Arun Gandhi

Understandably, after the tragedy in New York and Washington DC on September 11 many have written or called the office to find out what would be an appropriate nonviolent response to such an unbelievably inhuman act of violence.

First, we must understand that nonviolence is not a strategy that we can use in a moment of crisis and discard in times of peace. Nonviolence is about personal attitudes, about becoming the change we wish to see in
the world. Because, a nation's collective attitude is based on the attitude of the individual. Nonviolence is about building positive Relationships with all human beings - relationships that are based on love, compassion, respect, understanding and appreciation.

Nonviolence is also about not judging people as we perceive them to be - that is, a murderer is not born a murderer; a terrorist is not born a
terrorist. People become murderers, robbers and terrorists because of
circumstances and experiences in life. Killing or confining murders,
robbers, terrorists, or the like is not going to rid this world of them.

For every one we kill or confine we create another hundred to take their
place. What we need to do is to analyze dispassionately what are those
circumstances that create such monsters and how can we help eliminate
those circumstances, not the monsters. Justice should mean reformation
and not revenge.

We saw some people in Iraq and Palestine and I dare say many other
countries rejoice in the blowing up of the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon. It horrified us, as it should. But, let us not forget that we
do the same thing. When Israel bombs the Palestinians we either rejoice or
show no compassion. Our attitude is they deserve what they get. When
the Palestinians bomb the Israelis we are indignant and condemn them as
vermin who need to be eliminated.

We reacted without compassion when we bombed the cities of Iraq. I was
among the millions in the United States who sat glued to the television
and watched the drama as though it was a made for television film. The
television had desensitized us. Thousands of innocent men, women and
children were being blown to bits and instead of feeling sorry for them
we marveled at the efficiency of our military. For more than ten years
we have continued to wreak havoc in Iraq - an estimated 50,000 children

die every year because of sanctions that we have imposed - and it hasn't
moved us to compassion. All this is done, we are told, because we want

to get rid of the Satan called Sadam Hussein.

Now we are getting ready to do this all over again to get rid of another
Satan called Osama Bin Laden. We will bomb the cities of Afghanistan
because they harbor the Satan and in the process we will help create a
thousand other bin Ladens.

Some might say "we don't care what the world thinks of us as long as
they respect our strength. " After all we have the means to blow this
world to pieces since we are the only surviving super-power. Do we want

the world to respect us the way school children respect a bully? Is that
our role in the world?

If a bully is what we want to be then we must be prepared to face the
same consequences a school-yard bully faces. On the other hand we
cannot tell the world "leave us alone." Isolationism is not what this

world is built for.

All of this brings us back to the question: How do we respond
nonviolently to terrorism?

The consequences of a military response are not very rosy. Many
thousands of innocent people will die both here and in the country or
countries we attack. Militancy will increase exponentially and,
ultimately, we will be faced with another, more pertinent, moral question:

what will we gain by destroying half the world? Will we be able to live

with a clear conscience?

We must acknowledge our role in helping create monsters in the world and
then find ways to contain these monsters without hurting more innocent
people and then redefine our role in the world. I think we must move
from seeking to be respected for our military strength to being
respected for our moral strength.

We need to appreciate that we are in a position to play a powerful role
in helping the "other half" of the world attain a better standard of
life not by throwing a few crumbs but by significantly involving ourselves

in constructive economic programs.

For too long our foreign policy has been based on "what is good for the
United States." It smacks of selfishness. Our foreign policy should
now be based on what is good for the world and how can we do the right
thing to help the world become more peaceful.

To those who have lost loved ones in this and other terrorist acts I
say I share your grief. I am sorry that you have become victims of
senseless violence. But let this sad episode not make you vengeful
because no amount of violence and killing is going to bring you inner

peace. Anger and hate never do. The memory of those victims who have

died in this and other violent incidents around the world will be better

preserved and meaningfully commemorated if we all learn to forgive and

dedicate our lives to helping create a peaceful, respectful and

understanding world.

Arun Gandhi
Founder Director
M.K.Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence
650 East Parkway South
Memphis TN 38104

Tel:(901)452-2824; FAX: (901)452-2775
Email: gandhi@cbu.edu
Web: http://www.gandhiinstitute.org

Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death
The memory be green, and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe,
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
That we with wisest sorrow think on him,
Together with remembrance of ourselves.

Dear friends,

I was supposed to fly today on the 4:30 PM American Airlines flight from LAX to JFK. But tonight I find myself stuck in L.A. with an incredible range of emotions over what has happened on the island where I work and live in New York City.

My wife and I spent the first hours of the day -- after being awakened by phone calls from our parents at 6:40am PT -- trying to contact our daughter at school in New York and our friend JoAnn who works near the World Trade Center. I called JoAnn at her office. As someone picked up, the first tower imploded, and the person answering the phone screamed and ran out, leaving me no clue as to whether or not she or JoAnn would live.

It was a sick, horrible, frightening day. Safe. Secure. I'm an American, living in America. I like my illusions. I walk through a metal detector, I put my carry-ons through an x-ray machine, and I know all will be well. I have brought knives, razors; and once, my traveling companion brought a hammer and chisel. No one stopped us. Of course, I have gotten away with all of this because the airlines consider my safety SO important, they pay rent-a-cops $5.75 an hour to make sure the bad guys don't get on my plane. That is what my life is worth -- less than the cost of an oil change.

Too harsh, you say? Well, chew on this: a first-year pilot on American Eagle (the commuter arm of American Airlines) receives around $15,000 a year in annual pay. That's right -- $15,000 for the person who has your life in his hands. Until recently, Continental Express paid a little over $13,000 a year. There was one guy, an American Eagle pilot, who had four kids so he went down to the welfare office and applied for food stamps -- and he was eligible! Someone on welfare is flying my plane? Is this for real? Yes, it is.

So spare me the talk about all the precautions the airlines and the FAA is taking. They, like all businesses, are concerned about one thing -- the bottom line and the profit margin. Four teams of 3-5 people were all able to penetrate airport security on the same morning at 3 different airports and pull off this heinous act? My only response is -- that's all?

Well, the pundits are in full diarrhea mode, gushing on about the "terrorist threat" and today's scariest dude on planet earth -- Osama bin Laden. Hey, who knows, maybe he did it. But, something just doesn't add up. Am I being asked to believe that this guy who sleeps in a tent in a desert has been training pilots to fly our most modern, sophisticated jumbo jets with such pinpoint accuracy that they are able to hit these three targets without anyone wondering why these planes were so far off path? Or am I being asked to believe that there were four religious/political fanatics who JUST HAPPENED to be skilled airline pilots who JUST HAPPENED to want to kill themselves today?

Maybe you can find one jumbo jet pilot willing to die for the cause -- but FOUR? Ok, maybe you can -- I don't know. What I do know is that all day long I have heard everything about this bin Laden guy except this one fact -- WE created the monster known as Osama bin Laden!

Where did he go to terrorist school? At the CIA! Don't take my word for it -- I saw a piece on MSNBC last year that laid it all out. When the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan, the CIA trained him and his buddies in how to commits acts of terrorism against the Soviet forces.

It worked! The Soviets turned and ran. Bin Laden was grateful for what we taught him and thought it might be fun to use those same techniques against us. We abhor terrorism -- unless we're the ones doing the terrorizing. We paid and trained and armed a group of terrorists
in Nicaragua in the 1980s who killed over 30,000 civilians. That was OUR work. You and me.

Thirty thousand murdered civilians and who the hell even remembers! We fund a lot of oppressive regimes that have killed a lot of innocent people, and we never let the human suffering THAT causes to interrupt our day one single bit. We have orphaned so many children, tens of thousands around the world, with our taxpayer-funded terrorism (in Chile, in Vietnam, in Gaza, in Salvador) that I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised when those orphans grow up and are a little whacked in the head from the horror we have helped cause. Yet, our recent domestic terrorism bombings have not been conducted by a guy from the desert but rather by our own citizens: a couple of ex-military guys who hated the federal government. From the first minutes of today's events, I never heard that possibility suggested. Why is that?

Maybe it's because the A-rabs are much better foils. A key ingredient in getting Americans whipped into a frenzy against a new enemy is the all-important race card. It's much easier to get us to hate when the object of our hatred doesn't look like us. Congressmen and Senators spent the day calling for more money for the military; one Senator on CNN even said he didn't want to hear any more talk about more money for education or health care -- we should have only one priority: our self-defense. Will we ever get to the point that we realize we will be more secure when the rest of the world isn't living in poverty so we can have nice running shoes?

In just 8 months, Bush gets the whole world back to hating us again. He withdraws from the Kyoto agreement, walks us out of the Durban conference on racism, insists on restarting the arms race -- you name it, and Baby Bush has blown it all. The Senators and Congressmen tonight broke out in a spontaneous version of "God Bless America." They're not a bad group of singers! Yes, God, please do bless us. Many families have been devastated tonight. This just is not right. They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New York, DC, and the planes' destination of California -- these were places that voted AGAINST Bush!

Why kill them? Why kill anyone? Such insanity? Let's mourn, let's grieve, and when it's appropriate let's examine our contribution to the unsafe world we live in.

It doesn't have to be like this?

Yours,
Michael Moore

An interesting essay to ponder. Forwarded from Middle Eastern culture list:

The following was sent to me by my friend Tamim Ansary. Tamim is an Afghani-American writer. He is also one of the most brilliant people I know in this life. When he writes, I read. When he talks, I listen. Here is his take on Afghanistan and the whole mess we are in.

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? Don. 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

This article says that the attacks were FUNDED by Iraq, who HIRED the terrorists to conduct them --> so say Israeli intelligence reports. THAT is insaaaane. Whoa. We really would be talkin' world war if that is the case.

As an aside, CNN.com typically gets 14 million page views a DAY. Yesterday, though, because of demand for any details on the unfolding tragedy, it reached upwards of 9 million page views per HOUR.

Alternative News Sources:
IndyMedia and Poynter.org and Contientious... more news will come "as it happens"... Occupants of Tower 1 and Tower 2

The flights that were Highjacked were from United and AA, they were numbered as follows:

11, 93, 175, and 77

11 = Today's Date
9+3 = 12 = Tomorrow
1+7+5 = 13 = Thursday
7+7 = 14 = Friday