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What, exactly, are we supposed to never forget and what are we supposed to never surrender?
The meaning of significant political acts of terrorism are told to us, formed for us, by media that is controlled by white and male supremacist corporate conglomerates owned by a few white het men in the West, each of whom has some very significant "interests" in how stories get told and who gets implicated as "dangerous". Needless to say, white het men must not ever be implicated as "dangerous", while virtually all other groups of people can be, in media--and every other group has been defined by WHM as diseased, dangerous, invasive, threatening, insane, untrustworthy, deceitful, deceptive, and violent.
Below is one link to what Democracy Now! has to say, which, while progressive, usually steers far clear of naming "white supremacy" and "male supremacy" and "capitalism" as the key forces which created both the conditions that made "9/11" possible, but also the spins of it made into solid, largely unquestioned stories distributed in off-line and on-line media. The Twin Towers, let's not forget, is where gross violence against the world was perpetrated, but was called "commerce" instead. The victims of commerce, who died on every other day than "9/11/2001" and also on that day, are not remembered, named, or honored as heroes--ever.
http://hw.libsyn.com/p/c/6/a/c6aadaf3ada64df8/9_11_11_Radio_Show_part_2.mp3?sid=f081207ff8a29b99312a856ae53e7d46&l_sid=18778&l_eid=&l_mid=2714355
Here are some lessons from my point of view:
1. Corporate capitalism, formed out of and steeped and marinated in male and white supremacy, cannot bring peace to anything. It only brings terrorism to the poor, to the Earth and its non-human beings, and to women across race, sexuality, and ethnicity, and to men who are not white or het.
2. The West, including especially the US, is a terrorist state, a terrorist organisation on a grand, horrific scale, and any claims it makes--ad nauseam--to "goodness" and "greatness" are soaked in the blood of those it destroys to maintain itself.
3. The US is a pro-genocidal, racist, rapist white male supremacist State. Any attacks against it will result in massive military force, rapist force, racist force, deadly force, grossly and inexcusably exceeding the force used in any attack against it.
4. The supremacist structures of the US and other Western countries remain something their media won't discuss. How it is that men continually maintain (and abusively use) tools of power such as military warfare, terrorism against classes of people (such as by men across race,. class, and sexuality against women; such as by whites across gender against people of color; such as by the rich against everyone not-rich; such as by the politically powerful against the Earth)? The means and methods have been documented, experienced, reported on, catalogued, and survived (by some). Yet we are made to re-conceive the horrors of the inner and outer workings of these systems of terror as if they are perpetually "not understandable" or "incomprehensible". They are fully understandable and comprehensible to the perpetrators. They are deeply understood by the victims of them.
5. The US keeps its deadly power alive by scapegoating "foreign" groups as THE Terrorists of the World. Whether it be the Japanese and Germans, Communists, the Vietnamese, Central Americans, Mexicans, women, gay men, the poor on welfare, or Muslims, we can note how the enemy is definitionally, defiantly, and absolutely never "us" if "us" includes white het men from the US.
See, here's the thing about 9/11...
ReplyDeleteSo, I was having this conversation with a friend the other day, and we got around to discussing and saying things like: Wait... with a crash that's that horrible, wouldn't the people in the planes all get incinerated? And passports/birth certificates would vapourize right away, and yet... there go those fascists spewing out shit and claiming that they found some passport floating around that belonged to some Muslim guy (yeah... even if that were true, it's still not substantive proof it was the work of some Muslim terrorist). So, where is the proof that some Muslim terrorist hijacked the plane? Also, it's ridiculous how some idiots STILL think 9/11 and those hijacking operations were the works of "cave-dwelling illiterates" (yeah, as if those "cave-dwelling illiterates" have the access to high-end operations that can only be done by a millionaire with CIA intelligence). Yes, you could find out if your friend was in one of those planes through flight records, but you'll never have any proof that there were any hijackers - let alone, Arab or Muslim ones. Now, I'm not saying that I approve or excuse certain things that groups like the Taliban does, but in all honesty... countries like Afghanistan and Iraq never really gave a crap about the U.S. (at least not until the U.S. started dropping bombs on them after that fateful day). So you could say that 9/11 was also steeped in U.S. nationalism and narcissism
It's disgusting how the U.S. government would turn something that's supposed to be tragic into a race and class war. So much for exploiting people's grief over lost loved ones.
Ironically, the U.S. developed Al Qaeda to fight the Soviets -- hmm, hyprocrisy much?
And honestly, I don't believe that the troops are fighting for our rights. If they were, they would be over here, in North America, dropping bombs on government buildings and capitalist enterprises - and not in some other country where groups such as the Taliban don't affect us.
I'm not necessarily demonizing all the people who decide to join the military, but it is really sad how it's mostly working class men and women that get recruited, because they are just disposable tools. And what's also really sad is how some people have this naive, romanticized view of the army; I mean yes, I know I shouldn't be judging those people too hard because it's understandable how they just want to be this big hero. Unfortunately, and I really hate to say this, but they have been fed a lot of lies by the mainstream media.
And yeah, I had a falling out with one particular friend over this. As of now, he is still a soldier in training. But anyway, I had pointed out to him that if there's one thing we all learned, or should have learned, from 9/11 is that the military and these wars that have been going on for so long are just all part of this one big capitalist propaganda machine -- because hey, I really didn't want him to go, he was my friend afterall and I did care about him, and it's not like those Middle East wars have done anything progressive. I don't wish him ill will or anything like that, but more people need to stop taking this liberal approach towards war because if they really do think it's as bad as they say it is, then they should not be encouraging anyone to join the army since that just feeds into the conservative agenda.
I don't know, it's as if no one has learned a thing from the first two world wars and the Vietnam war.
A few responses to your excellent and provocative comment, eternalsunshine:
ReplyDeletePicking up on the last point first, NOT learning from 'our' mistakes is a key value of the US government. It thrives on never learning anything at all, or, as Andrea Dworkin once wrote, introducing her amazing chapter in Intercourse on the work of James Baldwin, Amerika is a country with "no memory and no mind".
I'm sorry your friend is going into the armed forces, and know that for too many young and poor and currently able-bodied, able-minded people, the army is often the best choice, with virtually no good choices to be found.
If I had the chance to speak with him, I'm ask:
"What do you think the purpose and function of the US military is? And, if you think it's purpose and function is noble and heroic, can you point to anything noble or heroic it has done in the last fifty years? (What's noble and heroic about mass murdering tens if not hundreds of thousands of people in retaliation for three thousand US citizens being killed--most of them very accidentally? (No one expected the Twin Towers to fall after being rammed by two jet planes, let's remember: not the Taliban, not Al Qaeda, not the capitalists and militarists either.)
The US government surely isn't capable, for example, of saving the lives of African Americans living in the New Orleans area when Hurricane Katrina struck and the US government did little to nothing. It isn't capable of bringing about peace anywhere in the world and exists to destabilise economically humane regimes, not to stabilise them. It isn't capable of bringing democracy to any region, including our own. "Hero" is a term used by the media to describe people who work for mass murderers of people of color--and it is rarely used in any other way. "Honor" means having an ethical value system and living by it at all costs. The US has no such value system in reality, only in fantasy.
I'd ask him to consider what you mention: that US rich kids never get sent into the most dangerous places ever, to fight rich white men's wars, particularly in Central Asia.
As for theories about what happened on 9/11, this much we can know for sure: the US powers-that-be-evil such as Rumsfeld, Cheney, and their political kin, have planned out very carefully how to create an evil Empire--which they, no doubt, consider very good (for them and their political kin). They have detailed the plan on a website for anyone to read and I'd suggest to your friend that they read and study the site carefully before going into the armed forces.
ReplyDeleteHere it is:
http://www.newamericancentury.org/
And here is a documentary about it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-ONhpNeWQA
The US government needed a few things to happen to move forward with its plan of massive Empire-building (at all costs). I don't know the extent to which it choreographed the events it needed to occur, but we do know it had a strong hand in making sure it got the president it needed into office--twice, illegally. And we know it went to war on well-planted fictional accounts of WMD. And it had no business--except xenophobic and capitalist business, going to war in Iraq at all, even if we believe people in the Taliban did all of what the US media and Conservative racist politicians says they did. The same with Afghanistan. The same with Pakistan. (We have no business being there, other than capitalist-militarist business.)
None of those countries leaders waged war against the US. A few rogue citizens may have--hard to know fully. But if a few rogue citizens of Canada did something terrifying and lethal to a few thousand people in the US, does that give the US the right to wage an invasive ten-and-counting year war against the country that produced the citizens?
The lingo about this is compelling if repetitive and utterly unimaginative: US media drills it into our heads that 'they' waged war against us. No, they didn't. A few people--allegedly--did something horrifying and criminal. That's not the same a country (or is that three countries???) waging war against us. What DID happen--according to the media--ought to require some of our allegedly 'fair' trials of the convicted living perpetrators of the crimes, who must be presumed innocent until proven guilty, NOT a series of terrifyingly and costly invasions of sovereign nations designed to permanently occupy, violate, and assault those countries in fascistic and utterly undemocratic ways.
Two of the things the likes of Rumsfeld and Cheney needed was a patsy president they could control and an 'event' the facts and meaning of they could spin as they wished; an event so outrageous that US citizens, duped by political leaders and media moguls, would eagerly and xenophobically hand over their 'American' rights, such as their alleged privacy rights, rights to a fair trial, and so on.
GWBush was their president, illegally elected, and "9/11" was their event, spun immediately as "them waging war against us", not as a few rogue citizens doing something criminal. (That Rumsfeld and Cheney are rogue citizens doing a whole lot that's criminal and worthy of charges of treason is another point.)
I'd also ask him to consider what this country is doing to poor people, and to returning vets also.
The US government only wants poverty-raised bodies to fight its ugly, perverse battles of capitalism and racism. It doesn't give a shit about our soldiers unless it can drain more blood from them. If they get killed, US media and politicians cynically slap the term "hero" on their caskets.
As you note, there's nothing "Muslim" about what happened on "9/11": it is--whoever orchestrated it--the action of people trained in terroristic activities, and the US is currently unparalleled as a nation-state devoted to such tactics. As you also note, our CIA trained "them".
ReplyDelete"Illiterate" indeed. There was nothing at all illiterate or uneducated about Osama bin Laden and anyone who thinks there was is a fool.
I also heard white US Amerikkkans say that Iraq and Afghanistan should be bombed completely and turned into parking lots (for us). How utterly terroristic, eh? How utterly inhumane and without any regard for anything resembling democratic principles. Such an attitude and a wish more directly reveals the 'light' (not dark) heart of the US's function globally.
I agree with you that if the US government officials really cared about democracy and freedom, "they would be over here, in North America, dropping bombs on government buildings and capitalist enterprises". But we both know that they're not likely to do that (again?).