Author: Jim Rissman

In an immediate response to 9/11, Robert Fisk noted “the utter, indescribable evil of what has happened in the United States,” but he also warned that

“[T]his is not really the war of democracy versus terror that the world will be asked to believe in the coming days. It is also about US missiles smashing into Palestinian homes and US helicopters firing missiles into a Lebanese ambulance in 1996 and American shells
crashing into a village called Qana and about a Lebanese militia–paid and uniformed by America’s Israeli ally–hacking and raping and murdering their way through refugee camps.”

After the discovery of Mohamed Atta’s will in early October, 2001, Fisk wrote

“So hard did a colleague of mine try, in a radio interview the other day, to unlink the bin Laden phenomenon from the West’s baleful history in the Middle East that he seriously suggested that the attacks were timed to fall on the anniversary of the defeat of Muslim
forces at the gates of Vienna in 1683. Unfortunately, the Poles won their battle against the Turks on 12, not 11, September. But when the terrifying details of the hijacker Mohamed Atta’s will were published last week, dated April 1996, no one could think of any event that
month that might have propelled Atta to his murderous behavior.

“Not the Israeli bombardment of southern Lebanon, nor the Qana massacre by Israeli artillery of 106 Lebanese civilians in a UN base, more than half of them children. For that’s what happened in April, 1996. No, of course that slaughter is not excuse for the crimes
against humanity in the United States last month. But isn’t it worth just a little mention, just a tiny observation, that an Egyptian mass-murderer-to-be wrote a will of chilling suicidal finality in the month when the massacre in Lebanon enraged Arabs across the Middle East?”

Here’s a wild prediction. In the not too distant future, Robert Fisk will have something to say about when the 9/11 plot was hatched, he’ll suggest that the commission’s timeline could have started a few weeks earlier with the events in Lebanon.

In the second article, Fisk also mentioned that bin Laden “has been suggesting that he’s angry about the deaths of Iraqi children under sanctions” and lo and behold, squeezed in between Israel’s Grapes of Wrath operation and the beginning of the 9/11 plotting is the Madeleine Albright moment. But that’s a subject for another day.

I was on welfare back in the 1960s. That was a way of showing contempt for society’s “work/progress” ethic, and if the state was willing to subsidize me while I protested the war and volunteered at the co-op, fine.

Caseworkers loved my brownies, but the joke was on me, for they never mentioned that, according to statute, as soon as I came into “property,” e.g., got a full-time job, I had to start repayment.

Ten years later, a computer match spewed me out, the state wanted its $2000 back. I’d been off welfare for eight years and gainfully employed for three.

Was their failure to inform me I was getting into debt grounds to contest? No, it wasn’t, but the “public assistance recipients’ bill of rights” guaranteed the right to a “speedy” determination of status or change thereof.

Hot damn, I had an argument! My status had changed three years ago, I had the right to plan for the future, I was about to make an offer on a house.

Well, it was a good try, more exactly, a “disingenuous” try, but who knows, had my cause been noble, maybe the judge would have taken advantage of the elasticity of the law.

It’s now another twenty-five years later and my friends at Voices in the Wilderness have been hauled into court; they wittingly violated the Iraq Sanctions Act and face $20,000 in fines. It could be the end of the road for Voices, but wait a minute, the judge has noted that the violations occurred in 1998.

Hmmmm, maybe my cause was nobler than I thought, maybe my mistake was not to have filed a countersuit.

On Sunday, AP reported that the US military is "lowering its profile" in order "to avoid alienating its Iraqi allies who take power at the end of the month." The military has been criticised for it "heavy-handed tactics," hence the softening of once-rigid demands.

Unfortunately, that report came on heels of one a few hours earlier from Karma, described as a suburb of Falluja. An Iraqi interpreter has been kidnapped. Marines cordon off the crime scene, a "house-to-house search" fails to find him. Lt. Col. Brennan Bryne "demands" that the Iraqi be released and announces he is "’indefinitely suspending’ all assistance and construction projects." Of course, house-to-house searches have been known to be conducted with a bit of "heavy-handedness."

That was Sunday in Karma. On Tuesday, eleven Iraqis, including women and children, were killed when heavy fighting broke out there. It appears as if the tactics and demands were hard enough to provoke more resistance.

On Wednesday (today), it appears the violence spread to Fallujah itself, "Rebels kill 12 Iraqi soldiers." Al-Jazeera reports "Occupation tanks poised to enter."