Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id GAA08275 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 20 Sep 2001 06:39:44 +0100 From: "Aaron Agassi" <agassi@erols.com> To: <coop@imaginaries.org>, <Critical-Cafe@mjmail.eeng.dcu.ie>, <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>, <Philosophize@yahoogroups.com> Subject: Why crash hijacked planes after we already *gave* them perfectly good rocket launchers? Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 01:34:12 -0400 Message-ID: <001e01c14195$e130f860$6501a8c0@rcn.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 8.5, Build 4.71.2173.0 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 Importance: Normal Sender: fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
It could be worse. It could have been an asteroids strike, for which we
remain scarcely better prepared than where the Dinosaurs. (For only one
frightening example, perilous near miss 1989fc wasn't even detected until
afterwards!)
The first real goal of terrorism is to oppress and to propaganda brainwash
their own uneducated and poverty stricken constituency, the same Standard
Operating Procedure as any other oppression by organized crime, dirty Cops,
or Juntas, in their own neighborhoods.
Indeed, the atrocities of the invading Taliban, including the mass graves in
which Afghan widows where buried alive, rather bring to mind Pol Pot's
Cambodia!
The first thing to understand about terrorists, is that they deliberately
choose the worst possible way to make their ostensible point to the rest of
the world, about which they really couldn't care less! -And never actually
want resolved...
These are the reasons why the first thing terrorists like the IRA or the PLO
have done is to assassinate their own moderates and massacre their own
peaceful protesters, the only true martyrs following in the path of Mahatma
Gandhi and Martin Luthor King, as traitors, summarily declaring all
diplomacy hopeless.
(Ironic when the terrorists themselves, entrenched, then run out of steam
and seek to go politically legit. Never the less, history should never
confuse terrorists with any legitimate freedom fighters taking up arms only
as a last resort after peaceful activism fails and becomes impossible, even
risking their own lives in protection of innocent bystanders whenever they
strike, or, better still, confining themselves strictly to the destruction
of public property. Sadly, however, as in South Africa, the descent in to
chaos and atrocity may still ensue in due course.)
And all of this is why bad government and dishonest business thrive on
terrorism, just as terrorism thrives on the destabilization resultant from
black opps would be puppet master foreign policy and unethical commerce with
petty dictatorships. This is not war, but cynical symbiosis and
collaboration!
No surprise, then, that it appears that Saudi Billionaire Osama Bin Laden is
another CIA creature, just like Sadam and Noriega. Because the Taliban was
armed by us, deemed useful against the Soviets, so resented mainly for
teaching Afghani women how to read and write!
How ironic that Bush Jr. has vowed, and with a perfectly straight face, not
only to route out the terrorists, but also to smash their support network.
What, is he dissolving the CIA? The West, not only the Taliban whom America
armed, looked the other way for Bin Laden because he proved so useful in
drawing fanatical cannon fodder for the Taliban in the ongoing Afghan civil
war of
attrition, the Russian Vietnam.
But now further bombing can only stir the rubble. And with the farm land
fallow, is anyone but the highly mobile Taliban well enough fed to move out
of the way? Other than they, hasn't anyone who can, already fled? -As
squalid and dangerous as life tends to be in the refugee camps at the
border...
Never the less, tax appropriations for counter-terrorism will be
astronomical, unprecedented and open ended, now that Bin Laden has returned
the favor of prior Western support by deliberately helping Bush Jr. to look
Presidential and manipulate a frightened West into war.
And, once again, huge profits stand to be made by the 1% who control 80%
(among 10% controlling 90%) of the world's wealth (as estimated by Forbes
Magazine), the Corporations of the Multinational Military Industrial Complex
who's lobbyists regularly give so generously to fund the campaigns often of
*both* interchangeable candidates from our identical political parties, in
each sham election.
In a word, graft.
This also explains why eminently feasible non lethal weapons (harmlessly
inducing unconsciousness or nausea over vast territories and large
populations, disabling electronics, and even temporarily sabotaging bridges
without destroying them permanently) are not being developed more quickly.
Too cost effective! And too merciful. No demand.
How wonderful it would be to able to temporarily incapacitate them all, and
let Interpol sort the guilty from the starving! But even such ought to be
last resort.
For a time, America's consciousness was raised by our disappointment with
the Contras, our equal disgust with the corrupt Sandanistas who betrayed
their own revolution, and delight at Nicaraguan popular success in
democratically choosing a third alternative in an election. (Something we
have not yet succeeded in accomplishing at home in America.)
Ensuing American political support for the pro-democracy movement of Corazon
Aquino in the Philippines was a proud moment and the rare exception.
Another, less well known, was when the White House funded a group of Polish
American business people to fly to Poland and set themselves up to disburse
small business loans, and bring Poland back to vibrant economic life as the
Soviet Empire collapsed, because Regain still considered the Poles only
reluctant Communists, and our friends. (And, boy, weren't the Polish
Aparatchicks, drooling at the prospect of carving up a Western pork-barrel
for their own government pet projects, incensed, instead, to find themselves
bypassed by aid direct to the private sector, not only small business, but
even first time borrowing mom and pop enterprises!)
If, instead, such political and economic intervention where standard Western
foreign policy, for the proverbial ounce of prevention, the world could have
been spared the rise of Petty Nationalism, Militant Islamic Fundamentalism,
ethnic tension, cleansings, loose nukes and the KJB Mafia.
Indeed, some say that the Marshall Plan should have included the Soviets in
the first place, to avoid the Cold War from the beginning. Though others
blame Stalin's monumental Paranoia.
Come to think of it, grass roots political revival and economic development
of impoverished neighborhoods would make a wonderful domestic policy too.
To quote Abraham Lincoln "Charity for all and Malice towards none." And as
he might have put it if he lived today, a planet divided cannot stand. The
need for Reconstruction in earnest has not abated historically, only
expanded.
Alas, most of the time, the West has simply stood by while pro-democracy
movements where overwhelmed by Militant Fundamentalism and Petty
Nationalism, in Iran when the Sheik fell, in most of Eastern Europe with the
collapse of the Soviet Empire, and all around the world, with depressing
consistency, blatantly stonewalling the repeated warning clamor of the
experts, each time.
No, this is NOT 20/20 hindsight, nor where the consequences complex or
unforeseen, but obvious and evitable. At best, this indifference, at worst,
deliberate, certainly there has developed systematic profiteering and
political manipulation. All in fulfillment of President Eisenhower's famous
and prophetic departing warning of the rise of the Military Industrial
Complex, now Multinational.
Indeed, who *can* count upon help by the West? Why, the likes of Sadam,
Noriega and the Taliban including Bin Laden! Then flag waving rah, rah, rah,
and false surprise when our own foreign policy Frankensteins turn on us! For
shame.
Bush in daddy's footsteps, rallying our sad, sick world against the enemies
of his father's creation! Noriega, Sadam, now Bin Laden. All Bush CIA
protégés. And all of this is common knowledge. But what choice have we at
this point? The public has been manipulated up against the wall, yet again.
We have sown the wind, and reap the whirlwind. But responsible policy would
put a crimp on graft, including war profiteering, energy price-fixing,
insider trading, megga-mergers, liquidation and auto-cannibalization,
pork-barrels, Corporate Welfare, tax loopholes for the rich, tax burdens for
the working poor, slashed social services, bureaucratic waste, Eco-rape,
Eco-preserves for the rich, and the exploitation of impoverished labor
living under oppression in the Third World, bereft of any better choice or
redress, in order to then intimidate First World labor with the threat of
mounting unemployment, fired and then hired back as temps with no benefits,
Vice, the War on Vice, and privatized prisons as a growth industry. All
Neo-Malthusian Standard Operating Procedure.
And the Running Dogs of the Oligarchs actually defend all such criminal
manipulative coercion, extortion and violence, Monopolism hording the
world's wealth, as Free Trade!!
Without genuine democracy, *real* free trade and open market competition on
a level playing field protected under the Rule of Law, true growth,
Progress, automation, actual production and prosperity for all everywhere in
the world, none of us can ever be safe. Not from terrorism, crime, AIDS,
pollution, nor even the next asteroid strike. All needless and evitable.
All the world wants to live the free and enlightened American dream, not the
loony imperial American nightmare! Which America do we stand for? The cost
of freedom is vigilance against scoundrels in power.
Bin Laden is just another killer rich boy, a wanna be Bush. A tool. A player
in the same endless and ugly game. Both Bush and Bin Laden have made
themselves richer and more influential in the human suffering they are
fomenting together.
Indeed, it is said that there was a huge short sell on the stock market on
the day before the attack.
Do either Bush Jr. or Bin Laden really believe in what they are doing, and
mean well? Perhaps there are no malicious intentions, but merely
overwhelming and impersonal political and economic forces at work. And
emotionally overwrought moral perception simply bends to fit. But does that
make any difference, one way or the other? "A king of fools is a fool
himself." The type believing their own lies...
The question remains, how can they all be thwarted, without distinction?
What can we do to change conditions for the better and reduce the
dysfunctional (un!)diplomatic (pseudo!)political and (anti!)social causes of
war, crime and terrorism, sooner rather than later? A question, first of
all, that only obtains after honest definition and then acknowledgement of
the problem. Because that is where any sensible discussion must begin.
Aaron Agassi, revision as of Sept 19 '01
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