As chineses we wish the world is peaceful! No atrocity,no threaten! People have the right to live and develop. Powful military can't keep the world quiet and peaceful.Give others freedom,then you'll be free!

“I was deeply shocked and horrified to hear of the incomprehensible and disastrous terrorist attacks that occurred at New York, Washington and Pittsburg, which caused the death of so many totally innocent people.

Please accept my heartfelt condolences. My thoughts and sincere sympathies are with the relatives of the victims who lost their lives in these cowardly attacks.

As everywhere in Europe we in the Netherlands too will have silence for three minutes on upcoming friday. It is the least we can do but if you'd ask me: Do you want to help? My reply would be: When,where and how?

We'll Go Forward From This Moment
by Leonard Pitts, Jr.
Sydicated Columnist
Published Wednesday, September 12, 2001
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's my job to have something to say. They pay me to provide words that
help make sense
of
that which troubles the American soul. But in this moment of airless shock
when hot tears
sting disbelieving eyes, the only thing I can find to say, the only words
that seem to
fit,
must be addressed to the unknown author of this suffering.

You monster. You beast. You unspeakable bastard. What lesson did you hope
to teach us by
your coward's attack on our World Trade Center, our Pentagon, us? What was
it you hoped
we
would learn? Whatever it was, please know that you failed.

Did you want us to respect your cause? You just damned your cause.
Did you want to make us fear? You just steeled our resolve.
Did you want to tear us apart? You just brought us together.

Let me tell you about my people. We are a vast and quarrelsome family, a
family rent
by racial, social, political and class division, but a family nonetheless.
We're
frivolous,
yes, capable of expending tremendous emotional energy on pop cultural
minutiae -- a
singer's revealing dress, a ball team's misfortune, a cartoon mouse. We're
wealthy,
too, spoiled by the ready availability of trinkets and material goods, and
maybe
because of that, we walk through life with a certain sense of blithe
entitlement. We are
fundamentally decent, though -- peace-loving and compassionate. We struggle
to
know the right thing and to do it. And we are, the overwhelming majority of
us, people
of faith, believers in a just and loving God.

Some people -- you, perhaps -- think that any or all of this makes us weak.
You're
mistaken. We are not weak. Indeed, we are strong in ways that cannot be
measured by
arsenals.

Yes, we're in pain now. We are in mourning and we are in shock. We're still
grappling
with the unreality of the awful thing you did, still working to make
ourselves understand
that this isn't a special effect from some Hollywood blockbuster, isn't the
plot
development from a Tom Clancy novel.

Both in terms of the awful scope of their ambition and the probable final
death toll,
your attacks are likely to go down as the worst acts of terrorism in the
history of the
United
States and, probably, the history of the world. You've bloodied us as we
have never been
bloodied before.

But there's a gulf of difference between making us bloody and making us
fall. This is
the lesson Japan was taught to its bitter sorrow the last time anyone hit us
this hard,
the last time anyone brought us such abrupt and monumental pain. When
roused, we are
righteous in our outrage, terrible in our force. When provoked by this level
of
barbarism, we will bear any suffering, pay any cost, go to any length, in
the pursuit of
justice.

I tell you this without fear of contradiction. I know my people, as you, I
think, do not.
What I know reassures me. It also causes me to tremble with dread of the
future.

In the days to come, there will be recrimination and accusation, fingers
pointing to
determine whose failure allowed this to happen and what can be done to
prevent it
from happening again. There will be heightened security, misguided talk of
revoking
basic freedoms.

We'll go forward from this moment sobered, chastened, sad. But determined,
too.
Unimaginably determined.

You see, there is steel beneath this velvet. That aspect of our character is
seldom
understood by people who don't know us well. On this day, the family's
bickering is put
on
hold. As Americans we will weep, as Americans we will mourn, and as
Americans, we will
rise in defense of all that we cherish.

Still, I keep wondering what it was you hoped to teach us. It occurs to me
that maybe
you
just wanted us to know the depths of your hatred. If that's the case,
consider the
message
received. And take this message in exchange: You don't know my people. You
don't know
what
we're capable of. You don't know what you just started.

But you're about to learn.

"A Message to All Americans"
September 15, 2000


"The message that follows this one is from all of us at the Spirit of Ma'at. We hope that perhaps the ideas it expresses can help to empower us in this moment of darkness.

But first — now that four days have slowly slipped by — my soul would like to speak to you, if you wish to listen, about something I see as a core issue in all that is happening.

We Americans have been watching life go by as though it were a surrealist movie. On TV, we see the flames of wars and watch them burn — Israel and Palestine, NATO, Kosiva, Iraq, Iran, India and Pakistan, Columbia and the drug guerrillas, North and South Korea, Russia, Chechnya, Ireland, England. We see the incredible pain. But it doesn't affect us directly. We have become numb to the violence. Numbness appears to be our only way of dealing with the tragedies of life. We feel very little in our hearts and bodies. In fact, most of us are barely in our bodies. We exist mostly in our minds and in the images.

It is all so removed.

And within our own society are ills that weaken us in our own eyes and in those of the world, and again, we are numb. We do not feel in our hearts the pain of the children who are raped, tortured, and made to serve the perpetrators of child pornography. We are numb to child abuse and people abuse, murder and violence on our streets and in our homes. We accept divorce as the natural order of things.

We witness the suffering of the world's people, the ravages of hunger and starvation. We face horrible diseases that threaten all life. And even more devastating, we see our Mother Earth herself dying, in her final gasps for life. CNN brings all of this to our eyes in massive doses, and we let it all into our living rooms, watching our little boxes, playing in our fantasy world, eating and drinking our fine foods and wines.

How could we allow ourselves to feel the true pain of it all? To feel such pain could almost kill us. So we don't feel it. It never happens to us.

What now? The pain is here. Not just at our doorstep, but here, within our homeland. What do we do now?

Whatever we do, I doubt if we will continue in the old way.

In the past, we have reacted to conflict with emotional violence of our own. In families, this almost always leads to pain and divorce. In the world, in this case, it leads to war. Real war, that will surely be fought worldwide, but this time, most likely, also in our own neighborhoods.

Supporting this war is one of our options.

But there is another option. It begins by first understanding why this is happening to us. I say this because I don't believe that we do understand. We really are too far removed from life.

I think we must learn to feel the pain that is worldwide. When we see a child burning in India or a little baby dying of starvation in Africa or bombs dropping on beautiful villages snuggled in the countryside, as a nation our hearts could respond as One. We could change this world by our love instead of our violence.

So I say that when we can understand and feel the pain of our distant brothers and sisters, then perhaps we will have the wisdom to know what to do about this horrible tragedy we have all just experienced as a nation.

The world can come together and say, "No more terrorism." We can let go of all terrorism, even our own, and find a way to make peace real. This seems to me to be the only answer. We create our world by our lives. We can create a world without terrorism if we wish and focus upon that.

But we do have to wish and focus upon a peaceful world — not stare at the TV in a coma. We have to come alive and do things that will make a difference.

The unity that we are all feeling now is a place of strength that could be the catalyst that alters the world in such a way that terrorism is a distant memory. Or it could become the energy that drives a lynch mob into chaos and perpetuates the pain and war, with the real possibility that this course could bring an end to civilization as we know it. It is our choice.

In a marriage — which is much like what we have now, since we cannot leave the Earth — the object is not to kill the other person, even if the other person may be making our lives uncomfortable or even painful. If we decide to solve our problems with murder, we are no different from those we consider evil. Finding a way where both people — both sides of any conflict — can live together and love and respect one another is probably the only response that will save the Earth.

For World War Three will almost surely take away the life of our Mother.

But before we can respond in a healthy manner, we first must feel, we must care, or there is nothing. We need to get out of our Lazyboys, stand up, and change our world into a planet of peace.

Through prayer and inner peace, and then through taking the kinds of action that come from a peaceful heart, we can change this world. I have great faith in us and in America. I believe with my whole heart that we will find the right way.

In love and service,

Drunvalo"