At every airport, I am reminded of 9/11. What strikes me hardest is the TSA. I cannot get used to the bureaucracy screening every passenger as an equal threat. The TSA is only the visible tip of the iceberg: trillions spent to attack ill-defined enemies with poorly defined objectives. When I go through the screening machines, the TSA finds nothing but I see Iraq, Afghanistan and the treasures lost.
The attacks of September 11th, a decade ago, occurred in the context of waning American power and influence. Its trigger was the globalization of the world economy, a hollowing out of American industrial manufacturing, and the explosion of financial engineering as a means of creating wealth. Those were the threats American politics failed to adapt to, long before the planes filled with innocents crashed into buildings filled with more innocents.
But there is nothing innocent about the response of industry or government to 9/11. The treasury drained. The policies supported to gin up the economy through the housing bubble remain unchallenged. The culpable are fortified by their wealth. Advocates like Alan Greenspan-- former chair of the Federal Reserve-- appear on TV talk shows speaking with authority about the unforeseen. 9/11 was predictable. Americans keep looking for mysteries, but there are none.
5 comments:
I miss Genius, is she still out on vacation?
Paul B. Farrell
Sept. 6, 2011, 12:03 a.m. EDT
Occupy Wall Street will lay siege to U.S. greed
Commentary: 20,000 or more set Sept. 17 as start of ‘American Fall’
By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) – The start of WWIV? Too strong? Maybe just the “Second American Revolution?” Too dramatic? Either way, this is a new D-Day, the invasion of Wall Street. And a global game-changer.
On Sept. 17, the Arab Spring becomes the new American Fall, with 20,000 revolutionaries in a tent city. Plus “solidarity” occupations in major financial centers worldwide, all ready for a long siege, vowing not to leave till they get their “one simple demand.”
Occupy Wall Street is a “leaderless resistance movement” spearheaded by the edgy Adbusters magazine, which in July issued a call for the Sept. 17 occupation of Wall Street.
Their allies have names like “CultureJammers,” “USDayofRage.org,” “People of the NYC General Assembly,” “TaketheSquare.net,” and recently they were joined by the noted civil disobedience anarchists, “Anonymous” and many others worldwide. This movement reminds us of the historic rag-tag armies General Washington commanded from 13 Colonies for the first American Revolution.
The new ones are also united in the spirit of the Tahrir Square revolutionaries: “One thing we all have in common is that we are the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%,” according to posts on the Occupy Wall Street website .
Leaderless, yes. But now their real power comes in a new strategy: “one big swarm of people” challenging authority. They want their democracy back: “One citizen. One dollar. One vote.” Get the corrupting influence of money out of elections.
Bottom line: They want to eliminate “the greatest corrupter of our democracy: Wall Street, the financial Gomorrah of America.”
Yes, the ‘Arab Spring’ is now the new ‘American Fall’ (part 1)
Andrew Sullivan's must-read Newsweek article on 911. Money quote:
We often talk about terror in terms of the terrorist. We do so less in terms of the terrorized. But it was how this act changed those of us who were bystanders that made this event more awful than a mere mass murder. It was mass murder as theater and as threat.
It took months for this initial trauma to ebb, years for my psyche to regain its equilibrium. And it took me close to a decade to realize just how slickly Osama bin Laden had done his evil work, how insidiously his despicable performance art had reached into my mind and altered it, how carefully he had set the trap and how guilelessly I—we—had walked right into it.
We need to understand that 9/11 worked. It worked as a tactic to induce American self-destruction, even if it failed spectacularly as a strategy to advance Al Qaeda—and its heretical message of suicidal warfare—across the globe.
Agree with Sullivan, here. Genius is back. ... and if you think, I'm hard reading... trying James Howard Kunstler this week!
"...ill-defined enemies with poorly defined objectives." The enemies are clearly defined as radical Muslims and the their objective is to destroy the west. Seems pretty clear to me.
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