USA: Indymedia-NYC article (english)

Die USA wird angegriffen - Deutsche Politiker halluzinieren die "Volksgemeinschaft".
Nach den irrsinnigen Anschlägen in NYC und Washington DC, nutzen deutsche Politiker dies, um vom "deutschen Volk" zu reden, welches jetzt als "ganzes" trauert und hinter "seiner" Regierung steht, wenn diese die üblichen Betroffenheitsfloskeln verlautbaren lässt. Im folgenden dokumentieren wir 3 Artikel von indymedia-NYC.

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NYC Apocalypse: Fallout spreads from Manhattan to Kabul
by Ana Nogueira 6:27pm Tue Sep 11 '01 (Modified on 10:13pm Tue Sep 11 '01)

Downtown Manhattan looks like a scene from an apocalypse movie. Huge clouds of dust
and debris cover the streets and block out the sun, police cars and ambulances screaming
up and down the streets carrying the injured have broken windows from falling debris
landing on top of them, and crowds of people are filing out of the city on foot across the
59th street bridge. Images of people jumping out of the top levels of the 110-story World
Trade Center in order to escape the flames will never escape the memories of New
Yorkers on their way to work this day.

“It was like a nuclear winter,” said one clerk who works in the stock exchange.

Following the shocking collapse of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, New
York City is under a “terrorist state of alert”. Two hijacked passenger flights carrying a
total of 157 people flew straight into the towers causing massive explosions Tuesday
morning at 8:45 and 9:03 respectively, ultimately resulting in the complete demolition of
these Manhattan signature buildings and symbols of the world financial system. The
impact of the blasts also caused the neighboring American Express building to collapse,
and later, the 50-story WTC building #7.

Minutes after the attacks against the WTC, the Pentagon in Washington D.C. was hit by
another hijacked passenger airplane. A passenger plane destined for the West Coast reversed course over Ohio and subsequently crashed near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The plane's possible target is unknown. It is unclear whether the plane was
pre-emptively shot down or crashed on its own.

The death toll of these dramatic events is still unknown. In a press conference this
afternoon, Mayor Giuluiani would not speculate but warned that the numbers “would be
more than anyone can bear.” There are more than 1500 “walking wounded” being treated
in makeshift medical triages around the city, 600 in hospitals and 200 additional victims in
critical condition. Many of the wounded and suspected fatalities include medical staff and
firefighters who were at the base of the WTC before the buildings collapsed.

The island of Manhattan has essentially been shut down, with subways and some bridges
closed. Stock exchanges have closed and will remain closed tomorrow. Markets are
plummeting across the world.

Nonetheless, people on the streets are relatively calm, cooperative and voluteering their
help in any way possible. There is a “dangerously low” supply of blood in the hospitals,
doctors say. But the lines outside the doors for blood donations are so long that people
are being told to come back later. Lumber workers are delivering massive amounts of
wood as impromptly organized groups of citizens shape them into make-shift stretchers.
Others are preparing to help clear the rubble once the area is deemed safe from further
explosions. At the moment the most precarious issue is that of the gas pipes underneath
the island’s financial center, which have not yet been turned off.

Who’s to Blame?

No one has yet claimed responsibility but top-level U.S. fingers as well as those of people
on the street are already pointing to Osama bin Laden, Islamic fundamentalists and
pro-Palestinian rights groups. All accused groups have denied responsibility, but in the
town of Nablas within Palestinian territories, thousands came out on the streets to
celebrate the attacks.

Many on the streets said they were shocked, but not surprised. One woman who saw the
plane dive into the tower from her apartment said “there are so many people angry at the
United States, and the Bush administration is just flaunting its policies in their faces all the
time. I’m not surprised.”

Brandon Gates, a student at Apex technical School agreed. “I hate to say it but the U.S. is
all about greed and money. How do you expect somebody to give you respect when your
back yard isnt clean, especially when you take from every other country to supply your
own country. But it is really sad that all these people died. it is sad that the U.S. can’t just
give people back their land and instead it has to come to this.”

What’s the Response?

Nine hours after the attacks, there are reports that Kabul, Afghanistan has been bombed,
possibly by U.S and/or NATO forces. NATO had an emergency meeting this morning to
plan a response.

Isreali Prime Minister Shimon Peres says that this is a turning point in the so-far
undeclared war with Arabs and that the attack was a declaration of war against the whole
world and ‘we must go through with it all the way'. (CNN).

The United States is under a THREATCON DELTA level of alert, which is a state of war
and does not preclude the use of nuclear weapons. According to radio reports, President
Bush has said that his finger is on the button.

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Response to Bush's Speech
by christopher mitchell 9:47pm Tue Sep 11 '01 (Modified on 2:21am Wed Sep 12 '01)

When everyone is free, no one will die from government terrorism, or terrorism against the government. Today I mourn an extra few thousand extra victims from an unjust society than on the average day.
Response to Bush Speech

This is a response to the speech given by George Bush on Tuesday night following the devastating attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Bush begins by claiming that “our” freedom and way of life came under attack in the United States. He is quite right on the second point and somewhat off in the first point. Clearly, “our” way of life is under attack. New York could be considered the heart of global capitalism and the Pentagon the heart of its defense. Consider the following quote by noted pundit on global capitalism, Thomas Freidman,
For globalization to work, America can't be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is. The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonald-Douglas, the designer of the F-15, and the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technology is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.
Unfortunately for most of the world, globalization means increased poverty, environmental destruction and decreased hope for a brighter future.

The United States Government has long meted out punishments to people across the globe. Whether it be by direct bombing campaigns (Iraq, Yugoslavia, Sudan, Afghanistan most recently) or by supplying weapons to aggressor nations (Turkey, Indonesia, Colombia, Israel all come to mind), it is directly involved in the death and destruction of innocents daily. The policies dictated by organizations heavily influenced by the U.S. (IMF, World Bank, WTO) also plunder people across the globe by forcing countries to privatize resources and slash social spending to pay back old debts. It appears to be payback time.

Perhaps the perpetrators were angry white men who have been deluded into fearing an international Jewish conspiracy. Perhaps these acts of terror were created by the religious fundamentalism fueled by people living in miserable conditions looking for any way out. We may find out who and why in the near future. We may not.

At any rate, Bush is serious when he says “our” way of life is under attack. Unless there is a significant reversal of global capitalism and its habit of rewarding the few with the spoils of the great many, these sort of attacks will continue.

Increase the NSA budget, give the CIA more power, quadruple the number of FBI agents. There will still be attacks against the United States because there are far too many people without hope. Whether it be angry white kids from rural areas who erroneously blame new immigrants for the old problems of capitalism or groups from abroad striking at American military might, attacks like this will continue.

The American way of life: cheap t-shirts from SouthEast Asia and South America, 2 refrigerators and 4 TV sets in each household eating up more wattage per house than typical villages anywhere else in the world, electricity provided by burning oil from friendly despots in the Middle East, and 3 cars per every 2 people opening holes in the Ozone layer. These things must change.
Bush romanticizes the United States’ relationship to freedom. The United States did not invent freedom. It comes with being human. The United States when founded, simply oppressed certain colors of people in certain classes slightly less than other governments were known to. A tradition that largely continues today. Ask Arab-American citizens how they felt about their freedom here in the U.S. following the Oklahoma City bombing. Ask them how they feel about it when they walk into an airport. Ask anyone living in any large urban area how they feel when they see a police cruiser drive by. Ask women walking alone at night. The freedom that Bush knows is only shared by thin minority in this society.

The attacks against the World Trade Center and Pentagon are not necessarily a strike against freedom. Attacks on global capitalism and militarism are pro-freedom. The loss of life associated with them is tragic and cannot be considered pro-freedom. It is not collateral damage. It is tragic and it is unnecessary. As the Praska Anarchist Group said: “Innocent people never deserve to die for their country or because of their country.” However, when peaceful change is perceived as impossible, some groups turn to violence.

What happens when tens of thousands are people are beaten and gassed in Seattle for non-violently blockading the streets and that brutality is supposedly justified by less than 100 people breaking windows? Some people begin to question non-violence. What happens when every time people try to protest an unfair electoral process and their media centers and puppet making facilities are destroyed and occupants arrested? Some people turn to violence. When non-violent change is perceived as impossible, people react violently.

Some say look to Martin Luther King, Jr for inspiration. I say look at what the United States government did to him. Look at how the FBI tried to convince him to commit suicide. Look at their harassment of him and everyone close to him. Look at his assassination. The deaths of these innocents are directly attributable to the United States government which not only enforces an unjust status quo, it is also refuses to respond to nonviolent pressure to change.

Violence in this society is a result of the ruling class. It is a result of an unjust society. It is a result of a too few with too much and too many toiling too hard for too little. It is the result of a society that places such high values on material things and too little on humans. It is a result of capitalism. It is a result of the violence inherent in the state. It is a result of building prisons faster than public schools.

So long as the United States is the guarantor of global capitalism, it will be a target of those suffering from it. The governments of the world and the system of global capitalism are responsible for violence. They maintain an intolerable status quo.

When everyone is free, no one will die from government terrorism, or terrorism against the government. Today I mourn an extra few thousand extra victims from an unjust society than on the average day.

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A Massive Intelligence Failure
by Daniel Hopsicker 9:19pm Tue Sep 11 '01
address: Slidell, LA phone: 941.416.3734  econtv@earthlink.net

"There will be many people asking tonight," he stated, right over the public airwaves, "just what it is we are getting for all those tens of billions of dollars being spent on intelligence."

A Massive Intelligence Failure
Amidst the carnage and horror of today’s attack on America there can be room in our hearts right now only for prayers for the dead and compassion for the living, hundreds of whom, we are beginning to learn, have bodies completely and massively burned from head to toe.

When Peter Jennings impatiently dismissed an ABC Pentagon analyst’s foray into theorizing about possible declarations of war, I cheered him—for once—for rightly insisting that Grief precede Retribution.

But we all know this will very quickly change.

For myself, I cannot get out of my mind the image of an anonymous man in white pants dangling out the window of the 97th (or so) floor of one of the Twin Towers. We couldn’t
even see his face, because of the distance and the smoke, and for once I was grateful for an MTV-like shaky-cam effect that had more to do with the honest human emotions of an
anonymous cameraman than any postmodern cinegraphic trendiness.

I didn’t want to know too much about that dangling man in white pants. He was soon to be dead. And I didn't want any close-ups of his face showing with horrifying detail whether he already knew it.

But as the acrid smoke of burning flesh lifts there will be more than a whiff of Revenge in the air. And before the finger of retribution begins pointing "over there," I want to point mine in another direction-- towards something over here.

Surprisingly, NBC anchor Brian Williams—yes, he of the oft-remarked unnatural tan—gave voice to it first.

"There will be many people asking tonight," he stated, right over the public airwaves, "just what it is we are getting for all those tens of billions of dollars being spent on intelligence."

Here here.

("The only real news you get about anything really big," stated a journalist of my acquaintance, "comes in the first 24 hours, before they can get the cover-up mechanism in
place.")

So, before I forget, I’d like to send a bottle of Man Tan over to Brian Williams’ table, for blurting a truth on national television.

After writing a recent book about the tawdry corruption surrounding the career of one of America’s most famous CIA agents, who was also and not coincidentally the most successful drug smuggler in history, I feel compelled to blurt out a similar question...

Has the endemic corruption in our national intelligence services contributed to—or even in some sense been responsible for—leaving us helpless before this national tragedy?

Could the truth really be as sordid as a statement I heard from a former NSA operative about the huge US intelligence operation in South America called Operation Condor?

"Operation Condor was the result of years of careful planning designed to take over an entire hemisphere," he had stated, matter-of-factly, "the conquest and then plundering of an entire, nearly virgin, continent, for the benefit of the American intelligence operatives involved in the
operation."

Anyone who has brushed up against the minions of this nation's clandestine services these past few decades cannot have failed to notice their pocket-lining preoccupation with
gunrunning and massive financial fraud; the unpunished looting of America’s Savings and Loans, to cite one example.

Not to mention the narcotics trafficking. (Paging Colin Powell; pick up a white courtesy telephone in the Lima Aero Porto, please.)

Did the cretins with an obsession to increase their market share in the illicit narcotics industry—Plan Colombia, to give it its formal name—keep them from doing the job we are
all paying them to do?

Are the guardians of our country’s national security apparatus too preoccupied these days with looting the system to waste their time on drudgery which doesn't positively affect their Cayman Island's accounts?

The brutal reality of American life entering the 21st Century was faced almost 2000 years ago by the citizens of Rome, when they looked with despair at the corrupt and swaggering Praetorian Guard which had made a mockery of their once-proud Republic, and asked out loud the question that echoes down to us across the centuries...

"Who will guard the guards?"

In one of the ironies of which history is so full, two days ago the New York Times ran an article headlined "The Bin Laden Movie: Oh Those Wicked Arabs!"

Hey, I’m human. As our pitifully inadequate President might pitifully put it, "I’d like to kick some Arab ass" too.

But as I sit in front of my television with the rest of my countrymen today, I am thinking about none of that; I am riveted in horror, as you are, while I watch helplessly, wondering if the cameras caught that man in white pants on the 97th floor loosen his grip on the ledge, and
free-fall 100 stories, like so much human confetti.

Daniel Hopsicker is the author of "Barry & ‘the boys;' The CIA, the Mob & America’s
Secret History."

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