9/11

The body of Father Mychael Judge is carried from Ground Zero. His compassion should be our lesson from 9/11.

9/11.

Those numbers have become so large in our culture. And for a week now, with the 10th anniversary of the attacks arriving, an extraordinary amount has been written and said about that day. And a lot of what I've seen is clearly the media getting as much mileage out of the tragedy as possible.

Here, in point form, are my thoughts.

* Everyone who suffered that day, and those who continue to suffer, should be in our thoughts and prayers.

* 9/11 showed us the real humanity of people. Especially in NYC, a city known for being a bit "cold," people were just people, united in survival, helping each other.

* 9/11 was not a government plot. That's nonsense. And the powers that be love it when we tie ourselves in knots with fallacies like this because then we aren't paying attention to what they're really up to. It would have been virtually impossible to orchestrate and our government was going to do what it's done overseas one way or another. 9/11, as Dick Cheney himself said at the time of the attacks, simply gave them the perfect excuse to get the ball rolling. Horrible serendipity.

* 9/11 is not just about 9/11. It is about all the causes that led up to it, and all the crimes that have been carried out in its name. So our thoughts and prayers should also be with the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. All the decent Muslim people who have been stereotyped and victimized. The victims of "extraordinary rendition," torture and illegal incarceration.

* 9/11 was further dishonored by our government with the Patriot Act and Homeland Security -- the names themselves are lies. Our rights have been severely attacked by these things. You can now be arrested for doing nothing at all and locked up without the right of habeas corpus. It's happening more than you might realize. (Read "The Attorney General's Guidelines for Domestic FBI Operations" -- also known as the Mukasey Guidelines -- or take a look at the book "Hell No: Your Rights to Dissent in Twenty-First-Century America.")

* To point out that our government caused 9/11 and exploited 9/11 is not to dishonor its victims. It is to honor them so that they may not have died in vain. Many of the 9/11 survivors and their families feel very strongly about this themselves.

* True patriotism is loving your country enough to speak up for it. True patriotism has nothing to do with loving a bunch of greedy politicians making emotional speeches about a tragedy, and then cutting off health benefits to those who suffer from its effects.

* 9/11 should remind us that we were naive to think that our government could throw its weight around all over the world, and nobody would ever bring some of that pain back to us.

* The so-called "War on Terror" is a blight on us all. We were hoodwinked. And the lie has cost perhaps millions of lives through invasions and sanctions -- men, women and children have suffered and died. Men, women and children just like us.

A young casualty of the "War on Terror." This is terror too.

* We have to have the courage and calmness to come to terms with the fact that successive U.S. governments have made America the world's leading terrorist nation, as defined by international laws and conventions.

* It takes an almost incomprehensible sickness to give mass murders names like "Operation Iraqi Freedom" and "Operation Enduring Freedom" (Afghanistan).

* It is very possible that today, on 9/11, also the first Sunday of the new NFL football season, those of us in America will spend more total hours watching football than thinking deeply about 9/11 -- its root causes and what it really means. If that is where our priorities lie, we have little right to point the finger at anyone else.

* 9/11 is Father Mychael Judge, the first recorded victim of the 9/11 attacks. Much loved in New York City, Father Mychael was the Chaplain of the NYC City Fire Department with a heart the size of the city itself. And the fact that he was openly gay didn't make any difference at all.

* Many Americans HAVE spoken truth to lies. Many DO understand the full scope of the 9/11 story. Their courage and compassion should be applauded.

* Each of us has more in common with the average person in Iraq and Afghanistan than with the megalomaniac elites in Washington D.C.

* To truly begin to heal the pain of 9/11, and to truly learn from it, we must learn that we are all one race, that our government does not speak for us, that in our name a handful of politicians have committed mass murder and toruture, that they have lied to our troops and put them unnecessarily in harm's way, that they've wasted many billions of dollars in military spending when our country is in the pain of a recession/depression (an ongoing crime of our government).

* To truly begin to heal the pain of 9/11, we must think for ourselves and not just salute a flag and do what we're told because our government feeds us a good story. We must have the courage to speak up, protest, exercise our democratic rights, and stick together as citizens. Above all, we must learn to love rather than take the low road to hate.

Take care and God bless all the victims of 9/11 around the world,
Adrian

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ANOTHER DAY AT THE OFFICE

My plan with this blog was to use my personal experiences, up to a point, to springboard to larger issues.

Well, it's starting to get too much like a personal diary. So let me clue you in on what transpired when I went to work today, and then next time write Part 2 of my blog on Gallipoli/war.

Today's events are indeed instructive, otherwise I certainly wouldn't bother recording them here.

When I logged onto my computer this morning there was an invitation to a 2pm meeting with the executive who told me yesterday that I would be terminated if I didn't sign that certain piece of paper (see yesterday's blog entry), and the main guy from HR. This was the meeting where the ultimatums about the blog and the piece of paper would be laid out again, I'd say no, be immediately fired, and drive home.

Only I didn't get fired.

And the HR guy wanted to make that clear. He repeated it several times. Of course I know what I heard the day before but, just like something out of Orwell, those words were now expunged from history and I was never in any way fired and a pox on the house of anyone who says I was. Okay, cool.

I also didn't have to sign the piece of paper with the plans for my vocational rehabilitation. Weird.

In fact, the HR guy wasn't even prepared to say I couldn't blog about Harrah's or that there'd be any trouble in the future if I did. Each "incident" will be looked at in isolation, he told me. Alrighty.

The most interesting moment was when the HR fella told me that Harrah's primary concern was that my blog might "hurt my co-workers." This, of course, was nonsense intended to cause me feelings of guilt and I called him on it. I explained that my blog is all about helping people like my co-workers, not hurting them. But he knew that and so does his "superiors."

If Harrah's is so concerned with my co-workers, it might want to consider giving their sick leave back. (Harrah's cut out sick leave for us in early 2009.) Or seeing to it that we aren't worked excessively. Or being more honest with us. And on and on.

The only "co-workers" that my blog has called out are the ones who are lackeys of the brass and, in being such, actually help with the hurting. So, while they're essentially pawns themselves, they are complicit in the systemic exploitation of those "under" them and deserve criticism. They're motives are generally selfish and have been noted as such by those they've affected.

There was more dialogue to this meeting, of course. (Though the exec never uttered a word but made copious notes because that would surely shake me up.) And at the end I made a little speech and toddled off.

But I shouldn't make too light of it because, as I said, there is something significant here.

What I believe this illustrates is... the little guy doesn't necessarily always lose. Now that's a pretty important message considering how overwhelmed/intimidated we generally feel by our "superiors" at work, the IRS, the preposterously expensive legal system, Homeland Security, etc etc.

My sense of what took place is that somebody at Harrah's did the math and realized that firing me over a small-time blog that doesn't get a lot of notice, might well give the small-time blog considerable notice. They may have guessed that I'd be crazy enough to go to the ACLU, file suit, wave the First Amendment and work the media like a demon. If this was their guess, they guessed right. I may not be rich or beautiful but I fight as hard as anybody.

So it was easier to just damp it all down and make it semi go away.

It reminds me of something I learned once when I went to an activist camp back East. The instructor asked how you beat a giant. Nobody knew. She said: "You stand on their toe and gradually apply more and more pressure until they'd prefer to get rid of you than put up with it any longer." In a sense, I think that's what I did.

If nothing else, it gave me renewed hope. A bit of a boost. I don't really despise the honchos at Harrah's. They're people too. But they're people either unseeing or uncaring. My concern is for the masses who struggle and deserve a better life and a better work situation. I have no personal vendetta -- it's a commitment of conscience.

Okay, that's enough stuff starring me. I'm breaking for a few days, then I'll be back with LEST WE FORGET, PART 2.

Take care,
Adrian Zupp