From: Eugene Leitl (Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Thu Sep 13 2001 - 05:19:23 MDT
-- Eugen* Leitl leitl
______________________________________________________________
ICBMTO : N48 10'07'' E011 33'53'' http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204
57F9CFD3: ED90 0433 EB74 E4A9 537F CFF5 86E7 629B 57F9 CFD3
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 21:38:52 +0100
From: Toby Watson <toby@tui.co.uk>
To: fork@xent.com
Subject: Fw: ZNet Notice and Essays...
Actually it's all about the Sep 11th atrocities, so here's the whole thing
since it's not on their website.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Albert" <sysop@zmag.org>
To: <sysop@zmag.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2001 1:39 PM
Subject: ZNet Notice and Essays...
For reasons I can't identify our servers in Washington State were
inaccessible to us nearly all day yesterday, and after brief access this
morning, are inaccessible again. We were able to place various essays
online, early AM today, but I fear the site may not be accessible for
people to access them. So, I am sending a seris of materials bearing on
yesterday's events...by a route that I can access, possibly...
Included are:
a note from Noam Chomsky replying to an email query
an Interview with Phyllis Bennis of the IPS
a statement from the War Resisters Leagues David MacReynolds
an op. ed. From ZNet Columnist Rober Jensen
an essay from British Journalist Robert Fisk
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
-----
Chomsky note...
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
-----
Bernie Ward Interview Phyllis Bennis
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.
-----
Statement on September 11 Attack
David McReynolds, WRL
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
--------
Sept 11
by Robert Jensen
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
------
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?
http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:10:34 MST