OUR NINE ELEVEN
2013-09-12 by Keith McHenry [blog.foodnotbombs.net/our-nine-eleven]:
The Smashing Hunger, Squashing Poverty Tour - This is such an important
time to work for peace, social justice and the environment. One way you
can help inspire your community to take action is to host the Smashing
Hunger, Squashing Poverty Tour with Food Not Bombs co-founder Keith
McHenry. [575-770-3377] [keith@foodnotbombs.net]
[foodnotbombs.net/speaker.html]
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local Taos man suffering a heart attack on May 21st could not be saved.
According to the Taos News when volunteer fire fighters dialed 911
“The call went unanswered. Dispatchers in Taos heard only a faint rasp.
The man died.” We have money for war but when it comes to real National
Security issues like 911 emergency services the funds are not there.
This
September 11th we woke to news that Obama still claims he may need to
bomb Syria if negotiations with Russia and Assad fail. Remember that
Saddam complied with every U.S. demand letting inspectors in to seek for
weapons of mass destruction taking away every U.S. excuse for war but
proving a negative was impossible and America bombed Iraq anyway. That
war continued to this day. A limited attack on Syria may ignite a global
war and maybe an economic collapse as oil prices sore after the Strait
of Hormuz is too dangerous to navigate. The murder and chaos that would
follow an Al-Qaeda victory in Syria would be staggering. All Al-Qaeda
needs is U.S air support.
This September 11th is also the one year
anniversary of an event in Libya that should remind us of just how well
Obama’s limited wars can work out. On September 11, 2013 CNN reported
that “A car bomb exploded outside a Foreign Ministry building in the
Libyan city of Benghazi Wednesday, state media said, on the anniversary
of an assault on the U.S. Consulate there that killed four Americans,
including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.” By the time you read this
essay news of this reminder may well be eclipsed by an even more
dramatic “Pearl Harbor” type event.
Imagine if Obama spent as much
energy encouraging America to change our policies to slow climate
change or spoke on every network pleading to congress to pass a
universal healthcare bill, fund research and development on alternative
energy or pass a farm bill that would subsidize organic agriculture.
Sadly he would rather go all out for another war while ignoring the real
national threats of climate change, hunger, poverty or the student loan
crisis.
For most of my life September 11th reminded me of the US
backed coup against Salvador Allende in Chili and the public murder of
folk musician Víctor Jara who’s hands were cut off before thousands of
other prisoners at the Santiago Stadium. But in 2001 nine eleven marked
the day I was added to the official U.S. “black list” and banned from
official employment in the United States, first being fired from United
Way, than Sun Sounds Radio for the Blind where my boss told me naïvely
of the Homeland Security “Black List” followed by my last official job
at Western National Parks Association.
Banned from employment I
headed out on the “Drop Bush Not Bombs Tour” first visiting Food Not
Bombs groups in North America followed by a three month tour of Europe
and the Middle East funded by friends and the sale of my first book
“Food Not Bombs – How to Feed the Hungry and Build Community.”
The
tour took me the Balkans where I visited Belgrade Food Not Bombs in
October 2003. As we prepared that weekend’s meal at the Rebel Squat
local volunteers asked me if Michael Moore’s move “Bowling for
Columbine” was based on reality. Did Americans really have guns and used
them against one another? They were surprised to learn that civilians
are allowed to be armed something I often hear when traveling outside
the states. I also shared that I had just read Moore’s book “Hey Dud
Where’s my Country?” and mentioned he finished the book calling on the
American people to vote for General Wesley Clark for president. Everyone
in the room gasped and started to recount Wesley Clark’s 1999 bombing
Serbia. One volunteer, Emma, told me how she was an intern at a local
hospital that cared for over 750 deformed children some with two heads,
others with five arms and others with just one eye. Depleted uranium was
America’s choice of “chemical weapon” in that assault. Food Not Bombs
activists painted targets on t-shirts daring Clark to kill them. They
told of the fear caused when Cruise Missiles slowly floated above the
streets of Belgrade seeking targets. Everyone lost friends and family
and almost lost hope but they bounced back eager to share the trauma of a
US Air War on a modern city. Their toilet was the Cruise Missile crater
that had forced the occupants the home they were squatting to flee to
France.
Imperialism has a long history of using chemical weapons.
Professor Howard Zinn started “The People’s History of the United
States” with an account of the first use of weapons of mass destruction
in service of imperialism in the “new World” the ever effective
blankets of small pox. His history book continues with America’s use of
one brutal advance in mass murder after another from simple bombs
dropped on Mexican Rebels to the nuclear bombing of Japan.
While
the U.S. media seems to have forgotten America’s use of banned chemical
weapons the rest of the world remembers. After the last U.S. war on Iraq
started the British Parliament ordered a study of the invasion and
issued a report on the United States use of Mark 77 – 750 pound fuel
gel napalm bombs on civilians during the early days of “Shock and Awe.”
Before that invasion American leaders including my neighbor Rumsfield
provided Iraq with chemical weapons that were used against Iran and
during an internal war against the Kurdish population.
The U.S.
also used more fuel gel bombs and white phosphorus on the people of
Fallujah in November 2004. The March–April 2005 online Field Artillery
magazine has confirmed the use of WP (white phosphorus) in so-called
“shake ‘n bake” attacks, so the use of white phosphorus is substantiated
by US Army sources only for screening and psychological effects: The
Iraqi ministry of health installed by the Bush administration announced
that their surveys and studies after the 2004 assault “confirm that US
forces used substances that are internationally prohibited – including
mustard gas, nerve gas, and other burning chemicals – in the course of
its attacks on the city.”
According to a study released by the
Switzerland-based International Journal of Environmental Research and
Public Health in July 2010 noted that “the increases in cancer,
leukaemia and infant mortality and perturbations of the normal human
population birth sex ratio in Fallujah are significantly greater than
those reported for the survivors of the A-Bombs at Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in 1945.” Hundreds of children deformed by the U.S. chemical
attacks suffer in Iraqi hospitals as the war America continues to rage
across Iraq.
At the same time Obama and Congress are investing so
much energy drumming up support for another war it turns out that one in
two civilians in the United States are still struggling to survive. The
government may close in October. According to a September 9, 2013
Washington Post article “The fiscal year ends Sept. 30, and government
agencies will start shutting down if some type of budget bill isn’t
enacted by then.” It also says that “The government’s ability to borrow
more money will probably end in late October if the debt ceiling isn’t
raised.” This real “National Security Threat” seems to be off the
agenda as Millions of Americas face delays and reductions in Food
Stamps while food prices continue to increase. Two days of bombing Syria
could feed all the refugees fleeing the war for months or save one
hundred Taos Hospitals from the painful budget cuts our community must
make this week laying off healthcare workers, reducing services and
increasing fees. Taos isn’t the only hospital forced to make huge
budget cuts. The Bend Bulletin’s September 11, 2013 article starts with
“A federal budget-cutting proposal threatens to reduce Medicare
payments to 15 rural Oregon hospitals, and hospital and state officials
said the impact could be devastating. The proposal involves “critical
access hospitals” that get higher Medicaid payments under a program
started in 1997 amid a wave of hospital closures in rural America.” So
calling 911 may not lead to emergency treatment at your local hospital.
When you call 911 in my community you have no idea what might happen. A
local man suffering a heart attack on May 21st could not be saved.
According to the Taos News when volunteer Fire Fighters called 911 “The
call went unanswered. Dispatchers in Taos heard only a faint rasp. The
man died.”
Congress has not been able to pass a federal budget,
not even a budget that would continue to redirect America’s resources to
the very corporations that enjoy using our nation’s infrastructure of
highways, power grids and surveillance without having to pay one dime in
federal taxes.
A desperate man called our hunger hot line today.
Like others that call our toll free number he had not eaten in seven
days. He told me that the Sheriff’s Department visited his home but told
him they were not in the business of feeding people. Food Bank couldn’t
help either but 211 was able to give him our number. We still plan to
help even though we don’t have the funds necessary to drive to his home
in Madrid, New Mexico. Our last dollar was used to transport food to
hundred of hungry children in Nairobi Kenya but that is fine, the funds
seem to arrive just in time. The people come through even if the state
can not.
After the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York Food Not
Bombs arrived with hot vegan meals to support the rescue workers.
Arby’s Roast beef showed up a couple days latter but the first
responders remarked that their sandwiches smelled like Ground Zero so
their help was short lived. When the carbon industry Super Storms
Katrina and Sandy attacked our communities we joined the citizen rescue
squad with our joyously prepared meals, cleaning supplies, fresh water
and commission. Every week during the perpetual war of poverty
volunteers faithfully arrive on street corners, parks and plazas ready
to nourish the local community.
The other emergency call this nine
eleven is to the Senate Intelligence Committee and Obama’s web of spy
agencies. News revealed on this 9/11 shows that “The National Security
Agency openly shares unfiltered intelligence files with the Israeli
government, according to a classified document leaked to the Guardian
newspaper by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.”
Domestic spying
has consequences. For example Food Not Bombs expected to receive the
final payment of $500 from a grant provided by World Peace Earth to
help secure the water pump at the Free Skool from this winter’s freezing
nights. Two other urgently needed donations also failed to arrive. When
I went to pick up the mail on August 21st, the day of the alleged
chemical weapons attack in Syria our post box was empty. It was empty
again the next day and every day since. Our mail box was empty for 21
days in a row with at least $1,200 in promised donations lost to the
winds or as Senator Tom Udall’s very helpful office suggested it may
have been lost to the F.B.I. as had been the case when not one piece of
mail arrived from June 1, 2008 to November 1, 2008 the same time the
F.B.I. started to infiltrate Minneapolis Food Not Bombs. The informants
suggested that bombing the police or Republican delegates might be a
great strategy. Even though the Food Not Bombs volunteers declined to
support the plot the Food Not Bombs house was raided the morning before
the Republican National Convention and eight volunteers were charged
under the Minnesota Patriot Act.
Food Not Bombs volunteer Jeremy
Hammond was targeted by the FBI for sharing the Stratfor or Strategic
Forecasting files with Wikileaks. Like Snowden, the information Hammond
made public has been critical in understanding the impossibility of
forming a free and democratic America unless we dismantle the
Intelligence industry. The freejeremy.net website asks that everyone
write Judge Loretta Preska and ask that she give him a sentence of time
served. He has been held since March 2012 often in solitary
confinement. They suggest you include a statement such as this in your
letter. “I am appalled that Jeremy Hammond is facing a decade in prison
for exposing corporate spying. Already, he has been incarcerated since
March 2012, held in solitary confinement, and at times has been denied
the ability to communicate with his family. Jeremy has done enough time
already. Please consider granting him a sentence of time served.”
Jeremy’s sentencing is to occur on November 15, 2013 in the Southern
District of New York.
Food Not Bombs volunteers Eric McDavid,
Brandon Baxter and Connor Stevens are in prison today as a result of
F.B.I. infiltration, surveillance following the government’s elaborate
and expensive creation of phony bombing plots. The programs revealed by
Snowden are more than curiosities or a violation of our Constitutional
rights. The principle task of the Intelligence Industry to make sure
democracy never comes to America and protect corporate power’s freedom
to ravage the environment, exploit labor and guarantee that they can
operate not only tax free but absorb as much of the public coffers as
they can before there is a revolution in the streets.
The
crushing poverty and hunger is our 911 and the people are as always the
first responders in the economic and political terrorism attack of
corporate greed.
You can respond by joining Food Not Bombs. Start
or join a Food Not Bombs group in your community and provide organic
vegan meals and inspiring literature under the banner Food Not Bombs.
Also consider bringing Food Not Bombs cofounder Keith McHenry to your
community this fall. The presentation will bring hope and a realistic
strategy to transform our society for the better. Food Not Bombs will
respond to your 911 call.
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