Re: CNN USING 1991 FOOTAGE of celebrating Palistinians to

While I very much would like to get a better source for the Faked Tapes
story, we are nevertheless not completely without counter-arguments.

There are millions of Palestinians. It is not clear that those celebrating
were any kind of majority. I do remember how the U.S. media fabricated
stories about how anti-war protestors abused Vietnam Veterans.

It may well be the case that many of the people protesting were young
children, and many of the others may not have fully understood the loss of
human life. They may just have heard that "THE US HAS BEEN STRUCK" or that a
major building was destroyed. Keep in mind that many of them may have had
relatives killed in Middle Eastern violence. None of this justifies joy at
the terrible carnage in New York but we have to struggle to help people
understand that whatever is going on

Furthermore, Americans have to look into themselves before they get too
self-righteous. How many Americans cheered during the bombing of Iran or
Yugoslavia or Panama City. Not spontaneous cheering in the streets, but
other kinds of cheerleading. I'm old enought to remember Billy Graham
blessing the U.S. pilots before they went to Vietnam to kill millions from
the sky.

NONE OF THIS CAN JUSTIFY ANYONE HAVING JOY AT THE DEATHS OF THOUSANDS IN THE
WORLD TRADE CENTER. But if empathy===learning to put oneself in the shoes of
others===mandates that we feel sympathy and solidarity for the victims in
New York, it also mandates that we try to understand that the "JOY" being
expressed might be terribly wrong, but it is something that has happened in
the US as well.

At a public forum on my campus on Wednesday, I made the point that while the
bombing was a terrible crime against the working class, it should be seen in
the context of massive wars, violence, and death going on as a consequence
of U.S. and other imperialisms. I discussed the hundreds of thousands killed
by U.S. imperialism in El Salvador, Guatemala, and throughout Latin America
as well as many other cases, with an emphasis on the Indonesian massacre of
1966 -- which killed perhaps 25 or 50 times as many people as the NY
bombings. Actually those comments received a lot of support, applause, on my
generally non-political campus, which was heartening.

One of the speakers, a former State Department official, tried to twist what
I said into something quite different. He implied that I was justifying the
NY attacks because of other acts by the U.S. government (some of which he
said he was critical of, but which he WAS a part of).  I was forced to
respond very sharply and intentionally impolitely and accuse him of
intentionally lying about my meaning.

The point is not that we should minimize the terrible situation in New York
by discussing other crimes.

The point is that imperialism breeds wars. It breeds wars between
capitalists and workers and mainly between capitalists and capitalists. Some
of those capitalists/nationalists use religion and other ideologies to get
some workers to support the capitalist/nationalist causes.  The consequences
are that the wars that imperialism (capitalism) creates that inevitably
kills so many civilians in dramatic, violent ways, (as well as many more
through disease and hunger.)  And the victims in New York were the victims
of conflict caused by imperialism and different groups of nationalists
fighting for political and economic power.

=======
As a side point, in a few weeks, perhaps when passions have died down and so
it won't be accused of "minimizing" the terrible situation in New York, it
might be worthwhile showing "The Panama Deception" in many classes. Not to
justify what happened in New York but to help students develop a better
understanding of just how imperialism/militarism kills so many people.

Alan Spector







----- Original Message -----
From: "Charlie Stevens" <stevencj@muohio.edu>
To: "C. Bandhauer" <bcarina@mac.com>; "World Systems Network"
<wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2001 12:22 PM
Subject: Re: CNN USING 1991 FOOTAGE of celebrating Palistinians to


> At 11:54 AM 9/13/01 -0400, C. Bandhauer wrote:
> >In my efforts to help students humanize the "terrorists" and socially
> >construct the "evil," if someone could direct me to additional sources,
> >books, websites, or something on this list that would give an effective
> >chronology of US bombings, embargoes, arms deals, etc. etc. and who and
how
> >these have affected people in the Middle East, I would be grateful.
> >
> >Carina
>
> I, too, could use these data to inform my efforts to contextualize
> Tuesday's events.
> As an anthropologist at a traditionally conservative school, I, too, am
> faced with Carina's dilemmas. I spent three hours in classes yesterday
> trying to guide students toward understanding or, at least, recognizing
the
> political, cultural, historical and economic contexts in which Tuesdays
> events were enmeshed. Without a doubt, these were the most difficult
issues
> to which I have had to teach.  I began with stories of US military
> statisticians' projections of "collateral damage" that might eventuate if
> Iraq's water supply and treatment centers were to be bombed (as I
> understand they subsequently were...against Geneva Conventions). I then
> asked if this was "terrorism" and the discussion of our our complacency
and
> arrogance ensued. Some students were receptive and later thanked me by
> e-mail for presenting an alternative view. Some were obviously hostile to
> even to possibility that contexts were relevant at all and these students
> have unreflectively picked up the rhetoric infused with the appropriate
> lexicon: "barbarian vs, civilized" "they and our way of life". Others have
> recently sent me an editorial from a Canadian newspaper where the author
> talks about "America the good neighbor".  Not yet ready to return to the
> syllabus, I will distribute "America the good Neighbor" tomorrow and
> present it as received ideology and oppose that idiom with America the
> Great Satan and see if we can tease out the truths at either ends of the
> binary opposition reminding them that there is no shortage of sound
> evidence that "ordinary" humans can be induced to do horrendous things in
> particular contexts.
>
> Obviously, none of this is easy at this particular time. Then, last night,
> I read Edward Said's piece "The Public Role of Writers and Intellectuals"
> in the last issue of The Nation and my resolve was again strengthened.  I
> would appreciate any guidance in how we might effectively approach this
> issue to lead students toward the realization that now might be a good
time
> to construct a different world (however naive that may sound).
> Charlie Stevens
>