9/11-in memoriam

this weekend marks10years since the 9/11 terror against the people of the united states and the world

i think this will be brief and i make no apologies that it is more the personal thoughts of an individual revolutionary socialist,who tries to live as a good man with compassion.

truth is important.i will start with some personal truth,that when i first heard of these terrible events,i was at work at my desk in a job where i worked with young offenders,in my case mainly between 16-18years old.the first news was in very abstract terms,that something,someone had attacked the united states in a big way.my initial reaction for which i am ashamed was a low register/scale whoop-at an attack on the greatest imperialist heart of brutal and bullying capitalism.i apologise for that

i went downstairs to a tv to see a rerun of the first plane crash into the twin towers and then the second in real time.i looked niot believing what i saw,then with shock and horror,as news and footage came in of the destruction,terror and death,then of the other crash and attacks over washington and pennsylvania.then the reportage of people falling and throwing themselves from windows of the towers,the last words messages on phones.then the heroism of the many including workers,fire officers,police who went back in to rescue others and do what they could.

nothing will ever make up for the deaths and other harm to humans there and across the world ever since as a consequence.i can only add my thoughts,prayers and condolences to all.i am unequivocal in this.

i would only add and stress that in addition to the americans and others at the immediate sites i have the same thoughts and cares for all those people everywhere who have sufferred since and for the peoples sufferring which leads others to such horrific,tortured and distorted conclusions that they muct bomb,kill,injure and terrorise others.

every fibre in my moral being rejects this.

it is not possible to bring the war home that way.
it is not possible either to bomb people into submission.
it is not possible to bomb people into thinking differently.

it is never collatoral damage for any purpose,idea,state,anything.it is the death and maiming of real human individuals.

it is no justification for revenge,or retaliation.it is not excused by our anger or pity,though it may be a scream of rage,pity,hurt.

it does not destroy capitalism or imperialism,nor even weaken it.it feeds no-one,educates no-one,helps no one.it achieves nothing except negative consequences.

if anything it extends all the negatives.in demonstrating those realities it moves us nowhere in any sense.

i dont even share victor serges view of terror,which is that it is neccessary in bringing about the new in terrible circumstances.i do acknowledge that he was writing from the middle of international terror against the birth pangs of what was then briefly,for a few years the emergent socialism of soviet/bolshevik russia.usually his writing,especially in his novels,usually about revolution or its contrext are humanitarian and even tender.

i condemn state terror in all its forms,i condemn the exploiutation and oppression of others by capitalism in all its forms including death and wage labour

my understanding of trotsky may well be faulted and limited but it is that he condemned terrorism as the politics of despair and spelled out the numerous ways inn which it is counter-productive.he was writing about a different sort of terrorism in that then it tended to be individual acts against individual representatives of power or centres of industry or power.there are always risks.some terrorism was symbolic but still dangerous.

what has been delivered by world states,the taliban,al qaida,dissident republicans and loyalists and many othyers since is worse and unacceptable.

i am not neccessarilly argueing for pacifism.whillst i do not think that humankind is born evil nor unequal we are all capable of bad faith,evil,revenge and worse.our psychologies may all contain light and dark from which we can act wrongly,darkly with bad faith or bad intent.this may,or more likely may not be fully explained by the capitalist system,though i know that this system does not always encourage the best nor discourage the worst.

but we,individually and collectively have choice and can act individually to make a better way,a better life.we have better things to do than violence,wars,armaments,torture and terror.

we can change the system to make our better directions,creativity and solidarity more likely.we can all look for and easily finds in which we can make social change.

it starts by talking with and listening to those eager to hear a message that things can be better.we can share our food,our hospitality,our talents to carve out a better way.this is not an abstraction.

nothing will bring our own or others losses back.living a different way,a better way might give those deaths and harm a context,which will not mean they have not been in vain.

and each journey starts with a first,small step.we,the doers in the world have the capacity to make a better way.we can also make a better way in the means as well as the ends.terror and terrorism is a means that justifies no end.it only speaks of barbarism,that unfortunately alongside the memorials for 9/11 is being repeated as we speak....we need no more ieds,nor torture to get at the so calked facts,nor soldiers in body bags