[Peace-discuss] 9/11

[C. G. Estabrook]

Chuck' positive program seems to me quite admirable -- I would happily 
support some version of it.  (In fact I did, as a candidate for Congress 
in 2002; unfortunately, as far as I could tell, the election did not 
turn on these issues but on whether the incumbent was a nice guy.)

I'd point out, tho', as Chuck realizes ("we might be better off if they 
were never exposed"), his program contains precisely nothing to address 
the vast conspiracy that he thinks accomplished the 911 attacks. 
Apparently that is irrelevant to the real political problems facing the 
country, to which his program responds.

I suppose we moles can rest in peace, having successfully protected our 
dark masters by continuing to work for what a large majority of 
Americans want (roughly, Chuck's program), although it's bitterly 
opposed by the two major political parties (which are of course 
unsurprisingly both substantially to the right of that majority of 
Americans, as polls such as those of the Chicago CFR show).

In this regard I suppose we're quite in line with the thought of the man 
who applied the mole image (which he borrowed from Shakespeare) to 
politics. Karl Marx was always a theorist of the working of the modern 
economy (rather than of revolution or, even less, of socialism), but he 
wrote in a burst of optimism about the political situation in France a 
century and half ago, that

"...the revolution is thoroughgoing. It is still traveling through 
purgatory. It does its work methodically ... It first completed the 
parliamentary power in order to be able to overthrow it. Now that it has 
achieved this, it completes the executive power, reduces it to its 
purest expression, isolates it, sets it up against itself as the sole 
target, in order to concentrate all its forces of destruction against 
it. And when it has accomplished this second half of its preliminary 
work, Europe will leap from its seat and exult: 'Well burrowed, old 
mole!'" [= a paraphrase from Hamlet 1.5]. (The Eighteenth Brumaire of 
Louis Bonaparte, ch. 7)

There's an interesting critique of the usefulness of this image at
<http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2002-02-13-hardtnegri-en.html>.

Finally, it's certainly incorrect to call Chomsky a "no-solution guy." 
Read or listen to what he says. He gets a bit exasperated with people 
who ask him Lenin's question ("What is to be done?"), as they frequently 
do, and not just because he's always been an anti-Leninist.  As he 
always says, there is obviously an immense amount to be done in this, 
"the freest country in the world," if also the one responsible for the 
greatest crimes.  --CGE


Chuck Minne wrote:
> Well, as far as what to do goes, I’m like Chomsky, and I say that 
> pejoratively, because I’m a no-solution guy too. I don’t think anything 
> can really be done, I think its hopeless. I bitch, rail and protest only 
> to salve my own conscience. And I suppose to hear myself talk. 
> Otherwise, it’s all meaningless.
>  
> If I thought anything could be done, here are some impossible things I 
> would work to implement:
>  
> Maintain a capitalistic system but with extremely tight government 
> controls. Set an upper limit on personal wealth; say around $50,000,000. 
> Break up the media conglomerates; limit the exposure of one media 
> company to say around a combined viewer/reader total of 25,000,000. Make 
> television time absolutely free for all “significant’ political 
> candidates, what a can of worms that would be. Make health care 
> universal, tightly controlled, with no insurance companies involved. 
> Dismantle Homeland Security and legalize drug use. Make all corporate 
> profits above a certain rate of return on capital, say 10%, be spent on 
> “social welfare projects.”  Cut defense spending dramatically and 
> allocate at least 50% of the cut toward finding ways to control the 
> amount of sunlight hitting the earth (for I am convinced that global 
> warming is past the tipping point and we are doomed unless a new 
> technology can save us – existing schemes and methods are just a 
> band-aid that will only postpone the disaster.)
>  
> I’m probably missing a lot, but none of it is doable anyway.
>  
> The 9/11 perpetrators have gotten away with it and need not worry as 
> long as the anti-war folks are so divided on the issue. I suspect that 
> the anti-war establishment is loaded with government moles and agents 
> for just that purpose; for the anti-war movement can be ignored, as it 
> is by both parties, as long as the 9/11 conspirators are not exposed. 
> And if the anti-war people do not expose them, nobody else will.
>  
> And the really ironic thing is that their exposure would cause such a 
> constitutional crisis that we might be better off if they were never 
> exposed. Tragically funny.
>  
> Did you ever consider that Chomsky might be a mole? Or how about 
> Estabrook? Now there’s a conspiracy theory.
>  
> Makes no difference, nothing is going to be changed. At least not the 
> way we want it. Hopeless. But it’s kind of fun trying – as long as you 
> don’t hope.
>  ...