Features the other press |} O- Cele september 20862 and Nothing to brate Sven Bellamy Features. Editor Here we are, one year from the collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. I will use the all-encompassing term ‘we’ because we were all affected in some way. The bombing of the World Trade Center will remain one of those events in our lifetimes where we remember where we were, and what we were doing when the event was disclosed. For myself, I was on my way to Douglas College. A friend of mine called to tell me the towers had collapsed. I was on the SkyTrain headed to New Westminster Campus. I didn’t believe the news. It must have been some ploy—a September 11 practical joke. Unfortunately, arriving at school, the entire college was in the same state of shock as myself. A television had been wheeled into the concourse and groups of students clung close- ly together in groups, whispering darkly among themselves. Another television was waiting for me in class; the instructor, sharing our feelings of numbness, declared we would not be having a normal lecture—no kidding. It was difficult to focus in class for at least a week following. But even now, reflecting back, I am still dis- turbed that humanity is able to inflict such terrible acts of hatred. Unfortunately, the hatred has been allowed to continue, propa- gated by a war, which involves issues much different than those which lead to the use of civilian aircraft as missiles. At this time, one year after September 11, let’s stop for a moment, exercise our critical thinking muscles and do some math. There are some important questions that beg to be answered. However, all of the articles that are present in the mainstream media con- vey the message that we are involved in a giant crusade against terrorism. In the words of my grandfather (a veteran of WWII)—“That message is Horse Shit, and my own ass hairs get knotted just thinking there are people who buy into that crap.” Let's spend some time examining an alter- nate perspective to the mainstream media: What does an activist journalist from NYC have to say? Michelle Goldberg, who lives in NYC and submits regularly to Salon.com writes this interesting paragraph about a day at ground zero: “According to the New York Times, 3.6 mil- lion people will visit ground zero this year. There’s no longer much to look at—the expanse where the twin towers once stood is now just a vast construction site—but people keep coming, disgorged by tour buses that idle nearby. There are giddy high school students in foam Statue of Liberty hats, dour families squinting under visors that read “Ground Zero NYC,” religious groups including, on a recent visit, a few dozen Jews for Jesus in matching fluorescent orange T-shirts, middle- aged men staring intently into their cam- corders and young guys strutting topless in the summer sun. Last Saturday one woman leaned into her husband and seemed, for a moment or two, to tear up, but mostly people seemed to be enjoying themselves in the perfunctory, listless way of tourists everywhere.” In her article Goldberg goes on to describe how kiosks have formed a street market around the site, where vendors peddle sou- venirs from the bombing—right down to Osama bin Laden toilet paper, with catchy slo- gans like, “wiping out terrorism.” Goldberg seems to emphasize her point that ground zero has become a sentimental landmark, some- place to get a picture taken and show off to friends. A letter from a South American Activist The view from a North American perspec- tive is only a very small part of this story. People living in England, North Ireland, or any number of other countries around the world have to deal with the threat of bomb- ings everyday; Perhaps not bombings on such a grandiose level, but bombings nonetheless. What follows are some short excerpts from a letter, written by a student activist from Columbia, in South America: “As an activist from the Third World, I can understand how many in the developed world have reacted to the events which took place in Washington and New York, shock and horror, as horrible as it was. But my dear friends, this has been happening everyday in the third world, and in my Native Latin America. “Tt appears that the US corporate media has attempted to distract these resistance move- ments by creating an ‘international’ effort on what it calls ‘terrorism.’ Terrorism for the ‘powers that are,’ may constitute anything which might threaten or disturb ‘normal’ busi- ness life and activities. “Our heads are constantly being drummed. about Osama bin Laden, except for this one fact: That the United States created him. “The US also paid and trained and armed a group of terrorists in Nicaragua in the 1980s to fight the Sandinistas. The US killed over 30, 000 civilians who supported them. Thirty thousand which most people in the developed world really don’t know about. “There is no doubt whatsoever, that the US endorses terrorism, only if it’s the US doing the terrorizing.” The activist, Eduard Aruna, finishes the arti- cle by summing up US activity in Columbia—that is, US military aid to back a despotic government, which has it’s own list of human rights abuses. Aruna mentions a little about the US collaboration with Klaus Barbie, an infamous Nazi who spent several years hid- ing out in Bolivia before being captured and sentenced to life in prison, where he finally died of cancer. And now a Word from Noam Chomsky Well, no article opposing the celebration of 9/11 would be complete without hearing from a proper, academic authority. What follows are some excerpts taken from interviews with pro- fessor Chomsky, both in print and from the radio, during the weeks and months following the NYC tragedy. Interviewer: The fall of the Berlin Wall did- nt claim any victims, but it did profoundly change the geo-political scene. Do you think last week’s attacks could have a similar effect? Chomsky: The events of September 11 are something quite new in world affairs, not in their scale and character, but in the target. For the US, this is the first time since the War of 1812 that the national territory has been under attack, even threat. Many commenta- tors have brought up a Pearl Harbor analogy, but that is quite misleading. On Dec 7, 1941, military bases in the two colonies were attacked. Not the national territory, which was never threatened. During these years the US annihilated the indigenous population (mil- lions of people), conquered half of Mexico, intervened violently in the surrounding region, conquered Hawaii and the Philippines (killing hundreds of thousands of Filipinos), and in the past half century particularly, extended its resort to force through much of the world. The number of victims is colossal. For the first time, the guns have been directed the other way. That is a dramatic change. Interviewer: “Intelligent Bombs” in Iraq, “humanitarian intervention” in Kosovo. The USA never used the word “war” to describe that. Now they are talking about war against a nameless enemy. Why? Chomsky: At first the US used the word “crusade,” but it was quickly pointed out that if they hope to enlist their allies in the Islamic world, that is a serious mistake, for obvious reasons. The rhetoric therefore shifted to “war.” The Gulf war of 1991 was called a war. The bombing of Serbia was called a “humani- tarian intervention,” by no means a novel usage. That was a standard description of European imperialist ventures in the 19th cen- tury. To cite some more recent examples, the major recent scholarly work on “humanitarian intervention” cites three examples of “human- itarian intervention” in the immediate pre- World War II period: Japan’s invasion of Manchuria, Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia, and Hitler's takeover of the Sudetenland. The author of course is not suggesting that the term is apt; rather, that the crimes were masked as “humanitarian.” But the pretext of “humanitarian intervention” cannot be used in the normal way in the present case. So we are left with “war.” To call it a war on terrorism, however, is sim- ply more propaganda, unless the “war” really does target terrorism. But that is plainly not contemplated. Perhaps I may quote political — scientist Michael Stohl: “We must recognize that by convention—and it must be empha- sized—only by convention—great power use and the threat of the use of force is normally described as coercive diplomacy and not as a form of terrorism,” though it commonly involves “the threat and often the use of vio- lence for what would be described as terroris- tic purposes were it not great powers who were pursuing the very same tactic,” in accord with the literal meaning of the term. Under the cir- cumstances that Western intellectual culture were willing to adopt the literal meaning, the war against terrorism would take quite a dif- ferent form, along lines spelled out in exten- sive detail in literature that does not enter the respectable canon. Putting a stop to the madness So there you go. On this (and every) September 11, please remember that the mes- sages conveyed through the media are at best an inaccurate truth. Stop and remember the people who lost their lives. But because so many people have lost their lives to hatred and violence, lets work together to understand the roots of violence. It’s time to stop seeking revenge for something that could have been avoided. This September 11 offers each person in North America a chance to bring about greater change than has ever been manifested, or even attempted—global compassion, understanding, acceptance, and peace. page 1%)