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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 liveS a
fluke, a mistake, a few feet on the tarmac, and I am still here, there but
for the grace ofS
Safe. Secure. I'm an American, living in America. I like my illusions. I
walk through a metal detector, I put yy 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
airplane mechanic gives me a ride the rest of the way to the terminal.
* I have brought knives, razors; and once, my traveling companion brought
a hammer and chisel. No one stopped us.
Of course, I have gotten away with all of this because the airlines
consider my safety SO important, they pay rent-a-cops $5.75 an hour to
make sure the bad guys don't get on my plane. That is what my life is
worth -- less than the cost of an oil change.
Too harsh, you say? Well, chew on this: a first-year pilot on American
Eagle (the commuter arm of American Airlines) receives around $15,000 a
year in annual pay.
That's right -- $15,000 for the person who has your life in his hands.
Until recently, Continental Express paid a little over $13,000 a year.
There was one guy, an American Eagle pilot, who had four kids so he went
down to the welfare office and applied for food stamps -- and he was
eligible!
Someone on welfare is flying my plane? Is this for real? Yes, it is.
So spare me the talk about all the precautions the airlines and the FAA is
taking. They, like all businesses, are concerned about one thing -- the
bottom line and the profit margin.
Four teams of 3-5 people were all able to penetrate airport security on
the same morning at 3 different airports and pull off this heinous act? My only response is -- that's all?
Well, the pundits are in full diarrhea mode, gushing on about the
"terrorist threat" and today's scariest dude on planet earth -- Osama bin
Laden. Hey, who knows, maybe he did it. But, something just doesn't add
up.
Am I being asked to believe that this guy who sleeps in a tent in a desert
has been training pilots to fly our most modern, sophisticated jumbo jets
with such pinpoint accuracy that they are able to hit these three targets
without anyone wondering why these planes were so far off path?
Or am I being asked to believe that there were four religious/political
fanatics who JUST HAPPENED to be skilled airline pilots who JUST HAPPENED
to want to kill themselves today?
Maybe you can find one jumbo jet pilot willing to die for the cause -- but
FOUR? Ok, maybe you can -- I don't know.
What I do know is that all day long I have heard everything about this bin
Laden guy except this one fact -- WE created the monster known as Osama
bin Laden!
Where did he go to terrorist school? At the CIA!
Don't take my word for it -- I saw a piece on MSNBC last year that laid it
all out. When the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan, the CIA trained him
and his buddies in how to commits acts of terrorism against the Soviet
forces. It worked! The Soviets turned and ran. Bin Laden was grateful for
what we taught him and thought it might be fun to use those same
techniques against us.
We abhor terrorism -- unless we're the ones doing the terrorizing.
We paid and trained and armed a group of terrorists in Nicaragua in the
1980s who killed over 30,000 civilians. That was OUR work. You and me.
Thirty thousand murdered civilians and who the hell even remembers!
We fund a lot of oppressive regimes that have killed a lot of innocent
people, and we never let the human suffering THAT causes to interrupt our
day one single bit.
We have orphaned so many children, tens of thousands around the world,
with our taxpayer-funded terrorism (in Chile, in Vietnam, in Gaza, in
Salvador) that I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised when those orphans
grow up and are a little whacked in the head from the horror we have
helped cause.
Yet, our recent domestic terrorism bombings have not been conducted by a
guy from the desert but rather by our own citizens: a couple of
ex-military guys who hated the federal government.
From the first minutes of today's events, I never heard that possibility
suggested. Why is that?
Maybe it's because the A-rabs are much better foils. A key ingredient in
getting Americans whipped into a frenzy against a new enemy is the
all-important race card. It's much easier to get us to hate when the
object of our hatred doesn't look like us.
Congressmen and Senators spent the day calling for more money for the
military; one Senator on CNN even said he didn't want to hear any more
alk about more money for education or health care -- we should have only
one priority: our self-defense.
Will we ever get to the point that we realize we will be more secure when
the rest of the world isn't living in poverty so we can have nice running
shoes?
In just 8 months, Bush gets the whole world back to hating us again. He
withdraws from the Kyoto agreement, walks us out of the Durban conference
on racism, insists on restarting the arms race -- you name it, and Baby
Bush has blown it all.
The Senators and Congressmen tonight broke out in a spontaneous version of
"God Bless America." They're not a bad group of singers!
Yes, God, please do bless us.
Many families have been devastated tonight. This just is not right. They
did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they
did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston,
New York, DC, and the planes' destination of California -- these were
laces that voted AGAINST Bush!
Why kill them? Why kill anyone? Such insanityS
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 thisS
Yours,
Michael Moore
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