Dear Friends,  
 

The relentless war of the rich on the poor, which added the dimension of
nationalism about 300 years ago, continues to rush ahead. 
 

Yesterday, Frontline (PBS) updated their two year old report on Bin Laden.
It's  less than an hour long, makes it clear that Bin Laden is a creature
of the Saudi Oil billions and the CIA (which was once proud to claim him).
Here is the PBS link http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/
 

The NEA and the AFL-CIO are behaving predictably, if disappointingly. The
NEA wants to pyschologize the terror and rise of witless nationalism
(http://www.nea.org/) offering several stock stress kits to teachers, while
the AFL just wants on board for the war
http://www.aflcio.org/home.htm  as it did in Vietnam.
 

Meanwhile, Detroit newspapers are offering to turn the collapsed city into
the 'arsenal of democracy' again, as a commentator on pbs declared, "after
all, war really is good business." Here is the Detroit News chiming in
http://detnews.com/2001/business/0109/14/c01-293861.htm
 

IndyMedia has struggled to keep up with the crisis, as has most of the
alternative press, swimming upsream against an onslaught of survivor tales
which, moving as they surely are, seem to be taking the place of questions
like, "why?" Here is the indymedia link. There is a good piece on Bin Laden
here. http://www.indymedia.org/
Z Magazine has a link to statements from several interesting groups
http://www.zmag.org/ZNET.htm
 

To my knowledge, no one has taken on the task of examining the dramatic
change that is going to occur in the US economy. On the brink of disaster
on Sept 10, the economy is perhaps over the edge now. The huge outpouring
of tax money to the military, a shift of at least 39 billion dollars on
this day alone, will have to come from somewhere, and that is not going to
be from taxing oil profits.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/14/national/14CONG.html
 

This debt will have to be paid by the working class, already burdened with
the greatest debt in US history. We will also be paying with our children,
the youth who were economically drafted to the military, apparently
marching onto the Afghan plains. 
 

If we consider the massive losses incurred by shutting down the economy for
a week, by gigantic insurance settlements, by the devastation of the travel
and transportation industry, the gigantic losses in entertainment profits,
well, the economic grinding over time may change some minds about the
notion that "We are all in this together." 
http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/top200text.htm#V. CONCLUSION
 

Or, maybe not. That would seem to depend on us learning to do things in new
ways, building community and care while resisting and seeking equality and
democracy at the same time---under very trying conditions. At issue to
educators is not only what people need to know, but how do they need to
come to know it, in order to be self-actualizing agents of our collective
lives? 
 

Below, I am pasting Ramsey Yousef's statement to the court. Yousef, you
will remember, was convicted in the bombing of the WTC. This is not, of
course, an endorsement of Yousef or his actions, or his ideas. It is an
original document, taken from a conservative www site, sent to me by a
ranking military officer who was in one of my classes. It cannot stand
alone but, in a classroom, combined with other material, may shed some
light on what is happening today. 
 

The last thing any terrorist on any side wants is a class conscious mass of
people who have the tools to comprehend and change the world--without
paying someone to interpret it for them.
 

best, r
 
 

Yousef to the Court:
 

        "You keep talking also about collective punishment and killing innocent
people to force governments to change their policies; you call this
terrorism when someone would kill innocent people or civilians in order to
force the government to change its policies. Well, when you were the first
one who invented this terrorism. 
 

        You were the first one who killed innocent people, and you are the first
one who introduced this type of terrorism to the history of mankind when
you dropped an atomic bomb which killed tens of thousands of women and
children in Japan and when you killed over a hundred thousand people, most
of them civilians, in Tokyo with fire bombings. You killed them by burning
them to death. And you killed civilians in Vietnam with chemicals as with
the so-called Orange agent. You killed civilians and innocent people, not
soldiers, innocent people every single war you went. You went to wars more
than any other country in this century, and then you have the nerve to talk
about killing innocent people. 
        
        And now you have invented new ways to kill innocent people. You have
so-called economic embargo which kills nobody other than children and
elderly people, and which other than Iraq you have been placing the
economic embargo on Cuba and other countries for over 35 years... 
        
        The government in its summations and opening said that I was a terrorist.
Yes, I am a terrorist and I am proud of it. And I support terrorism so long
as it was against the United States Government and against Israel, because
you are more than terrorists; you are the one who invented terrorism and
using it every day. You are butchers, liars and hypocrites. "
        
 
 
 
 

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