Cheesespread

The day we stood still
You could hear a pin drop in downtown Chico throughout the darkened morning of Tuesday, Sept. 11.

People walked around with blank stares and employees unloading beer kegs appeared completely insane.

All U.S. flights were canceled. The White House and Pentagon were evacuated. The stock market was closed. Prayer meetings were being formed around the country. Entire office staffs huddled around tiny televisions watching horrific images of the World Trade Centers—collapsing in falling piles of rubble as workers fell from windows and onlookers screamed on the ground. Untold thousands were dead. Manhattan and Arlington, Va. looked like war zones. Fighter planes were in the air over Washington.

It was being called the worst terrorist attack in world history.

As of press time, it is believed that Militant Islamic Fundamentalists are responsible, but the truth is still unknown. Those who hate U.S government had their symbolic imagery: The towers of Babylon had fallen. The pain and destruction so many small, war-torn countries often experience had come to America on the anniversary of the Camp David signing.

In the weeks to come, as we learn all the details, lets hope that cool heads prevail. Maybe something decent (like educating the public) can grow from this terrible attack. Whatever happens, times are changing.

Don’t think that our national media coverage will be anything other than biased, political propaganda. People should ask real questions about US Foreign Policy and our position in the world while condemning the messages of hate and stereotyping that are bound to surface in the coming days.

“We have to begin to enjoy the differences in the human family like we enjoy the differences in a garden of flowers. And there’s a race on—and the real race and the real ideological conflict is between those universalists who want to think in terms of mankind and those reversions to barbarity and tribalism, who are still hung up in ancient, anachronistic hatreds like we see in Ulster, in Israel, in Palestine. Without some system of world law we’re lost. And we can’t have a system of law without a sense of community.”

—I.F. Stone

Weekly props
1. Hopes for peace
2. Edward W. Said’s Power, Politics and Culture