FW: Bush knew..YQUE? What are we going to do about it?

[ben <benj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Forwarding this article, because it expresses some of the ideas that I
put forward earlier on marxmail about conspiracy theories, only more
eloquently and in more detail. Sorry for those who already read it! 

>____________________________________________________________________
>
>BUSH KNEW... ¿Y 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.
>
>
>




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