AYF-News> An American Opinion

[ayf@xxxxxxx]

Death, Downtown

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.

On December 27, 1985 I found myself caught in the middle of a terrorist
incident at the Vienna airport -- which left 30 people dead, both there and at 
the Rome airport. (The machine-gunning of passengers in each city was timed
to 
occur at the same moment.)

I do not feel like discussing that event tonight because it still brings up
too much despair and confusion as to how and why I got to live? a fluke, a
mistake, a few feet on the tarmac, and I am still here, there but for the grace
of?

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.

Here?s a short list of my experiences lately with airport security:

*At the Newark Airport, the plane is late at boarding everyone. The counter
can?t find my seat. So I am told to just ?go ahead and get on? -- 
without a ticket!

* At Detroit Metro Airport, I don?t want to put the lunch I just bought at
the 
deli through the x-ray machine so, as I pass through the metal detector, I
hand the sack to the guard through the space between the detector and the
x-ray machine. I tell him ?It?s just a sandwich.? He believes me and doesn?t
bother to check. The sack has gone through neither security device.

* At LaGuardia in New York, I check a piece of luggage, but decide to catch
a later plane. The first plane leaves without me, but with my bag -- no one
knowing what is in it.

* Back in Detroit, I take my time getting off the commuter plane. By the
time I have come down its stairs, the bus that takes the passengers to the
terminal has left -- without me. I am alone on the tarmac, free to wander 
wherever
I want. So I do. Eventually, I flag down a pick-up truck and an aeroplane
mechanic gives me a ride the rest of the way to the terminal.

* I have brought knives, razors; and once, my travelling 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 diarrhoea 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 commit 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 realise 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
mmflint@xxxxxxx


-- 
African Youth Foundation
Keldenicher str. 89
D-50389 Wesseling

Tel: 0049 175 517 9953
Fax: 0049 1212 510 323 700

www.ayf.de
www.freenet.de/ayf
Email: ayf@xxxxxxx

GMX - Die Kommunikationsplattform im Internet.
http://www.gmx.net