I’ve talked often here about the destruction caused by the conflation of the drug war and the war on terrorism post-9/11. Today, I thought I’d share with you a post I made elsewhere about this 10th anniversary commemoration. It’s not specifically drug-war-related, yet in a larger sense it certainly is relevant, since it has to do with the disfunction of our problem-solving abilities as a nation. Feel free to post your own 9/11 thoughts.
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It is appropriate to mark the 10th anniversary of a major event with remembrances. And yet part of me feels like we’ve been so busy remembering 9/11 for the past decade that we’re in danger of forgetting 9/10.
9/11 is important. Close to 3,000 people died in that attack. That’s a powerful and tragic number. And yet, in the ten years since then, over 150,000 Americans have died violently who weren’t involved in wars or terrorist actions. We rarely hear about them. We don’t build monuments to them, and their deaths didn’t “change” us like 9/11.
Over 6,000 U.S. servicemen have died in the wars we fought to respond to the 9/11 attacks that killed 3,000 people. And roughly one million people total (by some accounts) have been killed in these wars for which we probably have spent $4.4 trillion to pursue. How many deaths and dollars should we spend per 9/11 death? Unlimited?
The firemen who were killed in the World Trade Center were true heroes and should be honored. And yet… What about Josh Burch and Brett Fulton, firefighters who died on the job fighting a Florida wildfire earlier this year? Or San Francisco firefighters Anthony Valerio and Vincent Perez, who died fighting a home fire in June? Will there be television features about them?
Why do we fixate so intensely on that one event?
Remembering is valuable. Learning is critical. Obsessing is unhealthy. Letting it cause you to be afraid is downright dangerous.
People who think nothing of getting in cars (which kill more people each day around the world than the 9/11 attacks) strangely get so afraid because of that one day in history that they’re willing to sacrifice their principles, their freedom, their honor, and their morality.
So I will not be taking part in any 9/11 observances today. I will not be calling upon God to Bless America’s efforts to drop bombs as a solution to the terrorist threat, for I understand that, like the Hatfields and McCoys, such action only serves to fuel a never-ending cycle of extremist violence.
I am asking people to remember 9/10. Remember who we were (much of the time) before 9/11. That America is still there, deep down, as long as we don’t abandon it. We’re people who believe in freedom and who won’t let any terrorist or politician take it away from us, let alone give it up willingly for the perception of safety. We’re the people who don’t torture. We’re the people who believe that the rule of law is important and that everyone deserves a fair trial. We’re the people who aren’t afraid to face up to thugs, who would rather take risks with our lives than cower in a corner. We’re the ones who believe in human rights and want the rest of the world to follow our lead.
We can be that America again. The America of 9/10. If we don’t believe that, then we’ve lost.
My facebook post for the day
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On this somber day of remembrance let us not mourn the death of those lost but celebrate their lives as you would want your own to be celebrated after you pass from this world and onto the next. Fear and sorrow are what those who attacked us wanted us to live in and we can’t let that happen. The American Spirit is built on a legacy of bravery, pride and a dedication to building a better tomorrow and that won’t fall like a stack of glass and steel.
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September 11th always makes me a very sad man. Were my father still alive, today would have been his 90th birthday.
Chris Hedges today:
“What was played out in the weeks after the attacks was the old, familiar battle between force and human imagination, between the crude instruments of violence and the capacity for empathy and understanding. Human imagination lost. Coldblooded reason, which does not speak the language of the imagination, won. We began to speak and think in the empty, mindless nationalist clichés about terror that the state handed to us. We became what we abhorred. The deaths were used to justify pre-emptive war, invasion, Shock and Awe, prolonged occupation, targeted assassinations, torture, offshore penal colonies, gunning down families at checkpoints, massive aerial bombardments, drone attacks, missile strikes and the killing of dozens and soon hundreds and then thousands and later tens of thousands and finally hundreds of thousands of innocent people. We produced piles of corpses in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, and extended the reach of our killing machine to Yemen and Somalia. And by beatifying our dead, by cementing into the national psyche fear and the imperative of permanent war, and by stoking our collective humiliation, the state carried out crimes, atrocities and killings that dwarfed anything carried out against us on 9/11. The best that force can do is impose order. It can never elicit harmony. And force was justified, and is still justified, by the first dead. Ten years later these dead haunt us like Banquo’s ghost.”
That’s a Keeper…
At the time there were many protests in the street against the WTO. Most notably was the Battle in Seattle in 99. Ongoing protests against the world banksters and the Military Industrial complex left me no doubt the attacks on 911 were somehow domestic. Previous weeks of protests and posts against the wars and trade orchestrations, especially NAFTA/GATT Clinton gave us. Of coarse the logical targets would be the WTC and the Pentagon. I remember writing that these would be the logical targets for any terrorist organization since these two entities are the most responsible for the worlds impoverished and the world’s wars protecting vested interest. I remember after Oklahoma bombing the first thing the media did was put out an all points bulletin for “Arab Terrorists”. Then stumbling on McVeigh proved domestic terrorism is just as devastating. The drug war has no explosions or rather implosions. But the DEAth ad Torture is just as rank and prevalent. 911 turned a bumbling idiot into a bumbling idiot with a ruthless VP and war department funding to take Halliburton out of the red paying off lawsuits for Asbestos poisoning.
I still believe Clintons blowjob got more investigating and the evidence just removed to foreign scrap yards. A hand picked committee to form the investigation. Why not just get those lounging on Pete’s couch to investigate the drug war? Pretty sure the conclusions would be a tad different than Gilberts. I remember the same lemmings jerking off their plastic flags pretending for a few moments we were all a united people. But the plastic they were spasming was bought at Wallmart, made in China, by kids in sweatshops from crude oil sold by Iraq and Iran and the family of Ossama bin Laden. The same bin Laden given scud missiles to fight the Russians. Then the neocon fabrication against Sadamn. The same Sadamn Rumsfeld gave weapons of mass destruction to fight of the Kurds, siding with Iran. The MKULTRA boys, re covering up another investigation, no different than covering up the Science of Ganja. 911 was not a wake up call, it was a sleeping pill. Look at all the sleep walkers we have now. Sedated to the point we don’t even need another 911 to herd the sheep. They just volunteer like the teabog dipshits and the corporatists perpetuating the Ganjawar for profits on tax dollars no one seems to mind. The Untied States of Anemica has gone down in infamy. RIP USAl Qaeda,
Smoke and Mirrors in Vancouver on 10th Anniversary of 9/11
Activists who believe the official story of 9/11 is just government ‘smoke and mirrors’ are asking fellow protestors to light up at 4:20 at the Vancouver Art Gallery this September 11.
Cannabis Culture News LIVE: Truth About 9/11 Still Clouded in Smoke
Watch Cannabis Culture News LIVE for the latest news and views on pot politics and the marijuana community. In this episode: The 10th Anniversary of 9/11 is upon us, but the truth is still clouded in smoke. We talk to Vancouver activists who plan to light up at 4:20 on September 11 as part of a global protest.
Noam Chomsky: 9/11 and the Imperial Mentality
A number of analysts have observed that although bin Laden was finally killed, he won some major successes in his war against the U.S. “He repeatedly asserted that the only way to drive the U.S. from the Muslim world and defeat its satraps was by drawing Americans into a series of small but expensive wars that would ultimately bankrupt them,” Eric Margolis writes. “‘Bleeding the U.S.,’ in his words.” The United States, first under George W. Bush and then Barack Obama, rushed right into bin Laden’s trap..
PATRIOT Ax Targeted Drug Offenders
The Bush administration sold the PATRIOT Act’s expansion of law enforcement powers, including “sneak and peek” searches in which the target of the search is never notified that his home has been searched, as necessary to defend the citizens of the US from terrorist attacks, but that’s not how federal law enforcement has used its sweeping new powers.
9/11: A Murderous PR Stunt
That Launched A Deadly Decade-Long Propaganda War
Bush Cabal Hides Patriot II Police State in HR2417
It appears we are witnessing a stealth enactment of the enormously unpopular “Patriot II” legislation that was first leaked several months ago. Perhaps the national outcry when a draft of the Patriot II act was leaked has led its supporters to enact it one piece at a time in secret. Whatever the case, this is outrageous and unacceptable. I urge each of my colleagues to join me in rejecting this bill and its incredibly dangerous expansion of Federal police powers.
During WTO I was Director of a facility that served autistic adults with co-existing mental illness and had twelve employees on at any given time, 24/7. I knew that the union (SEIU) was participating in that first day, so I made plans to personally cover those hours. After the news reached me (No TV, too upsetting for severe autistics) of the magnitude of the resistance, I wanted in the worst way to be there. Instead I called my wife. Then I called as many of the employees there at the protest as I could reach, and told them what they were doing was too important, to stay as long as they could. I then told the next shift’s employees to get a bus downtown. I kept that up for three days, without sleep, covering 14 autistic adults with special needs, mostly by myself, sometimes with a little help from my wife. Because I pulled that marathon session, there were at least 15 more bodies disrupting that conference. I missed the WTO, but I didn’t miss the WTO. I watch the video my wife recorded of the local news coverage, about six hours in all every year on the anniversary. It’s like a football game, or a familiar movie. I know when the burning dumpsters get rolled into the line of cops. I know when the German delegate came out with the illegal Glock, (that was covered up for the nice diplomat). I know when the Battle for Capitol Hill starts, and the neighborhood swarmed to assist the protesters, who had been corralled there (boy, that put the biggest wrench ever into their crowd control strategy!). I watch it like I was there, because I was, sixteen or seventeen different places. I (well my employees)suffered tear gas, pepper spray, water hoses and rubber bullets. But in that instance, it was the protesters who succeeded. Damn, that was Seattle’s finest hour.
BTW, Norm Stamper did a magnificent job. Nobody, not even the organizers anticipated the perfect storm that rainy November week. Norm, if you happen to read this, nobody but the folks who needed the scapegoat ever blamed you. They decided yours was the head that had to roll.
9/11: A Conspiracy Theory
9/10 is indeed what I remember . 9/11 is shoved down our throats. Those behind it wont let us forget it…for get that America isnt the same, wont let us forget the fear they want us to exist in.Wont let us forget they broke this country.
Well, remember 9/10…remember who you were, then fight to get that back. Take back what is yours…this country…your life.
Remember 9/10 and stop the raping of this country.
For those that havent noticed…WW3 started 9/11.
Just because you dont see tanks in the street dosent mean we arent being attacked.
Just look on TV. Isnt the whole world trapped in this ‘war on terror’.
It may seem so far away. Like a distant dream. Its not.
This WW3 may just intensify down the road….maybe very soon.
Dresden,Germany;Hiroshima, Nagasaki,Japan;Kent State, Ruby Ridge,Waco. We are right? We are as sick as “THEM”.
Wikileaks Leaks 134,000 More Cables
Patriot Act Used Against Wikileaks
Man’s Home Set to be Seized Despite Acquittal on Marijuana Charges
NYPD Spying on Americans!
Harper Bringing Back “Anti-Terror” Powers for Canadian Police