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Re: [microsound] Re: [OT] NYC: Skewed Media Images



----- Original Message -----
From: "Falcata Galia Recordings" <fgrecs@xxxxxxxxxxxx>


> To be fair to Arafat (or to give him this year's Oscar for best acting
job,
> which I doubt), he looked pretty mortified about what had happened.  If
> we're getting condolences from Cuba and Lybia, you know this was bad.
>
> Rudy

yeah almost as bad as the 1 million civilians we have systematically
murdered over the past 10 years in iraq.
this was a horrible atrocity but at times like this, we need to come
together worldwide and look at what the causes were.
imagine if your entire family was killed and you had to fight your brothers
for food and water, if your hospitals and power plants were regularly bombed
... not to mention we give 5 billion dollars a year to israel to assist in
the murder of innocent women and children. you would be pretty pissed at the
country doing this! but to kill all those innocents, its insane.
it's a shame that this had to happen, because now we have a reason to allow
bush2 anything he wants. the official word on TV here in the US is: more
military spending. of course, we already spend 400billion a year (closest
runner up: 10 bil a year) ... oh and btw they just threw out laws like
"habeus corpus" and anti-assassination. looks like we have free reign in
foreign countries to do whatever we want. ps: attached email with some more
reading material.
-jonah




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

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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@xxxxxxx


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