{"id":17896,"date":"2015-09-09T15:55:02","date_gmt":"2015-09-09T23:55:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.richgibson.com\/blog\/?p=17896"},"modified":"2015-09-12T23:45:42","modified_gmt":"2015-09-13T07:45:42","slug":"rouge-forum-dispatch-draft-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.richgibson.com\/blog\/rouge-forum-dispatch-draft-21\/","title":{"rendered":"Rouge Forum Dispatch: 9\/11\/2001 + 10\/2008 = Fascism"},"content":{"rendered":"

We Say Fight Back!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Susan Ohanian’ EGGPLANT! <\/strong>Historical Signposts of Standards
\nThe Meek<\/em>
\nThe Old Testament contains 163 references to the Common Core Curriculum Standards, the most cited being, “The meek shall inherit the Earth–after the Standardistos are through with it.”
\nGoat Blood<\/em>
\nThe Old Testament called for animal sacrifice, goats for instance. This ritual was based on the Standard that without blood there can be no forgiveness. The New York Times editorial board has learned from this that kids today have it too easy.
\nNot Certified<\/em>
\nAfter bringing the Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai, Moses kept mum about the fact that they had not been certified “scientific” and “rigorous” by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Achieve, Inc., or the New York Times editorial board. susanohanian.org\/show_nclb_news.php?id=923<\/a><\/p>\n

\"IWW<\/a>\u201cThe more he identifies with the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own life and his own desires. The spectacle\u2019s estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual\u2019s gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\u2015 Guy Debord<\/a>, The Society of the Spectacle<\/a> <\/i> <\/span><\/div>\n
Hijacking Catastrophe<\/span><\/center>
9\/11, Fear and the Selling of American Empire<\/span><\/center>
edited by Sut Jhally and Jeremy Earp<\/span><\/center>
Olive Branch Press, 2004, paper<\/span><\/center>
\"\"<\/span><\/center><\/p>\n

<\/h4>\n

SJ. In March of 2000 you released a book entitled Blowback that became a big seller after 9\/11. What is blowback?<\/span><\/h4>\n

Blowback is a term the CIA invented. It’s a bit of jargon. Blowback means not just unintended consequences of foreign policy actions, but the unintended consequences of covert activities that have been kept secret from the American public. So blowback simply means retaliation. And when retaliation hits from the people who were on the receiving end of our covert actions, the American public has no way to put it in context.<\/span><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

SJ: How does 9-11 fit into this?<\/span><\/h4>\n

9\/11 was almost the classic example of blowback. That is, it is almost surely the most important use of political terrorism in the history of international relations. But the terrorism here was carried out by people who were our former “assets,” as the CIA puts it-former agents of ours, people whom we lavishly supported in the ’80s in Afghanistan to serve our interests against the Soviet Union. Once the Soviet Union, in 1989, withdrew from Afghanistan, we abandoned them. The country fell into a disastrous civil war that was ultimately won by the fundamentalist-motivated Taliban, who instituted a repressive, religiously sanctioned regime in Afghanistan. The people who thought they were our allies, including most prominently Osama bin Laden, the son of a very wealthy Saudi Arabian family, a man who joined the CIA and the Pakistanis in recruiting militants from around the world to fight against the Russians.<\/span><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bin Laden was disgusted by the fact that the Americans simply walked away and abandoned the country that they had helped to devastate. I mean Kabul in the early ’90s looked like Hiroshima, it had been so badly decimated. He was also disgusted by the fact that after 1991 we based troops for the first time in Saudi Arabia, allegedly to defend the House of Saud, the royal house of Saudi Arabia. This was insulting and aggravating to many patriotic Saudis because these Americans were infidels being introduced into a country whose government is charged with defending the two most sacred sites in Islam, Mecca and Medina. For the United States it was a stupid thing to do. Even if military force could have influenced in any way the stability of the extremely authoritarian and dictatorial government of Saudi Arabia, such force should not have been based in Saudi Arabia. It should have been put aboard aircraft carriers or something like that, which would have been every bit as effective as putting 20,000 American troops at Prince Sultan airbase. This then led Osama bin Laden to become an enemy of the United States.<\/span><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

In fact, 9\/11 was late in the day. He had already attacked our embassies in East Africa, American troops elsewhere, and the USS Cole. The World Trade Center had also already been attacked once. This was not, as the president put it, an attack on our values or an attack on America as Americans. It was an attack on our foreign policy by people who felt deeply aggrieved by it. They turned to an almost classic example of terrorism-what the Department of Defense calls asymmetric warfare-an attack on innocent bystanders in order to draw attention to the crimes of the invulnerable. This also made clear that “innocent bystanders” only refers to workers in the World Trade Center. They were not innocent bystanders in the Pentagon. That was the right target for these people, and they went to it in a ruthless manner. But it was blowback, pure and simple.\u00a0 www.thirdworldtraveler.com\/Sept_11_2001\/Chalmers_Johnson_HC.html<\/a><\/span><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Compilation of Chalmers’ essays<\/strong>\u00a0 www.alternet.org\/authors\/chalmers-johnson<\/a><\/p>\n