Why Do We Hate Us? Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Why Do We Hate Us? by Andrew Pollack With the arrest of Abdullah al-Muhajir -- born Jose Padilla in Brooklyn -- for allegedly plotting to plant a "dirty" bomb in Washington, the limited scope of the post-9/11 question, "why do they hate us," becomes even more obvious. Pogo's oft-quoted saying ("We have met the enemy and he is us") has taken on a new, nightmarish meaning. It's possible that Ashcroft is lying, that al-Muhajir/Padilla has done none of the things he's alleged to have done, that this is all a way of diverting attention from the Administration's intelligence failures. But he's not the first US citizen to be accused of working with al-Qaeda, and given the increasing inequity and oppression in most US communities -- and, most importantly, the weakness of a positive progressive alternative -- the notion that the plot he's accused of participating in could appeal to someone as alienated and directionless as al-Muhajir is not very hard to imagine. From press reports al-Muhajir appears to be a typical urban U.S. street (as opposed to corporate suite) thug. It's a short step, morality-wise, from the kind of murderous brutality practiced by any gangster in the US -- whether that be a member of the Latin Kings, the just-departed John Gotti, or those in the Pentagon murdering via "collateral damage"-- to that of al-Qaeda. Instead of a Malcolm X transforming in prison from gangster to revolutionary, we now have the potential for gangsters graduating from domestic to international homicide. Today in a letter to the New York Times the head of the Women's Housing and Economic Development Corporation in the Bronx writes of the importance of after-school activities for teens. She then criticizes the hypocrisy of law enforcement officials who blame unsupervised teens for crimes, and politicians who make it harder for mothers, especially those on welfare, to provide supervision for them. But instead of more funding for programs to engage urban teens, or to employ them, the al-Muhajir case will lead to further demonization and victimization of them. The Times notes that he researched bomb capacities on the Internet. What if during his school years he had had access to computer training and guarantees of a post-graduation computer job? Why was it left to al-Qaeda to initiate him into the capabilities of the wired life? One of the liberals' responses to 9/11 -- even those supporting the subsequent war against Afghanistan -- was the call for a Marshall Plan to rebuild poor countries and thus reduce the poverty which breeds terrorism. The liberals, of course, aren't serious about this, for a real reconstruction effort would clash with the "free market" economics they share with conservatives. Soon, no doubt, these same liberals will make the case for a domestic Marshall Plan to deal with homegrown terrorists. But they'll be no more serious about securing the funds, which would require challenging their parties' corporate funders. (The most recent example of their cravenness on this score can be seen in a Times article yesterday noting that all of the ballyhoo about post-Enron corporate reform has disappeared with no legislative residue). But the antiwar movement which sprang up after 9/11 can raise these issues, and can take this opportunity to strengthen the links we've tried to make between the fight against war and the fight for social justice, both here and abroad. Because we understand how war --- and the domestic repression that accompanies it -- is at its root a way of imposing social injustice. The stakes in making that point have never been higher, as is the need to build an antiwar movement which is at the same time a movement of organizations of people of color, of unions, of women's groups. source - 107disc group at yahoogroups.com ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytjus-06.11.02-16:57:09-5613