Repost: September 11 and The Narrative

As the war drums beat ever louder once again, I've decided to repost my 10th Anniversary of 9/11 opus, as so little seems to have changed except... it's worse.

September 11 and The Narrative (originally posted September 11, 2011):

I'm in a motel room in Kingman, AZ. That morning 10 years ago, I was in a hotel room in Seattle, WA. Travel has been a consistent part of my life for most of my life, so it doesn't seem strange at all that I would be away from home when Something Happens.

What's strange, as I watch the coverage of the 10th Anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on MSNBC, is the persistence of The Narrative. Narrative is not just Myth, it is the Whole Story now. There is nothing but The Narrative. And even more than The Narrative is the insistence that "everything changed" that day ten years ago, while everything is being done today to demonstrate continuity. Bush and Obama and Clinton have all been out and about, and the commentary is as if Bush is still in office, the pivot around which all else revolves.

"Everything changed" on that day ten years ago. They talk about "resets" -- that the events of September 11, 2001, "reset" America's relations with itself, and "reset" the American relations with the rest of the world. That's true enough. For a brief moment, the trivialities and obsessions of the past -- particularly the media's summer obsessions with sharks and missing white women -- were set aside while the shock of the attacks was endlessly chewed over...

Of course we know that sharks and missing white women would return to the summer schedule soon enough. The shame of the Chandra Levy/Gary Condit media obsession -- and the eventual denouement that hardly anyone remembers -- should have put the likes of Nancy Grace out of business forever, but if anything, the events following that summer of 2001 have only reinforced the warped and twisted freakishness of Grace and her fantasies of persecution and prosecution. The major mass media has gotten far worse, in other words, and worse in ways that make it less and less likely that the public will ever again be an active participant in government.

That's the worst part of the change that has taken place since the attacks of 9/11/2001. Our Government -- well, what used to be Our Government -- has retreated behind ever more secure barricades. In many cases, it is no longer accessible or even knowable to the American People. The participation of the American People in their government is now distinctly unwelcome -- except in the form of pre-packaged/pre-processed "movements" like the TeaBaggers, who simply scream or threaten mindlessly whatever they are told to.

You would think that the correct approach to attacks like these would be to make public participation in governance even more of necessity, but it has become a near impossibility at the Federal level, and it is becoming progressively more difficult at every other level of government.

Nothing seems to penetrate the barricades any more. It's as if nothing will be allowed to ever again.

It's as if the government used the attacks as an excuse to finalize its divorce from The People -- a divorce tendered with the lawless intervention of the Supreme Court into the election of 2000.

Even the most autocratic and totalitarian governments of the Bad Old Days were seemingly more accessible, in many cases more directly accessible (as in the case of Versailles under the Ancien Regime), than Our Government today. So something fundamental about the relationship between government and the people has changed.

Not "everything" has changed, but that has changed.

Another change related to the barricading of government away from the People is the capture of government by the financial sector. Many of the victims of the World Trade Center attacks were of course financiers; that's a big part of what went on in the World Trade Center, and what those people in those towers did for a living was a big part of what spurred the attacks. We can't pretend that's not so. We can't pretend they all were "innocent." They weren't.

They were exploiters and destroyers by trade. And the transfer of the Treasury to them began almost immediately after the attacks, such that now, nothing can be done without their approval and consent, and more and ever more of the wealth of nations -- all nations -- must be relentlessly poured into their maw. Is it atonement? I don't know. But we -- the People -- have no say in what more they will demand and extract from us and our progeny. Masters of the Universe, indeed.

I've had some conflicted feelings about the Memorial waterfalls at the WTC site.

Intellectually, it makes perfect sense. Emotionally, it's... tough. The memorial represents constant falling. Never-ending. Every minute of every day. "Never forget". What will it mean to those who didn't witness the events being memorialized?

Will they remember: Coups are easy. Revolution is hard.

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Within days, of course, what would be known as "Occupy Wall Street" and then just "Occupy!" swept out from lower Manhattan (Zuccotti Park is only a block or two from the World Trade Center site)  and spread around the world. That spirit is still active. Yes, coups are easy. Revolution is hard.

The Travesty of the Cecily McMillan Trial

Well, who'd a thunk it?

Yesterday in the august Manhattan courtroom of Judge Ronald Zweibel a jury of six women duly convicted Cecily McMillan of assault in the second degree for her alleged unprovoked attack on Honest and Brave NYPD officer Grantley Bovell, an assault that left the Poor, Beleaguered Officer injured in one -- or perhaps the other -- eye, and mortified him severely.

The trial was one of those farces that routinely passes for "justice" in this country, in which testimony and evidence was not allowed for the defense, but no corroboration was necessary for the police officer's assertions. According to those present, his bald-faced lies and contradictions were accepted by the court as gospel.

Well, too often, this is how it goes in the fraudulent institution that claims to be the "finest justice system in the world." The subjects are railroaded and convicted of things they haven't done -- or are induced to plead guilty to things they haven't done -- every single day, as a matter of routine practice. It's not even the pretense of justice, it's a fraud up and down the line, and it is a fraud that condemns millions to jail and prison, sometimes for very lengthy terms, sometimes indeed to death, with little or no recourse. Once "in the system" there's almost no way out.

Cecily was badly injured in the take down and arrest on March 17, 2012. She suffered bruises and a cracked rib, and she had a series of panic attacks which caused her to hyperventilate and ultimately put her in seizure while she was trussed up with zip ties awaiting transport. She was not attended by medical personnel -- in fact, the police openly refused to allow her to be attended -- until many minutes after she began to have a seizure, and the prosecution claimed at trial (without evidence) that she was "faking".

"Faking."

That's the word for the whole dismal process she's been subjected to for the last two years. "Fake" in every way, from her arrest to the charges against her, to the farce of a trial which convicted her.

Cecily McMillan, like millions of others, was railroaded, charged and convicted of the crime of "assault" -- which in fact was what Brave and Valiant Officer Bovell did to her. He assaulted her, first by grabbing her, then by groping her breast, then by tackling her and pinning her to the ground, then by trussing her up and throwing her into a group of other detainees, then he and other officers further assaulted her by refusing to provide any sort of medical assistance when she complained of being unable to breathe and went into seizure.

"Violent bastards," indeed. It's an identity thing with these people.

Cecily McMillan was convicted of assault in the second degree on a police officer and was immediately remanded to Riker's Island without bail to await sentencing on May 19. She may well be sentenced by his phony honor Zweibel to the maximum of seven years for the insult and mortification -- and injury to one or the other eye -- she inflicted on Brave and Honest Officer Bovell that night in Zuccotti Park on St. Paddy's Day two years ago.

She doesn't deny she smacked him with her elbow, oh no. She never did deny that. What she said was she didn't know who he was, she didn't even see him as he came up behind her, and grabbed her from behind. He didn't identify himself. He was not in uniform. She started to leave the park on her own, she said, to get away from this person, when he grabbed right breast, hard, leaving a bruise, and she whacked him with her elbow.

At which point Brave and Valiant Officer Bovell tackled the bitch and sat on her until she was zip tied and under... control. Yeah, that's the ticket.

This is the scene as it was recorded by Cecily's friends that night:



Is it possible for a viewer of this video to make out what happened?

To an extent, perhaps.

It's possible to hear women speaking. "Ah, there's Cecily.... Is she getting beat up? She's getting beat up right now... Oh God... Yeah, they're [unintelligible]... Who is [escorting... or hurting] her? Cops and one guy not in a cop uniform, he's right be...[cut off]..."

But what can be seen is... ambiguous. I recall watching livestreaming of the Zuccotti Park re-occupation that night, and I recall the astonishment and outrage at what took place when Cecily was assaulted, manhandled and arrested, and the growing fury and outrage as she was neglected and refused medical attention as she had trouble breathing and went into seizure. I will never forget it.

What happened to Cecily happened so quickly, no one initially knew what was going on. It was almost unbelieveable, as up to that point, there had been very little interaction between police and the Occupiers, and the mass arrests hadn't begun. The spirit of the place was, until that moment, still pretty mellow.

But then, the woman was tackled by... someone. Nobody knew who or why, and it looked for all the world like she was being assaulted and beat up by a civilian stranger -- remember, Bovell was not in uniform -- only whoever it was tackling her and beating on her was being protected by cops... Ah. There you have it. Her attacker was plainclothes.

She was being arrested.

Here she is, trussed up, lying in the street, having a seizure, while a whole contingent of New York's Finest mill about, apparently enjoying the show, and the crowd of witnesses can barely contain their anger and dismay.



Typical, though, of the efforts of NYPD to display as much of their arbitrary cruelty to the multitudes as possible during the Occupy hey day. They did it all the time, as I documented in the cases of Daniel Murphy and "Romania" among others.

But of course, Cecily would be charged, would go to trial, and she would be convicted -- for what the officer had done.

Of course.

No surprise.

No justice.

It happens all the time, every day, to thousands who wind up "in the system" never to be free.

It's time it stops.

The Collapse

Interesting sites in Lower Manhattan via Teh Goggle.

[Not having a whole lot of time to write these days, I'll make this one brief.]

The linkages between the attacks on 9/11/2001 and the ultimate economic collapse of 2007-08 might benefit from further exploration. Or maybe not. There are certain things we just don't want to know.

At the time of the attacks, after all, it seemed to me that the target in New York, the World Trade Center, was a hub, if not the global hub, of financialization -- what amounts to the creation of "wealth" out of nothing and the transference of wealth (in the real sense) from workers to the leisure class.

The target was perfect for messing with that whole scheme. Whether doing so was in anybody's mind or not, I don't know, but for a time, there was panic among the financial class. And shortly there would be demands, demands of billions upon billions of dollars in compensation for losses that day -- not from insurance companies but from the government, as if the government had some culpability somehow. Hm. Who'd a thunk.

And then there were the wars in the aftermath of the attacks, wars in which scads of money, cash money, featured prominently -- pallets of $100 bills famously shipped to Iraq, for example; guest houses along the Tigris found stacked to the rafters with $100 bills; showers of hundred dollar bills dropped over Afghanistan among the Northern Alliance, etc. It was money war, in which "sides" were bought and sold like commodities.

The American economy shifted into overdrive, not to satisfy the needs of warriors overseas but to satisfy the extortion of the the financial class -- which, after all, had suffered directly from the attack in New York on 9/11.

The location of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park/Liberty Plaza may have been happenstance, but it was striking how close it was to the site of the holes where the trade center towers had been. It was within a block or so of the long delayed "Freedom Tower" that is intended to replace the collapsed and vanished towers. While the demonstrations and protests were focused on Wall Street abuses, the point was made by many observers that "Wall St." is not the financial center it once was, that the chief players have long since moved their headquarters elsewhere, and the Stock Exchange itself is almost a stage show; the real action is not there anymore. Nevertheless, the physical Wall St. and Zuccotti/Liberty Park suffered greatly in the attacks and building collapses of 9/11; they were too close to escape the fall-out.

In the end, we've all been suffering from the multiple collapses during the past almost inconceivably eventful decade plus one. What's been happening didn't begin on 9/11, but it was vastly accelerated as a consequence of those attacks.

And always, it seems to be about the money. Not so much about the lives and the property destroyed, the entire nations put to the torch and the hundreds of thousands or millions sent to their doom.  It's about the money.

How much, how fast, and who from.