PEOPLE AGAINST RACIST TERROR/ANTI-RACIST ACTION P.O. Box 1055 Culver City, CA 90232 Tel: 310-495-0299 E-mail: [log in to unmask] Web: http://www.geocities.com/ara_losangeles - Sunday, 16 June 2002 - ----- ____________________________________________________________________ BUSH KNEW... żY QUE? What Are We Going to Do About It? ____________________________________________________________________ >From the latest issue of "Turning the Tide: Journal of Anti-Racist Action..." PART'S Perspective by Michael Novick, People Against Racist Terror/Anti-Racist Action A flood of information has begun to rise over the dam walls of the mainstream media to the effect that the U.S. government, at the level of both intelligence agencies and policy makers, had plenty of advance warning of the September 11 attacks. From a few lonely voices crying in the wilderness and trying to impede the drive towards war and repression, the claim that "Bush knew" has become a crescendo of competing conspiracy theories and demands for answers. On this, as on many social and political issues facing U.S. society, the loudest voices are coming from the right. Elements of the hard right are convinced that George II's plans to bring about his dad's New World Order are indistinguishable from the now-defunct "Communist conspiracy" or the fabled "Illuminati." They are seizing on every scrap of evidence, every gap in the "official story," to spin a wild array of often self- or mutually-contradictory theories. The airplanes were secretly controlled from the ground; the Pentagon was hit by a missile and Flight 77 simply vanished; the flight that went down in Pennsylvania was taken out by a U.S. fighter plane; there were bombs planted inside the World Trade Center; the attacks, along with the earlier bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, were masterminded by Iraq (perhaps with the connivance of U.S. intelligence agencies), etc. etc. How much of this is a smokescreen of distraction to prevent the more fundamental truths from being seen we may never know. What is true? How can we determine the truth and what can we do about it? Armed with the truth about September 11 and an understanding of the true nature of U.S. society, how can we organize to make a difference, and replace this oppressive and murderous system once and for all? How can we avoid getting sucked into the agendas of forces who are using this crisis to justify "sealing the borders," or "taking the gloves off the CIA," or "finishing off Saddam Hussein"? First of all, it is better to stay with facts than speculation. It is factually true that Bush called off intelligence gathering on the Al-Qaeda network's Saudi Arabian funding. It is factually true that normal "scrambling" of air escorts, called for in government operations manuals, did not take place on 9-11. It is factually true that the government received repeated warnings, increasing in urgency and tempo, of plans to use aircraft as flying bombs to attack symbols of US economic and military might. It is factually true that regulatory and investigative alarm bells should have gone and actually did go off on insider trading which bet that United and American Airlines stock would plummet. It's factually true that the corporate media have not pursued any of these issues, let alone the long term planning that preceded September 11 for a war in Afghanistan and a massive U.S. military presence throughout Central Asia. It's factually true that all the elements of the USA PATRIOT act were written and ready to go before the first plane struck the WTC, and that Congress passed this most repressive measure into law without debate and almost no dissent. It is factually true that the Taliban and Al Qaeda were, to a great extent, creatures of the CIA and US foreign policy. It is clear that more than incompetence was involved in the failure to act to stop 9-11. It is legitimate to conclude from these facts that Bush knew roughly what was coming and let it happen for his own partisan political purposes as well as his strategic formulation of U.S. imperial interests and its continued and expanded hegemony. We would shrink from such a conclusion only if we accept the myth of American democracy. A government capable of committing the most heinous crimes and genocide against the people of this continent and the globe, as this government has been and still is, would not hesitate to allow a bloody "demonstration" to take place if it felt it essential to lay the political basis for war and repression. Some on the left however, even those who see perfectly clearly that the 1845 border incident in Texas, the battleship Maine, the Lusitania, the Tonkin Gulf incident, or even Pearl Harbor, were pretexts created or permitted by US statecraft to justify imperial wars, yet seem to hold on to a scrap of illusory faith in the system and to deny the possibility or probability that a similar dynamic operated here and now. Yet it is exactly this faith and acquiescence in the system that we must attack most sharply and directly, because it, rather than any nefarious secret conspiracy, is the strongest bulwark of the imperial system of oppression and exploitation. And this simultaneously poses a challenge to the conspiracy theorists, who also are wedded to a belief that the problem is due simply to a latter-day deviation from the ideals of the founding fathers, or to a problem of corruption and criminality at the top. There is a clear and unbroken historical line from the genocide of the conquest and decimation of the indigenous people and their land, from the highly profitable genocide of the slave trade and slave-based production system, to the heinous crimes of the imperialist system today. The Constitution was designed as an instrument not to protect rights but to suppress dissent and resistance. George II, the unelected pResident installed in office by the Supreme Court and Electoral College is the fitting inheritor of that system of settler colonialism and class rule. There is no layer of the onion of US empire that we can peel away to reveal an unsullied pre-existing state of democracy and justice. The only way out of this is forward -- to a process of decolonization that will create a world that has never been before. The power to do this lies in our hands because it is our own power which the system wields against us! The reason it is vital to understand this, is that it gives us hope for the future and a way forward. This system has always extracted a pivotal base of consent based on white supremacy, imperial and settler privileges, and neo-colonialism, through which a mass base have identified with and participated in the crimes of the empire. On the other hand the recent ENRON debacle has clearly demonstrated that the wealth and power of this system must be constantly extracted and reproduced, or it vanishes overnight. The same is true of the consent of the governed. Bush understands how vulnerable this system is. His problem is that the very measures he takes to propagate it in power serve to expose it and to diminish its legitimacy. We must exploit this contradiction to our advantage, by intensifying resistance and exposure in the face of atrocity and repression. But we can only do so by challenging people's stakes and ties to the system, our complicity in our own and others' oppression. Why were Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. such powerful spokespeople of resistance, so widely responded to? Because, at the same time that they challenged racism, militarism and empire, each in their own way, they also issued a moral and political challenge to their own people and to all who thirsted for justice -- a challenge to stand up, to cease acquiescing in and internalizing their own oppression. When masses of people once again take that message to heart, and begin to extract ourselves from the system while extracting the system from ourselves, no power or repression on the face of the earth will be capable of sustaining this rotten empire. The disillusionment of realizing that neither white skin nor imperial privilege is any barrier to death or exploitation, that 'our' rulers are capable of the most heinous crimes as they always have been is a vital step towards waking up and taking back our power to make history. Whether you are galvanized by the struggle for peace, by the battle for the survival of the planet against a ruler who has said, "global warming is real -- live with it!" or by the effort to defend your own human rights, now is the time to redouble your efforts, embracing allies in conscious solidarity, and engaging in the self-critical effort to widen our field of vision and compassion, which has been severely curtailed by the blinders of privilege and identification with the oppressor. Note from MN: There are numerous sources on-line for masses of information indicating the complicity or criminal negligence of the US Imperial State in the crimes of 9-11. Some of it is on the mark, some of it is rank fantasy, some of it combines both elements. Little of it is based on a critique of imperialism. Three places to start looking at the evidence as well as the speculation are: http://www.copvcia.com (Mike Ruppert's website); http://newsinsider.cjb.net (for a summary article on Bush's "Smoking Gun"); and , http://www.unansweredquestions.org (which incorporates efforts of some family members of those killed to dig out the truth). But be forewarned that all of these sites contain the mishmash of wheat and chaff and the fundamental political problems outlined above. A free sample copy of Turning the Tide is available for the asking from ARA, PO Box 1055, Culver City CA 90232. Subscriptions are $15 payable to Michael Novick at that address. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to: [log in to unmask] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~