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9/11: A Desperate Provocation By U.S. Capitalism by Max Kolskegg 7:31am Mon Jan 28 '02

The War on Terrorism is a fraud. Its purpose is to maintain carte blanche for the ever more desperate agenda of American capital: the domination of the continent of Eurasia, and the

crushing of the Left worldwide, especially its anti-capitalist core.

9/11 : A DESPERATE PROVOCATION BY U.S. CAPITALISM

The "War on Terrorism" is indeed a fraud, as Australian film and print journalist John

Pilger has repeatedly pointed out. "Terrorism" is simply taking the place of

"Communism" during the Cold War as the propaganda line spewed by the state and

the corporate media to rally a confused and fearful population against "enemies" who

supposedly threaten them. This most effective form of social control was

recommended by Hitler's chief propagandist, Josef Goebbels. The purpose of the

"War on Terrorism" is to maintain carte blanche for the ever more desperate agenda of

American capital: the domination of the continent of Eurasia (the critical sector of which

is Central Asia, precisely where the "War on Terrorism" just happens to have begun),

and the crushing of the Left worldwide, especially its explicitly anti-capitalist core.

In the face of this juggernaut the Left has shown a potentially fatal lack of intellectual

rigor as well as nerve. The evidence that the attacks on September 11 were in all

likelihood a black operation of the US intelligence services, a state "provocation"

designed as a pretext to launch the global "War on Terrorism", is very substantial. It is

also painful to consider, but the task must not be shirked. The purpose of this essay is

to consider its relevance to the future of the only force which holds any hope of saving

humanity and the planet from the megadeath capital is preparing, the anti-capitalist

Left.

Shock, Propaganda And Paralysis

Four months after September 11, it appears that most of the Left is asleep at the

switch. Just about the only response has been the "anti-war movement", which has

been weak, especially in the U.S., where the propaganda barrage has successfully

marshalled the bulk of the population, including many leftists, into lockstep with their

masters' plans. In any case the movement hasn't stopped the "war" in Afghanistan

(really a one-sided attack against an essentially defenseless target, not a war). Nor is

there any reason to imagine that it has frightened the Bush cabal from implementing

plans to unleash its death machine on any number of additional targets in the future. US

troops are massing in Kuwait and Qatar, in preparation for an attack on Iraq, and

"special operations" are underway already in Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines and

perhaps Sudan. Then there's Colombia. . .Venezuela. . .Bolivia. . .Mexico, and these

are just the most obvious near-term objects of attention from the Sickos in command.

It is probably safe to say that the anti-war sector of the US population is almost entirely

restricted to the left end of the political spectrum. But today's Left is a truncated

remnant of its past self, both in size and in critical understanding. Much of it, when hit by

the double whammy of the events of 9/11 and the immediate subsequent government

and media propaganda assault, jumped right in line behind our new Fuhrer. After all,

"we" have been attacked! The rump that is still anti-war has been pretty feeble, not so

much in terms of the number of demonstrators in the streets, but above all in their

acceptance of much of the elite's propaganda.

Most of the endless stream of "analysis" from the Left or "progressive" side has

centered on "terrorism", posing and answering questions such as "what is terrorism?"

or "why do they hate us?" For example, the "Marxist" Tariq Ali's critique of events

amounts to pointing out the ineffectiveness of the US military assault as a method of

eliminating terrorism. His main conclusion seems to be that the US rulers are really

dumb; anybody with half a brain can see that the attack in Afghanistan will only breed

more terrorists! It never occurs to him that maybe they're not dumb, but have a different

purpose in mind; he takes their propaganda at face value. And so do most other

"critics" of the war. This is the wrong way to stamp out terrorism! Wage peace instead!

Dispense justice! Be nice! Then "they" won't hate "us" anymore (and "we" can carry on

with our relentless pursuit of money and goodies like SUVs).

Evidently the Left, like everybody else, spends too much of its time watching TV and

reading the newspapers, i.e., absorbing propaganda. How else to comprehend why

almost everyone from "liberal" Democrats and "progressives" to Marxists and

anarchists has accepted the propaganda line of the corporate media and psyops

specialists in the US government: the attacks on September 11 were planned and

carried out by Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorists, namely Osama Bin Laden and

Al-Qaida, and caught the US national security apparatus completely offguard. The fact

that no proof has ever been produced doesn't seem to bother anyone. And when this

lack of proof is pointed out, and all the innumerable facts and circumstances that cast

very serious doubt on this story are brought up, even "critics" of the war dismiss these

persistent questions as lunatic "conspiracy" mongering.

Professor John McMurtry of the University of Guelph points to a deeper explanation of

the difficulty people have had in analyzing all the evidence objectively. The crimes of

September 11 were so shocking that for many, perhaps most people, even those on

the Left, it is literally unthinkable that they could have been committed or intentionally

permitted by the Bush administration or some secret operations group working for it:

"There is growing suspicion, which is officially unspeakable, that the Afghanistan War

is a set-up, including September 11 itself. With any such hypothesis, one looks not only

for the evidence confirming it, but more conscientiously, for the evidence disconfirming

it. The principal reason against is the assumption that it is impossible that the U.S.

national security apparatus would ever permit such a mass killing of Americans on U.S.

soil, but this assumption itself is shaky given that Pearl Harbour itself was likely known

about in advance, and non-defensive wars since have sacrificed tens of thousands of

U.S. citizens (not to say millions of others) for so-called 'foreign policy and national

security objectives'".

McMurtry proceeds to make a succinct statement of some of the suspicions that arise

in the minds of those who are not paralyzed by this assumption: "The forensic principle

of 'who most benefits from the crime?' clearly points in the direction of the Bush

administration. One would be naïve to think the Bush Jr. faction and its oil,

military-industrial and Wall Street backers who had stolen an election with its man

rated in office by the majority of Americans as poor on the economy (a Netscape Poll

taken off the screen when the planes hit the towers), and more deplored by the rest of

the world as a deep danger to the global environment and the international rule of law,

do not benefit astronomically from this mass-kill explosion. If there was a wish-list, it is

all granted by this numbing turn of events. Americans are diverted from a free-falling

economy to attack another foreign Satan, while the Bush regime's popularity climbs.

The military, the CIA and every satellite armed security apparatus have more money

and power than ever, and become as dominant as they can over civilians in the 'the

whole new era' already being declared by the White House. The anti-missile plan to

rule the skies is now exonerated (if irrelevantly so), and Israel's apartheid civil war is

vindicated at the same time. Even the surgingly popular 'anti world-trade' movement is

now associated with foreign terrorists blowing up the World Trade Centre. The more

you review the connections and the sweeping lapse of security across so many

co-ordinates, the more the lines point backwards."

The failure to look hard facts in the face could be fatal, especially to the Left, which,

judging by its response to this point, doesn't seem to realize that it is one of the

principal targets of the coming global war. We need to look at all the clues which could

lead us to discover who the criminals behind September's events really are, and we

need to do so right away. A huge mass of evidence suggests that the events of

September were planned and carried out by the same team of "rogue" secret

government planners and operatives who have wrought so much murder and

destruction worldwide for the last 40+ years: the CIA, the Pentagon, the National

Security Agency and their contractees.

A War Long Planned

One way to assess the plausibility of the hypothesis that the attacks of September 11

were a black operation, a "provocation" on an unheard-of scale, is to evaluate the

subsequent actions of the Bush administration. Another dimension to the horrors of that

day was added by the violent assault of the US Government and the corporate media

on the United States and world populations which took off just minutes after the planes

struck their targets. This aggressive "response", surely, is fair game for a critical Left

analysis, undertaken from a position of strong skepticism toward any official statements.

Why "strong skepticism?" First let's ask why would any rational person on the Left

believe or take at face value, anything said by anyone in the Bush administration. It is

important to remember that Bush stole the election: he lost the popular vote by over

500,000 votes (NOT too close to call!) and stole Florida's electoral votes and the

Presidency by a complex, sophisticated and advance-planned operation involving the

elimination of many thousands of voters from the registration lists, obstruction and

intimidation at the polls, intimidation during the post-election recount process, and

finally by a totally outrageous intervention by the Supreme Court.

Then Bush loaded his Cabinet with oilmen (and women) and "Cold Warriors" from his

father's rolodex, giving plain notice of his administration's plans (at least for those with

eyes to see). Michael Ruppert, who has been tracking the secret operations of the CIA

and the Bush family for years, was able to predict in January 2001 the essential pattern

of events which is now unfolding:

"Make no mistake about it. The United States is preparing for war. Events immediately

following the 2000 US election debacle are ominous predictors for the Bush-Cheney

Administration. . .the key posts of Treasury, Defense, Justice and National Security

Advisor point to the most militarized oil-and-big-business-friendly administration in 35

years. . .We can be assured that an empire (as opposed to a republic) is emerging in

the United States more quickly than many have expected. And the Bush Administration

is already acting in a "godlike" manner. It is an empire that may have little need even of

the pretence of democracy as American corporate fascism removes its mask in the

wake of our election circus, the prostitution of our Supreme Court and the virtual

destruction of American government as a servant of anything other than money, greed

and power."

Go to war they did, and on a tight, pre-planned schedule. Overwhelming evidence

shows that the war in Afghanistan has nothing to do with "terrorism" and everything to

do with geostrategic plans for domination of Asia and control of rapidly dwindling

natural gas and oil resources. The US has been planning the "war" in Afghanistan for

years, and the attacks in the US on September 11 were remarkable in their provision

of the shock necessary for the American population to fall into line behind the imperial

adventure to take over Central Asia. The whole plan is laid out in exquisite detail by

Zbigniew Brzezinski in his 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard, in which he repeatedly

emphasizes the probable need for an attack comparable to Pearl Harbor to bring the

US domestic population onboard. Michael Ruppert has presented an acute analysis of

the relevance of this book for an understanding of the current situation.

American imperial planners such as Brzezinski see the necessity for the US to secure

its global domination in the near term; they fear the rise of a contesting power, such as

Russia or China, in the Eurasian heartland, which they see as key for global

supremacy. But other, less "grand" imperatives are uppermost in the minds of the Bush

Oiligarchy, including the coming "Big Rollover" when oil and gas supplies peak and

then precipitously decline, estimated to occur as early as 2003. Within a very few years

the amount of oil extracted from the ground will start to drop inexorably, regardless of

the rate at which new sources are developed. This reduction of availability combined

with the capitalist imperative of continual expansion of production and growing global

consumption will place severe stress on the global capitalist system, stress which the

US planners intend to manage for their own benefit. By launching the "war" in

Afghanistan, the US has established a permanent presence on the ground in Central

Asia (it now has bases in nine countries in the region), with the ability to exert its will

over the development of the oil and gas resources of what is considered the last major

untapped field in the world (although Somalia, the Pentagon's likely next target, is

thought to contain substantial reserves as well).

The Houston-based oil company Unocal has been planning gas and oil pipelines

across Afghanistan for years, but its plans were frustrated by the instability of the

country and the difficulty of working out a deal with the Taliban. One of the first things the newly emplaced Bush regime did was reopen negotiations with them over the terms under which they would provide protection for oil and gas pipelines from Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, across Afghanistan to Pakistan. A new book, Bin Laden: the Forbidden Truth, by Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, reveals details of these negotiations, including the true Mafiosi-style offer in which "US representatives told the Taliban, 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.'" Somehow the Taliban found it an offer they could, and did, refuse. Now, after extensive carpet bombing, the Taliban have been removed, a puppet regime installed by the US in Kabul (both Hamid Karzai, the new interim Prime Minister, as well as US Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, are former Unocal consultants), and the plans for pipelines are underway once again. In the Machiavellian world of "diplomacy", this is called "establishing credibility".

Mention should also be made of the history of close association of Osama bin Laden

with the CIA and Pentagon. Installed in Afghanistan in the 1980s by the CIA and Saudi

royal family (working through their local proxies, the Inter Service Intelligence or ISI of

Pakistan) to attract "freedom fighters" from the Arab world to fight against the Russians

and "give Russia its Vietnam", Bin Laden went on after the pullout of Russia to supply

mujahedin to other battle zones in Asia and Europe. He collaborated with the US in

Chechnya and Bosnia, supplying training and fighters to the Chechens and Bosnian

Muslims, and continued the same type of service to the US proxy Kosovo Liberation

Army during the NATO attack on Serbia. His most recent collaboration with the US has

been in the ongoing provision of mercenaries in Macedonia to destablize the government there, along the lines of US policy in Kosovo and Albania. The evident reason for all this "Byzantine" complexity? The laying of an oil pipeline from Burgas on the Black Sea across Bulgaria and Macedonia to the port of Vlore on the Adriatic coast of Albania, now currently under construction by the US oil company AMBO. As they say, "once a CIA agent, always a CIA agent". There is strong reason to doubt the US propaganda line that Bin Laden is the mastermind behind the attacks of September 11, because he is still on the payroll of the CIA. If he did have anything to do with them, then he must have been following orders.

The assault on the domestic population in the US is motivated by equally complex and

related considerations. The USA PATRIOT Act is presented as a response to an

unexpected terrorist strike, but was in fact already written and ready to go as the sun

rose on September 11. Hundreds of pages in length, it contains all the pet projects of

the national security apparatus for complete control of the population: surveillance of

phone and internet communications; CIA operations within the US; sharing of

information by the CIA and domestic law enforcement agencies; provision of grand jury

materials to the CIA, which can then be widely shared as well; seizure of assets;

surreptitious entry of private homes and businesses and removal of "evidence"("black

bag" jobs); and arrest and detention without formal charges of anyone the government

deems a "terrorist", with no judicial review. The bill was passed by both houses of

Congress in record speed, so fast in fact that no one in Congress had time to read it

first; evidently they didn't need to.

Numerous people have pointed out that the bill really provides few new powers that

would significantly strengthen protections against terrorism from abroad, but does

provide the whole list of powers over the US domestic population desired by the CIA

and FBI for decades. Essentially a new COINTELPRO has been authorized,

undoubtedly with the primary target, as previously, being the Left. This, combined with

the Operation Garden Plot system of concentration camps, already in place on federal

facilities near major cities around the country, surely should make people on the Left

suspicious. They should be trying to figure out what is coming -- for what purposes has

the government taken these steps? An obvious and plausible interpretation is that the government is greatly disturbed by the growing strength of the "anti-globalization

movement" (and especially its anti-capitalist core), in the US since the events of Seattle in 1999, and foresees future social upheaval as the global recession moves into an oil-starved depression. Could it be that they want to have draconian social control mechanisms in place and operational before the crunch comes? If so, their principal target will be those deemed "leftists", as has happened before in US history (the Red Scare after World War I, and the McCarthy period after WWII). This time, however, the attack on the Left will be even deadlier, if the past actions of the people now in charge of the government are any clue.

The assault launched by the US military, police and intelligence powers since

September 11 is described by the mainstream media as a "response" to the attacks

of terrorists from abroad. The nature of the response, however, makes this claim highly

dubious. Instead, the attack on Afghanistan and the stripping of civil liberties in the US

in themselves suggest a high likelihood that the " terrorist attacks" in New York and

Washington DC were an operation by some secret arm of the government to provide

the pretext to unleash a global and domestic offensive. Although much has been written

and posted online to examine this possibility, virtually no word of such speculation

reaches the mass media (unless on the lips of Bush or Cheney themselves, who seem

to have some concern about "conspiracy theories" circulating widely just under the surface).

Anomalies, Incredibilities and Suspicious Circumstances

At this point it will be useful to survey the many lines of evidence and argument which,

taken together, make the standard account of the events surrounding the attacks on

September 11 and the subsequent US Government response highly dubious. Links are

provided to the most useful discussions of the different lines of evidence.

It is simply not credible that the vast global surveillance and "intelligence" system

maintained by the US Government, with annual budgets, prior to its historic "failure" on

September 11, totaling at least $30 billion, would have missed the huge "intelligence

signature" such a complex and sophisticated operation would inevitably have made.

US intelligence experts are muzzled but Europeans have been highly skeptical of the

claim that a network such as Al-Qaida would have the capability to pull it off. Eckehardt

Werthebach, former head of Germany's FBI, the Verfassungschutz, has stated that "the

deathly precision" and "magnitude" of the attacks would have required "years of

planning" and "the fixed frame" of a state intelligence organization. Following this logic

many have speculated that Israel's Mossad, Pakistan's ISI or even Saudi Arabia may

have been the perpetrator. And this complete "failure" also required an adamantine

lack of response to many warnings to the US from foreign intelligence services

(including Russia, Egypt, Germany and Israel) as well as US citizens like attorney

David Schippers who, tipped off by informants, contacted the government with

warnings prior to September 11.

The incredibilities accumulate as the attacks take place. Four planes are hijacked,

supposedly by "Arab" terrorists, but the passenger lists from the four flights do not

include the name (real or assumed) of a single one of them! This casts doubt on the list

of 19 Arabs produced by the FBI, and raises the possibility that there actually were no

hijackers on the planes at all. The planes, all equipped with "Home Run" anti-hijack

computer technology which would have made it possible to seize control of the flights

from the ground, veer from their approved flight paths and head for their targets. The

FAA, as it is required to do, issues alerts to the US military, but no interceptor aircraft

are scrambled to investigate, as required by standard procedure. The "explanations"

of this "failure" are unconvincing. Dick Cheney claimed that it was an excruciatingly

tough decision to order the jetliners shot down, a decision that only the President is

authorized to make. This is pure smoke. The standard response to planes off course is

interception, not shooting down. No interception took place, and no credible

explanation has been given for this "failure" of the US air defenses. On the contrary,

stand down orders apparently were issued from the highest command levels.

The hijacked airliners, unhindered (in at least three out of four cases) then proceeded

to execute their spectacular aerial maneuvers. Two of them, the one which struck the

second, south tower of the World Trade Center, and the one which crashed into the

Pentagon, displayed the flying skills that only crack pilots possess. A problem for the

standard account here is that none of the 19 supposed hijackers was a crack pilot. The

"evidence" presented about their "training" for their mission is limited to short courses

at small-plane flight schools. Experienced pilots have expressed doubts about the

possibility that inexperienced pilots could have flown the jetliners at such high speeds

with such unerring accuracy. Retired career Special Forces Master Sergeant Stan Goff

has highlighted the problem of the official story with respect to the Pentagon strike:

"A pilot they want us to believe was trained at a Florida puddle-jumper school for Piper

Cubs and Cessnas, conducts a well-controlled downward spiral, descending the last

7,000 feet in two-and-a-half minutes, brings the plane in so low and flat that it clips the

electrical wires across the street from the Pentagon, and flies it with pinpoint accuracy

into the side of this building at 460 nauts. When the theory about learning to fly this well

at the puddle-jumper school began to lose ground, it was added that they received

further flight training on a flight simulator. This is like saying you prepared your teenager

for her first drive on I-40 at rush hour by buying her a video driving game. It's horse

shit!" Again, no explanation has been offered to make the government's claims credible.

Other very real possibilities do offer explanations, however. The planes may have been

"hijacked" electronically, using the onboard Home Run technology. The system allows

flight controllers on the ground to take over all flight functions from people onboard the

plane, and could as easily be employed to cause a remote-controlled hijacking as to

seize control of a plane hijacked by persons onboard. No 19 Arabs were necessary!

This would explain the absence of any of the "19 hijackers" from the passenger lists, as

well as the inexplicable demonstration of the highest flying skills in the crashes into the

World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Interestingly, the Home Run system just

happens to permit one person, at a remote location, to fly four planes simultaneously.

One highly skilled operator could have performed all the aerial feats of the hijacked

planes. An explanation would also be provided for some additional anomalies,

including why the Home Run system was not used to rescue the planes as it was

designed to do, and why none of the "black boxes" with their Cockpit Voice Recorders

have ever been "found" and the contents revealed. They might reveal the surprise of

those onboard at the remote-controlled takeover of the planes.

After the World Trade Centers were struck by the airliners they collapsed, as did the

nearby WTC #7 (a mere 47 stories tall), which was not struck by any plane. No entirely

convincing explanations of these collapses have been forthcoming; many people have

doubted that buildings designed to withstand such a blow from an airliner, as they

were, would have disintegrated. These critics contend that only a professional

demolition job could have caused the buildings to collapse in the manner in which they

did. The official investigation into the cause of the collapse has been undermined from

the start; the steel from the collapsed structures was recycled immediately, supposedly

by decision of the City of New York, before any team of qualified forensic engineers

could examine it.

Finally, there are many lines of evidence indicating advance knowledge of the attacks,

including insider trading in airline and insurance company stocks (rather implausibly

attributed to Al-Qaida), and warnings to various people (including San Francisco

mayor Willie Brown) not to fly on September 11. A major shift of the offices of

high-ranking Pentagon planners took place one week before the plane crashed into the

space they had vacated; no high level officers or civilian officials was killed. No

Congressional investigation of any of the unexplained "anomalies" surrounding

September 11 has been launched. No one has been punished for the massive failures

of established procedures and expectations; on the contrary the agencies which

"failed" so spectacularly have been rewarded by increased funds and powers.

Furthermore it has been revealed that the Bush regime stopped FBI investigations into

Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaida in the early summer of 2001, causing the lead

investigator, John O'Neill, to resign in protest. Circulating in the background is the

close business relationship between the Bush family and the Bin Laden family, their

joint ownership of major shares of the Carlyle Group (a large US defense company

now profiting handsomely from the new surge in military expenditures), and the

abundant evidence that Osama bin Laden has continued to receive major financial

support from the Saudi royal family.

All this complexity is really just a "short list" of some of the unexplained facts, incredible

assertions and suspicious circumstances surrounding the events of September 11.

There are many more. The many highly technical aspects of the questions raised make

it extremely difficult for anyone to get a firm grasp of the whole picture. Nevertheless,

people on the Left should be able to look at them and evaluate them objectively as well

as they can, especially given the high stakes, but few have done so.

Who Really Rules

As Jim Garrison pointed out in 1967, after frustrating years trying to penetrate the

layers of official obscurity erected around the real perpetrators of the JFK

assassination, "In a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the

Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society. Of course, you can't spot this

trend to fascism by casually looking around. You can't look for such familiar signs as

the swastika, because they won't be there. We won't build Dachaus and Auschwitzes;

the clever manipulation of the mass media is creating a concentration camp of the

mind that promises to be far more effective in keeping the population in line. . . .The

test is, what happens to the individual who dissents?. . .the awesome power of the CIA

and the defense establishment seem destined. . .to bring us into a new Orwellian world

where the citizen exists for the State and where raw power justifies any and every

immoral act. . .fascism will come to America in the name of national security."

Garrison's nightmare vision is now plainly visible to all who are willing to look.

"Fascism" has been back on people's lips a lot lately, especially since the events of

Genoa in July, 2001, in which Silvio Berlusconi launched a typical Italian fascist police

attack on leftists demonstrating against the heads of state of the G8 nations.

Berlusconi was not the only one there with fascist connections; the Bushes have been

linked with fascism since the 1920s, when George Herbert Walker and Prescott Bush

became bankers for the Nazi Party. George W. Bush is a figure rather similar in certain

fundamental ways to Ronald Reagan. He is the titular President, but isn't up to the job;

he is a puppet controlled by unknown persons behind the scenes. The probable

puppet-master is his father, George Herbert Walker Bush, the man who correctly said

"I am not a one-term President". Long time CIA agent, and Director of the CIA when

the leftist minister from Salvador Allende's government, Orlando Letelier, was

assassinated by a car-bomb in the streets of Washington DC, George H.W. Bush was

actually in charge of the country for twelve years, during Reagan's two terms and his

own one. Gene Wheaton, a military criminal investigator who at one time was very

close to the CIA but couldn't stomach the outrageous covert operations of "Iran-Contra"

and was an early whistle blower of the affair, provided a rare insider's view of the reality

of the Reagan years:

"Reagan never really was the president. He was the front man. They selected a guy that had charisma, who was popular, and just a good old boy, but they got George Bush in

there to actually run the White House. They'd let Ronald Reagan and Nancy out of the

closet and let them make a speech and run them up the flagpole and salute them and

put them back in the closet while these spooks ran the White House. They made sure

that George Bush was the chairman of each of the critical committees involving these

covert operations things. One of them was the Vice President's Task Force on

Combating Terrorism. They got Bush in as the head of the Vice President's task force

on narcotics, the South Florida Task Force, so that they could place people in DEA

and in the Pentagon and in Customs to run interference for them in these large-scale

international narcotics and movement of narcotics money cases. They got Bush in as

the chairman of the committee to deregulate the Savings and Loans in '83 so they

could deregulate the Savings and Loans, so that they would be so loosely structured

that they could steal 400, 500 billion dollars. . .they ran the whole operation, and Bush

was the de facto president even before the '88 election when he became president.

"See, when Harry Truman signed the National Security Act creating the CIA, he

specifically stated in that act that they could not have any police powers. And they could

not operate domestically in the United States, because he feared a secret police coup.

By creeping in a little at a time, that coup has taken place.

"This crowd really believes that the unwashed masses are ignorant, that we are people

who are not capable of governing ourselves, that we need this elitist group to control

the country, and the world -- these guys have expanded. They look at the United States

not as a country, not in any patriotic mode now, but they look on it as a state within a

world that they control. And that's this attitude they have. They're not unlike any other

megalomaniac in the world. They're nutty as a fruitcake, but they've got distinguished

gray hair, three-piece dark suits and they carry briefcases, and they'll stand up and

make speeches just as articulate as anybody in the world, but they don't socialize and

function outside their own little clique. My experience with them is that they could be

ertified as criminally insane and put away in a rubber room and have the key thrown

away. That's how dangerous they are. But they're powerful, and they're educated. And

that makes them twice as dangerous. And that's basically what's running the world right

now."

In all likelihood the structure within the current White House is similar: a well-rested front

man for the photo-ops, a powerful Vice President actually running the day-to-day

operations, and heavies from the CIA and Pentagon doing the long-range strategizing,

all veterans of George H.W. Bush's regime. If this hypothesis is even partially accurate,

an analysis of the past, when the elder Bush was in power, would most probably

provide solid clues to what the new regime is currently planning. The Gulf War of 1991

shows obvious parallels to today; it was very largely about oil, as is the "War on

Terrorism", and followed a deceptive move on the part of Bush administration, which

duped Saddam Hussein into making his move on Kuwait. This then provided the

pretext for the US to establish military bases in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region, as

well as to try out all the new weaponry that had been developed and awaited its

exemplary debut.

Another salient feature of the Reagan/Bush period was the systematic murder of

thousands of leftists around the world, in countries controlled by puppet regimes of the

US, and most especially so in Latin America. Death squads trained at the School of

the Americas eliminated radicals, unionists, students, teachers, landless peasants,

professors and priests in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Colombia,

Argentina, Chile and Brazil. In every case these killings were in keeping with US

government policy: leftists are the enemy and will be killed wherever possible,

preferably in as painful and horrific a manner as possible. This activity is still taking

place, especially in Colombia, where the US is currently funding a massive escalation

in military and paramilitary attacks on the population, called Plan Colombia.

So What Is Plan United States?

Could it really be that the current regime has intentions of crushing the Left in the US,

with massive arrests, torture, and disappearances, as in Latin America? Before

rejecting the proposition out of hand, it would be wise to consider recent events from

the standpoint of what they suggest about the concern our rogue capitalist masters

have regarding people like us.

A clue to understanding the real core of the situation is to recognize how destablilizing

is the imperial adventure embarked upon by the Bush regime. The attack on

Afghanistan threatens to destroy a very delicate balance in the Middle East and South

and Central Asia, both regionally and within individual countries. The attack is

incredibly risky, a daring throw in a high stakes game. Such a move, undertaken by the

most powerful nation in the world, must be a sign of desperation.

Two sources of this desperation have already been identified: the coming Big Rollover,

when the supply of oil will peak and can no longer keep up with demand, putting severe

strain on the capitalist system which relies so heavily on abundant and cheap energy;

and the rapidly growing global anti-capitalist movement, which will be well positioned to

advance as the oil shortages materialize. The planners of capital have seen their every attempt to meet and strategize contested by ever-growing numbers of demonstrators, and all over the world major development projects of capital, for dams, pipelines, power or chemical plants, are strongly contested by local people affected by them. The role of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization, World Economic Forum, NAFTA, European Union and similar planning and developmental agencies of capital are recognized all over the world as imperialist and neo-colonialist weapons of the capitalist marauder class, designed to impose the "new" corporate-state oligarchy. Such agencies and the powers behind them, states and corporations, are now increasingly seen as illegitimate all over the world. The US state, as the global center of capital and coercion, has now launched a preemptive war in response to this crisis of illegitimacy, which it correctly sees is potentially fatal for

global capital.

The fake black bloc provocations, the murder of Carlo Giuliani and the crackdown by hooded storm troopers on the Genoa Social Forum and Indymedia center in Genoa in July 2001 was a return to familiar methods by the Berlusconi regime; the Italian state is famed for the murderous brutality it displays toward left-wing contestation.

Provocations and fake terror have long been part of the state arsenal. In Italy in the late 1960s and 1970s the state secret services as part of the "strategy of tension" set off bombs in public places and blamed the non-existent "Red Brigades", using this as a pretext to launch a sweep against the Autonomist Workers movement (Autonomia) and left-wing intellectuals, in which over 5000 people were arrested and charged with "armed insurrection against the powers of the State". More than 150 remain in prison to this day. So well-executed and effective has the tactic been that even some of these political prisoners, e.g. Toni Negri, although insisting on their own personal innocence, do not question the events or the reality of the Red Brigades.

But others saw through the operation at the time, and analyzed it clearly. The

situationist Gianfranco Sanguinetti, in "Is the Reichstag Burning?" (dated 19

December 1969), laid out an analysis which has been confirmed by subsequent events and document discoveries: that the bombings were carried out by the state to strengthen the security forces and provide pretexts for crushing the most radical sector of the Left. The fake terror campaign was an act of weakness on the part of the Italian capitalist state, recognizing that without such methods it could not stop the growing power of the autonomist movement.

Genoa in July was just more of the same strategy. It is easy to imagine Bush and Blair enjoying the show put on by the Carabinieri, and saying to their chum Berlusconi,

"That's good, very nice, but just wait. Wait till you see what we can do!" Behind their barricades in the Ducal palace, plans were being laid for the present assault on the

workers of the world. As before, the principal target is that section of the working class

which has developed some understanding of the social situation, beyond the

immediate individual struggle to survive. The USA PATRIOT Act and similar legislation passed in Europe signal the impending campaign of arrests, summary trials, torture,

executions and disappearances, all conducted under the pretext of "terrorism", as

formerly, under the rubric "Communism", they were the norm in the rest of the world.

"Globalization" really means the globalization of capitalist coercion in all its forms,

never excluding the physical. Capital, in its campaign to reduce workers' conditions to the lowest common denominator, so obvious in the flight of production to China, India, Mexico, and Malaysia, does not forget to "harmonize" state terror worldwide as well.

As Starhawk said after the events in Genoa, they're coming soon to your home too.

Capitalism Is Organized Crime

The critical Left is the only major enemy capital has, potentially a formidable one if its numbers swell under social duress. The "War on Terrorism" makes clear that capital's

strategists have decided that the time has come to strike a preemptive blow, before the coming global depression, which will make that of the 1930s look like a picnic,

makes hordes of new leftists out of the unemployed and newly impoverished. The

process they fear has already started in Argentina, where people are formingassemblies in their neighborhoods to plan their collective self-defense against the

attacks that the Argentine state is imposing upon them. It is time for something along these lines in North America and Europe.

To defend itself under the new conditions imposed by the state, the Left must organize and exert itself to the utmost, starting now:

* First, we need to loudly and widely reject all the propaganda which is pouring out of Washington DC and London, and out of the mass media: the "War on Terrorism" is a

fraud.

* We must articulate a clear, strong analysis of what capital is doing: seizing resources and preparing to crush the working class resistance to its totalitarian domination

worldwide.

* We need to publicly demand in all our anti-war and anti-capitalist demonstrations and writing that the criminals who launched the fake terror on September 11 be brought to trial: not Osama Bin Laden but the secret operatives and strategizers in the US government. The criminality of what they have done can be used as a powerful weapon against them and against capitalism, which is inherently criminal.

* We must loudly reject both capitalist war and capitalist "peace", and practice total non-cooperation with both poles of the capitalist agenda.

* And clearly, like the men and women at this moment in Argentina, we need to focus on self-defense measures, and plan for what may very well be a fight to the death.

There is no time to be lost.

Hitting Them Where It Hurts

(we the people)



Strategies on using our strengths against their weaknesses, while upping the ante and tearing at the very systems that support powerful institutions like the IMF and World Bank!

The following suggestions are meant for those members of this Movement who

believe that the focus and purpose of our momentum is not merely to be reactive to

specific institutions (IMF, World Bank, WTO, Nike, President Bush, the Gap, etc.)

but that we are dealing with a Systemic problem, and as such should target many

other institutions that play a role in perpetuating a system of injustice.

As such, it is valuable to consider our strengths versus their weaknesses. We tend

to work best as small, autonomous, decentralized groups. They tend towards

centralized, unified, totalitarianism. We tend to be diverse in our modes of

exchange and solutions to given problems. They tend to toward centralized,

'standardized' systems of exchange and control, often OVER-DEPENDING on one

system or methodology.

Because of who we are, most of us understand that 'it's all interrelated.' We build

our Movement with this in mind. Some of us deal with direct action, others with

radical media, others with buildings TAZ or communal living situations, others with

worker-owned collectives. We all do our part. What I think we need to do is two

things-share resources more effectively, and attack more of their weaknesses (or

their shared resources) more ferociously.

Let's focus on the second part first. When we consider the enemy systemically,

where is the system vulnerable? What do they all depend on to keep their house of

cards from crumbling?

The Media



We especially, the Indy Media, understand how corporations control the

mainstream media and how fucked up it is that only a few companies control what

we see and hear. An interesting fact, however, is that most radio and television

broadcast towers are in plain sight in most towns, and relatively unguarded. I

propose that we take them out. Preferably all at once-all the TV and radio towers in

your hometown, disabled, all on one day. If you can figure out how to cut or disable

the main cable outlet, do that to. Why not? It forces people to find something else to

do besides tune in and tune out, and it takes away a major commercial

propaganda machine.



The Economy

I've talked to a few people about the difficulty of programming certain computer

viruses and worms, things like Code Red. I've been told that they are not very

difficult to put together. But whom do they generally target? The general idea

seems to be to 'slow down' the Internet, a nuisance to some businesses. But if we

really want to get them where it hurts, we need to take out their lifeline. It seems to

me that the thing that the business community really depends on is the stock

market. Okay, why not design some worms to disable the stock exchange. I've

been told that the exchange is not connected in any way to the actual Internet, so

we'd either need an insider to introduce the virus, or access to a computer on the

inside? Is this difficult, I don't know? Abbey Hoffman single-handedly caused a

slight dip in the stock exchange one day by dumping a bag full of dollar bills onto

the exchange floor. The traders stopped trading and started diving for the money

as it flittered down over their heads. These days, bulletproof glass prevents anyone

from pulling similar stunts, but I know we have people who are smarter with

computers than they are at protected their systems. So why not get them where it

will really pack a punch? If we shut down Wall Street with a sea of bodies as

effectively as we flooded Seattle, we could really pack a wallop!

While we're at it, why not disable a few banks. Most banks have some heavy

security, but it's all about keeping people from robbing them. Well, most of us know

that Labor, not Money, makes the world go round. We know that there's enough to

eat, and places to live, and resources at our disposal, and that money, to a large

extent, is merely a tool to keep us subservient to the wealthy power-elite. So even

though we probably couldn't ROB a bank, we COULD probably shut it down from

operation. Smashing ATM machines, calling in bomb-threats, and burning down or

otherwise smashing up banks isn't really that hard. It's not what they're expecting.

They still think banks, and the money inside of them, are sacred. They aren't. If the

ELF can take out a whole ski resort, we can take out a whole lot of ATM machines,

and a few banks too!

Also, if we can instill a mistrust of currency in general, half our battle will be one.

Why not flood the market with counterfeit currency? It doesn't have to be high

quality counterfeit currency, it just has to be a whole LOT of counterfeit currency. All

different kinds. If people have trouble knowing what's real money and what isn't on

a regular basis, it will instill a mistrust of currency in general. Would it be possible

to put something on the magnetic strip on credit cards to disable credit-card

machines?

Who's Got The Power

A few days ago, I was downtown in the city where I live, about to rent a movie from

a major rental chain, when suddenly the power went out. All the computers went

down, none of the cash registers would open. I walked outside and the power was

out all up the street and around the block. All the little chain stores were out of

commission. None of the employees cared-they work for minimum wage. As far as

they were concerned, it was a free break. Since America has never been in any

serious danger of military invasion, many of our main power lines are wide open,

just swinging in the breeze. Would it be that difficult to sever them? Hospitals and

banks have back-up generators, so who would be hurting? Would it be that difficult

to sever them the same day some other people disable the television and radio

towers? We'd be hurting the pockets of the elite, that's who. Plus, the police would

have to rally at intersections and direct traffic, and actually safeguard people for a

change, rather than harassing minorities and chasing people down for committing

victimless crimes. If we're serious about a revolution, we need to wake the middle

class up from their nap. It's like the story of the frog in the boiling water. If you put a

frog in a pot of cold water and start gradually heating it up, the frog will grow lazy in

the warming water. By the time it starts boiling, it's too late for the frog! Thanks to

the failing American economy, more and more people ARE waking up. All it would

take to really jolt them awake is a little well-executed mayhem-just enough to piss

them off about the big Powers That Be, the bigwigs who control the power, the

media, the companies where they (once) worked, the law-makers and the police.

Transportation

As we target delegations like the IMF and World Bank, I sometimes wonder why

we allow them to reach their destination hotels at all. Thousands of businessmen

and businesswomen spend days at a time in transit between cities every day. Why

not disable an entire airport-why not make that a focus of our attack. During the

Civil Rights movement, there was a time when the African-American people in this

country were going to march on Washington, and they threatened to lie down on

the runways and prevent the planes from taking off and landing. Martin Luther King

begged for moderation, fearing that this sort of thing would be too militant. Was he

right? Maybe it's time to be THAT militant! If we shut down an airport, ANY major

airport for even ONE DAY, we would have implemented a major blow to the

capitalist system. If our target is the injustice system as a whole, why not? If we

target an airport a few days prior to an international summit, then we hit two birds

with one stone by preventing delegates from easily even entering the city where the

meeting will take place!

The Police

This is a tricky one. As we all know, any direct attack against the 'keepers of the

police', the watch-dogs at the beck and call of the power-elite, merely gives them

an excuse to beef up their forces and use more deadly tactics later on. So what

can we do? A few fun ideas spring to mind. First, becoming a police officer is not

difficult. The officer training schools are easy to get into. And once you've gone

through the program, there is no law that states you then HAVE to become a police

officer. So, why not use this to our advantage to infiltrate their system. We could

have all sorts of people on the inside, throwing little monkey wrenches into their

attempts at efficiency, their communication systems, their solidarity. Maybe these

folks should take some added precautions-using a false identity to apply, having a

place in another city to go to afterwards. But hey, they're spying on us all the time,

betraying our trust in our fellow activists. Why not flip the script? With a little

forethought, we could have some of our 'recruits' on the inside during a major

protest. We could conceivably know what they're planning, where they are, what

tactics they're implementing (and which ones they're not expecting from us), what

their weaknesses are-plus possibly being able to break their solidarity by

SWITCHING SIDES during a protest, or fucking with their non-lethal weapons a

few days or a few weeks before a planned action.

It would be ultimately amazing if we could implement ALL these strategies on one

day. Take, for example, the idea of May Day. Or, perhaps even better, the Fourth of

July. On the Fourth of July, most major cities are awash with the simulated sounds

of war-fire-crackers and explosions resound the whole day. What better distraction

to push for our own independence, independence from a system equally messed

up as that of colonial England???

Another tactic is to use their tools to our advantage. Could we design a virus to use

people's modems around the country to flood local police lines or 911 with calls?

Could we systematically call in false pleas for help, essentially creating a diversion

to keep them from an area we are monkey wrenching? Sure we could. And why not?

All of these ideas are merely that, ideas based on thinking about the LARGER

framework, the system we are attacking, not just the individuals and individual

institutions that are the vanguard of that system. Because that system is so

pervasive, we cannot at this time even conceive of any kind of victory from a full-on,

face-to-face assault. We'd be crushed. But I do think it's time to up the ante. The

economy, as I said, is pushing the middle-class from their media-drunk daze-all

that's needed is a little more of a push, and we'll have the conditions for an actual

revolution on our hands.

Now, back to the first element I wanted to discuss: sharing our resources more

effectively. I think most of us believe that, given the choice, most people would

CHOOSE to eat for free (from Food Not Bombs, community gardens, etc.) than

pay for the right to eat. Most people would CHOOSE to share resources and thus

have a little bit for all, than for some to have everything and others to fight for a

meager portion of what's left. So what we need to do is to make those choices

MORE READILY AVAILABLE to everyone, not just our activist friends.

To do this, we need to do two things: develop some infrastructures and do some

more outreach. By infrastructure, I do not mean hierarchy. I mean we must build

stronger alliances between the different pieces of the puzzle. TAZ groups and

infoshops and communes need to share more resources between them. We

already share people-lots of people do 'community tours' where they stay with and

work for different groups all over the country. What we need to do now is share

more solid resources. We need to have 'wish list' pages, ways to let each other

know what each group needs to be more effective. The more we can share what

we have with each other, the more we can operate independently from the evils of

the capitalist machine.

I am personally a solid believer in a need-based economy. If any group has a

surplus of any commodity, why not give it to a group that has a shortfall. This is not

barter. This is placing value on the USE of a thing. In other words, unless a thing is

being used, it is being wasted. We cannot afford to waste ANY of our resources.

We need to create our own, autonomous ECONOMY that creates a net to catch

those of us who don't want any part of the system we despise. Granted, most of us

do not have the resources at our disposal (yet) to accomplish this. Hypocrisy is, to

some extend, inevitable for most of us. The point is, we are vectors pointing in the

direction of positive change, and we must reinforce our networks so as to create

the means by which to support more and more people joining forces with us.

Working in parallel to this notion is the serious need to PUT THE WORD OUT. We

need to keep pushing these projects into the awareness of the mainstream. At

upcoming protests, I will be out with a team of people distributing literature in the

suburbs, directly into middle-class mailboxes, rather than putting all of my energy

into marches and tear-gas in the city. I know the mainstream media won't give

those people any real sense of why we're in the streets, so I'll do it myself. We need

to get the word out directly, ourselves. Why not target more high schools and

middle schools for our zines and flyers and posters and teach-ins and art? We

need to put our energy into local congregations at local churches. I hate to say it,

but white activists dismiss churches way too much! Some of us wonder why there

isn't a great deal of diversity in our protests. One of the reasons is that the majority

of African-American activists are church-based. We really DO need to do more

grassroots organizing through churches and mosques, and put more legwork into

going door-to-door in our communities to educate people about the issues.

In the end, let me say that we are all doing great work! Progress IS being made.

The ideas I have expressed here are merely meant to be a catalyst for rousing our

drive to push ourselves a little bit further, going the distance a step and a day at a

time, all the while keeping our 'eyes on the prize.'

'To have progress, you must first have a goal.'

In solidarity,

We the people