Welcome to BASE21

Peace All.
I hope you are all okay and I send my heartfelt condolences out to those who may have lost someone close to them. Many on the Left are feeling confused, conflicted and especially isolated. It is probably not an understatement to say that this tragedy presents this generation with the largest challenge we have ever had the misfortunate to face.
And on that note, let us face it not silently coalescing in the shadows of the powers-that-be, but with a renewed sense of determination. Right now, Arab-American communities across the US (read MSNBC articles linked below) are facing a relentless wave of attacks by racist reactionaries, fueled by the establishment media's selective footage of celebration in the Mideast and constant insinuation often with little credible evidence. It is no time to rest comfortably on our laurels. There is an impetus in fact, to rely firmly on principle at a time when it may be the most difficult, uncomfortable--hard times breed hard questions and hard answers. Let us respond with deep sensitivity, but above all, with a bold resolve to oppose racial profiling on ALL levels, the gutting of democratic rights and U.S. military expansion and aggression.
The right-wing jingoist tide is stirring up the war machine and anti-war activists and progressives generally must be on the highest alert. We can take with us the harsh lessons from events that unfolded during WW2--of thousands of Japanese-Americans being herded off to concentration camps with the signing of Executive Order 9066, with relatively little resistance from the body politic (since the Pearl Harbor parallel is incessantly raised) and the subsequent nuclear holocaust that was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (the killing of tens of thousands of innocent civilians is not exclusive to terrorists).
We all know WHAT happened tuesday, the questions now are WHY and what to do. It should be all too obvious now that there is a bitter resentment for the U.S. in the Global South, and more particularly for U.S. foreign policy in the Middle Eastern region. Let us put it into perspective. The United States is responsible directly and indirectly for literally millions of murdered, disappeared, and tortured, from military inventions and bombings of Iraq, Yugoslavia, Somali, Sudan, Afghanistan, Haiti, Korea, and Vietnam, to propped up military dictatorships and support of paramilitary forces in Chile, Indonesia, the Philippines, Iran, El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, and so on. The lives of poor brown people are so often deemed cheap, expendable, and ready casualties in the game of realpolitik. That is of course not to say that the action was in any way justified--it was a horribly tragic and coldly calculated act of mass murder. But it cannot be divorced from its historical context. The ominous words of Malcolm X ring true: the chickens come home to roost (Bin Laden is afterall, in part a CIA creation). This is also the faintest reflection of the untold suffering and misery that the masses in the Mideast have faced at the hands of Western powers and Israeli encroachment for a century. And in many ways I am sickened by the regurgitation of "this is the worst terrorist act in the history of the US" - which is completely ignorant to the genocide of Native peoples and the Black Holocaust of slavery, contributing to the already pronounced American historical amnesia, or more accurately, selective memory.
Anyhow, without further ranting, I have compiled a list of interesting articles and resources, both mainstream and alternative, that should be useful in the coming days and weeks. In the words of Michael Moore, "Let’s mourn, let’s grieve, and when it’s appropriate let’s examine our contribution to the unsafe world we live in. It doesn’t have to be like this…"

In solidarity and with a heavy heart,
Chaz, from New York City

RELEVANT LINKS:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/2001_0912.html
- Michael Moore's statement, really insightful read
http://www.zmag.org/chomnote.htm - Renowned linguist/dissident Noam Chomsky's statement on the bombing
http://www.msnbc.com/news/627565_asp.htm - Short list of hate crimes against Arab-Americans so far ...
http://www.msnbc.com/news/627487.asp
- Blame Game profiling Arab-Americans
http://www.counterpunch.org
- Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair's newsletter, countering media pundits
http://www.zmag.org/reactionscalam.htm
- Z-Net's updated articles on the reaction
http://www.iacenter.org/sept11_stmnt.htm
- Statement from the International Action Center
http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2001/09/meyerson-h-2.html
- Life, Liberty and the Obligation to Defend Both
http://www.msnbc.com/news/190144.asp
- Bin Laden/CIA Connection
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Congress.html
- Bipartisan support, where's your money going?
http://latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-000072473sep08.story - U.S. Won't Invoke Law Against Israel "A Defining Moment of the 21st Century" from the Independent/UK -
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=93738 Terrorism through the lens of the alternative press, from Toronto Star -
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Artic le_Type1&c=Article&cid=1000289220981&call_page=TS_News&call_pageid=968332188 492&call_pagepath=News/News
Three interesting editorials from the liberal weekly the Nation -
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011001&s=schell
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011001&s=fisk (Robert Fisk is a great Mideast correspondant for the Nation)
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011001&s=corn
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4254828,00.html
- from the Guardian, Message from the Global South
http://www.fff.org/freedom/1296c.htm - 1996 article on opportunistic assaults on civil liberties following terrorist attacks check
http://www.commondreams.org regularly for progressive news
"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." - Amnesty International, 1996