Background and shockwaves of 9-11: An Orwellian Nightmare

1. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
2. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
3. WAR IS PEACE
4. "COLLATERAL DAMAGE"
5. SUSPICION OF US COMPLICITY IN 9-11
6. ENDURING THE FUTURE
7. NOTES (important content)

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY: The enemy within and the foundations of a police state.

"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

It could be useful to remind ourselves of something we often tend to forget. We live in the richest and most privileged part of the world, and we have through history, by the most abominable means, conquered and put under our control most of what remained of it. This violence is still alive today, in our political, economic, social, cultural (...) relations with the rest of the world. But we have recently experienced a significant and mysterious historic change. The most powerful country in the world has been attacked with horrendous violence - unfortunately far from being unusual elsewhere. And as in the past, we can see apologists of our historical barbarism resurfacing, reinforcing our cartoonish perception of the world, claiming the necessity of being "aware of the superiority of Western civilization" (Berlusconi) when it enters this "war between the civilized world and fanaticism" (Blair), where "even parts of the uncivilized world have started to wonder whether they are on the right side" (D. Secr. of State Wolfowitz) The pattern is clear. Bush junior will give us the choice: "you are with us or the terrorists". The sane urge to laugh will quickly fade away. After the ruins, the corpses and the dubious political future of Afghanistan, Washington now prepares to run the second major act of its "Operation Enduring Freedom". Meanwhile, Western citizens are still screaming for revenge under their flag - although some of their freedoms were severely trampled in the rush.

Since September 11, more than a thousand immigrants have been secretly arrested in the United States. It is hard to know where and under which conditions they are detained, and if they have access to lawyers. And after the adoption of the anti-terrorist legislations, the FBI estimates a "sensible" increase in the number of prisoners. According to Attorney General John Ashcroft, that "sensible" increase would represent 5000 more arrests, in raids that history will not judge mildly. Sandra Day O'Connor, justice of the US Supreme Court says "we're likely to experience more restrictions on our personal freedom than has ever been the case in our country". She may be right. To date, official policy has already violated three amendments of the US Constitution, while the trend is also spreading through Europe. And in the mean time, military courts are setting up, prisoners of war lose their rights, and the FBI plans to "use drugs or means of pressure" or to extradite suspects "to allied countries where security services threaten family members and use torture". (1)

The fearful atmosphere that hangs over the West is also the ideal opportunity to ram through measures that have met severe popular opposition for a long time. Jo Moore, special adviser to the British government, explained to her colleagues a few minutes after the first WTC tower collapsed that it was "a very good day to get out anything we want to bury". Her wisdom is understood in many circles. Everybody wants a share of the cake, while justifying it with all kinds of honorable and altruist aims. The Treasury Secretary Paul O' Neill calls the American tax policy an "abomination" and considers eliminating all taxes for corporations and abolishing Social security and Medicare. He will at least find an obvious exception: "National defense is a federal responsibility…but all other outlays need review". It seems the "federal responsibility" was followed when the Bush administration recently raised the military budget by 15%, although it already was higher than the combined budget of the next 15 countries on the list. And the same deceptive pattern can be seen in trade policy. Robert Zoellick, the American trade representative has propagated speeches and writings praising the benefits of the Fast Track bill, that would permit the president to negotiate and ratify trade agreements without Congress (that is, democratic) interference. He guarantees that imposing this dictatorial economic policy is one of the best ways to fight terrorism. The bill passed Congress with one votes margin in December. It would be surprising if the strategy was innovated to justify and impose Bush's plans for militarizing space (through his so-called anti-missile "defense"). All this is wrapped in the flag and defended by stamping all dissent as "un-American" and "unpatriotic". In addition, as if this intellectual terrorism wasn't enough, dissent is silenced with surveillance and intimidation, if not by straight out criminalizing. Analogies are often made between the supposed perpetrators of the terrorist attack that killed thousands and those "vociferating anti-globalization primates" (Jean-François Revel) - Zoellick claims that the two groups share "intellectual connections" - they have the same tendency to show a "violent behavior", according to the WTO secretary David Hartridge. (2)

The totalitarian charges of "anti-Americanism" already proliferated freely, but it seems as if we today somehow have managed to enter the domain of science fiction. Those who are cold-headed enough to criticize what they see are quickly put back into place with methods reminding the fanatic hunt for communists under the Cold War. "We're talking about exactly the same phenomenon", says the president of the American Civil Liberties Union. And the media is the worst guest at the party. The media watchdogs warn that the freedom of press is threatened, and describe the media as a "militarized zone". Some journalists with too daring comments or articles are fired and sometimes defamed to a point where apologies are necessary "for the country's good". The role of the press in this time of crisis was clearly defined by the White House spokesman Ari Fleicher, when he said that "they're reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do". After these calls to order, patriotic obedience and fear choking all independent thought, the media self-censor at governmental request or by simple "matter of taste", and turn into pure war propaganda machines. (3)

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH: The bewildered herd and the war for 'hearts and minds'

"There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job…If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone… The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread… You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press…We are the tools and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men…We are intellectual prostitutes."

-John Swinton (New York Times editor, from a speech to the New York Press Club, 1953)

As we easily can observe, war makes democracy run out the back door. But it is perhaps one of the best occasions to understand the flexibility of its definition. The first American experiment of institutional propaganda began before the First World War, when the Commission on Public Information was created to persuade the American people, mainly pacifist, to enter the war. Its success was amazing. A member of the commission was Walter Lippmann, the most influential and respected journalist at the time. Obviously inspired by his propagandistic experience, he spoke later about a "revolution in the practice of democracy" where an "intelligent minority" in charge of the political arena, had to "manufacture the consent" of the people, when it was not automatically granted to the decisions of this "specialized class". This "shaping of a healthy public opinion" would permit the minority to "live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd", an allusion to the people, an "ignorant and meddlesome outsider" whose role is to be a "spectator", not a "participant". Edward Bernays, another member of the Commission, concluded in 1925 that it was now possible to "regiment the public mind every bit as much as an army regiments their bodies". (4)

These propagandist achievements obviously charmed the intellectual community, and had an undeniable influence on the workings of the ideological apparatus, like the corporate media. The political analyst Noam Chomsky points out that "the mass media everywhere tend to serve the important interests that dominate the state and select and suppress facts so as to convey the impression that national policy is well-intentioned and justified… If the dominant interests of a free society call for a policy of foreign aggression, the mass media will voluntarily mobilize the population as effectively as under a fully censored system". Therefore, "rogue states that are internally free - and the U.S. is at the outer limits in this respect - must rely on the willingness of the educated classes to produce accolades and tolerate or deny terrible crimes". (5) And war is of course the worst environment for the media. The journalist Salim Muwakkil accurately reminds that "the passions of war unleash demons that must be scrupulously monitored. Had American media been more conscientious during World War II, thousands of U.S. citizens of Japanese descent wouldn't have been interned. The German press, though originally suspicious and critical of the Nazi party, began falling in line after the 1933 Reichstag Fire convinced them that external threats were a potent danger. And were the pretexts for our entry into the Vietnam War more thoroughly analyzed, millions of Vietnamese and thousands of Americans may not have died".

These propagandist ideologies were also the source of the public relations industry (PR) - another big institution that is mobilized for the war. According to a recent newsletter of the industry, "PR has a vital role to play in promoting economic globalization and fighting terrorism" The war gives new challenges to the industry. The letter quotes Jack Leslie, president of Weber Shandwick Worldwide, who suggests that the United States should apply a "Powell doctrine" of using "overwhelming force" to its communications strategy: "No tactic should be ruled out…every tactical approach should be considered that can deliver the right message to the right targets with credibility". Many key sectors have hired PR firms after September 11th: the pharmaceutical industry, wishing to be positioned as the "principal source of information to the public" on the subject of bio-terrorism; the American private equity firm Carlyle (to which Bush Sr. and other heads of state are affiliated) wanting to hide the fact that it counts members of the Bin Laden family in its major investors; as well as the Pentagon, disturbed by the surprising lack of support in the Arab world for its holy war. As one Pentagon official explains: "we are clearly losing the 'hearts and minds' issue". The specialists of manipulation and control of this field therefore have to intervene. The herd's minds have to be kept on track. (6)

The New York Times recalls that "In all conflicts, winning the information war has been an essential element of military strategy". But while all the ideological institutions are mobilized, and the president speaks about a war between "good and evil" in which his "good nation" mixes peanut butter with his cluster bombs, it is essential to understand which reality hides behind this opaque veil of cynical rhetoric. (7)

WAR IS PEACE: "We are a peaceful nation" (George W Bush)

"Throughout the world, on any given day, a man, woman, or child is likely to be displaced, tortured, killed, or 'disappeared', at the hands of governments or armed political groups. More often than not, the United States shares the blame." / "The U.S.A. has supplied arms, security equipment and training to governments and armed groups that have committed torture, political killings and other human rights abuses in countries around the world."

-Amnesty International, 1996, 1998

First of all we have to put all this in its context, and remember that the terrorists of Afghanistan are an American creation - recruited for their brutality all over the Middle East, they were regarded as the "moral equivalents of the founding fathers" (Bush Sr.) at the time of the Soviet invasion, and were heavily financed by the CIA. Surprisingly they have now lost those charming traits. Benazir Bhutto, the president of Pakistan at the time, had warned the father of Bush: "You have created a Frankenstein's monster".

While the pressure went up on Afghanistan after the hijackings in the US, a Taliban ambassador proposed to judge the Saudi millionaire if they advanced "solid evidence that binds him to the [9-11] attacks" - this proposal was rejected by Bush, who regarded it as "non-negotiable". Other similar diplomatic proposals since then have received the same greetings. Jean Paul II suggests that "those who are guilty of these acts be held accountable once evidence is produced, but not others" Apparently a fanatic and incomprehensible idea in our part of the world. (8)

Legal solutions that should ordinarily be undertaken in this kind of conflicts exist, although they never are mentioned or discussed in the major media. A presupposition for their success would of course be that the US respected international law - a quite naïve expectation: "A sign of Washington's insistence that its hands not be tied was its rejection of United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan's entreaties that any American military action be subject to Security Council approval" (New York Times 7/10). But the refusal to explore proposed diplomatic solutions, and the refusal to accept the jurisdiction of UN (incidentally the crimes that are the US guideline for pointing out "rogue states"), does not prevent the Western intellectuals to speak about a "just" and "humanitarian" war. The other voices are effectively excluded from the mainstream, in spite of their number. The professor of law Michael Mandel, specialized in international criminal law, explains that "From the legal point of view, this war is illegal. Of course, it's also immoral and it won't prevent terrorism… The war is illegal because it's a flagrant violation of the express words of the Charter of the United Nations. In fact, it's not only illegal, it's criminal. It's what the Nuremberg tribunal called 'the supreme crime', the crime against peace". Respecting international law is far from being necessary in a world ruled by force (at least for the lucky one on top of the pyramid). John Bolton, the new assistant of Secretary of State Colin Powell, illustrates it plainly: "international law doesn't exist". (9)

However, this legal option has antecedents. In the eighties, the United States launched their first official war on terrorism, with the aim of "cutting out the cancer" represented by the "depraved opponents to civilisation itself" consisting essentially of central americans (remember, the afghans were "freedom fighters" at the time). In that first war, the US attacked Nicaragua, killing about fifty thousand people ("soft targets" in military jargon). Not understanding that this operation was carried out "to promote democracy", Nicaragua went to the International Court of Justice. The court judged in favor of Nicaragua, rejected the US claim of "self-defense", ordered them to cease the "illegal use of force" and to pay significant reparations. The United States answered by refusing future jurisdiction of the court, and by intensifying the attack. Nicaragua then went to the UN Security Council, to its General Assembly, that voted several resolutions asking all the States to respect international law, all vetoed by the US. It is now the only country in the world that has been condemned for international terrorism by an international court, and rejected its judgment and such UN resolutions. Ironic to know that it is leading an international coalition against terrorism. This failure of legal processes is merely the consequence of the natural laws of power. If the United States accepted these legal means today, the country would have even more world support than they already have for their murderous crusade. (10)

International terrorism is not a new feature, as the US establishment wants us to believe since the Communist threat lost its credibility. The United Nations had already condemned and tried to prevent international terrorism in the past. A 1987 resolution condemned the plague in the strongest terms, and was adopted with quasi-unanimity. But two countries voted against: the US, and Israel, pursuing their long tradition of opposition to UN resolutions. A paragraph of the resolution defended "the inalienable right to self-determination and independence of all peoples under colonial and racist regimes and other forms of alien domination" and upheld "the legitimacy of their struggle, in particular the struggle of national liberation movements". At the time, the two countries actively supported the South African Apartheid regime, and Israel was in its twentieth year of military occupation, continuing today, possibly taking its most repressive form ever. (11)

Terrorists are also trained on US territory. The School of the Americas (SOA) forms death squad leaders, mainly active in Latin America (3 concentration camps under Pinochet were directed by SOA graduates), guilty of "the most atrocious human rights violations" according to the UN. All this is far from being enough in order to draw a correct picture, and it would be a mistake to regard these mere examples as an extensive record. Why would the US to tolerate the limitation of international law? It would be in total contradiction with the logic of power. "The United States acts multilaterally when possible and unilaterally when necessary" as many US government officials have explained their attitude towards the international community. By the same logic of power, the devastating consequences of the earlier "crusades of virtue" can only remain secondary, not to speak of its victims cry for justice. And let's not forget another very dangerous teaching of this logic: that these actions are undertaken in the name of "freedom" and "democracy" - quite flexible concepts, as one can easily note by looking at the paradises that have previously experienced the blessing of this military humanism. (12)

"COLLATERAL DAMAGE": "Justice should not precede revenge" (New York Post)

"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."

Now devastated by two superpowers, the Afghan people understand this clearly. The most tragic part is the silence that meets the civilian victims of this war. The only serious report on the subject, show that the civil victims of the bombings already exceed 3700 people, and hundreds of others have been added since its publication. The most common figure used today is 5000. This has of course not particularly interested our media. But the long-term consequences will undoubtedly vanish in the memory hole, like the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, expected to be catastrophic. Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries of the world, and has been dependent on international humanitarian aid for a long time. The drought has made it worse. Before the bombings, the US demanded Pakistan to close its border towards Afghanistan, and "demanded from Pakistan the elimination of truck convoys that provide much of the food and other supplies to Afghanistan's civilian population" (New York Times 16/9). The bombing later forced the withdrawal of the international aid workers who were in charge of food distribution in the country, but they also made the food deliveries very difficult. The UN estimated that 7 to 8 million Afghans risked starvation, since the assistance could only be brought at half or quarter of normal intensity under the bombs. Jean Ziegler, Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said on October 15th: "The bombing has to stop right now. There is a humanitarian emergency… In winter the lorries cannot go in any more. Millions of Afghans will be unreachable in winter and winter is coming very, very soon". Reuters and AP echoed that "the United Nations has warned of a catastrophe unless aid can get through for up to seven million Afghans" (according to several analysts, no mention to it was made in the US media). The big humanitarian organizations required "a pause in the bombings" the "immediate reopening of the borders" in order to avoid "a humanitarian catastrophe", where "the West would be responsible for a massive tragedy" causing "huge loss of life and unspeakable suffering". In spite of these warnings from the UN and the most respected humanitarian organizations, our Western media gave all its attention to the Anthrax scare. But "bio-terrorism" can visibly take many shapes. The humanitarian situation is currently critical. Millions of people in urgent need are almost or already inaccessible because of insecurity and heavy snow falls. (13)

SUSPICION OF US COMPLICITY IN 9-11: Another assumed candidate for the memory hole.

"If we hope to understand anything about the foreign policy of any state, it is a good idea to begin by investigating the domestic social structure: Who sets foreign policy? What interests do these people represent? What is the domestic source of their power? It is a reasonable surmise that the policy that evolves will reflect the special interests of those who design it. An honest study of history will reveal that this natural expectation is quite generally fulfilled. The evidence is overwhelming, in my opinion, that the United States is no exception to the general rule-a thesis which is often characterized as a ‘radical critique,' in a curious intellectual move… Some attention to the historical record, as well as common sense, leads to a second reasonable expectation: In every society, there will emerge a caste of propagandists who labor to disguise the obvious, to conceal the actual workings of power, and to spin a web of mythical goals and purposes, utterly benign, that allegedly guide national policy. A typical thesis of the propaganda system is that ‘the nation' is an agent in international affairs, not special groups within it, and that ‘the nation' is guided by certain ideals and principles, all of them noble… A subsidiary thesis is that the nation is not an active agent, but rather responds to threats posed to its security, or to order and stability, by awesome evil forces."

This Crusade of Infinite Justice is an Orwellian nightmare. We have been drowned in propaganda from minute one. Even the small critical enclosures of the left were carried in the flood. Let's try to clear this up. First of all, the attack on Afghanistan was not a spontaneous response to the attacks of September 11. Afghanistan was a target chosen much earlier for very specific reasons. Former Foreign Minister of Pakistan Niaz Naik revealed to the press that during a Berlin conference on Afghanistan in July, "the US representatives told him that unless Bin Laden was handed over swiftly America would take military action… before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest" (BBC 18/09). He forwarded these threats to the Taliban. (14) The respected journalist John Pilger reports that the Secretary of State Colin Powell was already gathering support for a war coalition in Central Asia during this period.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, member of the Council on Foreign Relations and former national security adviser to the Carter Administration, clears up many things in his recent book, which purpose is "The formulation of a comprehensive and integrated Eurasian geostrategy". Brzezinski writes that "America's global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained". To control the continent, it is necessary to control what Brzezinski calls the Eurasian Balkans - the area of the present conflict, that he circles on a map. These "Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold". Oil and gas reserves "that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea". The vice-president Dick Cheney nods. As former chairman of the large oil company Halliburton, he said in front of a group of oil executives in 1998: "I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian". Indeed, several pipeline projects in Afghanistan - conceived by the American oil company Unocal - have failed because of the civil war. But two days after the first bombs, the projects were put back on the table "in view of recent geopolitical developments". And don't worry, the "rebuilding of Afghanistan" is in good hands: The president of the temporary Afghan government Hamid Karzai was a former consultant of Unocal, and the US special presidential envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, who will also help "rebuild" the country, is a former assistant of the oil company. (15)

Brzezinski says that the area, because of its crucial importance on the geopolitical level, "threatens to become a cauldron of ethnic conflict and great-power rivalry". The United States' "primary interest" is therefore to "help ensure that no single power comes to control this geopolitical space". To avoid this scenario, he recommends to "put a premium on maneuver and manipulation in order to prevent the emergence of a hostile coalition that could eventually seek to challenge America's primacy". He clearly states his vision with the appropriate words: "the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together". He is thoughtful enough to explain to faint-hearted readers who for some reason would be bothered by these methods, that "America's withdrawal from the world… would prompt global anarchy". I suppose we should all feel better now.

Before September 11, tens of thousands of American and British troops were already heading to the Middle East. It seems that "the control of Eurasia" will be an easy game. In a Los Angeles Times article of January 5th, William Arkin writes: "Behind a veil of secret agreements, the United States is creating a ring of new and expanded military bases that encircle Afghanistan and enhance the Armed Forces greater ability to strike targets throughout much of the Muslim world. Since Sept 11, according to Pentagon sources, military tent cities have sprung up at 13 locations in nine countries neighbouring Afghanistan, substantially extending the network of bases in the region. From Bulgaria and Uzbekistan to Turkey, Kuwait and beyond, more than 60,000 US military personnel now live and work at these forward bases". The Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz explains that "Their function may be more political than actually military". The new bases "send a message to everybody, including important countries like Uzbekistan, that we have a capacity to come back in and will come back in". (16)

The plans to control Central Asia are a true threat, but not quite surprising. What is on the other hand quite alarming, are the many indications that the American government had foreknowledge of the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon. Three months before the attacks, the German Intelligence agency BND warned the CIA and Israel that Middle Eastern terrorists were "planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture" (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 14/09/2001). At the same period, Russian intelligence informed the CIA that 25 terrorist pilots had been trained specifically for suicide missions. And Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered them two months later to alert the US government "in the strongest possible terms" of imminent attacks on airports and government buildings (MS-NBC 15/09/2001). Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak also alerted the US twelve days before the event (AP 8/12/2001). The many reports on Israeli warnings have been denied by the US government. In spite of these warnings, the reactions to the attacks were virtually non-existent. The first reports stated that no air force was deployed to shoot down or intercept the planes, even though routine procedures are regularly applied to handle this kind of situations. Two days later, the story conveniently changed. The General of the Air Force Richard B Myers declared that "When it became clear what the threat was, we did scramble fighter aircraft, AWACs, radar aircraft and tanker aircraft to begin to establish orbits in case other aircraft showed up in the FAA [Federal Aviation Authority] system that were hijacked... That order, to the best of my knowledge, was after the Pentagon was struck". Namely, more than one hour after learning that four planes had been hijacked simultaneously - for the first time in history. (17)

There are 26 intelligence services in the U.S.A. with a budget of $30 billion. Reasonably, many intelligence experts express scepticism on the scenario, stating that it is impossible to miss the "intelligence signature" of such an operation. One of them is Eckehardt Werthebach, former president of Germany's domestic intelligence service, Verfassungsschutz, that told AFP that "the deathly precision" and "the magnitude of planning" behind the attacks of September 11 would have needed "years of planning" and would require the "fixed frame" of a state intelligence organization, something that is not found in a "loose group" of terrorists like the one allegedly led by Mohammed Atta while he studied in Hamburg. Many people would have been involved in the planning of such an operation and Werthebach pointed to the absence of leaks as further indication that the attacks were "state organized actions". (18) Which apparently seems to be the case.

arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)