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Included are:
and a statement from ZNet columinist Justin
Podur
I am sorry we have been and may even still be offline...in these difficult moments.
Michael Albert Z Magazine / ZNet sysop@zmag.org
www.zmag.org
-----
Just got your message. Quick reaction.
Today's attacks were major atrocities. In
terms of number of victims they do not reach the level of many
others, for example, Clinton's bombing of the Sudan with no credible
pretext, destroying half its pharmaceutical supplies and probably
killing tens of thousands of people (no one knows, because the US
blocked an inquiry at the UN and no one cares to pursue it). Not to
speak of much worse cases, which easily come to mind. But that this
was a horrendous crime is not in doubt. The primary victims, as
usual, were working people: janitors, secretaries, firemen, etc. It
is likely to prove to be a crushing blow to Palestinians and other
poor and oppressed people. It is also likely to lead to harsh
security controls, with many possible ramifications for undermining
civil liberties and internal freedom.
The events reveal, dramatically, the
foolishness of ideas about "missile defense." As has been
obvious all along, and pointed out repeatedly by strategic analysts,
if anyone wants to cause immense damage in the US, including weapons
of mass destruction, they are highly unlikely to launch a missile
attack, thus guaranteeing their immediate destruction. There are
innumerable easier ways that are basically unstoppable. But today's
events will, nonetheless, be used to increase the pressure to
develop these systems and put them into place. "Defense"
is a thin cover for plans for militarization of space, and with good
PR, even the flimsiest arguments will carry some weight among a
frightened public. In short, the crime is a gift to the hard
jingoist right, those who hope to use force to control their
domains. That is even putting aside the likely US actions, and what
they will trigger -- possibly more attacks like this one, or worse.
The prospects ahead are even more ominous than they appeared to be
before the latest atrocities.
Noam Chomsky
-----(Top)
Bennis: . . . crisis when we escalate the
patterns of more and more and more violence.
Ward: At this point in time most Americans
would say how could they escalate it, I mean, if you didn't respond
militarily, wouldn't that be worse than in fact responding?
Bennis: Well, I think the very worst thing
would be responding militarily to the wrong country, as the U.S. has
been known to do, not too long ago, in fact, when it knocked out a
vaccine company in the Sudan claiming that it was tied to Bin Laden
and only six months later saying, whoops, I guess we got the wrong
place. And in fact, settled with the owner of that factory for
having destroyed it, not to mention destroyed the one factory in
central Africa that was producing crucial vaccines for children in
that impoverished part of the world. So we have to be very careful.
And yes, I think it would be worse to respond militarily than to be
cautious and to say let's use this to do what is so difficult at a
moment like this, when we're horrified by the human toll, the human
tragedy, to say let's stop for a moment and think about why is it
that people around the world, so many people, are starting to hate
symbols of the U.S. as symbols of oppression.
Ward: Well, now you know that you are in a
huge minority tonight when you suggest that one of the things we
ought to take from this is to ask the question of why committed
terrorism against the United States to begin with, and most
Americans are simply going to say, "Who cares?" most
Americans are going to say, "It was whoever it was and we're
going to go get them," and most Americans at least in the polls
already that have been released, say that our support for Israel is
very crucial and that, you know, this is just going to solidify . .
. you, you are in a huge minority when you suggest that part of what
happened today might be connected to foreign policy decisions that
we have made in other parts of the world.
Bennis: But, you know what Bernie, you may be
right that I am in a minority, but I think these words have to be
said. We've had too many years of experience of answering these
kinds of attacks with more violence. And you know what? It hasn't
worked. If we're serious about ending attacks like this, we have to
go to the root causes.
Ward: And what are the root causes?
Bennis: To me it's a question of the arrogance
of the U.S., the policies around the world, not only in the Middle
East, although that's obviously a big component, but our policies of
abandoning international law, dissing the United Nations, refusing
to sign conventions and international treaties that we demand
everybody else in the world sign on to, whether it's the prohibition
against anti-personnel land mines, support for the international
criminal court, the convention on the rights of the child, for God
sakes that should be a no-brainer, only the U.S. and Somalia have
refused that one, you know, when countries around the world and
people around the world look at this, not to mention the most recent
stuff about abandoning the Kyoto treaty, threatening to throw out
the ABM Treaty, that's been the cornerstone of arms control for, you
know, twenty-five years, they say, "Who is this country? Why do
they think they're so much better than everybody else in the world
just because they have a bigger army?"
Ward: So do we deserve what happened to us
today? Bennis: No, no one deserves what happened. There's no
justification. . .
Ward: Did we ask for it?
Bennis: The question is: How do we stop it?
The question is how do we stop it. And military strikes are not
going to stop it. Ward: All right. So the example of terrorism
certainly is if we look at Israel, the example is that when you
respond with violence for violence it does not stop the terrorism.
Bennis: Absolutely right.
Ward: And in fact we saw for the first time
yesterday or the day before an Arab Israeli citizen who committed a
suicide bombing, meaning obviously that even buffers between them
and the West Bank aren't going to make any difference one way or the
other. Bennis: Right. Ending occupation of the West Bank and Gaza
and East Jerusalem might make some difference. But certainly what
isn't working is responding with more violence.
Ward: But aren't the extremists, Osama Bin
Laden has declared war on this country, , there's an interesting
article in Salon.com about how this is a very different kind of
terrorism than the terrorism of the P.L.O. and Black September and
others in the sixties and the seventies and the eighties, that they
see this as a war of attrition, that if they can wear down the
American people, if they can get them so worried about this that
they'll be willing to make compromises. Is it a war? Is that an
accurate term today? Bennis: I don't know if it's a very useful
term. Again, we don't know that this was Osama Bin Laden having
anything to do with the events of today. I think that we have to be
a little bit cautious when we hear U.S. officials and former U.S.
officials, as we've been hearing all day tonight, talking as if,
number one, they knew it was Osama Bin Laden, number two, that this
is what Henry Kissinger and so many others today have said is just
like Pearl Harbor and the U.S. should respond . . .
Ward: Yeah. I don't like that analogy and I
can't tell you why I don't like it, but I don't like it.
Bennis: I'll tell you one reason why maybe you
don't like it, and it's one of the reasons I don't like it either.
It's that one of the first things the U.S. did after Pearl Harbor
was to round up all the Japanese-American citizens and put them in
concentration camps - in this country. Now I hope that that's not
what anyone in the U.S. is thinking about when they talk about
responding the way we did to Pearl Harbor. But it's a very dangerous
precedent. We've already heard about death threats against Arab
Americans and Muslim organizations in the U.S. That kind of hysteria
is already on the rise. And we have to be very cautious and
conscious about the dangers of that. We have to be very cautious
when we hear someone like James Baker, the former Secretary of
State, claiming that he thinks there would be ninety-nine to one
hundred percent support across the U.S., that's what he said today,
for "taking out" a person who heads an organization like
Bin Laden's and getting rid of the legal prohibitions against that.
Ward: Well, I think that's going to go, to be
quite honest with you, I think there's going to be legislation maybe
even as early as tomorrow to eliminate that or get rid of that
prohibition against assassinations.
Bennis: You may be right. But I think that we
can guarantee it's not going to work. It's not going to stop events
like this. Ward: Let me put you into a bigger minority. Bennis: O.K.
Ward: Make the case for why the U.S. would be
so hated in the Middle East.
Bennis: I think it's hated in the Middle East
because, number one, it's uncritical support to the tune of between
three and five billion dollars a year in unconditional support to
Israeli occupation, including providing the helicopter gunships, the
F-16s, the missiles that are fired from the gunships, that are used
to enforce that occupation. It's hated, number two, because it has
armed these, these, repressive Arab regimes throughout the region,
in Saudi Arabia, In Egypt, in Jordan, throughout the region, that
have suppressed their own people, that have taken either oil money
or arms to build absolute monarchies in which citizens have no
rights and where the U.S. claims to support democratization of every
government in the world, don't seem to apply when the U.S. seems to
think it's fine when one absolute monarch dies and passes on the
baton to his son, you see every U.S. official and all of their
European and other Western allies flocking to the funeral to say
"The King is dead, long live the new King." We see it in
Saudi Arabia, we see it in Morocco, in Jordan, throughout the
region. And there's enormous resentment of that kind of support. So
those two sectors alone, support for the Israeli occupation and the
arming of these repressive Arab regimes is enough. Now that doesn't
even get to the question of the impact of U.S. imposed sanctions on
the civilian population of Iraq, the bombing of Iraq, that's been
going on for ten years now, all of these are things that have
dropped off the radar screen of the media coverage in the U.S. but
are very much front and center in Arab consciousness in the region.
Ward: Would you be surprised if I told you a
poll has come out in which a very large majority of Americans say
they're willing to give up civil liberties in order to "fight
terrorism," and that there may be legislation introduced in
Congress tomorrow to in some cases suspend habeas corpus and other
things in the cause of fighting terrorism?
Bennis: Would I be surprised? No. Because I
think too many people in this country have been misled by
politicians and by the media to think that somehow that's going to
work. That if you have more profiling based on race and ethnicity,
if you identify Arabs and don't let them on planes, if you do what
the multi-agency task force in 1987 and 1988 tried to do, which was
to actually round up citizens of seven Arab countries plus Iran on a
preventive basis and put them in a concentration camp in Oakdale,
Louisiana. It would not be surprising that that's something very
much on the minds of policy-makers. It would be, I hope you're wrong
to say that it would be supported by most people in this country,
but unfortunately I could understand why it might be because of that
misleading, what I would call propaganda, that has led people to
think that somehow that would work, that that would make people
safer, that if you didn't allow Arabs on the airplanes, somehow it
would be safe to fly. You know, this is the kind of illusion that is
bred by racism. And it's a very dangerous tendency in this country.
And I do hope that we don't have our political leadership in
Washington tomorrow or next week moving towards this kind of an
approach ostensibly as a way of providing safety for American
citizens.
Ward: Phyllis Bennis, I really appreciate
this. I hope we can keep in touch and maybe invite you back on
again. Bennis: I look forward to it.
-----(Top)
As we write, Manhattan feels under siege, with
all bridges, tunnels, and subways closed, and tens of thousands of
people walking slowly north from Lower Manhattan. As we sit in our
offices here at War Resisters League, our most immediate thoughts
are of the hundreds if not thousands of New Yorkers who have lost
their lives in the collapse of the World Trade Center. The day is
clear, the sky is blue, but vast clouds billow over the ruins where
so many have died, including a great many rescue workers who were
there when the final collapse occurred.
Of course we know that our friends and
co-workers in Washington, D.C. have similar thoughts about the
ordinary people who have been trapped in the parts of the Pentagon
which were also struck by a jet. And we think of the innocent
passengers on the hi-jacked jets who were carried to their doom on
this day.
We do not know at this time from what source
the attack came. We do know that Yasser Arafat has condemned the
bombing. We hesitate to make an extended analysis until more
information is available but some things are clear. For the Bush
Administration to talk of spending hundreds of billions on Star Wars
is clearly the sham it was from the beginning, when terrorism can so
easily strike through more routine means.
We urge Congress and George Bush that whatever
response or policy the U.S. develops it will be clear that this
nation will no longer target civilians, or accept any policy by any
nation which targets civilians. This would mean an end to the
sanctions against Iraq, which have caused the deaths of hundreds of
thousands of civilians. It would mean not only a condemnation of
terrorism by Palestinians but also the policy of assassination
against the Palestinian leadership by Israel, and the ruthless
repression of the Palestinian population and the continuing
occupation by Israel of the West Bank and Gaza.
The policies of militarism pursued by the
United States have resulted in millions of deaths, from the historic
tragedy of the Indochina war, through the funding of death squads in
Central America and Colombia, to the sanctions and air strikes
against Iraq. This nation is the largest supplier of
"conventional weapons" in the worldand those weapons fuel
the starkest kind of terrorism from Indonesia to Africa. The early
policy support for armed resistance in Afghanistan resulted in the
victory of the Talibanand the creation of Osama Bin Laden.
Other nations have also engaged in these
policies. We have, in years past, condemned the actions of the
Russian government in areas such as Chechnya, the violence on both
sides in the Middle East, and in the Balkans. But our nation must
take responsibility for its own actions. Up until now we have felt
safe within our borders. To wake on a clear day to find our largest
city under siege reminds us that in a violent world, none are safe.
Let us seek an end of the militarism that has
characterized this nation for decades. Let us seek a world in which
security is gained through disarmament, international cooperation,
and social justice not through escalation and retaliation. We
condemn without reservation attacks such as those which occurred
today, which strike at thousands of civiliansmay these profound
tragedies remind us of the impact U.S. policies have had on other
civilians in other lands. We also condemn reflexive hostility
against people of Arab descent living in this country and urge that
Americans recall the part of our heritage that opposes bigotry in
all forms.
We are one world. We shall live in a state of
fear and terror or we shall move toward a future in which we seek
peaceful alternatives to violence, and a more just distribution of
the world's resources. As we mourn the many lives lost, our hearts
call out for reconciliation, not revenge.
**************** This is not an official
statement of the War Resisters League but was drafted immediately
after the tragic events occurred. Signed and issued by members of
the staff and Executive Committee of War Resisters League at the
national office, September 11, 2001. Contact: David McReynolds,
212-674-7268 Joanne Sheehan, 860-889-5337 War Resisters League,
212-228-0450, wrl@igc.org
(Top)
--------
September 11 was a day of sadness, anger and
fear. Like everyone in the United States and around the world, I
shared the deep sadness at the deaths of thousands.
But as I listened to people around me talk, I
realized the anger and fear I felt were very different, for my
primary anger is directed at the leaders of this country and my fear
is not only for the safety of Americans but for innocents civilians
in other countries.
It should need not be said, but I will say it:
The acts of terrorism that killed civilians in New York and
Washington were reprehensible and indefensible; to try to defend
them would be to abandon one's humanity. No matter what the
motivation of the attackers, the method is beyond discussion.
But this act was no more despicable as the
massive acts of terrorism -- the deliberate killing of civilians for
political purposes -- that the U.S. government has committed during
my lifetime. For more than five decades throughout the Third World,
the United States has deliberately targeted civilians or engaged in
violence so indiscriminate that there is no other way to understand
it except as terrorism. And it has supported similar acts of
terrorism by client states.
If that statement seems outrageous, ask the
people of Vietnam. Or Cambodia and Laos. Or Indonesia and East
Timor. Or Chile. Or Central America. Or Iraq, or Palestine. The list
of countries and peoples who have felt the violence of this country
is long. Vietnamese civilians bombed by the United States. Timorese
civilians killed by a U.S. ally with U.S.-supplied weapons.
Nicaraguan civilians killed by a U.S. proxy army of terrorists.
Iraqi civilians killed by the deliberate bombing of an entire
country's infrastructure.
So, my anger on this day is directed not only
at individuals who engineered the Sept. 11 tragedy but at those who
have held power in the United States and have engineered attacks on
civilians every bit as tragic. That anger is compounded by
hypocritical U.S. officials' talk of their commitment to higher
ideals, as President Bush proclaimed "our resolve for justice
and peace."
To the president, I can only say: The stilled
voices of the millions killed in Southeast Asia, in Central America,
in the Middle East as a direct result of U.S. policy are the
evidence of our resolve for justice and peace.
Though that anger stayed with me off and on
all day, it quickly gave way to fear, but not the fear of
"where will the terrorists strike next," which I heard
voiced all around me. Instead, I almost immediately had to face the
question: "When will the United States, without regard for
civilian casualties, retaliate?" I wish the question were,
"Will the United States retaliate?" But if history is a
guide, it is a question only of when and where.
So, the question is which civilians will be
unlucky enough to be in the way of the U.S. bombs and missiles that
might be unleashed. The last time the U.S. responded to terrorism,
the attack on its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, it was
innocents in the Sudan and Afghanistan who were in the way. We were
told that time around they hit only military targets, though the
target in the Sudan turned out to be a pharmaceutical factory.
As I monitored television during the day, the
talk of retaliation was in the air; in the voices of some of the
national-security "experts" there was a hunger for
retaliation. Even the journalists couldn't resist; speculating on a
military strike that might come, Peter Jennings of ABC News said
that "the response is going to have to be massive" if it
is to be effective.
Let us not forget that a "massive
response" will kill people, and if the pattern of past U.S.
actions holds, it will kill innocents. Innocent people, just like
the ones in the towers in New York and the ones on the airplanes
that were hijacked. To borrow from President Bush, "mother and
fathers, friends and neighbors" will surely die in a massive
response.
If we are truly going to claim to be decent
people, our tears must flow not only for those of our own country.
People are people, and grief that is limited to those within a
specific political boundary denies the humanity of others.
And if we are to be decent people, we all must
demand of our government -- the government that a great man of
peace, Martin Luther King Jr., once described as "the greatest
purveyor of violence in the world" -- that the insanity stop
here.
------------------------- Robert Jensen School
of Journalism University of Texas Austin, TX 78712 rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu
office: (512) 471-1990 fax: (512) 471-7979 http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/home.htm
(Top)
------ Atrocities may be designed to provoke America into costly military adventure
By Robert Fisk 12 September 2001
I can imagine how Osama bin Laden received the
news of the atrocities in the United States. In all, I must have
spent five hours listening to him in Sudan and then in the vastness
of the Afghan mountains, as he described the inevitable collapse of
the United States, just as he and his comrades in the Afghan war
helped to destroy the power of the Red Army.
He will have watched satellite television, he
will have sat in the corner of his room, brushing his teeth as he
always did, with a mishwak stick, thinking for up to a minute before
speaking; he is one of the few Arabs who doesn't feel embarrassed to
think before he speaks. He once told me with pride how his own men
had attacked the Americans in Somalia. He acknowledged that he knew
personally two of the Saudis executed for bombing an American
military base in Riyadh. Could he have been behind yesterday's mass
slaughter in America?
Of course, we need a health warning here. If
Mr bin Laden was really guilty of all the things he has been blamed
for, he would need an army of 10,000. And there is something deeply
disturbing about the world's habit of turning to the latest hate
figure whenever blood is shed. But when events of this momentous
scale take place, there is a new legitimacy in casting one's eyes at
those who have constantly threatened America.
Mr bin Laden had a kind of religious
experience during the Afghan war. A Russian shell had fallen at his
feet and, in the seconds as he waited for it to explode, he said he
had a sudden, religious feeling of calmness. The shell and
Americans may come to wish the opposite happened never
exploded. The United States must leave the Gulf, he would say every
10 minutes. America must stop all sanctions against the Iraqi
people. America must stop using Israel to oppress Palestinians. It
was his constant theme, untouched by doubt or the real complexities
of the Middle East. He was not fighting an anti-colonial war, but a
religious one. In the Arabia that he would govern, there would be
more, not less, head chopping, more severe punishments, no
Western-style democracy.
His supporters Algerians, Kuwaitis,
Egyptians and Gulf Arabs would gather round him in his tent
with the awe of men listening to a messiah. I watched them one night
in Afghanistan in a mountain camp so cold that I woke to find ice in
my hair. They were obedient to him, not the kind of obedience of
schoolchildren but the sort of adherence you find among people whose
minds are made up. And the words they listened to were fearful in
their implications. American civilians would no more be spared than
military targets. This was not a man who would hesitate to carry out
his promises if he could. He was a man who would have appreciated
the appalling irony of creating a missile defence shield against
"rogue states'' but unable to prevent men crashing domestic
airliners into the centre of America's financial and military power.
Yet I also remember one night when Mr bin
Laden saw a pile of newspapers in my bag and seized upon them. By a
sputtering oil lamp, he read them page by page in the corner of his
tent, clearly unaware of the world around him, reading aloud of an
Iranian Foreign Minister's visit to Saudi Arabia. Was this really a
man who could damage America, who would have laughed when he heard
that the United States had placed a $5m (£3.3m) reward on his head?
Was it not America, I wondered then, which was turning Mr bin Laden
into the face of "world terror?'' Was he really so powerful and
so deadly?
If and we must keep repeating this word
if the shadow of the Middle East falls over yesterday's
destruction, then who else in the region could produce such
meticulously timed assaults on the world's only superpower? The
rag-tag and corrupt Palestinian nationalist groups that used to
favour hijacking are unlikely to be able to produce a single suicide
bomber. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have neither the capability nor the
money that this assault needed. Perhaps the old satellite groups
that moved close to the Lebanese Hezbollah in the 1980s, before the
organisation became a solely resistance movement, could plan
something like this. The bombing of the US Marines in 1983 needed
precision, timing and infinite planning. But Iran, which supported
these groups, has changed out of recognition since then, now more
involved in its internal struggles than in the long-dead aspiration
to "export'' a religious revolution. Iraq lies broken, its
agents more intent on torturing their own people than striking at
the country that defeated it so suddenly in 1991.
So the mountains of Afghanistan will be
photographed from satellite and high-altitude aircraft in the coming
days, Mr bin Laden's old training camps and perhaps a few new
ones highlighted on the overhead projectors in the Pentagon.
But to what end? When America last tried to strike at Mr bin Laden,
it destroyed an innocent pharmaceuticals plant in Sudan and a few of
Mr bin Laden's Muslim followers in Afghanistan. For if this is a war
between the Saudi millionaire and President Bush's America, it
cannot be fought like other wars. Indeed, can it be fought at all
without some costly military adventure overseas.
Or is that what Mr bin Laden seeks above all
else?
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