(en) Who benefits from the bombings?

September 11, 2001 may be remembered as the day “Freedom” a long-suffering patient went into a coma and died.

Freedom had been long suffering under pains of complete control by a very small group of people who owned most of what it was that could be owned. Something called the economy took precedence over what was necessary to keep this planet livable. Half the top-soil which we need to grow food’s gone, there’s holes in the ozone so sunlight can kill you and rain brings toxic acid but we’re all okay because the economy’s doing fine. You have political campaigns, politicians that are bought by the highest bidder. You have a World Trade Organization that sanctions governments who try to keep out toxic products that can potentially kill millions as participating in “unfair trade practices.”

The height of idiocy behind this is that there are “think tanks” that operate for the benefit of those who own most of what can be owned and their premise is this:

“With the ecology and hence the economy collapsing, how can those of us who are in control, keep control as the system consumes itself?”

And if you read further, their prescription is to interweave intelligence, police, and military into a force that can go anywhere and a force that is most geared to controlling domestic populations.

So today an “unprecedented act of terrorism bigger than Pearl Harbor” takes place on U.S. soil. One Henry Kissinger, the architect of much elite policy immediately commented: “it is an integrated attack that requires an integrated response.”

I find myself flashing back to the burning of the Reichstag. This was the German government building that the Nazis burned to the ground to justify their dictatorial takeover.

Let me repeat this: the Nazis came to power after they burned their own government building and blamed it on their opponents.

It was a typical Nazi tactic – in the Leipzig incident that justified the invasion of Poland, the Nazis dressed up a bunch of Polish prisoners in army uniforms, marched them into a border town shot up the town, shot up the prisoners and screamed “invasion we have to retaliate.” The Nazi intelligence apparatus it will also be remembered was eventually absorbed in the US intelligence apparatus became the backbone of the CIA and a major asset in the Cold War (they did have the best intelligence on the Russians after all.)

While I am not suggesting that our country is run by these same Nazi’s (President Reagan’s performance at Bitburg notwithstanding,) it is clear that they had a major influence in U.S. foreign policy. Groups like the CIA and the School of the Americas developed training manuals and training programs where mercenaries and petty thugs were taught to practice the same sort of mass murder and terror and trained to lie about these acts and to blame their enemies in just this same way.

This practice was not confined to wars of insurrection. Every major war that the United States has gotten involved in recent memory was begun over an incident that involved fabrication and deceit. There was:

 the sinking of the Maine that initiated World War I,
 the attack on Pearl Harbor (which our government had foreknowledge of) that began World War II – proof that our government is willing to let thousands die for a political objective
 the completely fabricated Gulf of Tonkin Incident that began our country’s escalated involvement in Viet Nam,
 the famous “Phantom MIGs of the Ronald Reagan era,
 the horizontal drilling by the Kuwaitis and the encouragement of Saddam Hussein by U.S. diplomats that created the Persian Gulf conflict, etc., etc., etc.

Not only have these involved deceit, they have involved the taking of lives, even those of thousands of U.S. citizens.

So we have to look at today’s incident in the same light. Today’s attack exists against a backdrop of a corporate run state that has become more and more heavy-handed in its attempts to control dissent. It is a state that imprisons ten times as many people as it jailed only a few decades ago, while investment bankers and junk bond traders can loot with impunity. It is a state that deals with non-violent protest by exposing tens of thousands of citizens to the same chemical agents used on the Viet Cong, while it’s supreme judicial body can openly steal a presidential election with impunity. This is a government that is out of control, will do anything and will rationalize anything.

We can look at this latest incident that took place today not just against the back ground of a militaristic corporate state that wants more control, but against the background of recent incidents. There was the first attempted bombing of the World Trade Center. Seems the Arab fundamentalists who planned that one had been trained by a FBI handler, supplied with explosives by a FBI handler, given directions by a FBI handler etc. This bombing was serving as the impetus to fast track through a very repressive federal terrorist law – it got stopped when it was discovered that one of the main suspects had kept a microcassette.

Following this, there was the Oklahoma City Bombing. Supposedly the sophisticated terrorist who pulled this off couldn’t drive a car with current plates and is coincidentally stopped a few miles from town. And they were so sure they’d got everything they could that the building is bulldozed within a week – compare this to the months agents searched Kazinski’s small 10 x 10 cabin. This brought back the same repressive terrorist law and this time it passed.

And there was also Columbine. Columbine where the alleged perpetrators wore masks the whole time, used highly inaccurate fully automatic weapons yet displayed marksmanship superior to that of trained snipers, and managed to kill themselves before being captured. Columbine, which took, place only a few weeks and miles from where the NRA was scheduled to have their major convention – notice you don’t hear the NRA calling the government “jack-booted thugs” anymore?

Having looked at the landscape, the first question a detective investigating a crime scene would ask is who benefits from the crime.

The question then that has to be asked is who benefits from the recent round of bombings in the U.S.? Is it any of the Palestinian or other ethnic groups who’d be sitting ducks for retaliation? Not likely.

Could it be a fascistic national security state eager for an excuse to exert complete control and cut down on all dissent? I couldn’t think of a more likely suspect.


Paul Richmond
September 11, 2001