Year: 2001

CALTON

Murray Sussman: ‘I bought CN at 91 cents after the $5 distribution and saw it jump up – only to see it close at 50 cents Friday. I’m ready to swallow my loss but would appreciate it if there would be an update on the company from your perspective first.’

☞ It’s definitely possible, as I’ve said, that the company will fritter away its $2 a share in cash (or whatever it’s down to by now). Truly. I’m holding mine, hoping that it won’t. If tax-selling drives the price still lower, I might even buy more. But I can afford to lose 100% of my CN bet – and you must own it only if you can, too.

Matvey Shindel: ‘With all due respect, this Christian Science Monitor article was not worth my time. It just repeats the same PROPOGANDA against Israel (and the US) that is so common in the Islamic world. Here’s a quote: ‘Over the past year, Arab TV stations have broadcast countless pictures of Israeli soldiers shooting at Palestinian youths, Israeli tanks plowing into Palestinian homes, Israeli helicopters rocketing Palestinian streets.’ It seems a bit one-sided, does it not?’

☞ Terribly. But was it your impression this article was saying everyone is RIGHT to hate us and Israel (which they assuredly are not)? Or just trying to explain why so many do?

Steven Schatz: ‘Regarding Friday’s link to the article in the Christian Science Monitor, I am so sad to read such half-truths about Israel. If you are willing to face truth and challenge the received ‘truth’ expounded by the likes of CNN and Christian Science Monitor, please, I beg you, please please please read Joan Peters’ book, From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine. She is an American Jewish liberal who started out to write about how awful the Israelis were to the poor Palestinians. But she was honest in her research and came to a conclusion that I am confident will open your eyes and heart.’

☞ My heart is already open. I believe our support of Israel is amply justified, although I do wonder whether things would have gone better without the West Bank settlements.

Art Yevin: ‘What did you expect from the Christian Science Monitor? They and their writings have always reflected an anti Israel and anti Jewish bent. So for you to say it is worth reading is sort of giving it credence. For some reason I have NEVER read a pro Israel writing of yours or maybe you believe that giving the Palestinians 94% of the West Bank, 100% of the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem is not enough.

‘Why have you never written anything about the terrible conditions the people of Israel face on a daily basis? In the past year, Israel has been hit with over 3000 incidents of terrorism. This, despite the fact, that Israel offered the Palestinian Arabs all of Gaza, 94% of the West Bank and their own country. President Clinton met with Arafat more than any other foreign leader, he even said that Arafat never delineated what he would be satisfied with. Why? I suspect that he desires the destruction of Israel. I know you are not an expert on the Middle East but you comment on many other topics and you are not an expert on them either.’

☞ I guess I take it for granted all of us, including virtually every member of Congress, regardless of party, largely or entirely support Israel, and are immensely frustrated by Arafat’s inability to ‘take yes for an answer’ (as Tom Friedman characterized it in one of his New York Times columns).

We take our own goodness for granted. What may be more important to explore is how we might have been even better, or be even better going forward.

In hindsight, for example, was our support of the Shah of Iran, and by extension his dreaded secret police, in the interests of the people of Iran? Did it lead some of them to hate us and teach their children to hate us? What about our involvement in Afghanistan. I don’t know, but with so much at stake, these sorts of questions seem relevant.

For those of you who missed it, here’s one important Israeli view:

Statement of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
before the
United States House of Representatives
Government Reform Committee
September 20, 2001

Chairman Burton, Distinguished Representatives:

I want to thank you for inviting me to appear before you today. I feel a profound responsibility addressing you in this hour of peril in the capital of liberty. What is at stake today is nothing less than the survival of our civilization. There may be some who would have thought a week ago that to talk in these apocalyptic terms about the battle against international terrorism was to engage in reckless exaggeration. No longer.

Each one of us today understands that we are all targets, that our cities are vulnerable, and that our values are hated with an unmatched fanaticism that seeks to destroy our societies and our way of life.

I am certain that I speak on behalf of my entire nation when I say, Today, we are all Americans – in grief, as in defiance. In grief, because my people have faced the agonizing horrors of terror for many decades, and we feel an instant kinship with both the victims of this tragedy and the great nation that mourns its fallen brothers and sisters.

In defiance, because just as my country continues to fight terrorism in our battle for survival, I know that America will not cower before this challenge. I have absolute confidence that if we, the citizens of the free world, led by President Bush, marshall the enormous reserves of power at our disposal, harness the steely resolve of a free people, and mobilize our collective will – we shall eradicate this evil from the face of the earth.

But to achieve this goal, we must first however answer several questions: Who is responsible for this terrorist onslaught? Why? What is the motive behind these attacks? And most importantly, what must be done to defeat these evil forces?

The first and most crucial thing to understand is this: There IS no international terrorism without the support of sovereign states. International terrorism simply cannot be sustained for long without the regimes that aid and abet it. Terrorists are not suspended in mid-air. They train, arm and indoctrinate their killers from within safe havens on territory provided by terrorist states. Often these regimes provide the terrorists with intelligence, money and operational assistance, dispatching them to serve as deadly proxies to wage a hidden war against more powerful enemies. These regimes mount a worldwide propaganda campaign to legitimize terror, besmirching its victims and exculpating its practitioners as we witnessed in the farcical spectacle in Durban [South Africa’s Racism Summit] last month. Iran, Libya, and Syria call the US and Israel racist countries that abuse human rights? Even Orwell could not have imagined such a world.

Take away all this state support, and the entire scaffolding of international terrorism will collapse into the dust. The international terrorist network is thus based on regimes- Iran, Iraq, Syria, Taleban Afghanistan, Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority and several other Arab regimes such as the Sudan. These regimes are the ones that harbor the terrorist groups: Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan, Hizballah and others in Syrian-controlled Lebanon, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the recently mobilized Fatah and Tanzim factions in the Palestinian territories, and sundry other terror organizations based in such capitals as Damascus, Baghdad and Khartoum. These terrorist states and terror organizations together form a terror network, whose constituent parts support each other operationally as well as politically.

For example, the Palestinian groups cooperate closely with Hezbollah, which in turn links them to Syria, Iran and Bin Laden. These offshoots of terror have affiliates in other states that have not yet uprooted their presence, such as Egypt, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

Now, how did this come about? The growth of this terror network is the result of several developments in the last two decades: Chief among them is the Khomeini Revolution and the establishment of a clerical Islamic state in Iran. This created a sovereign spiritual base for fomenting a strident Islamic militancy worldwide- a militancy that was often backed by terror.

Equally important was the victory in the Afghan war of the international mujaheedin brotherhood. This international band of zealots, whose ranks include Osama Bin Laden, saw their victory over the Soviet Union as providential proof of the innate supremacy of faithful Moslems over the weak infidel powers. They believed that even the superior weapons of a superpower could not withstand their superior will.

To this should also be added Saddam Hussein’s escape from destruction at the end of the Gulf War, his dismissal of UN monitors, and his growing confidence that he can soon develop unconventional weapons to match those of the West.

Finally, the creation of Yasser Arafat’s terror enclave gave a safe haven to militant Islamic terrorist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Like their mujaheedin cousins, they drew inspiration from Israel’s hasty withdrawal from Lebanon, glorified as a great Moslem victory by the Syrian-backed Hizballah. Under Arafat’s rule, these Palestinian Islamic terrorist groups made repeated use of the technique of suicide bombing, going so far as to run summer camps in Gaza that teach Palestinian children how to become suicide martyrs.

Here is what Arafat’s government controlled newspaper, Al Hayat Al Jadida, said on September 11, the very day of the suicide bombing of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon:

“The suicide bombers of today are the noble successors of the Lebanese suicide bombers, who taught the U.S. Marines a tough lesson in [Lebanon]. These suicide bombers are the salt of the earth, the engines of history, They are the most honorable people among us.”

A simple rule prevails here: The success of terrorists in one part of the terror network emboldens terrorists throughout the network.

This then is the Who. Now for the Why.

Though its separate parts may have local objectives and take part in local conflicts, the main motivation driving the terror network is an anti-Western hostility that seeks to achieve nothing less than a reversal of history. It seeks to roll back the West and install an extremist form of Islam as the dominant power in the world. It seeks to do this not by means of its own advancement and progress, but by destroying the enemy. This hatred is the product of a seething resentment that has simmered for centuries in certain parts of the Arab and Islamic world.

Most Moslems in the world, including the vast majority of the growing Moslem communities in the West, are not guided by this interpretation of history, nor are they moved by its call for a holy war against the West. But some are. And though their numbers are small compared to the peaceable majority, they nevertheless constitute a growing hinterland for this militancy.

Militant Islamists resented the West for pushing back the triumphant march of Islam into the heart of Europe many centuries ago. Its adherents, believing in the innate supremacy of Islam, then suffered a series of shocks when in the last two centuries that same hated, supposedly inferior West penetrated Islamic realms in North Africa, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.

For them the mission was clear: The West had to be first pushed out of these areas. Pro-western Middle Eastern regimes were toppled in rapid succession, including in Iran.

And Israel, the Middle East’s only democracy and its purest manifestation of Western progress and freedom, must be wiped off the face of the earth.

Thus, the soldiers of militant Islam do not hate the West because of Israel, they hate Israel because of the West — because they see it is an island of Western democratic values in a Moslem-Arab sea of despotism.

That is why they call Israel the Little Satan, to distinguish it clearly from the country that has always been and will always be the Great Satan –The United States of America. Nothing better illustrates this then Osama bin Laden’s call for Jihad against the United States in 1998. He gave as his primary reason not Israel, not the Palestinians, not the peace process, but rather the very presence of the United States occupying the Land of Islam in the holiest of places – and where is that? “the Arabian peninsula” says Bin Laden, where America is plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, and humiliating its people.” Israel, by the way, comes a distant third, after the continuing aggression against the Iraqi people. [Al Quds al Arabi February 23, 1998]

For the Bin Ladens of the world Israel is merely a sideshow. America is the target. But reestablishing a resurgent Islam requires not just rolling back the West; it requires destroying its main engine, the United States. And if the US cannot be destroyed just now, it can be first humiliated — as in the Teheran hostage crisis two decades ago — and then ferociously attacked again and again, until it is brought to its knees. But the ultimate goal remains the same: Destroy America and win eternity.

Some of you may find it hard to believe that Islamic militants truly cling to the mad fantasy of destroying America. Make no mistake about it. They do. And unless they are stopped now, their attacks will continue, and become even more lethal in the future.

To understand the true dangers of Islamic militancy, we can compare it to another ideology which sought world domination – communism. Both movements pursued irrational goals, but the communists at least pursued theirs in a rational way. Anytime they had to choose between ideology and their own survival, as in Cuba or Berlin, they backed off and chose survival.

Not so for the Islamic militants. They pursue an irrational ideology irrationally – with no apparent regard for human life, neither their own lives nor the lives of their enemies. The Communists seldom, if ever, produced suicide bombers, while Islamic militancy produces hordes of them, glorifying them and promising them that their dastardly deeds will earn them a glorious afterlife.

This highly pathological aspect of Islamic militancy is what makes it so deadly for mankind.

When in 1996, I wrote a book about fighting terrorism, I warned about the militant Islamic groups operating in the West with the support of foreign powers– serving as a new breed of ‘domestic-international’ terrorists, basing themselves in America to wage Jihad against America: Such groups, I wrote then, nullify in large measure the need to have air power or intercontinental missiles as delivery systems for an Islamic nuclear payload. They will be the delivery system. In the worst of such scenarios, I wrote, the consequences could be not a car bomb but a nuclear bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center.

Well, they did not use a nuclear bomb. They used two 150 ton fully fueled jetliners to wipe out the Twin Towers. But does anyone doubt that given the chance, they will throw atom bombs at America and its allies? And perhaps long before that, chemical and biological weapons?

This is the greatest danger facing our common future. Some states of the terror network already possess chemical and biological capabilities, and some are feverishly developing nuclear weapons. Can one rule out the possibility that they will be tempted to use such weapons, openly or through terror proxies, or that their weapons might fall into the hands of the terrorist groups they harbor?

We have received a wake up call from hell. Now the question is simple: Do we rally to defeat this evil, while there is still time, or do we press a collective snooze button and go back to business as usual? The time for action is now.

Today the terrorists have the will to destroy us, but they do not have the power. There is no doubt that we have the power to crush them. Now we must also show that we have the will to do just that. Once any part of the terror network acquires nuclear weapons, this equation will fundamentally change, and with it the course of human affairs. This is the historical imperative that now confronts all of us.

And now the third point: What do we about it?

First, as President Bush said, we must make no distinction between the terrorists and the states that support them. It is not enough to root out the terrorists who committed this horrific act of war. We must dismantle the entire terrorist network. If any part of it remains intact, it will rebuild itself, and the specter of terrorism will reemerge and strike again.

Bin Laden, for example, has shuttled over the last decade from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan to the Sudan and back again. So we must not leave any base intact. To achieve this goal we must first have moral clarity. We must fight terror wherever and whenever it appears. We must make all states play by the same rules. We must declare terrorism a crime against humanity, and we must consider the terrorists enemies of mankind, to be given no quarter and no consideration for their purported grievances.

If we begin to distinguish between acts of terror, justifying some and repudiating others based on sympathy with this or that cause, we will lose the moral clarity that is so essential for victory. This clarity is what enabled America and Britain to root out piracy in the nineteenth century. This is how the Allies rooted out Nazism in the twentieth century. They did not look for the ‘root cause’ of piracy or the ‘root cause’ of Nazism – because they knew that some acts are evil in and of themselves, and do not deserve any consideration or ‘understanding’.

They did not ask if Hitler was right about the alleged wrong done to Germany at Versailles. That they left to the historians. The leaders of the Western Alliance said something else: Nothing justifies Nazism. Nothing!

We must be equally clear-cut today: Nothing justifies terrorism – NOTHING!

Terrorism is defined not by the identity of its perpetrators nor by the cause they espouse. Rather, it is defined by the nature of the act. Terrorism is the deliberate attack on innocent civilians. In this it must be distinguished from legitimate acts of war that target combatants and may unintentionally harm civilians. When the British bombed a Gestapo headquarters in 1944, and one of their bombs unintentionally struck a children’s hospital that was a tragedy, but it was not terrorism. When Israel fired a missile that killed two Hamas arch-terrorists, and two Palestinians children who were playing nearby were tragically struck down, that is not terrorism.

But terrorists do not unintentionally harm civilians. They deliberately murder, maim, and menace civilians – as many as possible.

No cause, no grievance, no apology can ever justify terrorism. Terrorism against Americans, Israelis, Spaniards, Britons, Russians, or anyone else, is all part of the same evil and must be treated as such.

It is time to establish a fixed principle for the international community: any cause that uses terrorism to advance its aims will not be rewarded. On the contrary, it will be punished and placed beyond the pale.

Armed with this moral clarity in defining terrorism, we must possess an equal moral clarity in fighting it. If we include Iran, Syria, and the Palestinian Authority in the coalition to fight terror — even though they currently harbor, sponsor and dispatch terrorists — then the alliance against terror will be defeated from within.

Perhaps we might achieve a short-term objective of destroying one terrorist fiefdom, but it will preclude the possibility of overall victory. Such a coalition will melt down because of its own internal contradictions.

We might win a battle. We will certainly lose the war.

These regimes, like all terrorist states, must be given a forthright demand: Stop terrorism, permanently, or you will face the wrath of the free world through harsh and sustained political, economic and military sanctions.

Obviously, some of these regimes will scramble in fear and issue platitudes about their opposition to terror, just as Arafat, Iran and Syria did, while they keep their terror apparatus intact. We should not be fooled. These regimes are already on the US lists of states supporting terrorism and if they’re not, they should be.

The price of admission for any state into the coalition against terror must be to first completely dismantle the terrorist infrastructures within their realm. Iran will have to dismantle a worldwide network of terrorism and incitement based in Teheran. Syria will have to shut down Hizballah and the dozen terrorist organizations that operate freely in Damascus and in Lebanon. Arafat will have to crush Hamas and Islamic Jihad, close down their suicide factories and training grounds, rein in his own Fatah and Tanzim terrorists and cease the endless incitement to violence.

To win this war, we must fight on many fronts. The most obvious one is direct military action against the terrorists themselves. Israel’s policy of preemptively striking at those who seek to murder its people is, I believe, better understood today and requires no further elaboration. But there is no substitute for the key action that we must take: Imposing the most punishing diplomatic, economic and military sanction on all terrorist states.

To this must be added these five measures:

1) Freeze financial assets in the West of terrorist regimes and organizations;

2) Revise legislation, subject to periodic renewal, to enable better surveillance against organizations inciting violence;

3) Keep convicted terrorist behind bars. Do not negotiate with terrorists;

4) Train special forces to fight terror.

5) And not least important, impose sanctions on suppliers of nuclear technology to terrorist states.

I’ve had some experience in pursuing all these courses of action in Israel’s battle against terrorism, and I will be glad to elaborate on any one of them if you wish, including the sensitive questions surrounding intelligence. But I have to be clear: Victory over terrorism is not, at its most fundamental level, a matter of law enforcement or intelligence. However important these functions may be, they can only reduce the dangers, not eliminate them.

The immediate objective is to end all state support for, and complicity with, terror. If vigorously and continuously challenged, most of these regimes can be deterred from sponsoring terrorism. But there is a real possibility that some will not be deterred – and those may be ones possessing weapons of mass destruction. Again, we cannot dismiss the possibility that a militant terrorist state will use its proxies to threaten or launch a nuclear attack with apparent impunity.

Nor can we completely dismiss the possibility that a militant regime, like its terrorist proxies, will commit collective suicide for the sake of its fanatical ideology. In this case, we might face not thousands of dead, but hundreds of thousands and possibly millions. This is why the US must do everything in its power to prevent regimes like Iran and Iraq from developing nuclear weapons, and disarm them of their weapons of mass destruction.

This is the great mission that now stands before the free world. This mission must not be watered down to allow certain states to participate in the coalition that is now being organized. On the contrary, the coalition must be built around the mission.

It may be that some will shy away from adopting such an uncompromising stance against terrorism. If some free states choose to remain on the sidelines, America must be prepared to march forward without them – for there is no substitute for moral and strategic clarity.

I believe that if the United States stands on principle, all the democracies will eventually join the war on terrorism. The easy route may be tempting, but it will not win the day.

On September eleventh, I, like everyone else, was glued to a television set watching the savagery that struck America. Yet amid the smoking ruins of the Twin Towers one could make out the Statue of Liberty holding high the torch of freedom.

It is freedom’s flame that the terrorists sought to extinguish. But it is that same torch, so proudly held by the United States, that can lead the free world to crush the forces of terror and secure our tomorrow.

It is within our power. Let us now make sure that it is within our will.

Richard Reiss: ‘As a native New Yorker, who watched the buildings burn from my roof on 22nd St., I’ve had a lot of thoughts run through my head lately. To me the whole attack, the timing of the planes and their targets (and even this week’s assault on the unoccupied US embassy) seems too cleverly scripted for media; an attempt to create a wider war, one which would give bin Laden and his people the power they want. It’s to the administration’s credit not to have been sucked in. I think every day of US restraint is a victory. Ultimately we should pursue them as criminals, with the Islamic world on our side.‘

Tomorrow: Blowback and The Jerusalem Post

David Lohrey: ‘The drop in the market makes it a good time for someone in the right circumstances to look strongly at converting an IRA to a Roth IRA. You’ve covered this before – but the market drop makes it look more appealing [because if the value of your IRA has shrunk, so would the tax for converting it]. Right circumstances being – not having too high an adjusted gross income above $100K and having enough funds outside the IRA to pay the taxes.’ Click here for more.

Zach Rosen: ‘Trying to figure out why ‘they’ hate us as a means of understanding why Osama bin Laden attacked the WTC and Pentagon is about as productive as trying to understand why Timothy McVeigh murdered children and innocent civilians, and why McVeigh, and the rest of the Aryan World hates us. As a result of understanding Timothy McVeigh and why he hates us, will we, as a consequence, treat racists better and fix what McVeigh feels are the root causes of society’s problems (i.e., non-white people)? I don’t think so.’

☞ I agree. But it’s not just why bin Laden hates us, it’s why a billion others hate us. And how to proceed in a way that doesn’t make that two billion or convert the passive haters into active, possibly even suicidal, haters. Hence, the White House wisely retiring the word “crusade” almost as soon as it had been uttered. And changing “Operation Infinite Justice” to something else. Things like this – let alone weightier things like, say, the use of tactical nuclear weapons – matter to people. It pays to be sensitive to them.

Russell Turpin: ‘A better question might be: Why are they the way they are? After all, they don’t just hate us. They see the world in a cataclysmic clash, they’re fighting for The Good, this fight is worth killing innocents and sacrificing themselves, and they have the support of their group in doing so. Eric Hoffer’s True Believer is the best answer I have read to this question. I am now rereading this marvel, and find that it speaks as fully to the movements today as it did to those fifty years ago. I highly recommend it to everyone trying to understand this.’

Mitchell Ratner: ‘It is essential to understand the larger context in which the recent violence occurred. One of the best web resources I’ve found are a series of articles on Muslim Rage, Afghanistan, and the Taliban put together here by the Atlantic Monthly. I especially recommend for you and your readers the 1990 (!) article by Historian Bernard Lewis on ‘The Roots of Muslim Rage.’ I hope that one of the outcomes of these horrible attacks will be the realization that the world has become too small, too interdependent, for us, individually and as a nation, not to genuinely care about and work to alleviate suffering and despair wherever it exists on this planet. Showing the dispossessed of the world the U.S. really does care about starving children and wretched living conditions – not spin but genuine acts of mercy and compassion – what a difficult but honorable task for the years ahead. And how much stronger and at peace we would be as individuals and as a country.’

☞ So there are basically two contrasting views.

Alan echoes Mitchell in the first: ‘What do you think of this. We load up all the B1s, B2s, B52, and cargo planes, fly them over Afghanistan and drop…FOOD! We mount an air campaign that lasts as long as the one over Yugoslavia, but we drop food in designated areas. The Afghan government has seized the UN food and supposedly many are starving. After a few weeks of this, we walk into Afghanistan, and the people turn over bin Laden.’

Chris Williams expresses the second: ‘The liberal side of the populace is edging towards pacifism. Well, not edging. Sprinting. Here’s what I hear in various politics venues online. Item #1: ‘We mustn’t enrage the entire Islamic world.’ Item #2: ‘We should go in and get them, but no huge, widespread destruction because the Afghan people are victims and innocent.’ ‘Revenge is evil and just makes you one of them.’

‘Andy, here’s the deal. The devil is, as usual, in the details. Liberals are averse to things military and hence they have inadequate knowledge of military specifics. When asked exactly what Item #1 – ‘go in and get them’ – means, they don’t want to address it. They are more comfortable with touchy feely aspects of the event. Candles held stuff. Moral support to victims’ families. And as a conservative, it’s wise to note that this is not a foolish perspective; it’s just their nature.

‘But the problem arrives when methods for ‘going in and getting them’ are suggested, and suddenly they want to impose constraints. Item #1 becomes operative and any measure with potential for success is deemed ‘too provocative.’ That country is strewn with anti-personnel mines from their war with the Soviets. A US military commander ordering his troops into the areas with deep mountain caves to clean out the terrorist training camps is condemning a significant percentage of his people, young Americans all, to death – or a lifetime with one leg or no legs. It is the commander who has to write letters to the wives and parents of the men he orders into that situation to explain how and why they were injured or killed. And the commander has to do this because one of those measures with potential for success – perhaps a very low magnitude yield, airburst configured (no fallout) tactical nuclear device targeted in a remote valley with enemy casualty probabilities of only a few hundred – is met with expressions of horror and outrage at ‘idiotic military lust for death.’ It’s another of those N words, it seems.

‘An act of war was committed against American citizens on American soil. Pacifism is suggested by the left. If another act of war is committed, what more could the left offer? Perhaps surrender?’

☞ So far the White House has proceeded deliberately and cool-headedly. The goal seems to be, first, not to make it ‘us against the Moslems,’ but ‘virtually the whole world against the terrorists.’ This is an outstanding way to frame the conflict. And, second, to do tough, targeted things that almost any reasonable person would consider at least arguably justified. So far, so good. But a massive, sustained airlift of food (and literature) to the people of Afghanistan would not be a bad idea, either.

*

Finally, Dean Cardno points us to this wonderful piece in last Sunday’s Times of London. At some length, it marvels at America’s critics – and takes them on.

If you missed Tuesday’s NPR snippet, because you lacked the time or the audio player, click here for a transcript

Greg Curry: ‘I used to use CheckFree. It was easy to use and integrated well with Quicken. But I still had to go into Quicken and write out the virtual check. About a year ago, I switched to PayTrust. I pay $9.95 per month, and they receive and pay all of my bills. I now have most of my regular payees set up so that the bills are automatically paid if the amount due is under a pre-set amount. For those few that aren’t paid this way, I get an e-mail when the bill arrives, and I go and pay it (takes about 1 minute). Every week I download a file and import it into quicken (takes about 2 minutes). I’ve been very pleased with PayTrust, and plan on staying there for the foreseeable future.’

Chuck Smith: ‘I stayed with MYM dos version 12 until this year when I switched to Quicken Deluxe 2001. I had two main reasons for switching. One being lack of support for DOS by Microsoft in their latest releases and the other being the question of how long CheckFree will support input from MYM. I am happy with my decision, as Quicken has excellent Internet interfaces with my bank and securities institutions. I make my payments electronically to merchants (CheckFree is still a transparent third party) and update my statements on a daily basis, all without per-transaction or monthly fees. So why would I pay a fee to receive a bill and make a payment? These services are free (my bank likes me), even if I should want to receive the bills electronically. I took the PayTrust tour and, for me, it fails the cost/benefit test.’David Maymudes: ‘I feel that online bill payment should be free or better. I figure that printing and mailing the bill, and processing the check they get back from me, probably costs them at least $1.00 per bill. So I won’t sign up for online bill payment unless companies are willing to pay me at least 25 cents or so per bill. (I do sign up when individual companies offer to let me pay bills with a credit card; it saves them the same costs in paper processing, and I at least get the frequent flyer miles.)

☞ A man after my own heart.

Peter Reilly: ‘I was an MYM user who finally switched to Quicken. I used CheckFree at both. I was pretty happy with CheckFree, even when they raised the price on us a couple of years ago from $4.95 to $9.95 per month; though they gave us more transactions. However, I have discovered that Fidelity gives free CheckFree services to its USA clients. It is web based, not send and receive out of Quicken or MYM, but it works just as well, actually one day faster, 4 days instead of 5, and saves about $120 per year. By cutting and pasting from Quicken into the Fidelity web site, I minimize the chance for errors between the two.’

Joel Williams: ‘Why not use Waterhouse Bank? Bill paying is free, and they also give you interest on the money in your account. Besides that, since they have no ATMs of their own (but you can use just about any one in existence) they pay you $1.00 for the first 3 times per month you use an ATM. So when I take money out at Fresh Fields, where the ATM is free, I actually make $1.00 on the transaction. How’s that for a good deal?’

John Lemon: ‘I use an Internet bank called everbank.com. As long as I maintain a $1,500 balance, they pay relatively good interest (presently about 3.25%) and, more importantly, pay any bill for free, as long as you provide them with the address and phone number of the payee. I’ve been using them for about 18 months with no serious problems.’

Eric E. Haas: ‘Speaking of online banks, I believe the best of the bunch to be pcbanker.com. Their e-checking accounts currently pay 4.1% APY interest – FDIC insured! Also, they reimburse up to four $1.50 ATM transaction fees per month and they have FREE on-line bill-paying. These terms are not only superior to most banks, but nearly all money market funds as well!’

Ed Shoben: ‘I pay all my bills through First Internet Bank of Indiana – ‘First IB’ as they call it. I’ve been very pleased with them and particularly with the interest rate they pay on checking (still over 3%) and with their customer service people. The lack of any fees is wonderful.’

David Penfield: ‘I used to use CheckFree, but a few years ago authorized all my regular bills (mortgage, electric, credit cards, and phone) to be paid by automatic withdrawal from my checking account. This works much better than CheckFree ever did and I have never had a problem, whereas I did have some problems with CheckFree payments getting posted late. With automatic withdrawal, the companies take the money out on the day the bill is due, so I get the full benefit of the float and never have to worry about late fees.’

☞ Bob Fyfe goes that one better. Instead of having the payment hit his bank account on the due date, he has it hit his credit card – which then gives him another month or more of float. He writes: ‘I auto-charge all of the bills that accept credit cards in order to get the miles, the convenience, and the ‘float.’ The few bills that haven’t been charged to my airline-sponsored Visa (such as the Visa bill itself) I pay using my bank’s on-line bill-paying website.’ If you follow Bob’s lead, just be certain you’re someone who always pays his Visa balance in full within the grace period.

David D’Antonio: ‘You might want to (again) point out what a GREAT deal most credit unions are. Having worked for Digital Equipment Corp (now Compaq, soon to be Hewlett-Compaqard), I have access to the Digital Credit Union which gives me bill-paying services (and a lot more) for free. Very convenient. A good way to be frugal, yet get great service!’

Sreenivas I. Rao: ‘I was as surprised as the other reader of your column at your suggestion of PayTrust. I currently use Patelco, the big credit union, and they pay my bills free. For every bill I pay, using this service I save 34 cents. That is actually equivalent to earning 50 cents, in my tax bracket.’

CAVEAT VENDOR

David Frankel: ‘A note for Adam about going into the vending machine businesses. Not too long ago, the Federal Trade Commission was pretty active in bringing fraud cases against promoters who made highly unrealistic earnings claims to potential investors in such businesses. I’d advise extreme caution. At a minimum, Adam should conduct a search of the FTC‘s web site. While the FTC does not reveal the names of people or firms under investigation, he can read about past cases to see if the facts are similar to what he’s hearing now.’

I’ve been leaning over backwards to try to understand ‘why they hate us’ – and I think we should do that, if only to understand what we’re up against (and in some cases, going forward, to make better decisions than we’ve made in the past). But that doesn’t mean I think their hatred is justified, even if in some instances it is understandable.

Lest you worry that ‘we deserved’ this, Michael Rutkaus and David Smith linked me to two good columns that ably dispatch that view as rubbish:

The first is from The Economist. The second, from the Miami Herald.

Finally, a lot of people know by now that Mark Bingham – the six-foot-five, 230-pound 31-year-old amateur rugby player who almost surely helped down the ‘fourth plane’ in Pennsylvania – was gay. At his memorial service, Senator John McCain said that Bingham may literally have saved his life, as the plane was very possibly headed for the Capitol.

Can you imagine what would have happened if, on top of the World Trade Center tragedy, and the Pentagon, our nation’s Capitol had been destroyed?

Might the Bush administration been able to show the same admirable cool-headedness it so far has? Or might a nuclear missile or two have been let fly instead? Obviously we don’t know. It’s probably a stretch to suggest we would have done that, and a further stretch to imagine such a nuclear strike could have touched off some kind of Armageddon (though it might have made some future nuclear war more likely, for the precedent it set). But it’s not impossible. So maybe this nice gay guy – a friend of a friend in San Francisco – saved the world. It’s certainly likely he played a key role in saving our nation’s Capitol.

So if you have 3 minutes, listen to this NPR commentary by Scott Simon that contrasts Jerry Falwell and Mark Bingham.

(To be fair, Falwell and Robertson have disassociated themselves from their own remarks. When the Reverend Falwell said, ‘the ACLU’s got to take a lot of blame for this,’ he didn’t mean it. As he told Geraldo Rivera on CNBC, he hadn’t slept much the night before, and so he ‘misspoke.’ Slip o’ the tongue. And when the billionaire Reverend Robertson responded, ‘Well, yes,’ it was because he wasn’t sure what ‘the ACLU’s got to take a lot of blame for this’ – a complex, convoluted sentence if ever there was one – meant. When the Reverend Falwell, after listing the pagans and the gays and lesbians and the feminists, et al, said, on national TV, ‘I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen,” he just wasn’t expressing himself clearly, he told Geraldo, because that’s certainly not something he would have said if he had had more sleep. And when the Reverend Robertson shot back, ‘I totally concur,’ what he meant to say was, ‘I totally disagree.’ Got it?)

Anyway, don’t miss the NPR commentary.

Tomorrow: SOMETHING financial – anything! Please!

Nothing blew up yesterday. This is interesting, because a high-ranking law enforcement official told a friend of mine to ‘stay away from New York monuments’ Saturday. I don’t know whether this means our fears are overdone or our intelligence was good enough to pick it up and foil it – or, most likely, that it was just one of countless phony bomb scares.

New York is returning to normal, as is air travel, and you should come see a show. You think it takes courage? Statistically, even now, it takes a heck of a lot more courage to get behind the wheel of a car and drive home from dinner.

Come and meet … those dancing feet!
On the a-ve-noo I’m taking ya too: Forty-Second Street.

My feet start to tap at the mere thought – and yours should, too.

Still, this new environment is all-consuming, and it’s hard, just now, to get back to writing about automated bill-paying services.

Like you, I have read many compelling articles and e-mails over the last several days dealing with “why they hate us so much” and what, in any event, we should do.  And also like you (I assume), I don’t feel I can tell for sure what’s true and what isn’t and what makes the most sense.

Still, I have been heartened by the careful, measured response of the administration.  I get the impression that they really do understand the risks and the need to think things through very carefully before proceeding.  This is good news.  They are doing a very good job.

It is also good news that the initial verbal and physical attacks on Arab Americans have, apparently, fallen off dramatically, as people at all levels get the word that this is distinctly uncool.

And it is good news to see Congress working together.  Perhaps you saw Hastert, Gephardt, Daschle and Lott together on Meet the Press today, talking about what it was like to be stuck in a secret safe-room together for a day as we braced to see if there would be further attack.

So . . . so far, you might say (odd as it sounds under the tragic circumstances), so good.

Now what should we do?  “Bomb them with butter, bribe them with hope,” read the subject line of one of the (unattributed) Internet messages I got:

A military response, particularly an attack on Afghanistan, is exactly what the terrorists want.  It will strengthen and swell their small but fanatical ranks.

Instead, bomb Afghanistan with butter, with rice, bread, clothing and medicine.  It will cost less than conventional arms, poses no threat of U.S. casualties and just might get the populace thinking that maybe the Taliban don’t have the answers.  After three years of drought and with starvation looming, let’s offer the Afghani people the vision of a new    future. One that includes full stomachs.

Bomb them with information. Video players and cassettes of world leaders, particularly Islamic leaders, condemning terrorism. Carpet the country with magazines and newspapers showing the horror of terrorism committed by their “guest.”  Blitz them with laptop computers and DVD players filled with a perspective that is denied them by their government. Saturation bombing with hope will mean that some of it gets through.  Send so much that the Taliban can’t collect and hide it all.

The Taliban are telling their people to prepare for Jihad. Instead, let’s give the Afghani people their first good meal in years. Seeing your family fully fed and the prospect of stability in terms of food and a future is a powerful deterrent to martyrdom. All we ask in return is that they, as a people, agree to enter the civilized world. That includes handing over terrorists in their midst.

In responding to terrorism we need to do something different.  Something unexpected . . . something that addresses the root of the problem. We need to take away the well of despair, ignorance and brutality from which the Osama bin Laden’s of the world water their gardens of terror.

If we continue attacking in the old ways we will get the same old results. Look at what has been happening the middle east for thousands of years to see what we can expect if we attack with bombs and military force. Do we want to live a life of fear as people in the Middle East do?  WE WANT PEACE!

I think the VCR and DVD idea may presuppose the presence of more televisions – and electricity – than are actually there (much as I would like to airdrop TiVos as well), so this idea may need refinement around the edges.  But the approach is compelling, and could be combined with the very forceful attempts that will be made to destroy the terrorist cells.  It’s not “either/or.”

(One friend of mine pitches it a little more flippantly:  “Airdrop millions of CD players, CD’s, radios, TV’s, candy, food and western goods. In six weeks, the Afghan people will revere Brittany Spears and overthrow the Taliban in order to keep up their addiction to Snickers bars and pop music. This would be cheaper, cost fewer lives, and, in the short run, anyway, rid the US of all this crap.”)

Paul Lowry: “The problem isn’t terrorism.  The problem is hate.  It shouldn’t be a war on terrorism – it should be a war on organized hate.  Americans must understand why nations and cultures hate us and how they will interpret our words and actions.  You may not change those already indoctrinated by bin Laden or other hate leaders, but the wrong action by us now could raise his followers from the thousands to the millions if we don’t try to see the world through other peoples’ eyes.”

But why do they hate us so much?  How much of the motivation behind the terror is psychopathic, and how much stems from a logical (to them, if not to us) fury over decades of perceived injustice?

On the psychopath side of the ledger, I read a chilling article in one of the Jane’s publications about a Hollywood-couldn’t-make-it-any-more-chilling character named Mughniyeh.  I don’t mean to take your whole morning, but it’s worth reading.  You thought Osama bin Laden was scary?

On the perceived injustice side, you may have seen this piece riding the e-waves.  I don’t have the competence to judge how much of it is fair.  I certainly don’t think it does a very good job of seeing Israel’s very valid point of view, or of crediting her with having offered tremendous concessions last year, rejected out of hand by Arafat.  And I don’t think it correctly portrays our motivation in the genocidal Balkans, or much of anywhere else.  But that’s all really a separate question.  Do they justly hate us?  I desperately hope not.  But why do they hate us?   Read on:

Dear friends,

In order to make sense of the violence that occurred in NYC recently we must accept our anger and sadness but not let it cloud our vision.  We must condemn all killings of innocent civilians while not losing sight of why this tragic event happened and how it can be prevented in the future.  In reference to the information I am about to present, I would recommend that everyone do their own research on these important topics which are all written about extensively on the Internet and elsewhere.

One of the essential questions to look at, in trying to make sense of the tragic events, is who had the means to do such a thing and how they obtained the necessary training and power.  Many in the government and media have pointed at Osama Bin Ladin, member of the Taliban.  Bin Ladin, and the Islamic fundamentalists who now compose the Taliban, were trained and funded by the CIA to carry out terrorist acts against the Soviet Union during the Cold War.  In 1997, the power and weaponry the Taliban had amassed through U.S. support was used to take dictatorial control over Afghanistan.  They created an environment highly abusive to women and those not fitting in with the far right-wing Taliban viewpoints.  The U.S. government made no attempts to rectify this situation which had arisen as a direct result of our support for extremists.  This is not an out of the ordinary case, but rather, a predictable pattern.  Manuel Noriega of Panama was on the CIA payroll, and Saddam Hussein was funded and supported by the US government before we bombed Iraq.

Another essential question to look at is why someone would want to attack the U.S. government.  This question can be answered, not by choosing one specific thing, but rather, by presenting a list of war crimes committed by the U.S. or by foreign regimes supported by U.S. funding and training in the recent past (all examples are after 1980):

* After U.S.-led bombings of civilian targets in Iraq, including water treatment plants, the UN Human Rights Commission now reports that 5,000 Iraqi children die per month as a direct result of the bombings and the subsequent U.S.-led sanctions that prevent the rebuilding of the civilian infrastructure in Iraq.  Approximately half-a-million children have died as a result of the sanctions.  Over 200,000 were killed in the initial bombing operations and the U.S. continues to bomb Iraq on a regular basis.

* Over the past year the U.S. has given $1.5 billion ($1 billion from Clinton, $550 million from Bush) in military aid to Colombia, a country with the worst human rights record in the hemisphere. The official U.S. government rational for Plan Colombia is the “drug war.”  The Colombian military and their paramilitary allies are, and work for some of the major drug traffickers in Colombia, a fact that leaves the stated reason for the funding dubious.  The Colombian military and paramilitaries are reported by Amnesty International and other human rights organizations to commit around 70-80% of the killings in Colombia, totaling 14,000 since 1986. Clinton removed language from the funding agreement that would have prevented the funds from going to units known to have committed human rights abuses. Since the start of Plan Colombia violence has increased dramatically in Colombia, toxic fumigation of farmland has begun, and tens of thousands of peasants have been driven from their homes, displaced by violence and toxic spraying.  One probable reason for U.S. involvement is counter-insurgency against the leftist FARC, which demands an end to the economic exploitation and repression of the majority of Colombians.

* The U.S.-trained and funded military regime in Indonesia murdered thousands and drove several hundred thousand people from their homes in 1999 after East Timor voted overwhelmingly for independence from Indonesia.  Elite units of the U.S.-trained Kopassus special forces, legendary for their brutality, and their senior military adviser, General Makarim, a U.S.-trained intelligence specialist with experience in East Timor and “a reputation for callous violence,” appear to have directed the militias in the massacre.  Kopassus had been training regularly with U.S. and Australian forces until the time of the massacres.

* The U.S. led NATO bombings of Yugoslavia killed over 500 civilians and in clear violation of international law targeted hundreds of civilian installations, including over 190 school buildings.  The bombing of numerous petrochemical installations released toxins into the air that caused significant adverse effects on the health of the population of Yugoslavia and the neighboring countries.  NATO currently maintains a completely undemocratic military protectorate over the population of Kosovo.  The U.S. led NATO alliance also used it’s influence to increase the power of the KLA, a militant rebel group heavily involved in organized crime, at the expense of the ethnic-Albanian civil government in Kosovo, which was functioning previous to the NATO bombing.

* After U.S. Embassy bombings in 1998, the U.S. bombed a medicine factory in the Sudan destroying half the pharmaceutical production in that country. One year later they admitted that the owner of the plant had no links to terrorism and that the bombing was a “mistake.”

* The U.S. has used the radioactive substance depleted uranium as a coating for its munitions which it employed extensively in Iraq, Yugoslavia, and even in training exercises on the Island of Vieques in Puerto Rico.  There is strong evidence linking depleted uranium to Gulf War Syndrome, a debilitating disease affecting thousands of veterans of the Gulf War.  The U.S. has also used other weapons illegal under international law, including cluster bombs, which killed imprecisely and indiscriminately, in Yugoslavia.

* $3 billion in aid per year to Israel, the majority military aid, to a nation recognized by almost every member nation of the UN to be in illegal occupation of the State of Palestine. Israel is recognized by the UN Human Rights Commission to be in “widespread, systematic and gross violation of human rights” of the Palestinians. The Palestinians demand independence and the right to return to the homes that 800,000 of them were expelled from in 1948.  In reaction to their protest Israel bulldozes their homes, assassinates their leaders without trial, and murders innocent civilians who are exercising their freedom of speech and assembly.  Palestinian deaths and injuries have far outnumbered Israeli deaths in the conflicts both recently and since 1948.  Clinton pressured Israel to take a very hard line in it’s negotiations with the Palestinians.

* U.S. military assistance to Turkey which had been going on since the beginning of the Cold War escalated sharply in 1984 with the beginning of Turkey’s counter-insurgency against the repressed ethnic minority, the Kurds.  The military aid reached it’s climax in 1997 when 80% of Turkey’s total weapons had been donated to it by the U.S.  By 1999, Turkey had largely suppressed Kurdish resistance by terror and ethnic cleansing, leaving some 2-3 million refugees, 3,500 villages destroyed, and tens of thousands killed.

* U.S. funded military regimes and death squads in Central America, including the Contras in Nicaragua, murdered over 30,000 Central Americans during the 1980s.

* The U.S. invaded Panama in December 1989 killing over 2000, the majority civilians.  The supposed reason for the invasion was to oust the international criminal, Manuel Noriega, a man whom the CIA funded as he rigged elections and brutally ruled Panama throughout the early 1980s at which time he was praised by the US for his “democratic” credentials.

* Supported by U.S. funds and training, Israel launched an invasion of Lebanon in 1982 which claimed the lives of 17,500 Lebanese civilians.

These are not all, but only some of the atrocities that the U.S. has supported since 1980, not least of which is its role as the worlds biggest arms dealer.  In light of these facts, we demand a peaceful response to this tragedy.  We demand that no innocent civilians are harmed in our search for vengeance against the perpetrators.  We demand, not an increase in the military and surveillance budget, but rather a decrease, as only LESS aggression on the part of the U.S., not more, will solve the danger that we are in, brought upon us by the intense hatred that many throughout the world feel for the U.S.  We need to accept that a great deal of misery and repression is dealt out in our name, and that we have a responsibility, both to our own safety, and to that of the rest of the world, to combat these injustices.  We must stop believing that American lives, freedom, and democracy are more valuable than the lives, freedom, and democracy of people abroad.

Please forward this widely, especially to those who may feel that a U.S. military operation is appropriate at this point in time.

Robert Arnow
Co-chair
Media Working Group

Call me naïve, but I think that is unfair and one-sided.  Us?  The bad guys?  So consistently and extensively?  But that’s how enemies tend to see each other – unfairly and one-sidedly.  It was only during the Viet Nam War that much national attention and extensive debate was focused on our actions – because so many families had a direct, life-and-death stake in it.  And you will recall that opinion was divided on the wisdom and humanity of our actions.  When was the last time you heard a vigorous debate on our role in Turkey or Indonesia or Colombia?  This is not to say we are even necessarily wrong in these situations.  Often, you have to pick the better of two bad options.  (Let the genocide go on without interfering? Interfere?)  And so will be hated for either choice.

Still, I agree with those who believe that this war on terrorism must be unlike any other, and that to win it, we must really try to understand what we’re up against.

So far, as I’ve said, I think the administration is doing it well.

Ken Shirriff: “A minor correction.  The Friedman Doctrine, that no nations both with McDonald’s have gone to war against each other, doesn’t hold since NATO bombed Serbia, and Belgrade has a McDonald’s.”

Sorry. Will try to post something tonight or tomorrow. But looking at the market this morning, I’d suggest that the good time to sell has now past, if you were thinking of selling, and that the good time to hang on (and go to the movies and just wait it out) has arrived. Even, for those who really have a lot of cash on the sidelines, the time to start buying. But just start, because I would be surprised if we have bottomed, and very surprised if the unprecedented bull market we have experienced were not over for a while. Those who, wisely, invest $100 a week in index funds, or whatever similar lifelong discipline: just keep right on doing it.

I’m buying some more CSPLF today at $5.25 if I can get it – it fell sharply on a largely unfavorable court ruling yesterday, but owns a lot of natural gas in Canada. If you can REALLY afford to lose this money, and aren’t already over-exposed in speculative energy stocks, it might be worth a look. [Usual caveats apply: I am terrible at this; you must NEVER borrow to invest (which means never investing if you run credit card balances or might need the money if the roof starts to leak); you would do better just investing in index mutual funds; patience has to be your middle name.]

And now back to more important matters.

*

Gregory Lawton: ‘What could be better than having Osama bin Laden tried by an Islamic court and executed for his horrific crimes according to the Islamic law that he professes to revere?’

☞ Give me a minute . . . nope – can’t think of anything. Well, unless he could be executed twice.

*

Iris Cantor lost her husband and virtually all the employees of his firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, that occupied five high floors (I think it was five) in the World Trade Center. Here is the quote she chose for the memorial ad she placed in the Wall Street Journal:

‘When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall – think of it, ALWAYS.’ – Mahatma Gandhi

*

A Marine’s Mom Speaks: Click here.

First, high finance:

Joe F: ‘I still have not been able to locate three of my friends. I just returned from volunteering in the City this past weekend. I do not have much $$$. I donated to one of my friend’s families and have about $750 left to play with. I was thinking of taking the rest and investing. I know it is not much at all, but I would like to help jump-start the economy. Is this wise?’

☞ Only if you run no credit card balances, have no 10% car loans, etc., and truly can afford to put this away for the long term.

Coming to NY to help is patriotic and generous. Trying to prop up the world’s financial markets with $750 is tremendously well-intentioned – you deserve a big hug – but ——ic. (Fill in whatever blanks you like. I can think of words, of varying lengths beginning with Q, U, I and M.)

Like water, the market will find its level. It seemed to do just fine yesterday. No panic; no propping required. If it goes back down to 6500, where five years ago it was seen by some key players as dangerously OVERvalued, that will hardly be the end of the world – and you should let your friends know it. I’m not predicting that it will go so low. I sure hope not. But whether it does or doesn’t, if this $750 is truly long-term money, you would likely do just fine investing it today.

And now the letters:

I was moved by all three of these. Please don’t miss the last one, as it comes from our mutual friend, the estimable Less Antman. It is he who makes the case that . . . we’ve won. (Separately, Less has heard the report that the SEC is investigating whether bin Laden shorted stocks before the attack. Remembering that Al Capone was sent up for tax evasion rather than murder, Less wonders . . . oh, never mind.)

1. From Yasmine: ‘As an American, a New Yorker and an Afghan, I have struggled with many feelings. I have wondered what I can do to educate people about the state of affairs in Afghanistan now and over the past 20 years. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December of 1979, it is September 2001 and my father’s country has been destroyed day by day for over two decades. I am disgusted by the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. For my family, these have been household names for years prior to the tragedies we witnessed on Tuesday. My father has spent years trying to get people in our government to listen – he has sat around our dinner table talking to his children for hours on end about what was happening to his homeland – so many of our friends have listened as my Dad spoke passionately about the hateful crimes the Taliban was committing against innocent Afghans all in the name of Islam, an Islam that my family does not know, an Islam that cannot be found in the pages of the Koran.

‘I beg you, as friends, to take the anger we all feel and try to learn and spread knowledge. We all want retaliation. We want someone to pay for the innocent people whose lives were taken away. But, please, please, please understand that Afghans like me and my family have never supported the Taliban. In fact, we have watched helplessly as these cowards took the little bit of dignity the Afghans had left after the Soviet war.

‘I went to work the other night and watched groups of friends, bright and educated people, stop their conversations as I approached. I have never experienced anything like this. My Dad recently grew a beard, but after seeing images of bearded fundamentalists on TV, we have asked him to shave it off to quell any possibility of attacks out of ignorance. For the first time in my life, I am afraid to tell people my ethnic background. My name is a liability. My coloring makes me feel scared when people look at me on the subway. I find myself thankful that my sisters and Mom have lighter coloring.

‘We all feel helpless right now. If nothing else, please try to educate your friends. Please do not perpetuate hate. Hatred brought down the World Trade Center. Hate is hate – there is no gray area.

‘It is very possible that we will bomb Afghanistan in the coming days. Maybe emails like this will not stop that from happening, but let’s not pretend that we do not know that those actions will kill innocent and helpless people who have lived under the terror of the Taliban for years. We turned our backs for so long. We have not written about them, or if we have, we have not read those articles, we skipped past them. People did not know where Afghanistan was until three days ago. How is that possible? Bin Laden was behind the first WTC bombing, the bombing of the Cole and the embassies in Africa — ask yourself, how did we not pay attention? Pay attention now. Know what is going on in our world. All we have is hope, unity and the ability to open our eyes. Open them.’

2. From Will Proctor: ‘I went outside tonight at 7 pm for the candlelight vigil across America. Jason and I were the only two on our block at first. The lawn man and his wife were here, cutting the grass and triming the hedges. They just smiled but didn’t say anything. They don’t speak English. I offered them a candle and even though they don’t have Internet access and hadn’t heard the news about the vigil, they understood what we were doing. They didn’t hesitate to join us.

‘Then our neighbors from next door came out to see what was going on. And Jason gave them a candle. A pregnant mother and her daughter walked down the street. The mother wouldn’t make eye contact with me, but then I held out a candle in her direction and she came over to take it. They stopped and stood with us on our lawn.

‘Three Hispanic men had been standing across the street, laughing nervously at the spectacle at first. Then one timidly made his way over towards us and stood on the sidewalk. I offered him a candle and he took it. And one by one, his friends followed suit.

‘An Armenian grandmother from across the street saw us out her window. She came down to her front porch with her candle and smiled at us.

‘Then out of a rowdy group of teenagers up the street, a boy with chains around his neck, a blue baseball jersey and cap moved swiftly towards us with a swagger and attitude as strong as any kid of the streets. I stood my ground. He stepped right up to me. ‘May I have one?’ he asked. So I gave him a candle and followed him back to his friends. Pretty soon they all joined in as well.

‘Looking up and down the street, people had come out, quietly, and joined us on the sidewalk. It was truly an amazing sight. The Armenian grandmother, the Hispanic family, the teenagers, the gay couple, and many others all standing there together, feeling the same thing, understanding how similar we are. And acknowledging not only all the people who died and are grieving, but also, for the very first time on our incredibly diverse street in the middle of Hollywood, acknowledging each other.

‘For the three months Jason and I have lived here, barely a word of acknowledgement has passed betweeen us and our neighbors. But that has all changed. No longer can we pass each other with eyes averted. No longer can we avoid conversation because they don’t speak English and our Spanish isn’t that good. No longer can we avoid conversation because they are too macho to speak to us and we are too educated to speak to a group of laborers. No longer can we avoid conversation because a fifteen-year-old is too cool or too hip to talk to a thirty-year-old and a thirty-year-old doesn’t know what to say to a fifteen-year-old.

‘Tonight we saw ourselves in each other. We realized that we all just want to love and be loved and belong and make a difference. That is what being a human is all about. That’s it. Nothing more and nothing less.’

3. The estimable Less Antman: ‘In all the hand-wringing over what should be done to respond to the terrorism of September 11, it seems to me that a critical point has been overlooked by many: The terrorists have already lost.

‘The world is shocked, including the entire Muslim world. Iran, Libya, Pakistan are all feeling genuine outrage and compassion for the US. Anyone who saw Yassir Arafat on television knows that he is speechless in his anguish over what has happened. The longer we refrain from a visible attack that kills innocent people, the more we have gained a moral authority that is the last thing Al Queda wanted to have happen.

‘Osama bin Laden doesn’t care if he dies: he WANTS to be a martyr. What will torture him is for the Islamic world to be united with the West because of his actions. What will ruin him is acts of kindness by Muslims toward non-Muslims, and acts of kindness by non-Muslims toward Muslims. He thought he would be a hero: now he is afraid to claim credit. I hope bin Laden lives to be 100, for it will be the greatest punishment possible for him to see how a vision of Hell brought the entire world to its senses and turned him into a pariah among those he thought would consider him a savior.

‘Terrorists need a large number of people who, while not participating, sympathize with their cause. This is crucial. Don’t say that Osama bin Laden and his gang don’t care about public opinion: they desperately need the sympathy and the sense of heroism that they had before September 11 in much of the world. Now they have only the criminals. If they are not raised to the level of martyrs, youngsters will stop dreaming of growing up to be suicide bombers, for they will know this will make everyone they love and respect feel ashamed of them.

‘I’m not saying we should do NOTHING. Our counterattack needs to be on three levels:

‘(1) Government. Patient police and intelligence work with the cooperation and involvement of as many other countries as possible will take the victory we have been handed and solidify it. In truth, merely making it indisputable public knowledge corroborated by Islamic governments that Al Queda committed this crime will force them to hide out like rats in sewers for the rest of their lives, unable to continue their work. A few captures would be a nice bonus, but we’ll probably only get a few suicides out of it when arrest is imminent. Some consolation. But their inability to operate anymore with the tacit support and admiration of the large numbers of people who used to consider them vaguely heroic will cripple them beyond repair: logistically, financially, morally, and emotionally.

‘(2) Practical. Free markets and free trade make the world safer. It is not surprising that virtually all terrorist nations are countries without active stock markets and where American businesses don’t exist. To this day, as Thomas Friedman of the New York Times has pointed out, there has never been a war between two different countries which each had McDonald’s franchises. China needs our market: as horrible a regime as they are, we need to keep investing and trading with it, knowing that the more prosperity the people have, the more they will have to lose from being an enemy. Be an investor, and be a global investor. It is your contribution to world peace as much as it is to your own wealth.

‘(3) Personal. Our adrenaline is flowing, and we need to do something. In addition to working and investing (see number 2), we need to channel our anger into donations to the Red Cross, the September 11 fund for victims, and charities and religious organizations whose purposes appeal to us individually. We also need to stop perpetuating hate and stereotyping of entire nations and races: that is what the terrorists have done. Muslims around the world have been laying flowers in front of US embassies: a few bouquets in front of mosques would be warranted.

‘The Islamic world doesn’t need more parking lots [as in: bomb their cities into parking lots]. It needs time to think, to realize the role that public hatred has in encouraging sick minds, and to reconsider attitudes and actions that might have made it easier for those tiny numbers who are terrorists to feel like heroes. Such reflective thought will stop the moment the first American plane drops a bomb. The American administration deserves a great deal of credit for not giving in to the lowest common denominator to this point, and I hope it continues a while longer. Now excuse me while I add a little money to my mutual fund account and make an online donation at redcross.org.’

For some photos from around the world that eloquently bolster Less’s point, click here.