nmah6534.xml

nmah6534.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2004-06-06

6 June 2004 I arrived home at about 5:45 AM California time after working all night Sept. 10 to 11. Being very tired, I immediately went to bed without listening to the news on the radio or watching it on TV. This was right at 8:45 AM New York time, about the very instant the first (north) World Trade Center tower was hit. When I awakened and got up about 1 PM, my wife, who had been up during the day, said that New York had been bombed. At this point, I directed my attention to the TV set, on which pictures of the destruction and disarray in New York and Washington, D.C., were being shown, along with continuous verbal coverage by various broadcast personalities.

Personally, I have noticed no real changes in my life since Sept. 11, 2001. However, for a while, I remember hearing a greater than usual number of disparaging (=prejudiced and obscene) comments being said by people about foreigners in general and Near Eastern and South Asian people in particular. Most of these comments were uttered by acquaintances whom I consider relatively uneducated and possibly bigoted to begin with. Also, a couple of months after 9-11, my wife and I went to Vancouver, B.C., and noticed that the border controls by both U.S. and Canadian immigration and customs agents were being performed much more formally and not at all courteously. Although we had no problems, as we had read about the need to have our birth certificates with us, I observed other vehicles and their occupants being "given the nth degree" of nearly Gestapo-like scrutiny.

I totally disagree with the paranoid, xenophobic reaction of the Bush administration to the events of 9-11 (ramming through Congress of the so-called Patriot act, severe restrictions on, and even persecution of, foreigners, and most annoying, starting two foreign wars justified on obviously completely fabricated "evidence", e.g., the never discovered weapons of mass destruction. I feel the U.S. should recognize the grievances of the Arabs and other Islamics whom the West, and especially the U.S. and Israel, have persecuted for so many years. Let's correct the wrongs committed against the people of the Middle East instead of pandering to the narrow-minded, strictly emotional xenophobia being fanned by people like John Ashcroft and George W., alias Baby, Bush.

No, I have NEVER flown an American flag, and I NEVER shall display one. As a veteran of the Vietnam war, I have already seen and suffered the tragic consequences of an evil war perpetrated by the American power structure in the name of alleged liberty and democracy. To me the flag is just a piece of cloth, nothing more, and I even refuse to say the pledge of allegiance in places where it is being recited. I support the right of people to do with and to the flag as they please. The only reason I will not burn a flag is that burning something as meaningless as a piece of cloth merely causes increased air pollution.