La Mano Negra submitted the following essay by Brian Oliver Sheppard:

"

MAKING THE MOST OF THE SEPTEMBER 11 TRAGEDY

How Government Officials are Trying to to Push
Forward Corporate Agendas by Linking Terrorism
with Anarchism and the Anti-Globalization Movement

The tragedy of September 11 has provided government spin doctors with an unusually delicious opportunity to strike out at controversial and dissident beliefs. Since the attacks, prominent US policymakers have exploited an increase in patriotism and public fear, directing these volatile emotions into consent for pro-corporate, trade liberalization agendas with the implication that such is the path to safety.

In some cases, US government officials have linked the beliefs of the
terrorists to those of anti-corporate globalization protesters, referring explicitly to anarchists and other "enemies of civilization" (their words) as bedfellows. US government officials rarely acknowledge anarchist or anti-capitalist ideas at all; when they do, the intent is always ideological, and usually plays upon the useful, if somewhat antiquated, myth of anarchist as bomb-throwing maniac.

nomadlab writes: "The washington post is reporting that President Bush signed an order Tuesday that would allow for the trial of people accused of terrorism by a special military commission instead of civilian courts.

see the story yourself at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A235 66-2001Nov13.html

this is insane!"

For those of you who want to join the Office of Homeland Security Volunteer
Youth Brigade, they have a new website,

http://www.securethehomeland.com.

They
have t-shirts with the caption on the back, "Protecting America from
Americans."

After the Attack: The War on Terrorism

The Editors of Monthly Review, November 2001

There is little we can say directly about the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., except that these were acts of utter, inhuman violence, indefensible in every sense, taking a deep and lasting human toll. Such terrorism has to be rid from the face of the earth. The difficulty lies in how to rid the world of it.

Terrorism generates counterterrorism and the United States has long been a party to this deadly game, as perpetrator more often than victim.

The U.S. strategy of retaliation in the form of a global war on terrorism, already commencing on October 7 with military strikes in Afghanistan, is certain to compound this tragedy in the months and years ahead. For this reason it is now more important than ever that the realities of U.S. militarism and imperialism be brought to light, along with the role of propaganda in
removing them from the scrutiny of the domestic population.

http://www.narconews.com/zmarcosfourthworldwar.htm l

The 4th World War

By Subcomandante Marcos

The following text is an excerpt from a talk given by
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos of the Zapatista Army
for National Liberation (EZLN) to the International
Civil Commission of Human Rights Observation in La
Realidad, Chiapas, Mexico, on November 20, 1999.

Translated by irlandesa
The Restructuring of War

As we see it, there are several constants in the
so-called world wars, in the First World War, in the
Second, and in what we call the Third and Fourth.

One of these constants is the conquest of territories
and their reorganization.

If you consult a map of the world you can see that
there were changes at the end of all of the world
wars, not only in the conquest of territories, but in
the forms of organization. After the First World War,
there was a new world map, after the Second World War,
there was another world map.

At the end of what we venture to call the "Third World
War," and which others call the Cold War, a conquest
of territories and a re-organization took place. It
can, broadly speaking, be situated in the late 80's,
with the collapse of the socialist camp of the Soviet
Union, and, by the early 90's, what we call the Fourth
World War can be discerned.

Full story is at

http://www.narconews.com/zmarcosfourthworldwar.ht ml

After Genoa and New York:

The Antiglobal Movement, the Police and Terrorism

Donatella della Porta and Sidney Tarrow

In the light of the events of September 11 and the US
government's subsequent offensive against terrorism, it may be
useful to reflect on the strategies used against protest in times
of terror, and their effects. We take as our starting point the
measures that Italy took to meet the antiglobalization movement in
Genoa this past summer. The implications, we will argue, go well
beyond Italy to authoritiesâ responses to violence, whatever its
source and wherever it is found including the United States in the
months and years to come.

The End of a Truce

In spring 1977, a young Italian activist, Giorgiana Masi, was shot
by the police during a demonstration in Rome. Masi was the last in
a chain of about 120 Italians shotor, as in one infamous case,
"suicided" from the window of a police station, during or after
protests. Last July 19, Carlo Giuliano was killed by a young
carabiniere doing his military service and run over by a police
jeep during the violent protests against the G-8 meetings.
In the almost 25 years between Masiâs and Giulianoâs killings the
interactions between Italian demonstrators and the police wereif
not appeasedat least civilized. Yet in Genoa, not only did the
police shoot a demonstrator; hundreds of peaceful protesters were
caricati con caroselli (the infamous Italian police practice of
aiming police vans directly at demonstrators), beaten up,
strip-searched, forced to sing fascist and anti-Semitic songs and
denied access to an attorney or, in the case of foreigners, to
their consulates. Many returned to their homes in Italy or
elsewhere in Europe and the US with broken bones and cracked heads.
Some were well-known pacifists, others journalists; but most of
them were very young, and their detailed accounts of police
brutality shocked public and foreign opinion. Government and
parliamentary inquiries were immediately begun, and Italy's new
right-wing government was sent reeling by complaints from both
Italian citizen groups and allies protesting the treatment of their
citizens.

Globalization and Resistance Conference Schedule

Friday, November 16 - Saturday, November 17, 2001
9:30 am - 6:00 (BOTH DAYS)
CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave. (@ 34th Street), NYC

Friday

8:30 am - Registration

9:30 - Plenary: Neo-liberalism and the New World Order
Speakers:Susan George; Stanley Aronowitz; Tariq Ali

11:15 - 1:00

1) Neoliberalism: Old imperialism or new capitalism?

Speakers: Doug Henwood; Silvia Federici

2) Free trade, the welfare state and wages

Speakers: Bill Tabb; Francis Piven

3) IMF, World Bank & the WTO: Can they ever change?

Speakers: Robert Naiman; Barbara Garson

4) Debt, Structual Adjustment and the Global South

Speakers: Dennis Brutus; Forrest Hylton; Carmen

5) Globalization, the state, and imperialism

Speakers: Michael Hardt;, Peter Bratsis

6) Environment on the edge: The politics of global warming & GM food

Speakers: Jonathan King

7) Corporate rule and the erosion of democracy

Speakers: Rob Weissman; Bill DiFazio

1:00 - 2:00 LUNCH

2:00 - 3:45

8) The culture of neoliberalism

Speakers: David Harvey; Randy Martin

9) The Corporate University

Speakers: Barbara Bowen; Clyde Barrow

10) The US, Islam, and Terrorism

Speakers: Tariq Ali; Stuart Schaar; Ellen Willis

11) The War at Home: Surveillence, Civil Liberties, and Dissent

Speakers: Cory Robbin; Norman Siegel (invited)

12) Is Capitalism Sustainable?

Speakers: Stanley Aronowitz; Manuel DeLanda

4:00 - 6:00 Plenary: Alternatives to Globalization & War

Speakers: Manning Marable; Mike Davis; Rabab Abdulhadi

Saturday

9:30 Plenary: The shape of the resistance

Speakers: Leslie A. Kauffman; Kim Moody; Michael Letwin

11:15 - 1:00

1) From anti-capitalism to anti-war: Where do we go next?

Speakers: Marina Sitrin (People's Law Collective/Anti-War Activist) Leslie Woods (Ontario Coalition Against Poverty) Laura

Fantoni (Italian Anti-Capitalist Activist)

2) Breaking the Two Party System

Speakers: Howie Hawkins (Green Party) Joel Kovel (Green Party)

3) Grassroots Media

Speakers: Arun Gupta (NYC-IMC/Former Editor of the Guardian Newsweekly)

Ana Nogueira (NYC-IMC/Founding member of IMCs in Argentina and Brazil)

Chris Strohm (DC-IMC/Reporter, DC Free Press newspaper)

4) Patents that Kill: Intellectual Property and the AIDS Epidemic

Speakers: Asia Russell ( ACT UP-Philadelphia) Mark Milano (ACT UP-New York)

5) Direct Action Gets the Goods

Speakers: David Graeber (Direct Action Network) Brooke Lehman (Direct Action Network)

6) Fault Lines of Empire - Colombia, Vieques, and Palestine

1:00 - 2:00 LUNCH

2:00 - 3:45

1) The Prison-Industrial Complex: Social Control and Profit

Speakers: Luis Lopes (Critical Resistance - East) Pilar Maschi (Critical Resistance -East)

2) Organizing the Unorganized - UNITE Local 169

Jose Schiffino

3) Targeting the Corporations -

Rainforest Action Network

4) Organizing Against Police Brutality: From Cincinnati to PG County

Speakers: Life Allah (Cincinnati Cop Watch) Karen Allen (Sister of Caesar Allen,
killed by PG County Police)

5) Globalization on the Shop Floor

Matt Noyes

4:00 - 6:00 Final Rally: Directions: The future of the movement

Speakers:Jeremy Brecher; Alex Callincos; Dennis Brutus"

Louis Lingg writes: "St. Louis Today is reporting that at a lecture in Missouri lawyer Alan Dershowitz suggested that judges issue torture warrants in certain cases:

'Americans need to consider what measures should be allowed to get information from unwilling terror
suspects, he said. After law enforcement officials have asked, begged, cajoled, threatened and bribed a
close-mouthed witness, they may need to take more drastic measures to elicit vital information, Dershowitz
said.'"

Unleashing the CIA

William Blum

The old joke goes that in the waning days of the Second World War, when Hitler was told of yet another defeat on the battlefield, he slammed his fist into his desk and declared: "That does it! No more Mr. Nice Guy!"

We've been treated in the past couple of weeks to one press story after another about how the Bush administration seeks to "unleash" the CIA from its restrictions concerning things like political assassination and dealing with "unsavory" characters. The nature of the September 11 attack was such, we are told, that we have to remove our kid gloves and put on depleted-uranium-tipped brass knuckles.



The policies whose "revisions" are being discussed and leaked are principally a 25-year ban on the CIA and other agencies of the government from engaging in assassination, and a policy of the past five years or so of barring the CIA from employing real nasty killers and torturers abroad, or at least not without express approval from high up.



Why are they telling us these tales at this time? Is it to comfort the American public into believing that the government is holding nothing back in its campaign of making us more secure? Or can they actually believe that such announcements will put the fear of Allah in the Taliban leadership?



Whole story is at http://www.counterpunch.org/blum1.html>http://www.c ounterpunch.org/blum1.html

Autonomous Comrade writes:The San Fancisco Bay Guardian has an interesting article that is worth a read, titled Nixon's subliminal CIA tricks



here's an excerpt, read the entire thing using the link above.

As it turns out, the Bush team was not the first to contemplate using subliminal projection to sway voters. During the mid-'50s, then-Vice President Richard Nixon became curious when he got wind of CIA testing of subliminal manipulation for espionage purposes.

Nixon never explained to what extent, if any, he actually pursued using subliminal techniques during any of his election campaigns. And the CIA remains mum on the issue. Most MK-ULTRA documents were summarily destroyed on orders of outgoing CIA chief Richard Helms in 1973. The files were shredded because of "a burgeoning paper problem," according to Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, the sorcerer-spook who ran the MK-ULTRA program. Gottlieb admitted as much when he testified at a 1977 Senate hearing on CIA mind control scandals. Gottlieb was never grilled about the CIA's subliminal research.